Universal group - Add delays

[FunkyKwak]

I understand that sync playback for universal groups is very difficult, or even impossible.

But wouldn't it be possible to let us add a delay on each player, so we can try to compensate the existing delay between each player from different providers ?

This would be absolutely awesome! We would have an almost perfect sync, which would make this work. Today this feature is not usable for me
I guess the existing delay vary depending on the providers, I have Denon and Yamaha Musiccast and the delay is pretty big. Adding an artificial delay on the players that are in advance would fix it.

[OzGav]

No you would not have perfect sync. The delays constantly change.

[FunkyKwak]

Yes I know it won't be perfect, but I think usable if the speakers are not too close to each other.
Today I don't even see the point of using universal groups.

[OzGav]

We wont be implementing this as we believe it will be a poor user experience.

[OzGav]

https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/2549

[FunkyKwak]

We wont be implementing this as we believe it will be a poor user experience.

OK, that's sad, it was the only thing I needed from Music Assistant. I installed it because I thought the universal groups was there, even with a slight delay. But I end with a one second delay which makes it unusable.
But that's up to you, I guess other users must have other expectations from Music Assistant.

Thanks for your quick answers anyway.

[collateral87]

I agree with @FunkyKwak, maybe, please reconsider your opinion on this

[AlexKusnezov]

Well ots there for airplay devices, that way I could finally snyc perfectly my airplay 2 philips speaker and my arylic amp which is airplay 1, so why not just add it for every kind of player:

[OzGav]

Because that already supports perfect sync so you are introducing a fixed delay to perfectly synced speakers to account for listening position (for example)

[ThisIsJustARandomGuy]

I understand that it's not going to achieve perfect sync, but I still believe there are a few use-cases where it would be a nice improvement. Perhaps a hidden/advanced option with a warning would be a good compromise?

For me it would be that I have many rooms including outside with different speakers with varying capabilities. They do not need to be in perfect sync, as they are so far apart that a slight delay is not noticeable. But 1-2 seconds definitely are, so being able to add even 2 seconds of delay to a specific speaker in a group would be great for me.

Would it be possible with how MA currently works? If I were to try my hands on creating a PR for this, would it be considered?

[OzGav]

This has been answered above.

[DanielKinsman]

The sendspin cli client allows this, is that part of the spec now or is it just particular to that client's implementation? I'm experimenting with using some old android phones as players and unfortunately being android 7 they are too old to install senspin droid or the music assistant beta android app, and I also had no luck getting sendspin cli working in termux on them. So it's down to the web browser which doesn't have this feature.

Imagine I have two of the exact same devices, one plays directly over its 3.5mm jack but the other plays via a bluetooth speaker. Not being able to compensate at all for the bluetooth delay makes it horrible. Yes bluetooth delay is variable but there is going to be an absolute minimum floor always present and it would be nice to erase that.