Sensibly priced NAS for Naim UnitiQute

Hmm, trouble with sensibly priced is that it is subjective!

I have a QNAP TS212 "server" that holds two replaceable drives. This is used for the music collection, plus other uses such as Photos etc etc. QNAP have a good reputation, and as the disks are replaceable there is a degree of future proofing.

If you are you only going to use for your music there are some specialist NASes that include CD ripping capability that might be worth considering.

Hopefully others will chip in with their thoughts on this.

Is £499.00 sensibly? I can recommend LIV Zen 2Tb Vortexbox CD Ripping Music Server NAS.

Indeed subjective, but I use a Netgear ReadyNAS with 2x 1TB disks. About £350 including disks. Been rock solid for 2.5 years.

I use a mini UPS with it as unplanned power offs our very bad for NASes, and living where I live the power can be a little temperamental.

Simon

I would question whether "sensibly priced" is the right starting point.

The value is in the music stored and he time and effort of the ripping.

If you ave a NAS that can hols say 1000 albums, that must equate to say 10 grand in music cost, and is worth good storage.

Hi

+1 for the Netgear ReadyNas Duo, just upgraded it with 2 x 2TB WD Red drives for further peace of mind and additional storage (to match the recently upgraded UServe to 2TB).

I'd second QNAP. I bought a 500GB (x2) RAID TS212 model for less than £250 and it has worked flawlessly.

Whatever you buy I would recommend getting a two disk solution with RAID so that your music is 'mirrored' onto two seperate hard drives. That way, when one drive fails, you won't lose data and can simply 'swap out' the faulty drive. All hard drives do eventually fail and it is simply a matter of 'when' whether that is two, five or ten years.

You all know that I am going to recommend a Vortexbox - simple, easy to administer and rock solid with Naim.

Tog

Synology DS212j, ever reliable, great console 

I've tried the Qnap and the Synology. Synology wins.

In what respects? I've not tried Synology, but my QNAP has also been rock solid for 2+years.

My QNAP and 2x 2 TB HDDs have been working 24/7 flawlessly since Nov 2011. Twonky is stable too, don't understand why some forum members said it is flakey. Not too configurable for sure.

Synology software feels better - and the build quality is better too. I cut my hand on the Qnap (my fault - but still).

Their built in uPnP server just works. The QNap had twonky which was just weird to use - and had an awful user interface.

The point is, I'm not using the UnitiServe - with the NAS just to save music files. I'm using the Nas as a Upnp Server. I was able to configure it in Raid - 0 mode - no data protection, but the music seems to flow faster. Can't explain it. There was a definite improvement to my ears when I went from the mirrored configuration to Raid0. Now, I'm in no mood to change it back to mirrored to verify that I'm not imagining things. :-)

In addition they seem to be releasing updates to the upnp server fairly often - indicating they stand behind the product.

Hey Shiv,

Slightly of topic, .... are you sure ? .. do you hear differences in SQ when a NAS is configured in another RADI config ? That surprises.

I also use a QNAP which works perfectly and is very stable, though I believe that Twonky is hardly ever updated. The current version (7.0.9) is there for half a year now. THe QNAP firmware however is frequently updated with small adjustments.

Cheers,

Iver

Well, I did and it wasn't subtle. In the mirrored one the music didn't have speed - and just didn't feel to flow - it's almost like the streamer section was under strain. Changing the config to Raid0 made the system sound a lot more relaxed.

In the mirrored mode - data is written redundantly to both drives.

In the Raid0 mode - the data is striped across both drives: I'm assuming that reading is faster because the controller can read data from both disks...

Anyway, I won't be going back to the other raid mode - I'm happy with what I have - even if I might be wrong. :-)

There was actually this interview (link somewhere on this forum) where various raid modes were compared - I think I made my change after reading that article..

I actually had the Synology 212J - and then put the QNAP in place - believing that since upnp is Twonky's bread and butter - they'll do a good job of it. I was wrong and upgraded to a better sinology model - I did the mistake of getting slower hard drives - should've gotten better ones.

I've also got the green model - so it tries to reduce energy and not perform as well as it probably should/can.

Whatever the RAID config a file will be served up from the disks 100's of times faster than "play speed". Even if that were not the case it would cause drop-outs (stopping as can occur with a slow/overloaded network), not slowing of the music...

I don't doubt you heard differences but would suggest it must have been for another reason?

Shivoham, I stand by the assertion that if things got bad enough you would hear drop-outs not slowing down of the music. It's believe it's simply not possible. There are data buffers both at the NAS end of things, and in the streamer. If the buffers empty due to slow data retrieval from the disk the music will stop dead, and resume once the buffers re-fill.

Of course you are right, I've not tried it, so am speaking from a purely logical standpoint, but on this rare occasion honestly don't believe I need to try out what I "know"

+1.  If a Naim network player is unable to keep its buffer filled, then you would either experience drop outs, or it would halt altogether with an error. 

Music playing...slower?  Check the calendar -- that post was three days late.

Hook

Shivoham, I'm not trying to wind you up - just following the logic of how I understamd these things work. As far as WiFi vs Ethernet, as far as I know Naim have never suggested it is going to make any difference to SQ - so yes, I beleive it is only to stop drop-outs.

If you found a difference I *honestly* believe there was some other cause, and thought it might be more useful to understand what that might be, rather than patronise you by agreeing there could be any SQ difference with NAS disk speed.

Ian,

You've got a good point. Still early in the am and no coffee yet. :-)

Now Raid0 does have better perf than Raid1. That matters, or doesn't depending on the upnp software's implementation.

I suspect If it is really just streaming the bits out from the hard drive directly onto the Ethernet channel - kind of like having two pipes open - one to disk and one to the Ethernet I suspect it will matter. The file transfer perf has been coupled to the drive's perf.

If it copies data into memory and then starts writing it out to the Ethernet channel the disk perf won't matter.

Hmm maybe I should write my own upnp server optimized to just our scenario without any frills. :-) I can have simon test it out on his windows home server. Nice vacation project. :-)

Any audio component that is "working harder" may be emitting more EMI and, as a result, you may experience an increase in noise and a loss of clarity.  Perhaps that is what you subjectively perceive as a "slowdown", but that is not what is happening.  It is not analogous to a turntable playing at 32 versus 33 1/3.

Much has been written about why Naim power supplies matter so much to audio source sound quality.  If you interested in this topic, you might want to read the recently published "Naim Discrete Regulator" white paper, or just search the forum archives.

PRAT has nothing to do with the music speeding up or slowing down.  A band or singer is recorded at whatever time they are keeping.  PRAT is all about the ability of the audio equipment to produce the attack and decay (I.e., the ADSR envelope) of musical notes accurately:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/di...36#23811644305195236

Lastly, I am not sure what your idle speculation about Naim product quality accomplishes.  If you have facts to back up your assertion that the NDX's network card "isn't that great", then please do elaborate.