[Flac-dev] Synchronizing a streaming client to the server Was: Idea to possibly improve flac?

[Brian Willoughby]

I just thought of something: Given the maximum supported network  
packet size, and the minimum number of channels (probably stereo) for  
a FLAC broadcast stream, it should be possible to calculate the  
absolute longest time that a single network packet could span.  Once  
you know that time, you could simply double it, and then make sure  
the streaming client always buffers up at least that much time before  
playback is started.  Voila - instant protection against starvation  
due to silent frames being compressed to ultra-tiny packets with a  
long delay.

Some of the comments here have talked about low latency, but I would  
say that low latency has no place in an internet streaming  
broadcast.  I mean, the listened have no frame of reference for  
latency anyway, so what does it matter if the latency is really high?

Now that I think about it this way, I'd say that FLAC and OggFLAC  
should not have any real problems due to compression of silent  
frames.  Any place there is a problem should be blamed on bad  
streaming client / player code, not on the format itself.

Brian Willoughby
Sound Consulting