Buffering is caused by your internet connection cutting out and joining again, so to play a radio station or a programme smoothly and without interruption, you’ll need a good internet connection.
Radio uses a lot less data than TV, so if you can play TV programmes online you shouldn’t have any problems playing radio programmes. However, if your internet connection isn’t fast enough you’ll see a message saying you have ‘insufficient bandwidth’ (bandwidth is the amount of data your connection can transfer).
Generally, this could be because you’re either sharing bandwidth with other devices or you are connecting to your internet router via WiFi and the signal quality is poor.
What can I do to improve playback?
- If other devices are sharing the same internet connection, try disconnecting them, or just turn them off to see if that makes a difference.
- If you’re connecting via WiFi, move closer to the router or even try a wired connection to help rule out interference from another WiFi network.
- Check your internet speed using ourinternet speed checker FAQ on the BBC iPlayer Help Site.
- Radio 3 uses a higher quality stream which in turns uses more data so if you’re having a problem just with Radio 3, this might be why.
Other suggestions
- If you’re using the BBC Sounds website on a browser on your computer, mobile or tablet, try using another browser to see if that helps.
- If you have lots of tabs open in your browser, close them down as they could be affecting the device’s performance.
- There are two media players used across bbc.co.uk (Flash and HTML5). If we give you Flash player by default, try switching over to HTML5 at bbc.co.uk/html5. If you don't see an option to switch to HTML5, it's because you're already using the HTML5 player.
If you're still having problems, you could try downloading full radio programmes, podcasts and music mixes via the BBC Sounds app on Amazon Fire, Android, or iOS (if you're based in the UK). Once you've downloaded a programme you can listen to it offline, so you won't need to worry about your internet connection. If you're using a computer or laptop, you can download podcasts. Check our How do I download a podcast episode on my computer? page to find out how to do that.
And if you are still having problems after this, please contact your internet service provider, especially if stations and programmes from other broadcasters are affected.
