No sound - 1st few seconds of music files!

[OmniFi]

I was sitting here testing the WDTV Live I picked up the other day trying to convince myself to keep it so I decided to run some more tests on the audio playback.  Playing all my music is the main reason for buying the WDTV Live.  So... I start to notice that about the first 1.5 seconds of every song is muted.  What's with that?

I found that it does this regardless of just playing straight through an album, shuffling a playlist or whatever.  It will not play the first 1.5 seconds of a music file.  The counter runs and just before it hits 0:02 the sound comes on.

I totally ruins the experience of listening to music on this thing!

Has anybody else noticed this?

I am beginning to wonder what the WDTV does right?  I really want to like this thing but it's getting very difficult.

[OmniFi]

I should note the following...

1.  This is all on a local USB drive - and a pretty zippy one at that.

2.  The problem exists with or without the Media Library enabled

3.  The problem exists with mp3 and wma files

4.  It's always the same delay like the WDTV is filling some buffer before the audio output turns on.

This is pathetic.  I am beginning to think the WDTV is a total botch job.  Please somebody tell me how to get this thing to play entire songs including the first couple seconds - those are important after all.

:-(

[Techflaws]

I've experienced this behaviour with the original WD TV but failed to reproduce it with the LIVE though it occasionally happened to me initially to. I've still to determine what it is about my mp3s that causes this. In any case I don't regard the LIVE as a good music player.

[hdmilive]

I have the same problem.  I certainly didn't expect this thing to have trouble playing mp3s!  Totally ruins the intro to songs.  What is it doing in that first one and a half seconds, and why won't it just play the song?!

[TonyPh12345]

It's not the MP3s, and it's only partly the WDTV.   It's mostly your AVR taking too long to sync to the digital bitstream.

I've tried this on two separate WDTV Lives and one WDTV Live+.

On my HDMI Pioneer, it takes a split second for the thing to switch modes if I leave it in AUTO.   That's because the receiver has to first determine WHAT the bitstream is and then switch to the proper surround mode.   

The WDTV could improve on this if, when it's in MUSIC mode, if it were to "Freewheel" and send idle bits so the AVR knew ahead of time what's about to come before the actual data arrives.   

My pioneer loses about 2/10 of a second of the beginning of songs.    I tested this using an MP3 that I created in a digital audio editor.  When I'm using analog outputs, there's NO delay.

If yours loses seconds, then it's obvious that it's an AVR issue.  And I don't want my WDTV freewheeling for multiple SECONDS before music starts to accomodate slow receivers.

[Techflaws]

I doubt it's an AVR issue cause it happened when connected to my CRT TV and analogue AVR (composite). My LIVE is set to Stereo.

[richUK]

I have thousands of mp3's and all of them play perfectly OK via the composite output.

Have you tried using a different encoder?

Perhaps somebody could upload a mp3 which exhibits this problem so we could see what is different.

[hdmilive]

My issue is RESOLVED!  Thanks to you, TonyPh12345.  My problem was that I was using the hdmi connection with a 2009 Sony Bravia TV, which I've noticed is slow to react to anything.  I switched to analog audio and component video.

Mp3s play perfectly now!

I apologize to WD for the disloyal spouting I did in my earlier post.  I edited that stuff out.  WDTV Live is awesome!

Thanks also to RichUK.  The word "composite" in your post is what switched the light on.