HDX Full - qnap hs-210?

I am not trying to influence your choice of NAS or drives, just tell you what I know about noise & running a NAS in the listening room. If the boss has spoken,  TBH if you are gonna have it in the living room, a cabinet or a hidey-hole of some sort is a good idea as it comes with wires & stuff that downgrades WAF

I have a Synology DS214 with WD Red HDD's & it lives in a small cabinet with a door. The only time I hear it from listening position is when the room is quiet & only when I wake it up from hibernation, it then makes a soft whir with a few clicks for about 10-15 seconds, but once awake & ready its silent.  When playing music its practically silent,  if I hit mute the hum from the amp & tuner is the only sound I can hear & to hear the NAS I need to open the cabinet door & be close to the open door. 

Synology specs show 19dBA,  they don't say at what distance

But I would check what your intended QUAP dBA is & compare to what I know my NAS does.  

The NAS I am looking at is Fanless, no moving parts, the PSU, i am unsure, but my Hifi is all on its own direct supply from the mains terminal 2 Distribution boards, one for house, one for hifi.

so there should be no mains contamination.

I can from time to time hear the high pitched whirr of the HDX, which is why i am considering the SSD route.

Are the WD reds the NAS specific drives?

Yes, the reds are designed for NAS use. I have them in my Synology 213j, which I use for backup duties. One thought - if you have WAV files you can convert to FLAC and they only take up 2/3 of the space. Transcode to WAV for playback and they sound the same as the WAV originals.

I've done some noise testing this morning on my Synology DS in its cabinet location using my pro-level noise meter. On the meters lowest range, background noise from the room, birds in the garden thru double glazing & my movement on the carpet sends the meter into a frenzy - In short I need an anechoic chamber for this. 

Anyhow -  with the cabinet door open & the metre mounted 0.2m away from the DS & the DS on & awake but not running (playing music) the only noise is the fan (air movement)   problem is I can't measure this as the meter is constantly moving with background noise,  my best guess is that its about 1 or 2dB.

The start up (from off & coming out of hibernation) is the noisy phase & my guess is this is what Synology claim is 19dBA. 

Bottom line is what I have is silent in real life use. 

HH to your point about transcoded FLAC sounding the same as WAV - I recently changed my mind on this - that said I've always used WAV for all my serious music.  

A post I had in "Music Room" ended with me having the original FLAC transcoding & comparing to the same file converted (dBpoweramp) into WAV.

I had already made my mind up - but I knew which was playing - so I let Mrs-Mike have a "blind" listen,  she agreed with me, next to nothing in it but that straight WAV has the edge,  it just adds a touch of mellow sweetness.  ( & disk space is cheap )

I'm currently using the HS-210 with my Qute2. Silent, with exception of the drives spinning up, which are WD Red. Very impressed so far. Totally faultless. Numerous ways of publishing content on the network (Minimserver, Twonky, DLNA). Also supports my spare UPS, which it's plugged into. Has a couple USB2 sockets on the back, as well as USB3. I use the latter as a live backup copy to an external drive, just in case the mirror or hardware fails. Support cloud backup services which you can set and forget.

Very impressive piece of kit. The newer version, 251, has HDMI out.

I am using  HS-210 with my Unitiserve. There are 2 WD Red 3TB drives. While there is no fan, there is a low level 'thunking' sound from the discs especially when it is backing up the US. The sound is not intrusive - you can't hear it when the music is playing. It reminds me a bit of an old fashioned jukebox.

Mike your best test is your ears. Harddrives make noise, two or four make more noise. If you need a sound tester to hear them, then you want to get your hearing tested.

a nas in the living room, does not make sense, if there is anyway for you not to do so then that is the best solution.

i sometimes think audiophiles like nithing more than to see all their gadgets in one place!

I agree with you Garyi, but in my case putting it out of the room is not doable in the short term. HS-210 is better than the WD Mybooklive which it replaced, because it has no fan.

Gary I am normally really grateful for your advice,  but this time no thanks & please lets have less of the insults, my ears are 100% OK & I trust them implicitly

However I am unashamedly a technophobe & sound levels fall within my sphere of interest. 2roomsor1  asked the question,  its raised some interest, I told the forum what I found in case they might be interested; if not, fine no problems.

Having my NAS in my living room makes perfect sense to me in my situation at the moment,  I expect that will change in the future.  

garyi originally posted

"Mike your best test is your ears. Harddrives make noise, two or four make more noise. If you need a sound tester to hear them, then you want to get your hearing tested.

a nas in the living room, does not make sense, if there is anyway for you not to do so then that is the best solution".

What an amazing claim to make! Gary, perhaps you have tinnitus and mistake that for the sound of your NAS. Or, more likely, perhaps you have purchased the wrong NAS. More seriously, the amount of noise generated by your NAS will be dependant on the construction of the NAS, the choice of HDs and the location of the NAS within your room. Quite feasible to locate in such a way that it is virtually silent.

In any case (not a problem I have), but I read on this forum that many Naim amplifiers are prone to 'hum' . If ambient noise is an issue, then maybe this is the place to start! any takers for some nice Krell or Marl Levinson amps?- only kidding - honest!   

Mike-B, I am with you on this one. I have my NAS (like yours, a Synology  with WD Red disks) in one of my listening rooms and it is next to silent except for the brief wake-up period. Other ambient noise can be far more intrusive.

hmack 

my HI Fi dealer recommend the Qnap HS 210 running it with 2 4TB red - very very quiet, I have not found Twonky an issue on UPnP on my IPAD - quiet the reserve to be honest

delighted with both NDX and Qnap

WD Reds are notably quite as they run usually slower than many other high performance disks.  The Red (rather than Red Pro) drives slow down when not under heavy demand, allowing the large cache to feed the data steadily.  They are ideal for streaming!

I'm firmly in the 'I don't want my Nas in the living room' camp.  I had it there originally.  I did not like looking at it and all of the attendant cords and flashing lights.  We often listen in the living room in the evening, finishing our wine, with the lights dim.  Flashing lights on the nas take away from the ambiance.  (One of the many reasons I like my Naim system is the elegant look of black boxes and dim green logos.  No giant VU meters as on say Macintosh.)

For me it was not mostly about the noise level (the Synology 212j is pretty quiet, but not silent) but more about the look.  I really did not want to look at the Nas and the cable modem and switch, etc.  (There is no enclosure in which to put that stuff close to my hi fi.)

I invested a few hundred dollars to clean up the ethernet in-wall cabling that the prior owner tried (but failed) to execute, got an RJ-45 wall plate installed behind the Friam, and was able to site all networked components far away from the living room.  I'm happy, at least!

Quite. Mine's hidden away in another room far from the Hi-Fi to be a nuisance. We all have different circumstances though and if it all needs to go in one room...

Back to your original questions.  I'd be very tempted to go with a fanless solution.  The problem with ssd's is that they are still too expensive (for me) to get to the 2+tb range I need.  We're getting there . . . 

+1

Intolerable IMO,  thats why mine is all inside a small cabinet

thanks all for your input

everybodys resins are bound to be different.  

the main driver for me is running a cable from the two furthest rooms in the house will be a pain, i.e. the has in the office, and the hdx in the living room.

i have tried using a nas and putting it on wireless in the office, it played fine on the hdx, with no noticable drops.  but when i use the qute to play from the nas via hdx, i.e. upnp a playlist that uses external store tracks aswell as ripped, it drops very frequent (external store is all hd 24 bit etc)

the nas i have is a very robust has, but the noise

i think fabless will fit my situation, it will be in a area not seen, but could be heard.

the red or red pros might be the answer, or maybe ssd if the price is right. not looking fore masses, 2 tb with all backups wireless to the main has in the office

will see how prices look.

not sure about the uprated one with the hdmi, i would prefer ssd in place of the hdmi, and the price difference would be in that region

Get a price quote from your dealer (if they do cable pulling work), or an electrician.

Where I live, I have the luxury of a home built in 2006 with typical US construction techniques, making post-construction running of cable not all that difficult.  Those who live in the UK, etc., in homes built hundreds of years ago have different technical challenges; I'm aware

When my house was built, people were still burning witches!