Minim stream being throttled on QNAP NAS ?

[simoncn]

To clarify, the possible HDD fault would not be an error with reading the track that is playing but a fault when some other process on the NAS is running and reading a different part of the HDD.

Another possibility is that there is some other process on the NAS (such as indexing or creating thumbnail images) that runs from time to time and consumes a lot of system resource when it is running.

For both of these, you need to view resource usage while the problem is occurring.

Another possibliity is an intermittent problem with the network connection from the NAS to the player. A problem like this many years ago was solved by replacing an Ethernet cable. This would be a last resort after checking NAS resource usage as described above.