NAS threw a wobbly!

I'll bear that in mind Huge, when I check my lotto numbers on Wednesday. The mother of all rollovers £14,700,000!!

Indeed they are a nightmare to demo.

I had a showroom demo of the A5's with my own amp and CD player (Morgan Audio) and they sounded muffled and flabby but despite that I did see potential and took them home on sale or return.  The A6's in the same showroom sounded flat and lean.

In my room they worked well, but I can fully understand what the 'haters' say about them.

I took a different approach when purchasing the C20's, I didn't even audition them!  The price from a Naim/Kudos dealer selling on eBay was very attractive so I took a punt.  Luckily I seem to have a room that seems to be fairly inert so the change was successful.

Pretty sure it isn't the speakers that are causing the problem :-)

I would be very wary of fiddling with the NAS hardware on the basis of one failure. Using a dust buster on the fan slots should be sufficient, and you should be able to tell if the fan is stuck anyway. Of course, make sure you have a complete back-up. The reality is that all hard disks fail eventually . . . it's when, not if . . . but as long as you're backed up it's manageable. It's your choice, but NAS hardware is not really intended to be user serviceable.

Also, serving music files, even WAV or transcoding, shouldn't present any modern NAS with a RAM problem. Unless you're also watching movies or something from it at the same time it really should be fine. I agree that poor memory management can sometimes cause 'leakage' that builds up, so a power down and up every few months will clear that.

Synology with WD Red seems excellent for me, and I also use only one bay as I'm not bothered by RAID, and back-up separately. The built-in UPNP or Minim work very well. Pros and cons on those (see other threads) but both good. I use Minim.

Hi Solid Air...The fan is definitely not stuck, it can be heard a mile off! Which is why I banished it from my front room, to under the stairs! If it does die on me, I'll try a Synology. They appear to be highly regarded by most forum members. I now use PLEX on my Qnap and iMac. Prior to that, I used 'Wonky Twonky'.

I'll bear that in mind Huge, when I check my lotto numbers on Wednesday. The mother of all rollovers £14,700,000!!

If I won that on the lottery I'd emigrate to somewhere that doesn't have an extradition treaty for fraud (I don't do the lottery!).

Meerkat, fair enough :-)  

I guess you are stressing your 112's limits, so a more robust QNAP 2 bay+ or a flip to another brand, maybe more in your future then, but now you know what specs you need to meet your requirements. Also important is using a good hard drive. I'm not sure if you had to choose one for the 112, or it came with one, certainly check compatibility/recommendation with NAS.  But a Sata 6GB/s transfer with 64mb cache would be a minimum for future proofing. Guy

Guy...Correct. The HD was chosen from the TS-112 compatibility list, a choice of about two, as I recall. As I only wanted 1TB. I haven't used the NAS today, here's a screenshot of the system at 17:45

Just played a couple of tracks, and the CPU usage shot up to 100% highlighted in red! Is that normal? It's now back down to 10%.

Doesn't look normal to me.

My TS112 idles at 2.8% when I play Emily Barker Nostalgia from fields of June. (free 24/96 xmas download from linn) it leaps to 4.5%.

At the moment I'm performing a scan on the HD, this uses 48% CPU, playing the above 24/96 track it jumps up to 50%

This is using a squeezebox server on the nas and a SBT streamer,  Presumably the squeezebox server knows the most efficient speed to supply data to squeezebox touch.

Could the problem be down to the music server you are using not being compatible with your streamer.

I'd be temped to start from scratch, reinstall and reformat the HD.

During the scan I'm performing at the moment, this message flashed up.

Note that if you are going to install a hard drive (new or used) which has never been installed on the NAS before, the hard drive will be formatted and partitioned automatically and all the disk data will be cleared.

This seems to indicates the HD can be removed and reinstalled without loosing data.

Have you considered removing twonky. Twonky appeared on my nas after a firmware update, to say I was pizzed off was an understatement. My music library was sucked out of SB server placed into twonky and the SB server deleted.

Can't remember if I deleted the twonky or did a format and fresh install. Either way, I've not performed a firmware update since 2012.

Meerkat, what is interesting is the RAM hardly changed, 6.4MB used, but obviously the CPU is an issue.  I think re formatting is a bit drastic, but are you able to try a different media server to see if the CPU has the same behavior, or then contact the QNAP support for known issues or the media server vendor ?

Guy...I only noticed the the strange behaviour of the CPU this evening, jumping from 12 to 100%. It's possible that it's been doing it from day one! I have disabled all apps, other than PLEX. I'll disable PLEX and try Twonky. I am not going to reformat the disc at this point. There was a Java ARM app, in the app centre which I have deleted. Not sure if I should have done that.

Update: After a play around with the various installed servers, (Minim, Twonky and PLEX) it appears that the sudden and dramatic increase in CPU usage, (8% to 100%) only occurs when any one of the media servers is switched on (Enabled). After a couple of minutes the CPU stabilizes, and drops down to it's normal level. Strange behaviours, but as I've said, this could have been happening since day one, but I've only just noticed it.

All CPU's start high & fall back, take a look at your PC starting in Task Mngr.

But going to 100% & back to 8% is new to me, I'll leave that to the IT guru's

Opening my NAS from hibernation the CPU starts around 18 to 20%, then 38 to 40%,  then after about 20-30secs to 1% & idles moving between 1 2 & 3%.   LAN is 16%

The CPU hitting a high number when a UPNP server is being enabled doesn't sound like a problem. After all, you want to work hard at doing demanding tasks - if it only hit 50% then it would take longer to load. As long as it's not too high when operating normally you should be fine.

Any modern NAS should be capable of serving music, even while transcoding. A NAS isn't a powerful computer, but it really only has to do one thing. Your phone, for example, has to run several radios concurrently, a screen, complex user interface, background apps and so on, so it's a very different beast.

As long as you have a back-up, I'd suggest you leave it well alone and enjoy listening to music instead!

I should have taken your advice Mike, and pressure washed it!

I totally agree!

I seem to remember that Minim uses the Java, I'm not in front of my QNAP so I'll check later.

But as Mike says, some processes take a bit of time to 'bed down' if you leave it for a few minutes then play another music file, the resource monitor tab will show the history and spikes of CPU use.

Yes minim requires Java.

if the 100% cpu is after the media server starts then this could be it doing a scan of files to build the index on startup. Once cpu has dropped, then play a file and see what happens. Do you transcode files or play as-is? 

Ian...that is a very good explanation. I hadn't thought of it scanning all the files, which is what any NAS has to do...and explains why, after a couple of minutes, the CPU drops down to about 8%.

Unfortuately, the model Qnap I have, cannot transcribe at all. Something that will definitely be a must, in my next choice of NAS.

If I revert to Minim, I'll re install the Java app.

Correct Solid Air, that was pointed out earlier in the thread, I completely forgot...derrr! 

I don’t think this is correct.

When I transfer a batch of music files to the QNAP multimedia folder, the squeezebox server won’t automatically play these files, it doesn’t know these files exist. I have to tell the squeezebox server to scan the multimedia folder for new music files. It doesn’t need to scan everytime the server is used, all the information regarding the music stored on the NAS has been stored in the server software.

Errr, I'm in the dark on this one...

If I had half the problems with my TS-112P that Meerkat is having with his TS-112 it would have gone in the dustbin long ago.

FWIW I am streaming using Logitech Media Server (LMS), version 7.7.5, installed on the TS-112P, using a WD Red hard drive, via ethernet, to a Squeezebox Touch (SBT) and a Boom Radio.

Since setting it up a few months ago it has worked a treat.

My motto: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Dave