ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi all,
I have some very weird issues with airplay playback on my speakers. I currently have an A9 MkII, an M5 and an M3 connected to my wifi.
Sometimes I can stream via airplay to the speakers, sometimes not. In all instances, if I power cycle the speakers, they show up on airplay after reboot.
Usually the M5 and A9 show up in Spotify under Spotify connect which always works, but the same speaker might not show up on airplay, even though it is available for Spotify connect.
When I log in to my router, I can see that all the speakers are connected to the network (as the speakers' diodes indicate), but to no avail. Whether they are available on airplay is completely random, but most often not.
Obviously this is an issue, since airplay is the only way I can use multi-room streaming.
I have contacted B&O support, and they offered several fixes, but nothing helps.
(And by the way: my Apple TV ALWAYS shows up in the airplay menu....)
Anybody with a solution ?
I had this problem with an A6. I believed, but could not prove, that my Apple AirPort responded for the A6 if it felt the A6 had gone to sleep but was still active ("Bonjour Proxy"), and this confused the source device. I believed, but never knew for sure, that giving the A6 a static IP address assignment, and, IIRC, preventing it from going to sleep, helped. Given that my experience is so sketchy and so long ago, hopefully someone else can advise you!
(Note you did not say what your source device was. My source was an older (10.6.8) Mac, which may have had mDNSresponder bugs, who knows... The situation was complicated by having a DSL modem DHCP the IP address assignments, the A6 was connected to the Airport as wireless access point only, and both went through an Ethernet switch to which the Mac was hard-wired. Who dropped or failed to respond to the Bonjour discovery packets, or maybe didn't wait long enough to receive replies? I'll never know.)
Hi
My source device is an iPhone 8. My router is a Sagemcom 3890V2. All devices are wirelessly connected.
It definitely seems like the devices are in "sleep" mode, and do not wake up unless power cycled (or connected with Spotify connect). Maybe it is a router issue. Maybe it is a B&O software issue...?
Hi,
Not a solution but some details more.
I've a little experience with wide Airplay networks and what I can say is that anything which is not Apple branded will result in random Airplay results.
My setup has several Airport express scattered around the house and is pretty reliable. But it also includes standalone airplay speakers which regularly behave weirdly. Disconnections, disappearances, dropouts… Turning then off/on or de/selecting them, solves the problem and makes them appears again.Sometimes they can work as expected for weeks and start again to fail without obvious reason.
I've tried several brands of speakers, from cheap to well know brands, with the same result.
I even installed a wifi repeater with a dedicated network for each speaker only, works better but not 100% reliable.Also tried 2,4 and 5 Ghz networks without obvious results.
Dry walls have internal metallic structure who could maybe act has a Faraday cage, but speakers are less than 3 meters from the router/repeater through one wall max, and Apple Base Stations doesn't suffer any perturbations.
All this to say that I've come to the conclusion the wifi hardware from third party devices may not be perfectly adapted to Airplay protocol, thus creating the problems you mentioned.
Thanks,
Just to elaborate:
It is actually not just an airplay issue.
Even the B&O app is not consistent in connecting to the speakers. If I open the app, often times it will say "product not available on the network" and this being while I can see they are connected, when logged in to my router.
Right now as I type this, my A9 is not available in the app. The M3 and M5 are. But only the M3 is available on airplay. The A9 could however be connected to via Spotify connect, which in my experience has worked most consistently. (but it cannot function as multi room, sadly). So now I am streaming via Spotify connect to my A9 only - while the B&O app states that "the product is not on the network"
It is a tad frustrating...:-)
matador43:Sometimes they can work as expected for weeks and start again to fail without obvious reason. I've tried several brands of speakers, from cheap to well know brands, with the same result.
trackbeo:It may very well be that AirPlay is unreliable, and AirPlay2 is less problematic?
Maybe you're right. I dont have or didn't try Airplay 2 standalone speakers. The ones I have are AP1, not even 5ghz compatible so yes thats old hardware. But they also sound well and I might end up just wiring them to the wall or to an AE base for them to work better. So far, having to make them reappear from time to time is not too much work.
Don't know if it can answer to your question but in my Airplay Network I have olds (AP1) and new (AP2) Airport bases mixed. All working flawlessly appart from a new model base sometimes not visible from Airport Utility Software but still working and visible as an Airplay speaker.
I believe like you that the problem is related to the non Apple devices going to sleep and a "handshake" problem when they need to wake up. But its really an ignorant guess.
Two observations thought:- When I start music and the TP speakers don't wake up, then end up connecting after a while by themselves. Sometimes long seconds, sometimes minutes, often never.- Depending on how I start music (Remote software on mac, old iOS or recent iOS) the speakers are more likely to start or not. Older iOS (up to 6.X) work almost everytime.
MWJ:It is actually not just an airplay issue.
It looks like a local area network issue.
In order to discover Airplay receivers such as B&O products, an Airplay sender such as a Mac or an iPhone sends Multicast Domain Name System QUERY packet on the network, Airplay receiver(s) respond(s) to this query with their network information and capabilities using the same multicast protocol. The sender caches the information and refreshes it when needed. B&O App has the same approach to discover the B&O products on the network, as well as Google cast. (I don't know about Spotify).
If these packets are lost then the devices appear unreachable for the respective service, while the router/switch will show them stil connected to the network.
If you have a computer on your network, I would start using the ping command against each device to see if you have packet loss, abnormal latency variation. It is not the most scientist way, but unless you know how to drive packet analyzer tools like Wireshark, it is a good start to diagnose network issue imo.
I would also temporarily wire the computer as well as one of the B&O products to identify if the problem is with the Wifi or the router/switch itself, e.g you could wire the M5, if the M5 is always present as AP receiver for the wired computer vs. A9 and M3 which are not always reachable via AP, it could then indicate a wifi issue. If the problem persist for all devices, wired included, then it is surely a router/switch issue.
BS Moment, BS Core, BG 4002, BC 4500, BS1, BL18, BL19, BL8000 + RCV1, A6, M5, M3, A1, P6 (tks Botty), H5, TR1
Thanks! I will try to see if I can isolate the problem.
But then: what will be the fix? Another router?
MWJ:But then: what will be the fix
I agree. To me it sounds like an mDNS issue, if the multicast handling of the router (especially over wi-fi) is a bit shaky it may result in the behaviour you experience.
Solution? Probably a firmware upgrade from Sagemcom (or Broadcom, who is responsible for the chipset of your cable modem). Maybe you should contact your ISP (or whoever it was who supplied the 3890). Apart from this, it's a really good unit.
I use a 3890v3 (same SoC, slightly different wi-fi chipsets) and I have similar experiences, btw.
henrik:To me it sounds like an mDNS issue, if the multicast handling of the router (especially over wi-fi) is a bit shaky it may result in the behaviour you experience.
mbolo01:If these packets are lost then the devices appear unreachable for the respective service, while the router/switch will show them stil connected to the network. If you have a computer on your network, I would start using the ping command against each device to see if you have packet loss, abnormal latency variation
If you have a computer on your network, I would start using the ping command against each device to see if you have packet loss, abnormal latency variation
This is very likely some sort of a network issue with other wifi router. In my case, I am using Google Wifi Mesh and both Core and A9 show up every time with my HomePods and other gear. My assumption of why your Apple TV is showing up but not the A9 is perhaps because your Apple TV is wired. Also, if my A9 does not show up for AirPlay on my iPad or iPhone, I can recycle my iPad or iPhone rather than the A9 or Core to see it. The current firmware on the A9 is rock solid in my experience, but it needs a stable wifi connection.
B&O in my life 😊:
He means "restart" of course. "Recycle" is what one does with one's old, bricked, Sonos CR100's!:-)
Restarting the iDevice is easier than the A9, because it's in your lap rather than across the room. But it still doesn't say where the bug lies. Does waiting -- for minutes -- at the selection pop-up on the iDevice finally show the A9, accomplishing the same thing as restarting the iDevice? If not, then that's a bug in the iDevice's mDNS "gathering" algorithm/cache. (Because the iDevice is *supposed* to rebroadcast the query and rebuild the list periodically.)
trackbeo:If not, then that's a bug in the iDevice's mDNS "gathering" algorithm/cache. (Because the iDevice is *supposed* to rebroadcast the query and rebuild the list periodically.)
If mDNS queries/responses are lost somewhere along the path, how is restarting the iDevice any different than waiting for a re-broadcast? If it is, that must be because of some bug in whatever router is maintaining said path, where the new request for a DHCP lease from the restarting iDevice clears some logjam? Like resetting all the ARP cache IP-MAC entries? Hmm... But in that case, restarting *any* device on the same network might do the trick...
By the way, the idea above about ping-ing devices would not necessarily work, because the OP has an AppleTV on his network, and the AppleTV will act as a Sleep Proxy (if the router isn't already doing so). (According to Stuart Cheshire, "To reduce unnecessary wakeups, the Sleep Proxy will wake a sleeping machine only when the proxy sees an incoming IP UDP packet or incoming IP TCP connection request for a Bonjour-advertised service on the sleeping machine. In particular this means that “pinging” a sleeping machine WILL NOT wake it, since “ping” is not one of the Bonjour-advertised services on the sleeping machine.")
Upshot: here are some experiments the OP can try to see if the A9 will stay visible as an Airplay speaker: Restart the iDevice. Leave off the AppleTV. Restart the AppleTV. Restart the Wi-Fi access point/router. If the A9 is the culprit, none of these things should work. If it is responding as it should, one of them ought to "make" it visible again? Worth a try at least...
trackbeo:If mDNS queries/responses are lost somewhere along the path, how is restarting the iDevice any different than waiting for a re-broadcast? If it is, that must be because of some bug in whatever router is maintaining said path, where the new request for a DHCP lease from the restarting iDevice clears some logjam? Like resetting all the ARP cache IP-MAC entries? Hmm... But in that case, restarting *any* device on the same network might do the trick...
Dont know if it's related but when a speaker disappear he stay on the speaker list on the airplay menu. I just can hear it has not started.If i try to deselect it to reselect again in order to start it, then it disappear from the list of available speakers. One way to make it re-appear is t start iTunes from my phone ans scan for available Airplay speakers. Then the phone finds it and at the same time it appears again on the airplay list from the computer.
Yeah, OK, let me prefix the following by saying that I am absolutely *not* an expert:
That smells to me *exactly* like some bug with Sleep Proxy on a network and a device that is not aware of such behavior! The iDevice says "tell me about yourselves, all you Airplay renderers", and, everybody responds, except that without waking any sleeping devices, the Sleep Proxy server responds for some of them. How? It has substituted its own MAC address for theirs and the router sends messages to it. So the Sleep Proxy says, "Yes, here I am: DeviceName(etc.)" for every device which has slept but it thinks does not need to awaken, because hey, it's "only" supplying names/DNS services, right? But then the iDevice tries to set up the stream to one of them before sending data, whereupon the Sleep Proxy gets its first packet that it knows must be handled by the device. So it tells the router to switch back the MAC address (how? I dunno, maybe TTL=0?) and then sends the special wake packet, and then also passes along the packet it knows the device must handle itself. How long does the wake take? Does the Sleep Proxy know how long to wait before passing that first packet? Does the device have a packet buffer? If it's UDP, does the packet just go off and get ignored by a waking device? If it's TCP, how long does the sending device wait before deciding to retransmit (or give up)? All unknown to me, though someone at B&O must have written code for this case.
That correlates to how a speaker device might be seen, but then takes longer than usual to start playing, and sometimes... just doesn't! Now, I do not *know* that an A9 can sleep, or that yours is sleeping. And I do not know if Bonjour Sleep Proxy is responsible. But what you just said sure looks suspicious.
If you are not using Apple Airport's for wireless or routers (which also have Sleep Proxy built in), I would at least *try* turning off the AppleTV and restart all the rest of your network, then use it like normal, and wait to see if the A9 works as well as all your other devices. This may be a total red herring. But at least it's easy to test.
Thank you Trackbeo,
I'm not the original poster and my problems are related to non B&O speakers.B&O stuff are hooked to Airport bases and behaving well.
Anyway, all you wrote make sens to me as it seems to be some sort of technical description to what I usually experience.Now i have to figure how to turn this into a fix.
All the best.
Hi TrackbeoI will give it a shot. However, I had the problems before the apple tv was connected. By the way: I am using a Ethernet via power grid from the router to the Apple TV. All the B&O speakers are connected wireless. Also, if the problem was the sleep-command, would Spotify connect then work so consistently?
thanks again for your replies.
Reminder: soak my opinions in a brine bath... What I *suspect* is: Because of the way Spotify Connect works -- streaming direct from their server, piercing your router's NAT & firewall, requested direct by the playback speaker -- and not streaming thru your iDevice running the Spotify App -- that the setup & teardown protocol is so complicated that the playback speaker was already completely awake. Why? Because it had to tell Spotify's server, over the Internet, where to reach it. That still doesn't explain why the very beginning of that setup process doesn't fail too -- but it is, at least, different, and probably why it works.
(If you didn't really mean "Spotify Connect" but you meant "the 'More Devices' menu item which shows all my Airplay speakers in Spotify's 'Available Devices' menu", then I *really*, really don't know, because that should work thru the same mechanism as any other Airplay output from that same iDevice. In my current home setup, Spotify Connect only shows up in the "Available Devices" menu as routing to my Sonos , and all the other devices are off the Airplay menu item. But I no longer have the A6 and don't remember if it did Spotify Connect, or not.)
Hi. they appear (the A9 and M5 - M3 does not support Spotify connect) under ‘devices available’ directly If I then select ‘AirPlay’ the speakers often times don’t show up.
Hi Mbolo01,
Unfortunately this is inconclusive as well, I think. (I am no network expert).
When I ping the speakers, I get inconsistent results. Right now, I can ping the M3 and M5 with good results. The A9 is unreachable.
Only the M3 is available for airplay. The A9 and M5 are available for Spotify connect.
And now a weird thing: The A9 (and my iPhone) are now listed as connected to ethernet port 3 on my router even though they obviously are connected via wifi. This happens often - devices connected via wifi appear as connected through the ethernet ports. Dont know if this is of any relevance.
I connected to the A9 and M5 separately through Spotify connect. This seems to have woken up the M5, which is now available for airplay. The A9 is still not available for airplay, and cannot be ping'ed
After a power cycle of the A9, it is reconnected to the network (same IP address). It responds to ping and can be connected to via airplay.
I am about to give up here.....
I tried to ping all the units. Unfortunately this is inconclusive as well, I think. (I am no network expert).
MWJ:I am about to give up here.....
Don't give up!
I don't know your router, but it is really suspicious. Your local area network seems very simple according to your description: an ISP provider router / switch / WiFi with a handful of network nodes connected wireless, you should not have such issues. Ping test resulting in high latency variation, packet lost and host unreachable is a sign of a very serious network problem.
Do you have other issues such as Internet browsing, watching Youtube video or listening to Internet music from your phone? Have you contacted your ISP? Do you have a mean to share your router configuration? even by PM, hiding any private information.
Rel to Wifi devices appearing connected to an Eth port, it could be by design in this type of router, while being very strange ... it is like if you had an external Wifi access point, connected to the relevant Eth port, showing all wireless devices connected to this external Wifi access point. I wonder what would be shown if all Eth ports were busy with real wired network devices?
In another post, where similar issues have been reported, I advised to install the Discovery free app (there is an IOS version). With this app you can see all products and all services advertising themselves on the network via the mDNS protocol, including Airplay, Google Cast and Spotify Connect. Maybe you should give a try and see if same inconsistencies are seen, i.e. by clicking on a given service such as _airplay._tcp. (Airplay receivers), you'll see all the products that have announced themselves so normally all B&O speakers. This will not solve the issue, but may may confirm what you are already seeing through the B&O app or IOS, i.e that service information such Airplay is not propagated well which would double confirm a network issue, so a router issue.
If you could borrow/purchase a Wifi Access Point, plug it to one of the ISP router Eth port, disable the ISP router Wifi and see if you have improvement, this would definitively confirm an issue with the ISP router.
Thanks again
I downloaded the app and will check for inconsistencies. I have another router, which I will try to set up later to see if it is more consistent
Did you ever figure out a solution?
I'm having the same problem and it's definitely a multicast DNS issue over WiFi. It seems to me that this is a bug in the B&O software or a problem with the WiFi hardware in the B&O devices. I've talked to B&O customer support but they don't yet have an answer.
I have several B&O products, some are wired and some use WiFi. The wired ones work reliably with AirPlay but the WiFi ones don't. If I wire one of the WiFi ones it then works reliably. I also have Apple TVs (some wired, some WiFi) and Apple HomePods (WiFi only) and they have no problems.
The B&O devices that disappear from AirPlay all work on the network fine: I can ping them and they can stream TuneIn radio stations without any interruptions and if I AirPlay to them they don't ever drop the music. So they are networked and the network seems to be fine. The network is a simple Ubiquiti UniFi network with a UniFi switch and several UniFi access points (that are all wired) scattered around the house.
Because they stay networked reliably, it seems to me that the B&O devices just stop answering multicast DNS queries for a little while and then start answering them again.
I've been watching all my AirPlay devices on my network using dns-sd to browse AirPlay devices which runs continuously and says when a device is available and when it isn't. What you don't see in the output is all the AirPlay devices that advertise themselves and never change state.
Here's the output of dns-sd -B _airplay._tcp (on a Mac)... the first column is the time of day, "Add" means the device is advertising itself and "Rmv" ("Remove") means it's not, "4" and "6" mean IPv4 and IPv6, that's why there's 2 of each of them. You can see that 2 of the devices (a Level and a Balance, both on WiFi) come and go every few minutes:
dns-sd -B _airplay._tcp
8:58:15.712 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 8:58:15.712 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 8:58:27.608 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 8:58:27.608 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 8:58:39.463 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 8:58:39.476 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 8:58:39.525 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 8:58:39.531 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:07:36.865 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:07:36.865 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:07:36.865 Rmv 1 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:07:36.865 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:09:39.665 Add 3 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:09:39.665 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:09:39.690 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:09:39.690 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:10:22.760 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:10:22.760 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:10:22.760 Rmv 1 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:10:22.760 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:10:26.714 Add 3 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:10:26.714 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:10:26.734 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:10:26.921 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:23:45.648 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:23:45.648 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:29:46.248 Rmv 0 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:29:47.355 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:41:55.044 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:41:55.135 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:44:04.414 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:44:04.587 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:46:12.977 Rmv 1 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:46:12.977 Rmv 0 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:46:17.885 Rmv 1 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:46:17.885 Rmv 0 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:46:27.441 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:46:27.479 Add 2 4 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance 9:46:27.626 Add 3 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Beosound Level 9:46:27.626 Add 2 6 local. _airplay._tcp. Lounge Balance
I have 2 other Balances, one is currently wired and the other is on WiFi but they are fine right now, but later today the WiFi one will also disappear from AirPlay and come back. I also have 2 Beosound Stages (both WiFi) that seem to be more reliable but they also come and go at times. Again, all the wired B&O devices and all the Apple TV and HomePods whether they're wired or WiFi work reliably.
Yes I did. the problem was caused by my 5ghz network. Apparently it produces interference which gives problems with airplay
Initially I had the 5ghz network set up with a different ssid and password than the 2.4ghz, but that still caused problems.
once I deactivated the 5ghz network, everything worked fine and has worked perfectly for long now.
hope this works for you.