MA fails to play a particular annoucement and stays stuck

[robin-thoni]

What version of Music Assistant has the issue?

2.7.8

How is the MA server installed?

Home Assistant OS Addon

Mandatory: Carefully read the Troubleshooting FAQ and confirm that

• I have examined the logs and tried to resolve this issue
• I have fixed any errors or warnings in the logs that relate to tags
• I am not running MA across a VPN, VLAN, subnet, behind a firewall, or using local SSL or have any other complex network setup
• I am not using or have disabled tools such as AdGuard, Pi-hole or pfSense and retested
• I have checked my network setup to ensure mDNS/multicast is not being blocked
• I have reviewed the Open and Closed Issues and Discussions
• I have reviewed the applicable player or music provider documentation
• I have reviewed the MA Status Page
• I have tried restarting MA and rebooting the host

As Applicable: Carefully read the Troubleshooting FAQ and confirm that

• If using HA, I have confirmed the internal URL is set correctly
• I have tried a wired connection for issues related to interrupted or poor playback quality
• If the problem relates to a device then I have checked the device settings
• If it is a frontend issue, I have tried a different widely used browser
• For voice problems, I have sought help elsewhere before returning here
• For playback problems, I have recycled power to the physical device

The problem

I'm using HA/MA as my alarm clock. The flow is as follow:

• Slowly turn on a light, to act as sunrise simulator
• Enqueue my shuffled Liked Songs playlist from Spotify
• Randomly pick two songs from a wakeup playlist
• Enqueue them on top of the Liked Songs playlist (To avoid having too loud/"brutal" songs as first ones)
• Set volume to 0
• Start playback
• Slowly increase the volume over ~15 seconds
• Announce time after 30 seconds, then every 15 minutes
• Stop everything when I leave the bed

It works perfectly fine. Or used to worked.

For a while (I couldn't say exactly when), the first time announcement will play the pre-annoucement chime, then just stop playing anything (no time being announced, no song playing), until the next time announcement will happen 15 minutes later. At this point, everything works as expected: the chime is played, the time is announced, and songs start playing again (I can't say if it starts from where it stopped 15 minutes ago, or if just continued in the background). The behavior is consistent and happens every single morning at 7:25, and only at this time.

How to reproduce

I was able to reproduce the issue by just playing the same announcement text on a different player. The player then becomes completely stuck and won't start playback again. Waiting an undefined amount of time or restarting MA seems to be the only way to make it work again. There's no need to reboot the device, it's entirely in MA.

Music Providers

Spotify

Player Providers

• Google Home/Cast

That's the one I use as wake up alarm. Fails every morning.

• Home Assistant Voice PE

I tried w/ that one to see if it was caused by the Google Home. It was not, it failed the same way w/ that one too.

Full log output

d5369777_music_assistant_2026-03-03T11-01-22.640Z.log

Check for logs at 07:25: (Google Home) and 11:36: (HA Voice PE)

The mp3 file failing to announce xMYWM1f0955NZl8HWhxLtA.mp3, playing fine on VLC w/ no warning on CLI, and Firefox.

Additional information

Clearing the TTS cache would probably fix the issue, but MA completely failing and not being able to automatically recover when it can't play something is not expected, and this particular issue can be used to troubleshoot the underlying problem. I can live w/ that for a few days if you want verbose logs, or anything.

The logs above suggest the mp3 file is corrupted, but I was able to play it locally (mp3 file is attached next to the logs).

What version of Home Assistant Core (if used) are your running

2026.2.2

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

On what type of hardware are you running?

Linux

Have you included ALL of the information specified in the Troubleshooting FAQ or explained why you cannot

• Yes

[MarvinSchenkel]

Few questions:

• I hope your HA version is a typo? Otherwise, please update to the latest HA
• When you say you can play the mp3 locally, are you using the same URL as MA receives to test this? (i.e. https://hass.lesse.rthoni.com/api/tts_proxy/05fFOz-kB6sU8MDoFM0l6A.mp3)
• In general, the 'Home assistant player provider' could have weird side effects. The Home Assistant Voice can also be integrated into MA using the Sendspin provider. Have you tried this?

[robin-thoni]

I hope your HA version is a typo? Otherwise, please update to the latest HA

Indeed, that was a typo...

When you say you can play the mp3 locally, are you using the same URL as MA receives to test this?

Yes. I quickly downloaded the file after playing the announcement.

In general, the 'Home assistant player provider' could have weird side effects. The Home Assistant Voice can also be integrated into MA using the Sendspin provider. Have you tried this?

No, but it's also, and primarily impacting Google Cast. They both exhibit the exact same behavior. I'll give it a shot, just in case, but I have very few hope in this.

Thanks

[MarvinSchenkel]

Sorry, I thought you were mainly talking about the Voice PE since those show up in the logs you attached. In the meantime, I will check if we can gracefully handle this case on our side too