[Problem]: [development] No audio playback when next track is played, unless seek is used on the playing device

[saujanyashah]

What happened?

Hey Mike and charles,
Something seems to be off on the latest development image, no errors in log (without verbosity option).
No audio is output by mikebrady/shairport-sync:development latest docker image (26f91f1) when audio playback finishes on current track and the player automatically plays the next track. Audio is output when seek functionality is used on the player. The docker image from 4ce14e1 works fine.

Relevant log output

System Information.

Docker 29 on raspberry pi 4B (4 GB) 64 bit raspbian.

Configuration Information.

From "uname -a":
 Linux raspberrypi 6.12.47+rpt-rpi-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.47-1+rpt1 (2025-09-16) aarch64 Linux

From /etc/os-release:
 Alpine Linux edge

Shairport Sync Version String:
 5.0-dev-92-g26f91f1e-dirty-AirPlay2-smi10-OpenSSL-Avahi-ALSA-PulseAudio-PipeWire-dummy-stdout-pipe-soxr-convolution-metadata-mqtt-dbus-mpris-sysconfdir:/etc

Command Line:
 shairport-sync --displayConfig

Configuration File:
 /etc/shairport-sync.conf

Configuration File Settings:
 general : 
 {
   name = "Lights";
   output_backend = "pulseaudio";
   airplay_device_id_offset = 20;
   airplay_device_id = 0xBBBBBBBBBBBBL;
   ignore_volume_control = "yes";
 };
 mqtt : 
 {
   enabled = "yes";
   hostname = "192.168.1.10";
   port = 1883;
   topic = "shairport/lights";
   publish_parsed = "yes";
   enable_remote = "yes";
 };

PulseAudio or PipeWire installed?

• Check if your system uses a Sound Server.

How did you install Shairport Sync?

Docker

Check previous issues

• Confirm

[mikebrady]

Thanks for the post. Does the problem persist if you change the output backend to "pipewire"? What player are you using?

[saujanyashah]

Hey Mike, I have a setup where pulseaudio server is run inside another container and shairport-sync outputs to that pulseaudio server using pulseaudio socket. There is no pipewire to do a quick test. I rolled back to the older version 5.0-dev-60 and it works with pulseaudio.

[mikebrady]

Thanks. And could you share what player you are using and what platform it is on, please?

[saujanyashah]

Hey Mike, The pulseaudio server is installed in ledfx docker image (https://github.com/LedFx/LedFx/tree/main/ledfx_docker). Shairport-sync is run alongside like shown below. The player is Youtube Music on iOS 26.1, iPhone 15.

services: 
  ledfx:
    image: ghcr.io/ledfx/ledfx:latest
    container_name: ledfx
    restart: on-failure:3
    network_mode: host
    command: ["--offline", "--clear-effects"]
    volumes:
      - /home/ledfx/ledfx-config:/home/ledfx/ledfx-config
      - /home/ledfx/pulse:/home/ledfx/.config/pulse:rw
    devices:
      - /dev/snd:/dev/snd
  
  
  shairportforledfx:
    image: mikebrady/shairport-sync:development
    #image: shairport-sync-dev:old
    container_name: shairportforledfx
    restart: on-failure:3
    depends_on:
      ledfx:
       condition: service_healthy
    environment:
      - PULSE_SERVER="unix:/tmp/pulseaudio.socket" # Path for PulseAudio socket
      - PULSE_COOKIE="/tmp/cookie" # Path for PulseAudio cookie
    volumes:
      - /home/shairportforledfx/shairport-sync.conf:/etc/shairport-sync.conf # Customised Shairport Sync configuration file.
      - /home/ledfx/pulse:/tmp # PulseAudio socket when using that backend
    logging:
      options:
        max-size: "200k"
        max-file: "10"
    network_mode: host

[mikebrady]

An issue was found -- old flush requests were not being purged when a new play session was started. An update has been pushed into the development branch and should shortly be available in a Docker image. With it, it now seems that YouTube Music (free version) works as expected.

It would great if you could check it out and report back.

[saujanyashah]

Hey Mike! It works!! 🎉

[mikebrady]

Great, thanks!

[saujanyashah]

Hey Mike, Just opened rtp.c to see the change you made and scrolled to the top.
Mike Brady 2014-2025. 11 years into this amazing piece! Kudos to you!
Thanks for looking into the issue so quick.

[mikebrady]

Thanks -- as long as I'm still using Shairport Sync, I'll stay interested!