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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2015 16:44:52 GMT
Not sure whether this is the right place to put it so happy for the administrators to move it if it is incorrectly located I have been thinking about getting a NAS to store my music and films on (Approx. 4000 music albums and 1000 films). Up until now I have been using my Apple Mac to and external hard drives which work up to a point but the Mac is reasonably old now and really struggles to cope. Anyway, do any of you have any experience of NAS's? which one would you recommend? I would be looking to run the Logitech software for my Squeezebox on the device, so are they compatible with this or would it need to run off the Mac and effectively run like an network server? Any help would be much appreciated as although I work in IT, technology is not something I know a lot about (as I work in IT Management and Service Management areas) Paul.
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Post by ChrisB on Sept 10, 2015 17:29:07 GMT
I'm interested in what answers this question might offer, as I was thinking of investigating this market myself just the other day. (Not so much for the music storage aspect of it though, more as a general file repository)
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2015 17:55:49 GMT
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Post by ChrisB on Sept 10, 2015 18:05:35 GMT
Yes, I was looking at those and that's as far as I got!
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Post by Stratmangler on Sept 10, 2015 21:11:24 GMT
I run a very basic and inexpensive NAS. It is a Zyxel NSA310, and they're available second hand without a fitted HDD for around £30. A decent size (3TB) compatible drive can be had for under £100 if you shop around. It runs Logitech Media Server, which is why I bought the thing in the first place. What's more LMS is available for installation from Zyxel's own servers - it's a supported application, and it has been stripped back a little for use on the Zyxel NAS range.
I have found that using the plugins written by the Squeezebox community that the functionality of LMS just gets better and better. Spotify works a treat using the Triode plugin, although it will only work with a Premium account (which is on Spotify's demand). The fiasco that was the transition of the BBC's streaming services has been solved with amendments to Triode's iPlayer plugin so the BBC live and listen again services are back working properly. I have streaming from Tidal working properly to, thanks to the ickstream plugin.
My digital audio library is pretty big with not far short of 4000 albums (there are a number of repeats with different resolutions etc).
Now for the nitty gritty. Squeezebox players do not natively play Apple Lossless files.
If you run LMS on an all singing, all dancing computer with loads of spare processing capacity this is not a problem. A NAS is not all singing, all dancing. It is a very basic computer that runs on quite limited resources. And in the case of the NSA310 is doesn't have the grunt to perform a couple of operations, one of which is transcoding on the fly, and the other is resampling on the fly. And in order to get ALAC files to play on a Squeezebox player it first needs to be transcoded on the fly to FLAC.
So with Paul living in Apple Land I think there might be a problem to get over - it depends on the nature of his digital music library. If it's largely ALAC then another solution needs to be found. If it's largely AAC (what you download from iTunes is mainly AAC @ 256kbps VBR) then there might not be an issue. For Chris and his general storage requirement it's a good option.
Device administration can be performed easily from a web browser. Backup is to USB HDD.
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Post by liffy99 on Sept 10, 2015 21:13:04 GMT
I use a Vortexbox (just google it) running Slimserver and two Squeezeboxes. Only for music (all FLAC library) and it works a treat. Completely automatic CD ripping makes it easy and stereo playback on the hifi is controlled via Ipad running Squeezepad. Vortex box now also cater for films / bluray I believe but for some reason I very rarely watch a film twice so don't tend to keep them. The Vortexbox software is free to download and can be run from a not very powerful computer. I bought the actual 'box' as it consumes <15w so I just leave it running. Backup is to an external HDD.
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Post by Stratmangler on Sept 10, 2015 21:20:23 GMT
I have a friend who runs Vortexbox, and he's delighted with it.
With regard to the movie thing - I decided a while ago that it was easier to just play the discs, as ripping the content to HDD would require what would quickly amount to being a server farm. Bluray discs especially so.
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Post by Slinger on Sept 10, 2015 21:32:43 GMT
I was looking at those My Clouds too. I've currently got a Synology DS211j with 2x2Gb drives set up in a RAID 1 config hanging off of my router via a LAN cable, which I use primarily as backup for my music files and a few other bits and bobs. I can stream from it but I use a 2Gb external drive to hold my "live" music files, and stream from that 99% of the time. I'm currently trying to work out if the My Cloud would actually be more useful or if I'd just be buying the same product that I already have in a different box, given the way I'd use it.
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Post by MartinT on Sept 11, 2015 5:44:06 GMT
We use a Buffalo 18TB NAS for main backup and I can report that it's good and reliable. I'm not suggesting our model, but saying that the Buffalo range in general are good.
Something like this LS220 2-bay NAS: Buffalo LS-220
However tempting they may seem, do NOT buy a 1-bay NAS. I'll leave you to work out why.
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Post by canetoad on Sept 11, 2015 9:24:49 GMT
I use a Synology DS212+ for my music. It runs LMS but I now mostly use an RPi for music streaming in my main system. I will be setting up the Touch in the bedroom at some point. The NAS currently has 2 1Tb drives (Raid1), which I'm about to upgrade to 4Tb. I use cat6 cable throughout the house with gigabit switches where I need more than one connection (lounge and office) and the system works a treat.
I don't have any movies on the NAS as it's just as easy to connect external HDDs directly to the Smart TV. At some point I will though so my son can watch them in his room. Currently they're only available in the lounge.
Additionally, my son has access to the NAS from his PS3, although it won't play Flac files but does play MP3s.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2015 12:01:25 GMT
I run a very basic and inexpensive NAS. It is a Zyxel NSA310, and they're available second hand without a fitted HDD for around £30. A decent size (3TB) compatible drive can be had for under £100 if you shop around. It runs Logitech Media Server, which is why I bought the thing in the first place. What's more LMS is available for installation from Zyxel's own servers - it's a supported application, and it has been stripped back a little for use on the Zyxel NAS range. I have found that using the plugins written by the Squeezebox community that the functionality of LMS just gets better and better. Spotify works a treat using the Triode plugin, although it will only work with a Premium account (which is on Spotify's demand). The fiasco that was the transition of the BBC's streaming services has been solved with amendments to Triode's iPlayer plugin so the BBC live and listen again services are back working properly. I have streaming from Tidal working properly to, thanks to the ickstream plugin. My digital audio library is pretty big with not far short of 4000 albums (there are a number of repeats with different resolutions etc). Now for the nitty gritty. Squeezebox players do not natively play Apple Lossless files. If you run LMS on an all singing, all dancing computer with loads of spare processing capacity this is not a problem. A NAS is not all singing, all dancing. It is a very basic computer that runs on quite limited resources. And in the case of the NSA310 is doesn't have the grunt to perform a couple of operations, one of which is transcoding on the fly, and the other is resampling on the fly. And in order to get ALAC files to play on a Squeezebox player it first needs to be transcoded on the fly to FLAC. So with Paul living in Apple Land I think there might be a problem to get over - it depends on the nature of his digital music library. If it's largely ALAC then another solution needs to be found. If it's largely AAC (what you download from iTunes is mainly AAC @ 256kbps VBR) then there might not be an issue. For Chris and his general storage requirement it's a good option. Device administration can be performed easily from a web browser. Backup is to USB HDD. Good point, thank you re the Apple thing as a good 50-60% of my music is in Apple Lossless (Could this be the reason I sometimes gave buffering issues when playing the Apple Lossless files? Paul.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2015 12:02:06 GMT
I use a Synology DS212+ for my music. It runs LMS but I now mostly use an RPi for music streaming in my main system. I will be setting up the Touch in the bedroom at some point. The NAS currently has 2 1Tb drives (Raid1), which I'm about to upgrade to 4Tb. I use cat6 cable throughout the house with gigabit switches where I need more than one connection (lounge and office) and the system works a treat. I don't have any movies on the NAS as it's just as easy to connect external HDDs directly to the Smart TV. At some point I will though so my son can watch them in his room. Currently they're only available in the lounge. Additionally, my son has access to the NAS from his PS3, although it won't play Flac files but does play MP3s. How has your ,used been encoded? FLAC, Apple Lossless or other?
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Post by Stratmangler on Sept 11, 2015 16:35:19 GMT
Good point, thank you re the Apple thing as a good 50-60% of my music is in Apple Lossless (Could this be the reason I sometimes gave buffering issues when playing the Apple Lossless files? Paul. If you've been running LMS on the Mac then I would think that you've got more than enough grunt to handle the resampling on the fly bit. You haven't been buggering about and changing where all the conversions take place have you? I keep hearing that things allegedly sound better if you do the conversions on the server and stream the uncompressed files to the player. Now I have blind tested myself with the A/B/X/Y plugin for Foobar, and I cannot detect the difference between FLAC and WAV, so it doesn't make sense from my standpoint to change any of the server settings from the default settings. If you have changed them the buffering might have more to do with the increased network load, and if your network isn't as robust as a very robust thing then that might explain it.
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Post by canetoad on Sept 11, 2015 23:25:32 GMT
Good point, thank you re the Apple thing as a good 50-60% of my music is in Apple Lossless (Could this be the reason I sometimes gave buffering issues when playing the Apple Lossless files? Paul. If you've been running LMS on the Mac then I would think that you've got more than enough grunt to handle the resampling on the fly bit. You haven't been buggering about and changing where all the conversions take place have you? I keep hearing that things allegedly sound better if you do the conversions on the server and stream the uncompressed files to the player. Now I have blind tested myself with the A/B/X/Y plugin for Foobar, and I cannot detect the difference between FLAC and WAV, so it doesn't make sense from my standpoint to change any of the server settings from the default settings. If you have changed them the buffering might have more to do with the increased network load, and if your network isn't as robust as a very robust thing then that might explain it. Mine is all Flac, but LMS should also play Alac. As previously mentioned, the NAS won't transcode the files, so the Squeezebox has to perform that function.
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Post by Stratmangler on Sept 12, 2015 8:21:15 GMT
Bernie's (Canetoad) post had me checking a few things out. I took a CD and tried to rip it to Apple Lossless. dBPoweramp told me it wasn't happy and said it needed a plugin. I downloaded the plugin and installed it and dBPoweramp still wouldn't play fair, so I resorted to using iPlayer. I then copied the files onto a SD card, and inserted the card into my Squeezebox Touch. I then made the Touch turn on it's internal server which then scanned the card and made up its library. I went to the newly scanned Apple Lossless files, pressed play, and to my surprise music played. So that's cleared up and corrected my understanding of the Squeezebox and formats it will support natively - it will play ALAC natively on its embedded server. I then downloaded the latest official server program (7.7.5) from Logitech at www.mysqueezebox.com/download and installed it. After setting things up and performing a scan I played the same album files and they played as I expected. I brought up the web browser control and went to the settings page to find out the supported file types, and I was surprised to find that ALAC is supported natively, so no transcoding is required. Now I will add that the version I have is for Windows, so my findings may not be conclusive, but I find it difficult to believe that whoever was tasked with writing the MacOS version of LMS would wilfully exclude ALAC from native processing. Not unless they had a particularly twisted sense of humour .... I know that LMS (or was it SqueezeboxServer?) at one point did not support ALAC natively, but time moves on and things change, and in my case my knowledge fell behind with regard to ALAC support and playback using LMS and Squeezebox Touch. Or, and it's just popped into my head, I could well be confusing things with the SB3 (nee Classic), as I haven't been running mine in anger for quite some time now. A look on the hardware comparison page confirms my suspicions wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/HardwareComparison , and it looks as though the hardware page hasn't been updated since the Squeezebox Touch was launched. I can also state that the version of LMS running on my Zyxel NAS does not support ALAC. Zyxel have written out process heavy features in LMS in acknowledgement of the lack processing ability of at least the bottom of the range NAS boxes they have made(and the NSA310 is bottom of the food chain). I can't see them doing a more fully featured version for their higher specced boxes. Why would they?
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Post by Stratmangler on Sept 12, 2015 8:30:11 GMT
Paul
The thing about buffering issues keeps running around my head. Your Mac running LMS deals with ALAC natively (as I've now found), so the buffering thing has to be down to a network issue.
Is your Mac wired or wireless? Is the player wired or wireless? If wireless is used, how many local routers are on the same channel as you? There are Smartphone apps you can download which will tell you which channel your router is using - it will show up your neighbours too.
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Post by canetoad on Sept 12, 2015 21:55:27 GMT
I got tired of the Squeezebox Touch dropping out every time I used the microwave with wireless, which is why I only use hardwired now.
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Post by ChrisB on Oct 10, 2015 22:49:41 GMT
We use a Buffalo 18TB NAS for main backup and I can report that it's good and reliable. I'm not suggesting our model, but saying that the Buffalo range in general are good.
Something like this LS220 2-bay NAS: Buffalo LS-220
However tempting they may seem, do NOT buy a 1-bay NAS. I'll leave you to work out why. I've been looking into the subject of NAS drives a little more (not much, just a little!) and, looking around at what's on offer, I'm pretty interested in the Buffalo drives. The one that Martin linked to is £220 and is a 2 x 2 TB model with WD Red drives mounted in it. However, for 70 quid less, you can get what seems like the same thing with drives of an unspecified brand inside (though the FAQs imply they could be Seagates). So, what's so good about the WD Red ones then?
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Post by canetoad on Oct 10, 2015 23:25:13 GMT
I've just updated the drives in mine from 1Tb to 4Tb. Easy as pie!
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Post by MartinT on Oct 11, 2015 4:40:20 GMT
WD Reds are middling drives performance-wise. Green are eco-friendly and may be quieter. Black are the performance ones. You could buy an empty Buffalo and stuff it with your own drives? Seagates are fine too, as are Samsungs.
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