NAS synology 215j advise

Posted by: M Strong on 29 January 2016

Thankyou in advance, i have been offered by family purchase of nas namely synlogy 215j (brother in laws recommendation for money they have)  it has dual core 800mhz processor 1gb of ram (upgradeable to 16gb) and he says there interface/management software is easy to use and excellent. will this be upto the task streaming to superuniti, i know diddly squat about computer stuff s advise/help most welcome.

 

Other alternative is if i add funds and get 216 play with dual core 1.5ghz processor 1gb ram (9upgradeable to 16gb), but would prefer the money spent on hard drives if the first one 215j is up to task.

 

thankyou

Posted on: 29 January 2016 by Dave***t

The 215j is excellent, and easily up to the demands of streaming to a Superuniti.

If it has no drives in it, stick one or more WD Reds in it (dead easy to do). The preinstalled Synology audio server is OK, but most prefer Minimserver (also preinstalled).

Go through the setup guides carefully, try to figure out how to get Minimserver to transcode to .wav on the fly (it's not as complicated as it may sound), bob's your uncle.

Plenty of help both here and on the respective forums if you get stuck.

Edit: forgot to mention, a lot of people recommend putting a small network switch immediately before the streamer (ie the Superuniti). Simple example is a lead from your router to the switch, NAS to switch, and switch to streamer. Only £20-odd and helps network stability. The model I use is in my profile.

Posted on: 29 January 2016 by Mike-B
All the above x100
The specs you mention are not a concern,  all Synology's are perfect for audio duties,  the  1.5ghz & big RAM's stuff is only needed with HD AV.  Mine is Dual Core 1.066 GHz & 512 MB. 
2TB WD Reds will load 2000++++ CD's
The preinstalled Synology "Media Server" is my choice over the also included Minimserver,  its a personal choice & is easy to try both.
Posted on: 30 January 2016 by Huge

For audio streaming, any Synology that is powerful enough to run MinimServer, is more than capable of doing anything that audio streaming demands (including gapless transcoding via MinimServer!).  Here's the list of Synology NAS's that run MinimServer:
https://www.synology.com/en-us...packages/MinimServer
Note that even the lowly DS216se can do it, and the DS215j is somewhat more capable than that.

+1 for the WD Red drives, relatively quite and have a very good reliability record - they really are worth that little bit of extra money over standard computer drives.

 

I wouldn't bother with mirroring the drives unless you already have an independent backup solution.

If you do have an independent backup, then include your NAS drive on that as well as your computer.

If you don't already have an independent backup, configure one drive to serve the music and to be 'shared' to the network so you can access it from a computer.  Keep the other drive private to the NAS box, and configure it to be the data-store for the Synology backup programme (set this to run regularly, say at 3AM, when you're not listening).  This will do an automatic incremental back up for you and give much better protection from data loss than mirroring ever will.

Posted on: 30 January 2016 by Mr THX

+1 To both replies above. Excellent option.

 

Posted on: 30 January 2016 by M Strong

Thankyou Dave & Mike

Oh! family for the nice new NAS..

Re: from Dave  

"Go through the setup guides carefully, try to figure out how to get Minimserver to transcode to .wav on the fly"

I was told to rip to 'FLAC' are there benefits to .wav ? Also would running the cable from switch to S'uniti be ok if switch was upstairs with router/NAS and just run one long cable from switch downstairs to S'uniti

Posted on: 30 January 2016 by Huge

Most people consider the best options to be...

1  Use a Ethernet cable rather than wireless (cable length doesn't matter, but for longer cables you may want to add a clip on ferrite to reduce RFI)

2  Rip to FLAC and set MinimServer to transcode FLAC to WAVE (this way yiu get the space benefits of FLAC files and the audio quality benefits of WAVE files at the same time).

Posted on: 30 January 2016 by M Strong

Thankyou gentlemen, really appreciated

Posted on: 30 January 2016 by Dave***t

What Huge said

The on-the-fly transcoding part means that the files are stored as .flac, but the NAS converts them to .wav as it sends them to the streamer. This is actually a comparatively easy process, and the processor in the NAS can handle it easily. It's different with transcoding video etc, but .flac to .wav is easy.

So the streamer receives .wav data, and you get the (arguable, but pretty much unanimously agreed upon here) sound quality benefits of .wav. But you also get the smaller file size and (again, arguable, but a lot of people would agree) ease of tagging of .flac.

Ethernet cables should be fine up to around 100 metres, so as long as you don't live in a palace, no problem. Clip on ferrite chokes can help eliminate any interference picked up by long cables, and can be bought for pence.

Posted on: 30 January 2016 by M Strong

You guys are awesome .... but as per terms and conditions

"i reserve the right to retract that at anytime"