We've had an internet outage since 11am.
No Spotify etc..

Came back 5.15pm.
Not my Sky provider, a BT Open Reach issue.

My local network worked fine, and I could see and play RPi / Volumio on USB router connected NAS..

New (to me) Google pixel XL did sterling service providing 3 or 4G depending on where I was in da house

If I'd needed to, I could have put the big Samsung drive back on with all my FLACs, but there was no need.

Nice to see backup eventualities are covered.

Interestingly, the Gizmo app was not able to control my Jrivered laptop if the internet was down.
I had to use the laptop to cue up music..
Gizmo for some reason needed the internet, whereas Volumio does not.. so it's anything the RPi / router USB drive solution is more robust..

Food for thought..

Yeah, I'm not trying to stream over 4G
It is quite fast enough to stream FLACs though.

Can you do it over your phone and in to Volumio somehow? You have a Wireless 4G if I remember correctly?

Spotify on the track You - Kingston Wall does not quite come up to snuff Vs the USB stick NAS! It's close but my Kingston Wall FLACs are hi-res. I forget how high Res but might be 24/192.. I'll have to check.

Spotify is also a dB or 2 quieter.

I like how Spotify is now giving me a Daily mix solely of Swedish artists.. that's pretty cool! Nice to hear new stuff mixed with the old..

I can stream Qobuz 24/192 FLAC quite happily with no glitches.

I could take the SIM out of my phone and put it in the back of the 4G router but it's pointless as it has a SIM there with 30GB allowance.

Kingston Wall sounds ace on my system.

Daily Mix and Discover are excellent and learn your favourites.

Adding a USB (NAS) Drive to the Network (Router in my case)

After some trials and tribulations (mostly with getting the right settings in Volumio)
and getting access to the USB drive over the network in my Laptop that has all the FLAC files I want to transfer,
I got it working.

For the record this is how I did it

1. Firstly the Router with USB drive needs to be set for sharing.

For Haewei router..

Login to router - admin and pw and in Share Enable Samba

Under USB settings add new USB user and give appropriate name : Sandisk

Give username Sandisk and pw. Set all directories and read/write.

Under Anoynmous User set All directories and Read and Write.
SAVE

Find the name of USB device in the Home network section - SanDisk-07813B6C

2. Open File Manager in Windows.

Go to Network and navigate to \\192.168.0.2\ (the routers IP address. In my case I have a Master and Slave router setup
as one router is not enough for the property they are linked via a Lan cable - hence address)
Only my Slave Router has
a USB slot! Sky cheapskates!
You should see the folder admin.

Click on admin and get the full name of the USB drive: Sandisk-07813B6C_usb_1

Click again and you will see all the music folders / FLAC files.

If Windows 10 can't find your router device it could be because at some point W10 depricated the security protocol

used by older routers! You need to turn on the SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support.

Search in windows for Features - Under Settings Windows Features should be seen

Click on that and a Windows Feature box will open.

Find SMB 1.0.... and tick it. Save and it will ask for a restart..

Note: Two of my PC's did not have this Feature enabled and could see the Router just fine,

1 laptop could not see it no matter what else I tired and this fixed it!

3. In volumio settings, add a New Drive

Should find router - 'TALKTALK ROUTER' in this case.

Alias: sandisk
NAS IP Address: TALKTALK ROUTER
Path: admin\Sandisk-07813B6C_usb_1
File Share Type: cifs
Username: admin (router login username)
Password: Router PW
Options: vers=1.0

SAVE

Under Network Drives it should look like this

Alias     Path

Sandisk \\TALKTALK ROUTER\admin/Sandisk-07813B6C_usb1_1

It should find the drive with no errors and

then update / rescan to get the files pulled in.

Under Browse and music symbol & Music library you'll see NAS. Click and then see all the Albums / files

Click to play.

:Martin was helpful, always offering insight and IT help along the way.

This is why I never bothered with a NAS drive. Far too complex for me

Coo, I thought your music server was more complex, but it's just what you familiarise yourself with I guess.

Share drives are coo!l I can manage and read/write new Flacs from any laptop now. Most music is on the lappy in the lounge though.
I've just xfered over a couple of albums to compare with Spotify.
Some I also have on CD, I'll connect up the Transport via optical sometime and have a further compare..

Tonight's fiddling was to put the 3uF caps back on the Vitavox S2 upper mid frequency drivers.

This is instead of the Najda DSP DAC XO doing the job of the lower crossover point. Measuring and listening tests had got me to a Bessel 1st order X/O at a 1175Hz setting.
The 3uF cap does essentially the same job, crossing at this frequency neatly avoids the S2's rather pronounced hump in amplitude just below this point.
It's rather magically smoothed to an almost perfect 1st order slope - as confirmed by the measuring mic.

There's something rather magically about a nice soft sounding 3uF cap on these drivers.. certain music seems to benefit from whatever a capacitor does to the full fat signal between amp and driver.
I can't begin to describe it..
It's not so for the other drivers where a lower and upper X/O point is required and 2nd, 3rd or even 4th order is needed. They just sap signal and become large and costly at lowest bass frequency.

It will stay like this until I feel like a change.

I was trying to find some elusive 3uF caps to end all caps (I forget the name), a few years ago but gave up.. hen's teeth.

Clarity.
Not all makes come as 3uF.
Many are 3.3..
Can always parallel up two 1.5uFs though..

I'll bet I would. How are you liking I²S these days?