Hello and arvind,
it's great that both of you try to find out about this issue!
In my setup, playing music from my NAS in unattended mode, I get the same behaviour as arvind: no wallpaper for flac files, but wallpaper for wav files. Playing from the local harddisk the wallpaper is displayed for both, flac files and wav files.
I also tried to change the buttons for the services, actually not to switch off any of them: again no wallpaper for flac files (only SQ changed to become significantly worse).

The persist button for the LAN services was always on (red).
So I tried to change that to off (blue) half an hour ago for the first time. And that failed in my setup: The LAN connection to my NAS got lost after the first track was played in unattended mode. The audio PC could not "see" the NAS any more. Only a reboot of the audio PC helped in this situation.
Important notice: In my setup everything is conneted directly to the router: NAS, audio PC, remote PC (using RDC over Wifi).
Maybe that is the reason that the persist button for the LAN services has to be on.

Additionally I have got one other problem with the wallpapers:
As already described in my post above: If the wallpaper is displayed in unattended mode (always for wav; from local harddisk also for flac), XXHE restarts automatically a few seconds after the first song starts to play.
When I received the audio PC from Peter more than half a year ago, this was working well for the demo files on the harddisk, but I soon lost this feature, using my NAS and now it even does not work correctly any more for music files from this local harddisk.

Btw: It would be great to see the wallpapers also in unattended mode. But... as SQ is the most important for sure, I got used to live without it. And I somehow have the feeling that too much graphics data being transmitted over RDC would harm SQ (at least a bit).

Kind regards
Richard

Hi Peter,

I know, it's Christmas... So please... take your time... I don't expect any answer before all your celebration will have ended 
We caught a bit of a flew during Christmas and we have to be in bed. So I took my MS Surface to find out a bit more about my wallpaper problem.

When we met in Holland about 10 days ago, I told you, that I never see a wallpaper during unattended playback when playing flac files. It is like this:

1) Playing music from my Synology NAS:
When I play flac files in unattended mode, what I do most of the time, no wallpaper appears at all.
When I play wav files in in unattended mode, I get the wallpapers when the the first track starts to be played, but for some seconds only. Then something strange happens: XXHE starts again automatically, so if I would have pressed Ctrl_X (but I didn't).

2) Playing music from local drive (C:, D:)
To test it for music from the local disk I copied some folders with flac files to the harddisk of the audio PC.
Playing these files from there the behaviour of wav and flac files is the same as for wav files in 1)
The wallpaper appears for some seconds only and XXHE is mystically started again automatically.

As I wrote above: All this is not urgent. I am used to XXHE without wallpaper for more than half a year now.

Happy hollidays!
Richard

yes, please put me on the Phisolator list too.
I am (hopefully) on the B'ASS list since you had anounced it.

I have got one question about the latter:
Could B'ASS be installed switchable into the NOS1a case? So I  would be able to run the NOS1a with and without the B'ASS unit?
I am asking this because I am a very happy user of my NOS1a over my Ayon Polaris preamp for various reasons and they love each other... the sound is great. Therefore I would love it to compare it with and without B'ASS.

kind regards
Richard

During the last weeks I was using XXHE a lot with my MS Surface as the remote PC controlling the audio PC. The audio PC loads the music files directly from my NAS, which is connected directly with the LAN/Wifi router.

This setup works perfectly, when only one thing is taken into consideration: If the RDC would get interupted during unattended playback, it cannot reconnect and gets stuck in the blue screen So when using a Windows PC as a remote this usually never happens, because Windows is doing real multitasking.
I case you want e.g. to reboot the remote (music) PC, this should not be done during unattended playback on the audio PC. So before doing this unattended playback should be ended. Otherwise you would get stuck in blue screen after rebooting. And it is most likely the audio PC, what is not able any more to do the RDC properly.
Attended playback would be no problem. The remote (music) PC always reconnects again with RDC to the audio PC.

Using an iPAD:
The above behaviour is the reason, why it is unstable to use an iPAD to controll the audio PC directly via RDC. It works as long as your iPAD is active in this RDC task. If you change into another task during unattended playback and switch back later, you may get stuck in the blue sceen.
The reason for this is, that iOS does mutitasking but switches off the Wifi connection of every background task after about 2 minutes to save battery power. There is no way to change this behaviour of iOS, exept maybe with the newest types of iPAD, which are able to run two tasks equally, one beside of the other (I don't have one that is able to do that).
I got these infos about iOS from my son Clemens who is creating iOS apps professionally.

So, to use an iPAD directly as a remote to control the audio PC, it works well with playback in attended mode but is unstable in unattended mode.

Kind regards
Richard

"Sweetnighter" is a another great album from Weather Report, which I listen quite often - amazing SQ.
BTW, in the track "125th Street Congress" of this album the  HipHop rythm was created by Joe Zawinul for the first time ever.

Kind regards
Richard

Hi Peter,

it's great, that the NOS1a and the audio PC can run on 12 / 24V.
For my sailboat it's a question of space, specially for the audio PC.
And it only would make sense if I a good DC powered amplifier too and then also better speakers. I am thinking about that... but it will be a project for next spring.

Are there users of NOS1a and audio PC, who run these devices on 12 / 24 V batteries in their home? Wouldn't that ne a further improvement of SQ?

Kind regards
Richard Malits

Yes Peter,

a NOS1a on the water would be great.
But... there is always a but... I need one with DC power supply, because all the hifi on my sailboat runs with mostly super clean DC. There is 12V DC, 24V DC and 48V CD available.
Could you do this?

Kind regards
Richard

sorry, one mistake on my previous post. It should be:
...on my sailboat unfortunaltly there is no NOS1a installed 
Richard

Hi Peter,

I agree with you, that a PC with Windows on it, can do the same job as a NAS and also can be accessible from outside the home network.

The reasons, why I prefer the Sonology NAS is, that it provides a very stable UPnP/DLNA service, what I need for networkplayers, e.g. on my sailboat, where unfortunatly is NOS1a installed 
The stability of these NAS's is amazing. It may run for year(s) without beeing rebooted and you can easily switch off any kind of updates, without the need of special tricks, like the one that made me to start this post. 

Using Wifi Tidal streaming with my "music PC" in my network:
My leased line for the internet is limited to 40Mbit/sec, what's enough for me, as less than 4Mbit/sec is needed to stream RB size files with FLAC compression.
The Wifi in my home is doing about the double of the 40MBit/sec. So the bottleneck is still the internet connection and even more then that Tidal itself at times. And therefore for me it's fine to use Wifi to download music from Tidal.

The search function of XXHE for Tidal content gives me some troubles sometimes. But I will write this into appropriate post.

Kind regards
Richard

Hi Peter,

everything is fine. I receive so much good infos out of this forum, so I think it's good when I share some of my experiences here.

By the way... I got Tidal to work today with XXHE and it's doing very well and I am still using Wifi for my "music PC". And that's great!

Kind regards
Richard

I just correct the headline doing this post

Hi Peter and all others,

thanks to you, Peter for explaining the network setup, which I am using here in my home in Austria in such a detailed way. I agree in almost all points in your last long post.

Yes, I know, with Tidal it will be kind of another story. I am using Tidal since it exists with other network players (Linn, Naim, ...), but not with XXHE yet. But that will change soon, because I going to setup Tidal for XXHE right now. So we will see...

To explain everything a bit better, I tell you my story of playing digital music around my home network and even outside my home network, e.g. to my sailboat in Croatia:

All my music is stored on a Synology NAS, which is directly conneted to the router in my home since years, actually almost since this kind of technology is available. And I have experienced big benefits out of this setup:
- All my music, and that became a pretty extensive collection over the years, is centrally stored and managed.
- I am using various network players and DACs, sometime simutanously in my home, e.g. with the multiroom functionality of the Linn network players, what is nice to have, when there is party time in my house.
- I have also got a DSD music collection stored on the NAS and a Lampizator DSD DAC, what it doing very well with DSD.
- There is even direct access to the synology NAS from my sailboat in Croatia. It works fine with a 3G modem/router to stream my RB music files.
- I do the same in my little downtown flat in Vienna.
So all these devices use the same source: my Synology NAS
I believe it's obvious, why I like to have it this way in my - maybe a bit complicated - lifestyle.

One important side note: XXHE and NOS1a provide significantly better SQ with PCM music files than all other devices! Therefore I prefer to use Peter's technology and tried to find a convenient solution for me.

When I received the parcels from Peter with an audio PC and a NOS1a in April, I had some hard times in the beginning:
I just connected the audio PC to the router with a LAN cable and could play music soon. But then I fell into the Windows 10 update trap. Luckilly, with some advices from Peter, I could copy an uncorrupted backup .vhd file over the damaged one and it was working fine again. Peter, that's a really great technology!

But I had to change the setup now to the peer2peer LAN cable connection from music PC to audio PC, not to fall into the Windows 10 update trap again. So to use my Microsoft Surface Pro 3 notebook (I believe, it's a "notebook", because it has got a regular Windows 8.1 version on it, but didn't really care about that until now) as a music PC, I had to plug in an external USB harddisk with the backup of all my music into it. For me it was not comfortable this way (LAN cable through my living room, external harddisk on the table). And I had to manage my music collection twice.

That was the reason for me to look for another solution and we found the pretty easy way to prevent Windows 10 from updating with the network setup of the audio PC, what I described in my second post above.
There was still the LAN cable across my living room, but no extra USB disk needed any more, because the audio PC gets the music files directly from the Synology NAS.
Peter is right, that using a NAS that way is slower than using a harddisk on the music PC, but in my setup it is only a bit slower. So I can live well with this litte disadvantage.

Then, like one month ago I was thinking: Why shouldn't I try to use Wifi for my "music PC", because there are no music files transported from it any more. And it worked well and therefore I named it "control PC", but let's say "remote" now, as Peter suggested.
As expected, with Wifi it is working the same stable way as it does via LAN cable.
Only when I did the update to XXHE version 2.06a, it became instable for a short time. But that was another issue, already discussed in another post.

I also tried my iPAD as a remote directly controlling the audio PC, what worked well for some time with XXHE 2.05, but seems to be too unstable, when the RDC get's interrupted during unattended playback with XXHE (blue screen).
So I am using my MS Surface now with Wifi and it works perfectly. I will do some more testing with the iPAD as a direct remote for the audio PC in the near future.

So, I believe, that everybody has to decide himself, if he wants to go the "centrally located NAS way". If you are going to use your music by various devices, it will bring you some comfort to do it this way.
In case you use it on one place only (XXHE on audio PC), the traditional way with the music files on the music PC is maybe the better one.

But anyway... my intention for this post was acctually the Windows 10 update prevention as described in my second post above.
And that's good to do in any case!

Best regards
Richard

ADDITIONAL INFOS:

my post above describes, how Windows 10 PCs can be prevented from receiving updates from the internet.

Since version 10 Windows is able to download updates not only from the Microsoft servers but optionally from other PCs, which already have these updates installed.
I myself have no experience with this kind of updating, but I recommend that this option should be switch off. This could be important, in case you have other PCs with Windows 10 running in your home network, because the audio PC could (maybe) get the updates from there, as it has access to all devices inside the home network.

There are various posts in the web how to do that, e.g.:
http://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-set-windows-10-get-updates-local-network-internet

Kind regards
Richard

Yes now it is here, even twice
Peter, could you delete one of them please.

So I go on explaining...

Probably many of you have been already doing this kind of network setup on Windows before.
On the right side you see the Dialog to give the PC a fixed IP adress. That's good to do in various ocasions anyway.

When you do that, there is also the Default Gateway to fill in (below subnet mask).

So the point is:
IF THE DEFAULT GATEWAY IS LEFT COMPLETLY EMPTY (as you can see in the screenshot), THE PC CANNOT GET INTO ANY CONTACT TO ANY WEBSITES IN THE INTERNET.
So not even microsoft.com can be contacted.

In my home network I did configure some additional stuff, like an additional internal DNS Server, but that's acctually not needed to prevent Windows 10 from updating.
And, if you adress the devices in your home network through the IP number (what's better anyway), no DNS Service is needed.

So, to do this configuration it is good to disconnect your home network from the Internet for some minutes, e.g. switch your modem off or similar.
Then:
- start the Windows Explorer
- rightclick "network"
- click "Properties"
- click "Change adapter Settings"
- now rightclick your LAN Connection and again choose "properties"
- Now you have to doubleclick "Internet Protocol Version 4(TCP/IPv4)"
- Now click "Use the following IP adress" and choose a propriate number for your home network. In my case it is: 192.168.0.133
Now important: DELETE the "Default Gateway". This fields have to be empty.
- OK and so on to save this configuraion.
- You are done.

To check, if it really works, connect again to the Internet (modem or so...) and open the Internet Explorer on this PC. Whatever Website you try to access, it should fail now.
That's it.

Kind regards
Richard

 

It is only one Picture, so i do it with an attachmant now.