[RT-AC87U] iTunes playback stopping over AirPlay

[DanielCoffey]

I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction to diagnose why audio occasionally stops streaming over AirPlay with my Monitor Audio S200 wireless speaker.

I have an iPad2 with iOS 8.2 playing iTunes over 5GHz wireless on auto channel to an ASUS RT-AC87U running Merlin's firmware version 378.51. The Monitor Audio S200 is on the 2.4GHz band on a fixed channel (1) because it is a b/g device. All devices are in clear line of sight to each other in the same room.

I turn on the S200 and wait for the steady blue light (wifi found). I turn on the iPad2 and swipe up to reveal the AirPlay button. I sometimes have to wait 30s or so for the AirPlay to be shown. I can then select the S200 device. Audio can then be streamed to the S200 without issue.

Occasionally (about once in three hours of playing), the audio will stop. The S200 shows a steady blue light (wifi not lost). The iPad2 shows iTunes playback has stopped. Swiping up to reveal the AirPlay button shows the preferred device has reverted to iPad2 speakers. The S200 is visible but not selected.

iTunes playback can be manually resumed but will come from the iPad2 speakers unless I manually re-select the S200.

A check of the Asus RT-AC87U log over the period where the audio stopped just shows the usual DHCP discover, offer and request messages from the S200 so it appears the S200 is holding its connection.

I was wondering if some timeout was being exceeded at the iPad2 end since it is running iOS8.2 which is pretty heavy for an iPad2. If a housekeeping task made the iPad miss some AirPlay server timeout, could that cause the AirPlay connection to drop?

Monitor Audio have advised that I try the S200 on its direct mode where it acts as a 2.4GHz wifi router to eliminate the ASUS RT-AC87U from the equation. If the audio still stops, it would point the finger more at the iPad2 itself.

Please can you advise how I can start to diagnose this issue.

 

[sfx2000]

It's not your iPad, it's your router... the 87U has issues documented on the forums here with streaming in 5GHz...

Try using different SSID's for 5GHz, and pair up the iPad to the 2.4GHz side, and your problems will go away...

 

[DanielCoffey]

Thank you for the reply. I already had separate SSIDs but now I have have changed the iPad to the 2.4GHz channel. I will give that a go.

Could you point me to a discussion about the 87U and 5GHz streaming please. Is it looking like something that will get fixed in firmware or are we stuck with it? My 2.4GHz band is very congested here with over 20 SSIDs visible on a variety of channels (some set to be wider than 20MHz) but the 5GHz is clear.

 

[Jong]

Update to 378.4950 and the AC87 is absolutely golden on 5Ghz and with iDevices. Airplay is fine. Same SSID is also fine, in fact better.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Given the contradictions in the two posts, I would appreciate a link to the 5GHz streaming issues and anything that says ASUS 378.4950 addresses it where Merlin does not.

I have a vague memory from an earlier Merlin discussion that same SSID caused problems rather than helped.

 

[Jong]

Given the contradictions in the two posts, I would appreciate a link to the 5GHz streaming issues and anything that says ASUS 378.4950 addresses it where Merlin does not.

I have a vague memory from an earlier Merlin discussion that same SSID caused problems rather than helped.

There is no real contradiction, just sfx is a little out of date. Asus have been releasing a lot of betas over the last few weeks, working on the 5Ghz problem and iDevices in general and yesterday's official release fixes things:

http://www.asus.com/uk/supportonly/RT-AC87U/HelpDesk_Download/

ASUS RT-AC87U Firmware version 3.0.0.4.378.4950
[Important] Because added the patch for 5GHz, please press and hold the reset button more
than 5 seconds to reset the router after firmware updated to avoid compatibility issue.

- Added workaround for iPhone6 wireless unstable issue.
- Fixed the denying intranet access issue in 5GHz guest network.
- Fixed the UI issue when switched to AP mode from media bridge mode.
- Supported ZTE MF193A USB LTE dongle.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac87u_3-0-0-4_378_4950.23709/

(Same SSID works just great too now I promise. I have 2 AC87s, AP and Router, and use the same SSID across all 4 radios. Unless you have a very good reason to want to segregate traffic, the same SSID is the way to go - devices roam pretty much ideally.)

Edit: I am sure Merlin .52 will pretty soon have the same fixes applied

 

[RMerlin]

There is no real contradiction, just sfx is a little out of date. Asus have been releasing a lot of betas over the last few weeks, working on the 5Ghz problem and iDevices in general and yesterday's official release fixes things:

http://www.asus.com/uk/supportonly/RT-AC87U/HelpDesk_Download/



http://www.snbforums.com/threads/rt-ac87u_3-0-0-4_378_4950.23709/

(Same SSID works just great too now I promise. I have 2 AC87s, AP and Router, and use the same SSID across all 4 radios. Unless you have a very good reason to want to segregate traffic, the same SSID is the way to go - devices roam pretty much ideally.)

Edit: I am sure Merlin .52 will pretty soon have the same fixes applied

The Guest network isolation fix is part of the 4950 code, so it will have to wait for 378.53. General 5 GHz stability should however be similar as 378.52 shares the same Quantenna FW as 378_4950.

 

[Jong]

Any luck Daniel?

 

[DanielCoffey]

I will be updating to Merlin 378.52 this afternoon (just got back from the local Farmer's market) and will have a good test of the 5GHz streaming later today and tomorrow.

With Merlin 378.51 I would get one dropout for every three hours or so of 5GHz streaming. By switching the S200 speaker to direct streaming (where it acts as a 2.4GHz b/g transmitter) I was able to stream flawlessly to the iPad2 over the 2.4GHz band for hours but this did mean I could not use the iPad2 for anything else as its wifi was tied to the S200 while I was streaming. This effectively eliminated the AC87U from the equation.

Yesterday I swapped back to the AC87U 2.4GHz radio on the iPad2 and told the S200 to use it too and it worked for a couple of hours without issue. Too soon to say whether the problem had totally been solved.

I am factory resetting now and updating to Merlin 378.52.

 

[Jong]

It's not completely clear to me if 5Ghz on .52 will be as good as 4950; RMerlin said "similar" above. There were definitely improvements from 4825, to 4839 and I think 4850 too and I'm not sure how many of those, if any, will have to wait 'til .53.

So, it'll be interesting to see how .52 goes. If it's still not perfect you could try 4950 if you are not wedded to other Merlin features, or you can wait on .53.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Right - factory reset done and on 378.52 now. Fingers crossed...

EDIT : two hours passed and still streaming from iPad2 on 5GHz radio through to the S200 on the 2.4GHz radio. No interruption in the iTunes playback.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Bad news I am afraid. Despite upgrading to 378.52 the AirPlay 5GHz streaming stopped after about 2h15m with exactly the same symptoms.

Audio stopped, I checked the iPad2 which was right next to me and saw that iTunes playback had stopped. The preferred AirPlay device had dropped back to the internal speakers and the S200 still showed a steady wifi connected light.

There were no oddities in the System Log on the AC87U but I did see something unusual on the Wireless Log page. I can see the 2.4GHz devices (my iPod Touch 3G and the S200 speaker) and the speaker has an asterisk as its name. For the rest of the stats, RSSI shows -42dBm. RX/TX Rate drops back to 1/1 until I resume playback manually then it shoots back to 54/54. Connected shows 2h24m and Flags shows AU.

I will have to tell the iPad2 to use the 2.4GHz radio until we can get to the bottom of this issue.

 

[fax]

I would personally test it with the official 4950 build if you have not yet tried it.

 

[DanielCoffey]

Just about to - another factory reset incoming...

 

[DanielCoffey]

ASUS .4950 build has been stable for 3h45m so far and it is time to switch it off for the night.

I will give it a few more hours tomorrow and then swap back to Merlin 378.52 and repeat the test. It is possible I failed to clear nvram properly so I feel I should give Merlin .52 another chance over the weekend.

 

[fax]

Sounds some good news.... I suspect you may need to wait for Merlin 378.53 for keeping the performance you see in 4950.....

 

[sfx2000]

There is no real contradiction, just sfx is a little out of date.

No Jong, I'm not out of date -- the Quantenna solution continues to have problems - in this thread and others...

To the OP - put the iPad on to the 2.4GHz SSID, and you'll be fine streaming across Airplay to your speakers... it doesn't need to be on 5GHz, actually the iPad 2 is the same connectivity for both bands (1 stream, narrow channels) - keep it simple..

 

[Jong]

No Jong, I'm not out of date -- the Quantenna solution continues to have problems - in this thread and others...

To the OP - put the iPad on to the 2.4GHz SSID, and you'll be fine streaming across Airplay to your speakers... it doesn't need to be on 5GHz, actually the iPad 2 is the same connectivity for both bands (1 stream, narrow channels) - keep it simple..

It was not a criticism. Until literally 2 days ago 5Ghz, with official firmware, was a mess. Now I'd say it is on a par with just about any good router out there. Do you have examples of problems? I've been following just about all the threads here and elsewhere and aside from the fact there will always be someone with issues, of their own making or due to very specific circumstances, I really think the concensus is, beamforming aside, Asus have it cracked with 378.4950. Some think beamforming is fine too, although I disagree.

 

[Jong]

I did wonder how the iDevices would cope in a marginal signal situation where they needed to roam. I have to say I was totally blown away by the brilliant performance of my iPad Air 2 with 378.4950!

I played a radio station over AirPlay and wandered between my AC87 AP and Router's furthest extremes watching as the BSSID changed. Not once did AirPlay stop as the device roamed from 2.4Ghz to 5Ghz and/or AP to Router (same SSID). Mostly there wasn't even a pause in playback. About 1/5 times or so, always switching to 5Ghz, there was a ~1 sec pause in playback during a switch, but it always continued.

This was with roaming assist off, so the iPad was in control. I think roaming assist kicking the iDevice off a radio can sometimes cause AirPlay to stop.