Troubleshooting
-----
-The installation and setup of Shairport Sync is straightforward on recent Linux distributions. Issues can occasionally arise caused by problems elsewhere in the system, typically WiFi reception and/or the WiFi adapter settings, the network, the router, firewall settings.
+The installation and setup of Shairport Sync is straightforward on recent Linux distributions. Issues can occasionally arise caused by problems elsewhere in the system, typically WiFi reception and/or the WiFi adapter settings, the network, the router, firewall settings or some more esoteric audio interfaces.
In this brief document will be listed some problems and some solutions.
You can check UFW config by typing `sudo ufw status` in shell. Please make sure that UFW is active, especially if you have deactivated it previously for testing purpose.
Run your song from your remote device. Enjoy !
+
+### Stuttering audio on certain USB DACs (such as the Creative Soundblaster MP3+)
+
+**Problem**
+When using a USB DAC on a Raspberry Pi audio plays fine through other methods (such as through mpd, mopidy, mplayer or aplay) but when streamed to Shairport Sync regular dropouts or stutters are heard.
+
+**Possible Cause**
+There is a suspicion (although this is not 100% confirmed) that this is a fun latency/timing issue related to a combination of
+- The Raspberry Pi's ethernet itself being a USB device resulting in shared bandwidth/interrupts with USB DACs
+- Shairport Sync continually checking the latency of the USB DAC to maintain synchronisation of audio
+- Quirky USB DACs (already known to be problematic on the Raspberry Pi more info available [here](https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/usb/README.md#knownissues)
+For more discussion on this issue see [issue 167](https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync/issues/167) or read on for the quick fix!
+
+**Solution**
+To get nice smooth audio first check the details of your USB DAC by either using 'aplay -l' which will give you output something like this:
+````
+**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
+card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
+ Subdevices: 8/8
+ Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
+ Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
+ Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
+ Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
+ Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
+ Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
+ Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
+ Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
+card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 1: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI]
+ Subdevices: 1/1
+ Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
+card 1: MP3 [Sound Blaster MP3+], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
+ Subdevices: 0/1
+ Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
+````
+
+or look at your exisiting '/etc/asound.conf' file, which may look something like this
+
+````
+pcm.!default {
+ type hw
+ card 1
+}
+ctl.!default {
+ type hw
+ card 1
+}
+````
+The important information you want is the card number which in this case is 1.
+
+Now modify your 'etc/asound.conf' file (or create one if it doesn't exist) using the following template substituting the 'pcm "hw:1"' and 'card 1' sections with the card number of your device
+
+````
+pcm.!default {
+ type plug
+ slave.pcm {
+ type dmix
+ ipc_key 1024
+ slave {
+ pcm "hw:1"
+ rate 48000
+ period_time 0
+ period_size 1920
+ buffer_size 19200
+ }
+ }
+}
+ctl.!default {
+ type hw
+ card 1
+}
+````
+Note that some distributions (such as Volumio 2) don't use an asound.conf file by default, they instead specificy the hardware details directly in '/etc/shairport-sync.conf' and '/etc/mpd.conf' files so some more in depth modification is needed to override this.