Windows 7 streaming radio stops for no apparent reason

[0pt1cal]

I am running win7 ultimate 64bit and have had winamp and media player installed from day 1 for over 2 months now.

However over the last week I have a problem with all media players 'ending playback' for no apparent reason while recieving internet radio broadcasts.

i have reinstalled winamp again (the latest version), updated the codecs as a precaution and played around with the buffering settings all to no avail.

locally played mp3 files etc play with no problems at all so i am pretty sure it isn't a local network issue as they are stored on a NAS box with two routers between them and my machine.

has anyone had a similar / same problem and found a work around?

 

[Saltgrass]

I have no idea what is wrong, but have you tried without a firewall or anti-virus? Maybe there is a log.

You are sure your network isn't disconnecting?

When you are streaming, does the download bar stay in front of the play progress bar?

 

[0pt1cal]

I have checked the logs just now for anti virus (kaspersky 2010 latest update) and router firewall (netgtear) and apart from a few random browser incidents with firefox there are no reports for around the time i am getting disconnected.

with regards to your last query i dont have a download bar, the bar dissapears as soon as the stream connects the first time and then plays within one of the media players.

to the best of my knowledge there are no network disconnections as i use a chat room which doesn't have any disconnection issues as that stays running and working throughout.

 

[Saltgrass]

The download bar I was referring to is the one in the media player. You may see a darker and a lighter download bar in the playback window. You can normally watch the playback bar to see if it catches up to the download bar. If it does, the playback stops until a buffer is rebuilt.

Yours may not work like that, but look closely to make sure.

There are also some performance graphs you can watch to see how the network is behaving. Task Manager, Performance tab-Resource Monitor. Watch the Network Connections graph to see if your download speed is as you believe or if it is being interrupted.

 

[0pt1cal]

ok now i know what to look for i'll look out for it when they go on air tonight at 9 but will have a listen to a few other broadcasts as well in the meantime and see if it is 'station' related or something local to me

 

[0pt1cal]

well things appear to have settled down a bit for now at least.
i listened to another station transmitting at 192k/bit where as the station i was having issues with was running at 96, could that be part of the issue and is there a way of fixing that?

 

[Saltgrass]

The speed could be a problem if it is not feeding the player fast enough. If you can, the next time you listen to the 96 kbps download, hit the pause button for a few minutes. When you resume, see if it plays for a while without stopping.

 

[0pt1cal]

ok i'll give that a shot and post back here tomorrow )

 

[0pt1cal]

Right, have tried pausing playback, as a precaution I paused it for about 3 minutes, things were looking good for about 30 minutes and then the stream started buffering.

I do however suspect that was an issue with the transmit as other people mentioned it at about the same time.
Also gone to an earlier version of winamp - 5.0.2 as some people have mentioned tha the earlier versions work without error.

I would try it tonight but since I am the dj tonight it's going to be a little hard to listen to myself while doing the show, will report back tuesday after i've listened to it monday night