I still have the firewall off since it is working this way. Jussi seems to feel there is no reason to turn the firewall on since the PC is dedicated to HQ Player.
However, when I get a chance I will try to add exceptions and turn the firewall back on. When I do I will report back here.
I only run anti-virus software but no firewall, I can tell that both F-Secure and Kaspersky anti-virus works fine with HQPlayer (likely also TrendMicro and Bitdefender). Thereās no benefit for firewall if it is allowing all services that there are. It is different if you have a laptop that you occasionally take out of the protected home network to some airport or hotel WiFi, then you certainly need a firewall because your are in a potentially hostile network. So I have full āinternet securityā suites on laptops that can move out.
For this same reason, HQPlayer Desktop has the toolbar button to allow/disallow remote control. So that someone at airport WiFi cannot start controlling your music playback. Likely not so dangerous, but would be annoying.
For example the Windows Firewall (built-in one) has two domains. Private networks where things can go open, exposing services. And public networks where incoming connections to services are blocked by default. Windows then asks you on a new network to tag it as a private or public network to apply either policy (you can also modify these policies).
I realized that by running audiophile optimizer on both machines the firewalls are disabled.
I do have a laptop that I take on the road, but most of the time it is behind my home router.