Why Is Internet Radio Delayed? Latency Explained

Published 26 September 2026

Watch a football match on TV with the radio commentary on, and the commentator shouts "goal" long after the ball hits the net — or long before, depending on the platform. Internet radio is always behind live, usually by somewhere between ten and thirty seconds, and sometimes by more than a minute. Here is where that time goes, and what you can and cannot do about it.

Where the delay comes from

Live sound passes through several stages before it reaches your ears, and each one holds on to a few seconds:

1. Encoding. The station's software compresses the audio into a stream, working in small chunks.
2. The streaming server. The server keeps a buffer so it can hand every new listener a running start.
3. Delivery. Streams in the HLS format are split into segments several seconds long, and players typically wait for a few segments before starting — which is why HLS streams are often the most delayed.
4. Your player's buffer. Your browser or app stores several seconds of audio before it starts playing, so a brief dip in your connection doesn't cause a dropout.

Add them together and ten to thirty seconds behind live is normal. FM and AM are effectively instant; DAB digital radio runs a couple of seconds behind; digital TV and TV streaming services have delays of their own, which is why radio and TV rarely line up.

Why the delay can grow

If your connection stalls and the player waits to refill its buffer, it usually resumes where it left off rather than jumping ahead — so each stall adds to the delay. After a patchy hour, a stream can be well over a minute behind.

The fix: stop the station and start it again. The player reconnects to the live edge of the stream, and the accumulated delay disappears.

Lining up radio commentary with TV pictures

This is the most common reason people care about delay, and there is no perfect answer, because you can't make the radio faster. What works:

• Pause the TV. If your TV box or streaming service lets you pause live TV, pause it until the picture catches up with the radio — this works when the radio is ahead of the TV.
• Restart the radio stream if it has drifted further behind than usual.
• Choose the stream format. Where a station offers both, a classic MP3 or AAC stream usually runs closer to live than an HLS one.

Remember too that live sport is often blocked on streams outside the country, because of broadcasting rights — sports radio online explains why.

The time signal problem

Because of the delay, the pips or chimes that mark the hour on some stations arrive late on an internet stream. They are accurate on FM and AM, but don't set a clock by them online.

Does a lower delay mean worse sound?

Not directly — bitrate decides quality, and the delay comes mostly from buffering. A bigger buffer means more resilience on a weak connection, which is why players err on the side of caution. If you're on a stable connection, a small delay is simply the price of uninterrupted listening. Radio stream buffering fixes covers the other side of the trade-off.

The short version

Internet radio is normally ten to thirty seconds behind live because of encoding, server and player buffers. If it has drifted further, restart the stream. To match radio commentary to TV, pause the TV rather than fighting the radio.