Web Player vs. Fantasy Player Issues

Support
#1

Fundamentally, I love what Syrinscape can do. Unfortunately I’m caught between the Web Player and Fantasy Player with both falling short of what I really want.

I would LOVE the Web Player if it:

A. Supported 5.1
B. Reduced latency to (more closely) match the Fantasy Player

I would LOVE the Fantasy Player if it:

A. Didn’t crash randomly every hour or two.
B. Had the editing functionality of the Web Player OR had a way for custom moods to not randomly get deleted.

So I struggle with Web Player for Online (where 5.1 doesn’t matter and just live with the latency), and struggle with the Fantasy Player in person, where 5.1 matters, but can’t edit moods quickly on the fly (or expect them to be there when I need them) and deal with random crashes.

I’m running fairly high-end machines (i7-13700k/64gb DDR5/ 990pro nvme/RTX4070Ti) on 600 down / 15 up 20ms ping internet.

Is there any roadmap of changes that might make either of these as good as they could be?

#2

I SECOND that – What is up with the Fantasy Player randomly closing. I don’t want to use the on-line player, since I am dealing with EXTREMELY large lag time, though my pipe is a 1Gb fiber… I don’t want in the middle of session… tell the players, wait a second – the sound effect is coming… Sort of breaks the ambiance.

WHAT is up with the development staff – maybe came from Microsoft – we all know how stable their platforms can be. But I guess that doesn’t help – I just want a stable application that I can use for my sessions.

I sure hope QA can be improved. I await for their response.

1 Like
#3

I haven’t had problems with the Fantasy Player crashing/ closing, and I’m running it on a very old windows 7 laptop, but I would love more love for the Fantasy player. There is a small list of things I’d “fix” or adjust, or add. I cannot use the Live player there is simply too much lag time between hitting a button and hearing it play. I also prefer the layout of the Fantasy Player over live.

#4

I’m in a similar position, but I want to add some nuance.

I mostly use the Fantasy Player. I have 5.1 sound equipment installed, so it pains me to see one of the coolest features of Syrinscape, the surround sound, reduced to stereo. But I don’t think this is Syrinscape’s fault. I’m unable to get my browsers to output 5.1 . I run the YouTube 5.1 tests, and it’s obviously outputting stereo. Have you tried those OP? You might be in the same position. If so, nothing Syrinscape can do about that… maybe there’s a workaround in the browser config I haven’t been able to find yet.

Meanwhile in the Fantasy Player, I’m finding it stable (on my fairly underpowered Mac), though custom moods have been flaky. For a while, I would carefully build out the soundscape I wanted, add in the “silent” track, save as a new mood… and it didn’t work. The mood saved, but didn’t include the other various sounds. But most other times it’s been fine. Might just have needed a restarted that one time.

I’m itching to get keyboard shortcuts for moods built into the Fantasy app so I can use it with other devices to trigger sounds without having to cross to my computer. The “3rd party app integration” feature doesn’t work on Mac, even though it’s in the UI, and keyboard shortcuts for moods would bypass that limitation.

So yeah… I have to choose between the app and web player, each with different limitations.

#5

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Performance and latency in the web player is definitely something we care about. If you’d like to help us further improve in this area could you:

Type ping p1.syrinscape.com into a terminal or command prompt and let me know the result? This is the baseline network latency between you and our servers.

$ ping p1.syrinscape.com
PING p1.syrinscape.com (44.226.20.167): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 44.226.20.167: icmp_seq=0 ttl=45 time=177.968 ms
64 bytes from 44.226.20.167: icmp_seq=1 ttl=45 time=176.053 ms
64 bytes from 44.226.20.167: icmp_seq=2 ttl=45 time=177.238 ms
^C
--- p1.syrinscape.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 176.053/177.086/177.968/0.789 ms

The latency you experience between triggering an element and hearing the sound should be approximately this network latency plus the time it takes our server to process the request.

Next, look at the network tab in Chrome dev tools and look at the waterfall graph for any /online/frontend-api/elements/N/play/ requests. For example:

image
image3680×2382 921 KB

This shows the total latency for the request.

Finally, let us know your geographical location (e.g. US West Coast).

Knowing the actual latency you are experiencing and how close to acceptable (or not) it is for you, and whether or not it is consistent will help us improve in this area.

#6

Hello,

I tried yesterday and today with the same results:

C:>ping p1.syrinscape.com

Pinging p1.syrinscape.com [44.226.20.167] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 44.226.20.167:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)

#7

Oops, we were dutifully blocking inbound ping requests from unknown IP addresses at our servers - our infrastructure apparently more locked down than we realised (generally a good thing). Should be fixed now, you can try again when convenient :man_facepalming:

(non technobabble version: we done goofed, sorry!)

#8

I spoke too soon? Weird, I had no problems with Fantasy Player until Sunday Nov 12, 2023. It crashed four times in a four hour session. What happened?

#9

From Midwest US - Sheboygan, WI 53081

C:>PING p1.syrinscape.com

Pinging p1.syrinscape.com [52.24.200.194] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 52.24.200.194: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=20
Reply from 52.24.200.194: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=20
Reply from 52.24.200.194: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=20
Reply from 52.24.200.194: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=20

Ping statistics for 52.24.200.194:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 93ms, Maximum = 99ms, Average = 95ms

What is the average processing time? 95ms + any additional amount is a noticeable delay.

I’m thinking that total needs to be under 40ms or so to not feel laggier than the Fantasy Player. If it was 100ms all the time that would be fine too, but some percentage of sounds, whether it is 1% or 10% are lagged by multiple seconds, and that is terribly jarring.

Additionally, the time it takes to navigate between sound sets is often multiple seconds. If there was a way to preload all or a subset of soundsets (I have 64GB of DDR5, just hanging out doing nothing…) maybe that delay could be alleviated in a session and paid with a longer load up-front.

Ideally, I’d just love to see the Fantasy Player developed as it has the ability to (essentially) instantaneously play sounds and switch between soundsets. It just needs the helpful feature of the web player (sound icons that pulse in response to what they are playing, ability to edit and save reliably, level control on each element, etc.) I’d pay $30/month happily for a well-developed Fantasy Player.

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