Bartok sometimes refuses to play files off USB

Hi all. I’m new to the dCS world with a new Bartok–very exciting. I’ve been streaming over tidal which is pretty effortless. I’d like to play files off a USB stick. I have a 1TB flash drive formatted FAT32 which I’ve put ~300gb of files on. Some play others don’t. I see all the files and when I select one I see the track name and it seem about to play, but never starts. Formats are most often AIFF. Sometimes files that used to work don’t when I play them later. I’ve read that the USB is really only for small numbers of files but I think I also read that 1TB would be fine. So, I’m a bit confused.

Welcome to the forum @dankaplan .

That’s correct.

@Phil posted this message on another thread.

To continue @Bauer point, you have used the symbol for “approximately” so you may have exceeded the maximum thumb drive storage capability of Bartok for this format. I think this may be 320 gb.

Very large thumb drives have a reputation for unreliability with some brands anyway.

Bartok like all dCS streaming units is designed for UpnP file playing and this requires NAS storage with appropriate server software ( MinimServer is supported by dCS). This may not be costly using, for example, a small model from QNAP or Synergy.

This will enable proper navigation via Mosaic. Thumb drives cannot do this as they have no computing power and are storage only. You then also will have network connection which most people generally find superior to USB.

Hi Guys,

Just to clarify as this keeps being brought up.

We recommend that the USB “Host” port on the rear of the units is used with USB pen/flash drives of up to 32GB …

Large collections of music should be hosted via a UPnP server which will enable a much better browsing experience as the USB Host port only allows folder and file browsing.

I hope that helps.

P

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Thanks Phil. It looks like I added a rogue “0” :frowning:.

Damn that rogue zero … if only I could get one to appear as an extra digit on my paycheck! :smiley:

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Thanks for all of these helpful comments. I was hoping to avoid setting up a server. I gave it a shot already with MinimServer but failed so I was hoping the flash drive solution would work. I can dig into to more. Rather than starting a new thread with already covered topics, are there a good ‘how-to’ links for setting up a UPnP on a Mac?

Not as far ad I know. Perhaps someone else has better knowledge?

Your problem us rather open ended without any further information from you, Please let us know what you have done, where the difficulty occurred and what it is. We can rake it from there.

Thanks for the offer of help. It just took some messing around. Seems to work just fine now. The server is connected over wifi. I assume if run it directly to the DAC there will be improvement in sound quality?

You’ve gotten further than many of us. I haven’t been able to get any usb drive to work. All I get is “nothing found”.

Ah. I had that. Format USB drive as Fat32. USB sticks come in a different format. But as above, if you have tons of files it slows down to a crawl and sometimes doesn’t even work. The max size quoted by experts above is 32gb. Also, access is by files. I agree that using a UPnP set-up is superior.

You need server and your device to be on the same subnet. The usual way of achieving this is to connect your device and server via your router.

Wired connection for your server is considered superior to wifi for music data due to the way the data is handled and offers better audio results. Of course no music data passes through Mosaic which is for control only.