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[swiv3d]

Can I ask how your library containing the NAS files was set up? I know I did have similar hang screen problems when I first set up a library using my NAS (which spins down after 10 minutes of inactivity) but when I changed the way the library was set up all of those problems vanished.

[RoderickGI]

But lets stick to playback for now and see what comes of it.

Fair enough. I won't try to narrow down the cause of the issue when the Server goes to sleep under the Client at this time then.

But I did just confirm that it is still there, after the Server has been asleep for a while, and if I click around the UI to display various records, at which time MC uses the local copy of the Library and doesn't wake the Server, but has some significant delay while it is trying to do something. Perhaps it is trying to connect to the Server without sending WOL packets to it. Or maybe it is trying to Sync to the Server before displaying the requested record. Note that it takes clicking on three items before I get the Windows message, usually.

[steff]

Can I ask how your library containing the NAS files was set up? I know I did have similar hang screen problems when I first set up a library using my NAS (which spins down after 10 minutes of inactivity) but when I changed the way the library was set up all of those problems vanished.

The MC library is locally stored in the local HDD where MC itself run.
The NAS contains "only" the media files.

[Spike1000]

Try uninstalling the antivirus software.

Every time I see Jim post "Try uninstalling the antivirus software" a little voice in my head cries out 'why oh why!?' MC mainly does low level IO, access to files and a database. Occasionally things get busy with imports, analysis or thumbnailing. But with modern CPUs and SSDs this should be a breeze. Note: firewalls blocking internet access is another beast and is not relevant here.

In another thread I posted this:

"The weird interaction between MC and antivirus applications on some people's PCs. In all my years in enterprise IT I have never seen such issues from any other application. . . .  Very strange considering the function of MC. There's never been an explanation or an improvement in MC, just a need to tame some people's AV."

As there's a useful active discussion on the blurry screen MC 'waiting' issue I'd like to make a call on the need to often tame antivirus with MC. .  . The Emperor has no clothes on.

My 2p:
There is something in the core of MC that's not playing fair with Windows, it plays reasonably fair but not fair enough in this day and age. The blurry screen of wait and the antivirus issues may be related or at least linked (and that's my guess) but neither should exist.

With a new version in the works I hope the team will take the time to lift the bonnet (hood  ) and get into the 15 year old engine, strip and service it so when V25 comes out there'll be a proud announcement that she now purrs like a kitten and drives like new again. I just hope the person that wrote the core MC functions left the service guide otherwise there's going to be a problem. . .

There was a quote from Jim that was something to the effect of he'd rather write the (Windows?) OS than re-write MC. I hope the issues in the heart of MC aren't that bad otherwise we're all in trouble. 

Spike

[steff]

So it seems I did not understand your question.

THe PC running MC24 mounts the folder shared by the NAS as a local drive Z:

THe library is stored on the PC

MC24 points to the Z:, MC24 scans the Z: drive and imports media files (audio only)

[Awesome Donkey]

Every time I see Jim post "Try uninstalling the antivirus software" a little voice in my head cries out 'why oh why!?' MC mainly does low level IO, access to files and a database. Occasionally things get busy with imports, analysis or thumbnailing. But with modern CPUs and SSDs this should be a breeze. Note: firewalls blocking internet access is another beast and is not relevant here.

I've thought about this, and I have a guess why it happens. Depending on the situation (as there are antivirus apps that don't play well with Media Center, e.g. Bitdefender) but for the majority I don't think antivirus applications are targeting Media Center per-say and flagging Media Center's executables (though some have and do still). Most, if not all antivirus applications have a real-time scanning feature, meaning it scans files actively being accessed. What I believe happens is Media Center starts importing/scanning media files, and the antivirus application is in the background actively doing scans of the files Media Center is importing/scanning, which is causing a) a slow down of the import/scan process and/or b) in some cases the antivirus might be trying to upload sample files to the cloud for the antivirus company to scan on their side. You might be able to see if this is happening by monitoring the resource usage of both Media Center and the antivirus' executables.

The workaround for this is to add both the folder(s) where the media files reside and add the file type/extensions of the media to the exclusions list if the antivirus application has that feature available.

For the last two days I've been trying to reproduce the issue(s) steff has reported with my NAS. So far, I haven't been able to reproduce it like steff encounters it. steff if you don't mind I'd be interested to know more about your setup you're using in your testing, e.g. routers/switches being used, if you're using a gigabit (or higher) network, wired or wireless, the method accessing your NAS (CIFS/SMB1, AFP, NFS, SMB2, SMB3, etc.) and anything else that might help replicate this. I think the more information there is, the better chance there is to understanding the possible cause.

[JimH]

Awesome Donkey,
I think what you're guessing is possible.  MC is multi-threaded and starts other pieces of the program and I think antivirus software can just get pushed so hard it dies trying to keep up.  Not many other programs use so many files at one time as MC.

And sometimes problems like this are masked by very powerful computers and only show up on lesser machines.

Putting out a build a week also means that the antivirus makers have more to deal with.

They're looking for patterns and eventually they will find them, even if the patterns are in innocent programs.

[JimH]

Every time I see Jim post "Try uninstalling the antivirus software" a little voice in my head cries out 'why oh why!?'

Maybe you could take a look at the evidence:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86096.msg588759#msg588759

[JimH]

My 2p:
There is something in the core of MC that's not playing fair with Windows, it plays reasonably fair but not fair enough in this day and age. The blurry screen of wait and the antivirus issues may be related or at least linked (and that's my guess) but neither should exist.

I don't know where you get this idea, and it's quite a serious accusation.

We're using Microsoft Visual Studio and playing completely by the rules. 

[DJLegba]

Maybe you could take a look at the evidence:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=86096.msg588759#msg588759

Only 55 cases since 2013, and almost none with Microsoft's Windows Defender. I don't think there's a problem with MC and anti-virus software, but that could be the perception when the first response to almost every problem is "anti-virus".

[Awesome Donkey]

They're looking for patterns and eventually they will find them, even if the patterns are in innocent programs.

Indeed. Some antivirus applications have better heuristic analysis algorithms than other antivirus applications. In addition, in the past a lot of the false positives I saw/encountered were caused by the compression/packers used by some executables, e.g. UPX compression. But that shouldn't be an issue for MC, as at least the most important MC executables have a digital signature (which is nearly all of them do now).

Only 55 cases since 2013, and almost none with Microsoft's Windows Defender. I don't think there's a problem with MC and anti-virus software, but that could be the perception when the first response to almost every problem is "anti-virus".

Antivirus can have other effects that are more subtle. Like what I mentioned above with real time scanning which is something I did encounter with Windows Defender in the past with it automatically submitting Media Center's executables as "samples" to Microsoft (granted, I haven't checked that lately). This is more likely to happen when new builds are released and/or when major MC versions are released since they're "unknown".

[michael123]

My NAS is custom-built unRaid (Linux) server with high specs - 64GB RAM, Xeon processor, server motherboard and SSD cache. I get roughly Gigabit transfer rates

When the disks go asleep, I DO get sometimes the message about spinning up the disks. Sometimes - not.
Sometimes the wait is short - 5-10 seconds, sometimes longer
I do believe, though, this has something to do with the way Windows handles the shares

[michael123]

And you guys should work with Microsoft Defender, asking your customer to take it off is kind of weird

[Hendrik]

When the disks go asleep, I DO get sometimes the message about spinning up the disks. Sometimes - not.

MC should try to open the file with a wait message in place to ensure the disk is woken up. The message would only show after 1.5 seconds of waiting, so its not blinking on/off on short waits.

Depending on how the remote server responds, it might be possible that MC can open the file, and the wait only happens when it actually tries to read a bit data. Which would explain why the message is so inconsistent, I guess.

[Awesome Donkey]

And you guys should work with Microsoft Defender, asking your customer to take it off is kind of weird

Except Windows Defender can't be uninstalled. I'm not sure if it can be fully disabled (even via group policy). It's so integrated in Windows 10 now that it may not be possible to fully disable it.

That's why the taming topic exists. I'm going to try to see if I can refine the taming method to specific MC executables, folders containing media and file type exclusions when MC25 is released.

[michael123]

MC should try to open the file with a wait message in place to ensure the disk is woken up. The message would only show after 1.5 seconds of waiting, so its not blinking on/off on short waits.

Depending on how the remote server responds, it might be possible that MC can open the file, and the wait only happens when it actually tries to read a bit data. Which would explain why the message is so inconsistent, I guess.

Might be, so as you explain it, it might be fixed then

[JimH]

And you guys should work with Microsoft Defender, asking your customer to take it off is kind of weird

I don't ask that.

[JimH]

Only 55 cases since 2013, and almost none with Microsoft's Windows Defender. I don't think there's a problem with MC and anti-virus software, but that could be the perception when the first response to almost every problem is "anti-virus".

Those are just the cases I've documented.  For every one of those, many more people experienced the problem but never found the cause.  They probably blamed JRiver and stopped using it.

My first response isn't "antivirus" unless the problem reported seems to fit, but if you have a random crash or hang, you have to rule out antivirus and it's quick to do if you uninstall it.

[steff]

For the last two days I've been trying to reproduce the issue(s) steff has reported with my NAS. So far, I haven't been able to reproduce it like steff encounters it. steff if you don't mind I'd be interested to know more about your setup you're using in your testing, e.g. routers/switches being used, if you're using a gigabit (or higher) network, wired or wireless, the method accessing your NAS (CIFS/SMB1, AFP, NFS, SMB2, SMB3, etc.) and anything else that might help replicate this. I think the more information there is, the better chance there is to understanding the possible cause.

I reproduced the issue both at my home and at work with totally different hardware.

It happens both with wired 1 Gbps network and wireless b/g/n/ WiFi
Happens with media files stored on the local NAS and also stored on another Windows 10 PC that exports shares.
THe NAS, as already mentioned, is a HPE Proliant server running Ubuntu and SAMBA, with Gigabit Ethernet
Copy to NAS and read from NAS using windows Explorer or measuring the speed with IOMeter, uses all the available bandwidht ( about 100 MByte/second )
THe PC is a standard HP EliteBook with touch screen where Microsoft Defender is running but MC executable is excluded together with the library and the NAS folder. No AV running on the Ubuntu
THe switch is a managed Netgear professional switch.

Switching to the environment at work...
the NAS is a EMC Unity running Unisphere OS, no AV at all, build on full flash technology
The switch is a Cisco 3850, 1 Gps each port
PC is stadard HP PRoBook, 1 Gbps

Some considerations:

Antivirus
If I include media extensions to the AV scaning, I really see an heavy downgrade in the performance, high CPU usage and so on. For this reason MC executable folders, remote NAS share and local library folders are excluded from scanning. No improvements if I completely disable real time protection, so... I keep Defender running real time protection, but excluded the above folders.

Media files type
16 bit \ 44 kHz FLAC, ripped from my CD collection
up to 24 bit \ 384 kHz FLAC from several music store. Even some DSD\DXD files. Up to 1 GByte size.
THe bigger the file, the longer last the issue because it takes more time to load into memory.

Test cases 1
NAS disks are sleeping and playback from memory DISABLED
I navigate the MC library, choose what to play, hit play.
THe issue starts and end as soon NAS disks are live and data are transferredn from NAS to PC; let me say... from 10 to 20 seconds

Test case 2
NAS disk are not sleeping, memory playback DISABLED
NO major issue using both small or very big media files

Test case 3
NAS disks are not sleeping, memory playback ENABLED
I choose from the library a very big 1 GByte FLAC or DSD and I hit play
THe problem starts and ends as soon MC starts to play, meaning the file fro the NAS has been completely loaded into PC memory.

How to reproduce the issue with the GUI
In test case 1, while disks are coming alive OR
in test case 3, while MC load files into memory
If I "touch" the screen of the PC, then the MC window overrides and expands to 100% of the screen, becomes blurry, out of focus, the Windows taskbar appears (if in theatre view) and the Windows pop up asking to "wait or close" appears.
THis hapens in normal view and theatre view.
If I do not touch anything... and just wait, keeping my hand firmly on the table and not on the mouse, keyboards, etc. then no problems.

[Spike1000]

I don't know where you get this idea, and it's quite a serious accusation.

We're using Microsoft Visual Studio and playing completely by the rules.

Jim, I'm certainly not trying to be accusative or augmentative I'm only speaking from what I see and what I know. Yes, I see evidence of AV and MC don't get on all the time but in my experience of working with 20,000+ PCs, 60,000+ users and 1000+ applications it's not something I can honestly remember really seeing. I've run enterprise AV and had to make very very few exceptions for those PCs and those users for all those apps in all my years. So in my experience MC stands out as being 'different' in some way. This surprises me as the tasks that MC needs to do are routine and there shouldn't be any real issues with it; but the evidence you link to shows that odd things do sometimes happen to some people some of the time.

Spike

[steff]

In my corporate I am responsible to manage 46.000 PC and 2300 server.
I just verified on the AV policy: no exception at all.
It means that all the corporate applications run well without exceptions or exclusions.

Imagine the behaviour of the AV programs with CAD\CAE applications working on NAS and very huge file (GBytes )...

It really too simple to say: disable the AV... it is because the AV...
If disabling the AV eventually solve the issue, then this does not necessary mean that it is because of the AV!!!
Please!!!
It means that maybe... eventually... it is because the application does not necessary deal in the correct way with the AV,
If the above statement is not true, then I can not explain why in my corporate, with so many PC\server and thiusand applications... I do not have any exclusion at all

[JimH]

Test cases 1
NAS disks are sleeping and playback from memory DISABLED
I navigate the MC library, choose what to play, hit play.
THe issue starts and end as soon NAS disks are live and data are transferredn from NAS to PC; let me say... from 10 to 20 seconds

Test case 2
NAS disk are not sleeping, memory playback DISABLED
NO major issue using both small or very big media files

Test case 3
NAS disks are not sleeping, memory playback ENABLED
I choose from the library a very big 1 GByte FLAC or DSD and I hit play
THe problem starts and ends as soon MC starts to play, meaning the file fro the NAS has been completely loaded into PC memory.

Aren't you saying that if you disable memory playback, it works? 

If so, why not do that?

[steff]

Aren't you saying that if you disable memory playback, it works? 

If so, why not do that?

Because i notice significant improving in audio quality enabling memory playback on Windows (MC and Foobar) Because the absence of network activities

[blgentry]

Pretend for a moment that MC was patched or re-written so that it handles these interruptions gracefully and the GUI is still responsive.  You seem to have two scenarios where you are expecting this to help you.

1.  Your NAS disks are spun down:  In this case, MC still has to wait until the NAS disks are spun up and deliver data.  What difference do you expect from MC?  The GUI will work, but what will you do with it?  Sit there and wait.  Play with the window?  It won't play music until it gets data and it won't get data until the NAS delivers it.  I understand that it will be "nice" for it to respond, but isn't this just cosmetic?  Meaning that it doesn't help you in any way, other than looking nice.

2.  Memory playback is enabled and you load a large file.  If MC stays responsive while loading a big file, what do you expect it to do while it loads?  Stop playing the current file?  Or continue playing the current file?  If you want it to continue to play isn't that what it does now?  Otherwise what do you think you or MC will do differently while it is loading, if the GUI is responsive?  Again, this appears to be cosmetic only.

Perhaps my analysis above has missed something.  Please comment if you'd like.

Brian.

[ErikN]

While I am not affected by this particular problem, a responsive GUI during a period of waiting is not cosmetic. There is a reason the world is full of spinners, floating dots, and progress bars. For most users, of which engineers are maybe a poor sample set, an unresponsive GUI is alarming. It makes it seem like something has gone wrong.

Ignoring development effort etc., it is always nice to have a responsive GUI. In a perfect world the GUI would indicate that it is waiting on something and has a "cancel" of some kind for the current action. Whether or not it is feasible to implement, it is certainly reasonable to want.

[JimH]

While I am not affected by this particular problem, a responsive GUI during a period of waiting is not cosmetic. There is a reason the world is full of spinners, floating dots, and progress bars. For most users, of which engineers are maybe a poor sample set, an unresponsive GUI is alarming. It makes it seem like something has gone wrong.

Ignoring development effort etc., it is always nice to have a responsive GUI. In a perfect world the GUI would indicate that it is waiting on something and has a "cancel" of some kind for the current action. Whether or not it is feasible to implement, it is certainly reasonable to want.

I don't think anyone disagrees.

[steff]

Pretend for a moment that MC was patched or re-written so that it handles these interruptions gracefully and the GUI is still responsive.  You seem to have two scenarios where you are expecting this to help you.

It is not just to have a responsive GUI: when the issue starts, as I mentionend several times, the MC window takes over and expands to 100% of the screen overlapping even the Windows taskbar, becomes blurry and out of focus. Moreover, in addition, if theatre view is enabled, the visual effect is much more annoying.
Let me say that there are several products on the market that play music, but months ago I choose MC just because the theatre view, to be used with touch screen or with a remote control.

1.  Your NAS disks are spun down:  In this case, MC still has to wait until the NAS disks are spun up and deliver data.  What difference do you expect from MC?  The GUI will work, but what will you do with it?  Sit there and wait.  Play with the window?  It won't play music until it gets data and it won't get data until the NAS delivers it.  I understand that it will be "nice" for it to respond, but isn't this just cosmetic?  Meaning that it doesn't help you in any way, other than looking nice.

Yes I agree: most of the benefits will be just cosmetic.
But consider that I play high resolution music, up to 24\384 and files are up to 1 or 2 GByte each one and... it may takes quite e lot of time to be loaded...

2.  Memory playback is enabled and you load a large file.  If MC stays responsive while loading a big file, what do you expect it to do while it loads?  Stop playing the current file?  Or continue playing the current file?  If you want it to continue to play isn't that what it does now?  Otherwise what do you think you or MC will do differently while it is loading, if the GUI is responsive?  Again, this appears to be cosmetic only.

I already asked to the MC team to "fix" this behaviour in the past, but I never received any comments.
Let me explain: music players based on MS Windows sound better (to my hears, of course) when the files are played from memory or from local SSD versus from a remote NAS.
Today, with SSDs widely adopted, the electric noise coming from disks is a non sense, but the network activity during playback, according to my hears, introduces distorsion, glitches and with low performance PCs even stuttering audio.
Since my music files are stored on the remote NAS, I prefer memory playback.
So... according to me, memory playback not only means to play from memory, but also to not have heavy network activities during playback.
If I choose playback from memory, then I pretend that MC stops playing the current file until the new one is fully loaded.
Foobar beahves in this way, to mention an example.
If most of people disagree, it would cost nothing to add a "switch" in the option menu to force MC to stop playing.

I do not pretend to have a PC fully resposive during this "waiting", but it would be very nice to have MC not make mess with the windows.
I expect also to have MCshowing a meter while loading... 0%... 30%......... 100%.... let's play!

Let me add that I am not fanatic of memory playback, but I noticed that on Windows it makes the difference; on the other end a cheap Raspberry running the free piCorePlayer is perfect even without memory playback... it depends on the HW\OS architecture.

[RoderickGI]

Pretend for a moment that MC was patched or re-written so that it handles these interruptions gracefully and the GUI is still responsive.  <snip>
What difference do you expect from MC?  The GUI will work, but what will you do with it?<snip>
If MC stays responsive while loading a big file, what do you expect it to do while it loads? <snip>

Perhaps my analysis above has missed something.  Please comment if you'd like.

Yes, you missed something. I can think of lots I would do if the GUI remained responsive.

Scenario like Steff's waiting for the NAS to spin up:
Start MC, select a few albums, click Play, which sends the requested albums to Playing Now and initiates the request from the NAS.
Currently, sit and wait. Do nothing. Can't. The GUI doesn't need to be involved at this stage. I don't wish to view Playing Now.
If the GUI remained responsive;
  Select some more albums to add to Playing Now.
  Build a new Playlist.
  Open a new tab and start editing a View.
  Select an Audio track that you see has a wrong tag. Edit the tag and save it.
     If the tag is only saved into the MC Library, which is local, process completes.
     If the tag is also set to save to the file, file edit is queued behind the playback requests.
  Etc. Anything that doesn't initiate playback can and should be available to be done.

Music starts to play back when the NAS has spun up and delivered the files. It happens in the background. The GUI doesn't need to be involved.

Scenario like Steff's memory playback.
Exactly the same as above.

Scenario like my Server going to sleep under my Client.
Exactly the same as above, except maybe not editing Views, unless I am testing something new on the Client before adding it to the Server. Plus I would typically select Television, check recordings, To Be Recorded, EPG. I would check TV Logs as well, but they aren't available on Clients yet.

It is pretty common for me to start some music and then do some work, and sometimes that work takes a while and I don't add to the music selection, so playback stops and the Server goes to sleep under the Client. When I come up for air, finish the task, or take a break and come back to the PC, I want to start some more music. Selection of the music only requires the local MC application and the local copy of the Server Library. Playback requires the Server to be woken, but I don't care about that. The GUI doesn't need to be involved in that. I just select the music, hit Play, and then I might want to do any of the things mentioned above in MC, because that is when I think to do it, while I have MC in focus again.

I live with the time it takes to wake the Server, because it is usually only five to ten seconds, and I know what it is doing. But sometimes it is longer, and I don't know if MC has actually locked up, or something else is going on.

[blgentry]

Yes, you missed something. I can think of lots I would do if the GUI remained responsive.

I suppose your examples are mostly fair.  However, for "normal people" using MC, you know what I think they would do?  Click on the song again.  And again.  and again.  Unless of course there is a count down like steff suggested.  In which case you can't do anything else, but wait until it's done.

Look I understand that it's rather ugly for MC to stop responding under any circumstances, even when it's necessitated by a lack of data from NAS or something else.  I'm just wondering what the benefits are other than "it seems nicer now".  ...and for the record I'm a big proponent of "it's nicer now".  I've spent a lot of money on cars, stereos, furniture, and art because it's aesthetically pleasing.  It's a valid point.

I guess I'm "lucky" because I think NAS is a terrible compromise and I refuse to use it.  I also don't use memory playback at all, but I might be inclined to if I had an extremely high resolution playback system and had heard the difference (if any) for myself.

Best wishes to all on this.

Brian.

[Spike1000]

If I "touch" the screen of the PC, then the MC window overrides and expands to 100% of the screen, becomes blurry, out of focus, the Windows taskbar appears (if in theatre view) and the Windows pop up asking to "wait or close" appears.
THis hapens in normal view and theatre view.
If I do not touch anything... and just wait, keeping my hand firmly on the table and not on the mouse, keyboards, etc. then no problems.

I think this is really really significant and key to the technical problem, rather than the (let's call it) 'cosmetic' issue. Please don't look over this point in all the messages.

It shows that MC is 'waiting', we all know that, and it could be handled better with some form of message, egg timer etc. BUT look what happens when MC is interacted with (in this case a touch screen, but a click will do), boom! messed up display, blurry/white screen of wait, windows 'not responding' error and awful UX.

The routine that's handling the user input at this time needs to be able to run and it can't as it's 'blocked'. The fix may well be in the core of MC but the program flow around this point needs to be understood and potentially re-worked to improve the UX.

It's been said that this is a 'Windows' issue/error message, and that could well be the case; but it's the state that MC is in that causes it. It would be really appreciated if JR said they were going to dig into it and improve the 'wait handling' of MC and its interaction with the OS. . . . Does it happen on Linux/Mac? (probably need to duck for cover for that one  )

Spike

[steff]

I think this is really really significant and key to the technical problem, rather than the (let's call it) 'cosmetic' issue. Please don't look over this point in all the messages.

I confirm: if I hit "play", then MC starts waiting for data from the NAS. If I do no nothing at all but just look at the screen and wait... then at some point MC will start to play.
But, in the meanwhile, if I touch something (move the mouse, or, in theatre vie touch the screen or arrows key on the keyboard or anything else..) then boom! Blurry screen, windows messed up, etc. and the Windows pop-up asking to wait or close.

[Awesome Donkey]

Hmmm, I'm curious, how much wait time is there between loading music from the NAS (from sleep to wake up) with memory playback disabled and with memory playback enabled? Is it a significant amount?

[steff]

Hmmm, I'm curious, how much wait time is there between loading music from the NAS (from sleep to wake up) with memory playback disabled and with memory playback enabled? Is it a significant amount?

If I understand correctly your question,

- with memory disabled
we have to consider just the time to wake the disks. Using pure Windows Explorer, 5 seconds are enough, but using MC it takes up to 10-15 seconds, then the GUI starts again to respond and at the same time the music plays

- with memory playback enabled
we have to add to the above 10-15 seconds the time to load the file from the NAS to the PC memory.
It depends on the file size: if we work on a song ripped from an audio CD... it is a matter of some seconds, but if I consider a high-res FLAC or DSD\DXD... we speak about 1 to 2 minutes.

[Awesome Donkey]

1 to 2 minutes? Huh, that's actually quite a long time. I can load long hi-res or long DSD tracks into memory within a couple seconds with a local library (5 seconds with the longest DSD/DSF track I have, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) by Pink Floyd). But I've never tried doing this from a NAS over the network though, so I'll add that to my to-test list.

[steff]

1 to 2 minutes? Huh, that's actually quite a long time. I can load long hi-res or long DSD tracks into memory within a couple seconds with a local library (5 seconds with the longest DSD/DSF track I have, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) by Pink Floyd). But I've never tried doing this from a NAS over the network though, so I'll add that to my to-test list.

Consider that a 24/384 PCM FLAC runs at (more or less) 10 Mbps.
With classic music it is common to have 10 or 15 or even more.
Even with Gbps wired network... this is the time it takes to load.
If I move from wired to wireless, even with ac protocol, I am not able to go better than 500 Mbps

[Hendrik]

Since apparently it wasn't clear on the last page, or someone missed it, definitely looking into at the very least keeping MC alive while its loading a new file. Can't promise yet if I'll also manage to fully move it into a background action so that you can actually continue using MC in the process.