unitiserve SSD with Music Store on BT home hub?

The BT HH3 is not the sharpest knife in the draw,  I melted one when I used it to stream through NAS - BT - NDX when playing even 14/44 albums.

The solution is use a switch between the US & network player for the HD traffic - ethernet connected of course.  

The switch is ethernet connected to the BT HH3;  that way only lightweight wireless traffic to/from the app & streaming for iRadio, Tidal etc  is all that the BT HH handles.

Thanks, Mike,

for reminding me on getting a switch (any recommendation welcome!)

Regarding my query, the harddisk connected to the BT HH3 would not benefit from the switch, if I see this right (and the bottleneck of the HH3 would remain)?

Might moving to a BT HH5 help at all?

Cheers,

Stefan

Yes the BT HH5 is quite a smart and sophisticated bit of kit... It needs to be to support of the more advanced BT services.

Simon

Stefan, the US-SSD works excellently with a powered USB drive plugged directly into it. Audibly far superior to a USB stick, and to network (NAS) based storage.

 I have ~ 1000 albums equally CD rips and HD. The first Statement owner living in this region also uses this configuration.  We both use LaCie drives, my drive on a TP 12v2a fully linear supply and his on a modified super cap. I have formatted mine FAT32 for simplicity but I suspect NTFS will also work, given the Windows CE o/s and drivers, and support > 2 TB.  I know he runs a 3TB drive.

Think of this as an optimised replay cache; you will still need a NAS for ripping and backup. However this can be powered down when not in use, reducing electronic haze.

Thank you, Simon!

40 below: thanks, too! So are you ripping to a NAS drive, then copy the music over to a hard drive which you then plug into the unitiserve? (really a shame that naim don't allow to use a USB-connected drive directly as Music Store)

Currently I do something similar by ripping on the Mac, then copying the music to an external SSD which I plug into my streamer.

Regarding my original question (still unanswered): I take it that nobody uses a harddisk on the BT HH3 as Music Store for the unitiserve SSD (perhaps for reasons of unavoidable high traffic)?

Yes Stefan, I rip to NAS, then copy to USB disk.  I sometimes put a few new albums onto a stick temporaril, rather than update the disk immediately.  

The other shortcoming of USB drives is losing access to the Naim metadata (ie the US only manages metadata for the registered NAS Music Store), but tagged WAV files work OK. However using the US via SPDIF into the DAC, the SQ improvement was way too good to ignore.  I must re-try this, now I've got a fibre link to my music system....

Why are you looking to connect your USB drive into the BT Hub?  Are you trying to avoid a full NAS running?

40 below, I do not intend to hijack the thread but I have a similar setup with a fit-pc3 + USB to S/PDIF converter (both powered by TPpsu) instead of the UnitiServe and a USB powered SSD drive instead of your LaCie drive. You mention a significant improvement in SQ using the US via SPDIF into the DAC. With respect to which setup? Thanks, nbpf

hi Stefan & nbpf

Stefan: From curiosity I looked at the BT HH3 info, as the  concept of a low-power HDD into a router interested me.  It seems the HH3 can support basic file server/SMB access, with constraints of:

• USB storage must be FAT32 formatted
• power consumption is limited (or is self-powered USB drive)

See http://www.filesaveas.com/bthomehub_usb.html for more details; it does seem doable. As an alternative the various 1-drive "personal cloud" products (WD, Lacie, Synology DS1115j) would seem to provide similar functionality with ability to easily power from a 12V/2A truly linear supply.

nbpf: the fit-pc3 is reported as drawing < 10W idling and 23-26W under maximum load from various tests.  This should practically be within limits of a decent 12V/2A linear PSU; I've found the TP 12V/2A to be good.  The more recent TP 12V/4.5A (Unitiserve) PSUs actually contain a pc-type smps followed by the regulator board, and from my experience this entails significant audible compromises.  If you have all-linear supplies then your current setup is probably not impaired. 

In my environment, the benefits of using a USB drive rather than a NAS seems related to reducing CPU work and related noise.  A disk drive can do large block transfers of data, whereas data over the network entails many 1500 byte packets processing through the server's TCP/IP stack - from ~100 to  ~1000 packets/sec.  Similarly in my environment, storing as WAV vs FLAC also reduces the CPU load and results in a significantly more open sound through the SPDIF.  FWIW my external disk is significantly more 'open' than a USB stick into the 'Serve which loads the power. 

Of course, the 'Serve is using its own internal SPDIF board, whereas today a more typical audio PC would use USB to an external converter, which would offer some degree of isolation.

Thanks for the precisation 40 below, I very much appreciated. Best, nbpf