Audio stutters with live streams

[Skywatch]

Info about your set up would help here.

What audio output or device are you using? I would guess a usb sound card or dac. If that is the case the pi has a well known weakness where the network and usb data are both controlled by the same chip and this bottleneck could be the problem if it plays OK from local SD card but not via network.

Otherwise it could be something else on the pi using the CPU for something every 5 seconds? What else is set up and running?

Also it might be something else on another device that is checking or posting to the network every 5 seconds sucking up all the bandwidth.

Power supply could be a problem too. Maybe the voltage is dropping? If you have a voltmeter measure the 5V and 3.3V points to see if there is a stable voltage there. Any changes *may* be too quick to see on a simple meter, but it is worth a look.

The first problem can be cured by removing the usb audio device and adding an I2S dac instead (they start at about £6 on ebay). The other three you will need to look into yourself as we can't see what is going on!