Paul, I don't know how easy it is for you to route some new cable (cat5e or cat6) but the cable itself is quite inexpensive as is the gear to terminate it yourself.  When doing the house here I purchased a 100m roll of cat5e and the tools to do the termination and test the cable for about AU$100.  It is simple to do for a guy of your diy ability.

And you will not need a xover cable to direct connect two computers...modern LAN ports will self detect the connection and adjust accordingly...so you will be able to use a normal LAN cable.

Anthony

Hi Alain,

My NAS manages the drives itself so I don't know what format they are to be honest, but it runs Linux so I guess a Linux format.  I use Raid5 which keeps a duplicate of every piece of information on another drive and the drives should be matched in pairs (same capacity) although this is not essential.  On top of this I backup the NAS to another computer on the network which means that I have my info on at least three local drives.

Anthony

Stanley,

Well, a NAS is simply an optimised computer.  It runs a motherboard with a processor (maybe a Celeron), ram (1GB or 2 GB), has a bunch of SAS or SATA ports for its collection of drives, one or two LAN ports, and would generally run Linux.  A NAS is a computer.

So if what you are after is the best thing for SQ and its use is limited, then maybe do what Peter is suggesting, although you should not need a crossover cable because modern LAN ports self detect the type of connection and can adjust themselves accordingly (so just use a normal LAN cable).

Cheers,

Anthony

Hi Peter,

It was not quick in w8 but I think it was quicker. 

I don't use w8 at the moment because that pesky "music stops then you move the mouse to get it started" problem is back.  I will have to find and trawl through that thread to see if I can get that problem to go away.

Regards,

Anthony

Hi Stanley,

I assume that you will use the NAS for more than your music collection.  Personally, I have a wired network (with wireless as well for those devices with no physical connection) with a Netgear ReadyNAS Pro at its core.  Our entire DVD and Bluray collection is ripped to the NAS and can be streamed direct to the home theatre via the Denon Receiver or the AppleTV.  My music library is also entirely contained on the NAS as are the primary archives and backups from all the computers in the house.

I don't know why Peter had problems with a NAS in the past, but they are generally easy to set up and in my view indispensable.

I have used XXHE and its LAN functions to draw music directly from the NAS, but am annoyed by the wait for the network to come back up in windows, so am persisting with music on a local SSD for now.

Cheers,

Anthony

Paul, cat5e will transfer 1gb all day every day...it does here anyway.

Peter, why do you recommend direct connection instead of a router?

Hi Peter,

Based on all of my conversations with you, I rate your post just now as the instigator of one of my 'keystone moments' or "when it all seems to fall into place".  Of course I have a little more insight than most with our recent emails and our discussion of USB noise:  in those power supply noise plots that I have been privy to the USB fundamental at about 8MHz and harmonics further out really do stand starkly above the general noise profile, but they are really quite alone up there.  If the dexa's produce lots of this noise that sits well above the "normal" noise profile then I begin to see how they would alter the sound.

Since I have settled on the Silverstone and the isolations of the PC and NOS1 (along with the XXHE settings to suit) I have experimented by putting other usb cards back into my PC from time to time.  There is no doubt in my mind that the Silverstone in this arrangement is quite unique and I really struggle to persevere with the other cards, including the PPAstudio card.  The obvious question is "why", but of course no-one here really knows.  It would be nice to find out though, and I suspect that it has something to do with the all-SMD layout of that card.


Cheers,

Anthony

Hi Nick,

I am glad that yourself and Peter finally managed to get together and thank you for reporting this to us all.

Regarding the 24MHz dexa's do you have any theories as to why they did not help in Peters system?  This is perplexing for me because I have used and modified the PPA studio card which is basically a clock modification that is not that dissimilar to your mods, and for me there was a difference whether that was due to improved clock performance or some grounding issue or something else.

Have you tried Peters Silverstone card with the isolations in the PC and NOS1 for yourself? 

Regards,

Anthony

Thanks for having a look Peter.  Much appreciated.  We managed to arrange it perfectly when I was having dinner and putting then kids to bed.

Anthony

No.  The error is not on screen.  I do not get an error if the Music Root is not defined.

If I press [ S ] and then fill in my Music Root and then press [ L ] it all works fine.

However, if I now quit and restart XXHE and press [ L ] the error pops up.  I press "Continue" and then XXHE is virtually frozen.  Some buttons like the [ Q ] section works but [ S ], [ P ], [ L ] do not respond...those panels remain blank...and right-click on the mouse does not function in XXHE at all (no menu pops up).  I can press play and whatever is in the playlist will play and Alt-X brings me back out of unattended with the playlist showing (not blank) in its panel.  NOW I can press [ S ] to bring up the settings and then go back to the playlist by pressing [P] but press [ L ] and I get the error again.  Interestingly, if I do not click  [ L ] but I right click in the left panel to "Show Embedded Explorer here" then I get the error message, but I can still use [ P ] and [ S ] after I have pressed "continue" to the error message.

So, I still can't change the playlist but XXHE is not as dead as I first thought.

Anthony

I should add the procedure that I used to install the update:

• Un-minimised windows so that I could get network
• Made sure that XXHE had not run and also killed the autohotkey service
• extracted the RAR file over the 1.186a directory

• Started XXHE and answered yes to the prompts

Anthony

Hi Peter,

This has killed my XXHE in both w7 and w8.  I applied the update but have two problems that I can see.  Firstly, setting changes I make will not stay put (when I restart XXHE).  Secondly, XXHE gives an "Unhandled exception" error as soon as I load up Explorer either directly or via the "L" button in XXHE.

Stupidly, I applied the update to both w7 and w8 before testing it in one or the other so have killed both.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Anthony

Damn bugs...

Same story in w8 as it is in w7.

No probs Peter, glad to help.

So, I have two tracks (that I believe you also have Peter):  tracks 4 and 6 from the Beatles White Album (Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill) in FLAC format.  If these two tracks are next to each other in the playlist then I get the "Caller J" and "full playback drive" error messages and no playback is possible.  If I split them up then I get no messages and the music plays.

If I turn off hyperthreading then those songs can be placed anywhere in the playlist, even next to each other, and things play well without any error messages.  So it does seem as though hyperthreading has some effect on the "Caller J" and "full playback drive" messages.

I use the same processor as George, a Xeon E5-2648L which is 8 core that hyperthreads to 16.  Peter, I believe that the yellow boxes at the top of XXHE indicate each processor core.  After counting 20 boxes there, when there should be 16 (if my presumption is correct) then something is not quite right.

George, how many boxes do you count?

Regards,

Anthony