Qobuz playback on CCA goes silent when Internet connection is overloaded

[madbrain76]

What version of Music Assistant has the issue?

2.4.0b23

Have you tried everything in the Troubleshooting FAQ and reviewed the Open and Closed Issues and Discussions to resolve this yourself?

• Yes

The problem

I was playing an album on Qobuz, the Goldberg Variations by Cameron Carpenter, onto a single Google Chromecast audio device. Meanwhile, I had some downloads going in another program on another device, temporarily saturating my Internet connection, enough that it might reasonably be expected to cause audio streaming to buffer.
After a few minutes of playback, the CCA went silent. The transport controls in MA still showed the time advancing. It even moved to the next track. There was nothing but silence, however.

How to reproduce

1. Add Qobuz music provider
2. Add CCA
3. Select CCA
4. Select album
5. Play album
6. Start downloads to saturate connection
7. Wait for playback to go silent

Music Providers

Qobuz

Player Providers

Chromecast

Full log output

music-assistant_qobuz_interrupted.log

Additional information

If I press pause/play, the playback resumes. However, by the time I do that, the transports have already advanced, and I have missed part of the album.

My expectation in this case would be a pause when buffering. I believe I have experienced that in the past with the Airplay player providers. It's possible that this issue is specific to Chromecast.

What version of Home Assistant Core are your running

2025.1.4

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

On what type of hardware are you running?

Generic x86-64 (e.g. Intel NUC)

[marcelveldt]

This is outside of our control. You're playing an internet source - that means you need internet bandwidth, especially for Qobuz hi res content. If the buffer gets below the threshold your music will stop or start to stutter.

[madbrain76]

@marcelveldt ,

Stuttering or stopping is exactly what I would expect if the internet is slow or down.

What I'm seeing is different - the playback time transports continue to advance, even skipping tracks, as if audio data was still streaming from the server. Once that happens, audio also never resumes on its own, even if internet is up and there is enough bandwidth.