0
Not a bug

Excessive bandwidth when playing streams

Fran Litterio 11 years ago updated by Jona (Lead Developer) 11 years ago 2

On my Droid Razr running ICS I notice that XiiaLive uses waaaay more bandwidth than the stream I'm playing is rated at. For example, a 128 kbps stream causes my download bandwidth to hover around 320 kbps (and sometimes higher). I suspect this is because the playlist for the stream contains multiple stream sources, and XiiaLive is actually streaming more than one of them in case one fails. Is this what's happening? If I play a 128 kbps stream, I expect XiiaLive to use 128 kbps of my bandwidth and no more.

Answer

Answer
Not a bug

Great question.  There is something tricky we must do in order to stream using Androids hardware decoders.  What it is, is that we have a local server running on your device that reads the stations feed from the internet process the data and hands it to the Android media player. This causes the phone to record double bandwidth but when in reality only half of the bandwidth is internet/data plan used. 

Answer
Not a bug

Great question.  There is something tricky we must do in order to stream using Androids hardware decoders.  What it is, is that we have a local server running on your device that reads the stations feed from the internet process the data and hands it to the Android media player. This causes the phone to record double bandwidth but when in reality only half of the bandwidth is internet/data plan used. 

+1

Let me know if that helps you out! :)

+1

Thanks, Jona! I think that exactly explains what I'm seeing. I was about to post an update saying that I found the same issue with other streaming music apps on my phone, so they must be doing something similar. Thank you for the quick response!