Which QNAP for NDS?

I have a TS210 at home with one of my PC's using iscsi and others just a shared folder for backups. It is also running squeezebox as a qpkg for my qute and handles all of that with ease. Has been up and running for around 3 years with two WD caviar green 3TB drives in RAID1. 

I don't have any plans to upgrade it as it can handle anything I ask it to do. I think the latest version is the TS-212.

I would stick with the 219 but also look at the 212 unless the extra for the 419 is peanuts.

Also tried a synology NAS but dumped it after a months as I didn't get on with the GUI.

Oscarskeeper,

a wise decision. You clearly do not need the extra CPU power of the 219. I have a 3 year old 119, which is much less powerful than the current model and it is fully sufficient.

But having a second disk with which you can run RAID1 (the second disk automatically mirrors the first one; necessary in case disk 1 goes bad on you) operation would be the road I would travel down, if I had to buy something new today.

Oscarskeeper

I too have a QNAP (TS-419P) and am very please with it; 4 * 1.5TB drives running in Raid5.

A word of caution though and you may already be fully aware of this:

If you have a HDX then all your CDs have been ripped to WAV without embedded metadata. AFAIK this means that other UPnP servers will not be able to read metadata from the files, I'm not aware of any servers that can utilise the separate Naim metadata file.

You obviously will need a UPnP server to serve the files, Twonky is shipped with QNAP by default, however, my experience of Twonky with WAV files was very poor, fine with FLAC but not great with WAV.

You need to consider the above as part of your migration to an NDS which I'm sure you will really enjoy Perhaps others have gone down a similar path and can comment

Everyone, many thanks - At least the hardware part of my plans seems to be along the right track!

Jack-this is something I am still in the process of investigating and was not sure about. From what I have read, I had seen conflicting ideas as to whether I could simply put all the HDX rips on the NAS and then use them or not. If not, I am assuming that I would effectively have to re-rip absolutely everything in my collection. Is anybody able to advise whether this is so and, if so, whether there is anything that can help ease the pain?!

Red wine.

Oh no, really! You don't have to rerip anything. My advice would be to convert to Flac and get the tags from freeDB or any other internet database. If you must retain the Wav format by all means then get Media Monkey which is supposedly capable of doing some rudementary wav tagging.

Thanks PH - is this FLAC conversion an easy thing to do? Is there some batch conversion process? Will it matter to the NDS if it is getting fed these and not WAV files?

dbpoweramp will do bulk conversion, just install and then right click the folder and choose batch conversion.

TBL, thanks - Can I ask  = will it also sort all the tags out as well?

Does the NDS then read the file as a FLAC or do I set the NAS to transcode it back to WAV (is that the right expression?)

Your WAV files are untagged as Naim servers keep metadata in separate files. It has been reported here that MediaMonkey can retag the WAV files automatically using the folder structure and file name, restoring very basic tags like Artist, Album and Song Title. But you are going to loose the rich metadata your HDX pulled from the Rovi database (ie performers for instance).

If these metadata are important to you (for advanced searching for instance), maybe you should trade in your HDX for a UnitiServe SSD to go along with your NAS under the stairs ?

As for WAV vs FLAC... The only question is whether you would like to use these files with other devices/software, as tagged WAV files are sometimes not well supported.

Not even 2p

Maurice

There are options in dbpoweramp to edit the tags but I don't know if it will automatically update the info from freedb.

I think the NDS should handle flac ok but someone else should confirm 100%, I've got a unitiqute and I'm streaming flac native to it, so no conversion there.

Just don't ask what is better for naim wav or flac as the thread will turn into a bloodbath.

 1 vote for FLAC 

Thanks everyone, this looks like being more complicated than I thought, even though I don't need to be able to stream to other devices, this is just for the NDS. 

I really don't want to have to re-rip everything, although I am not bothered about losing the more details data, the files do need to be usable. I didn't really want to have to buy a uniti serve as well as the NAS though.

I'd had a look at some of the FLAC v WAV debates and frankly didn't want to go there, even if I had been able to understand what was being said. I was hoping that there was (even if only for the NDS) an official line that was not incompatible with what I was trying to do!

Oscarskeeper,

you are right in the middle of the target group for whom this was written: https://forums.naimaudio.com/di...nt/19447375216556940

This will give you some basics.

I see you're a fan of their famous album, Dude:

PH, thanks, that was helpful.

If I've understood properly, does this mean that the Bliss programme referred to would, effectively do what I want. IE if I copy everything across to a NAS and then get Bliss to work on it, it would end up in the shape it needs to be in to allow the NDS and my iPad to see art and data?

I have no own experience with Bliss. But, yes, this is what they advertise. However,if you are talking about wav files, this may not work. Wav files can only be tagged to a VERY limited degree. The HDX will store information on wav files not in the file as tags, but in its onw database. Here it can include considerably more information than it is possible in wav tags, "composer" for example, or "comment".

This database thing for tag information is quite unique to the naim hard disk devices and therefore not transferable to other devices. But, this is no reason to worry. When you rip a CD on the HDX, it will get the information on this disk over the internet from a database (i.e. freedb or any other).

YOU can do the same and at the same time store this info in the tags, where it belongs. Any of the renowned ripping/tagging software offers this service. In order to be able to store those tags properly, I would convert the wav files to flac format. Flac supports tags very well and it is also a lossless format (as opposed to lossy, like MP3, AAC) like WAV and ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec).

Many people use dbpoweramp or EAC as ripping/tagging software. I prefer Foobar2000 for ripping/tagging and MP3TAG for even better tagging (sometimes there are tags in a file, that are not seen by foobar or other applications). dbpoweram, EAC and Foobar, they all not only do a rip job, but you canm also convert to other formats. From wav to flac. Or to MP3 for a USB pen drive for the car - the possibilities are endless.

The problem with tags from the internet data bases is, that there is no commonly aknowledged tagging standard. This means, sometimes "albumartist" is populated and sometimes it is not. Or there may be artists spelled differently from what you already have: "Idol, Billy" instead of "Billy Idol" or someone may even have written "Billie Idle". So it is ievitable that you have to "dig into" the tags after the initial download. This is also emphasized in the eBook which I linked earlier.What it all comes down to is, you need your own tagging scheme and neither an HDX nor any internet database can take this off your shoulders.

Sorry PH, but this is not exactly true (although not pertaining to the OP's question as he stated not to be bothering about extended metadata).

The Naim servers primarily get their metadata from Rovi, which often brings richer information than the usual free-to-access Internet databases (as you state correctly), and store them in a way that allows to retain such richness. Morevover, Naim ensures that the displaying and searching of these metadata is possible across all their applications (firmware, DTC, nServe, nStream).

You're absolutely right in saying that there is no real tagging standard but the most basic one. Althoug this is no solution to the lack of standard, one can consider that the Vorbis Comments used in FLAC to be better than the more common ID3 tags (found in MP3 for instance). They are free form, meaning you can define the tag itself in addition to its value. This could empower you, should you fancy to do so, to manually replicate the rich information found in the Naim servers metadata.

For this you would have to find a piece of software nice enough to let you do it (free-form tagging is not that common in GUI-driven software, though quite easy to do with a CLI-driven one). And finally, you would have to find the server and control point software -- or a player, depending on your choice of rendering -- able to make good use of these custom tags. And that is another question altogether.

The integration work done by Naim across all their range of digital streaming components (devices and software) is too often overlooked IMO.

Sorry for the rambling (and the slight derailing of the thread oscarskeeper), this is one of my favourite dead horse to beat, so hope you'll indulge me.

Maurice

Maurice,

thank you for the additional information on naim's data handling. I am sure it works like a breeze and will be of gereat comfort and value for the user.

How does it handle files (or better: the information on those) which do not originate from a (Naim)native rip? Download purchases for instance.

My requirement would be that such 'external' files can be fit into the existing Naim library seamlessly.

All in all the Naim ripping/hard disk devices seem to be the perfect solution for the non-IT-knowlegable person. But as time, interest and size of the library progress it emerges that the propriatary character of the system sets limits to the user, also with reagrd to the future employment of non Naim gear, as we can read in this thread. To me this is an incapacitation of the user, which I cannot advocate.

Has anyone asked Naim if you can export the data? Might be restricted by their license with Rovi.

PH,

As I understand, Naim servers handle other "external" tagged files correctly, it's just that they are kept separated from their rips (the rips are in a "Music Store", all other files are in a "Network Share", or a "I don't know the name" locally in the new 2TB servers with latest firmware). The aggregation of different Music Stores and Network Shares in a single library with search capability is a distinctive feature of the Naim servers.

Note that the Naim Label downloads come with an XML file that brings the extended Rovi info that the Naim servers can handle.

Regarding the data lock-in and export capabilities, that is my main concern, and why I am upset by the decision to only have MP3 as the secondary ripping format instead of a choice of MP3 or FLAC in the forthcoming version 1.7 of the servers firmware. Its announcement is the proof that the Rovi license doesn't prevent an export of at least the basic metadata.

I can live with walled gardens as long as I can climb the fence and run with the cherries.

QNAP TS-412 is more than enough to stream high res files to any of the Naim streamers. 

Also the Qnap range can take 3tb HDD so the above will give you around 9tb in raid 5, but of course you can start with a basic raid 1 comprising of 2x2tb disks then expand on this at a lafter date if required.

sean

I would highly doubt that there is any legal or contractual issue if you intend to use the data for home use only in the same home with the same music file, just in a different format (that is, move it from the xml file into a tag).

More challenging would be the implementation, although someone surely could write some code to do it.

Yeah, some XSLT with some scripting around the flac/metaflac utilities, this kind of stuff. Not that I'd be happy to do it though...

I am using NDS fed by QNAP 219P II / Twonky. I ripped CDs with dbpoweramp, but Twonky will not recognise these files / tags. To overcome this is easy, just open them in MediaMonkey and re-save. Twonky will then serve music to NDS without any problems.