Dipping toes into the NAS (world) with no clue and getting rid of the CD player

Remember you should have a copy of all your previously copied music on the NAS so you could copy these files back to the laptop and only re-rip anything missing.

james n posted:

Stephen Tate posted:

I didn't know what the full retail price was for a ND5XS but because it was £200 cheaper than the newer item, I assumed this is tempting. Anyway, I want a ND5 XS 2.

Good man - The ND5XS2 sounds very good so it\s worth hanging on for this player rather than a bargain ND5XS. 

James

Hi [@mention:1566878603926433]

Somehow I missed feedback on the sound of the latest generation. Did people hear it at Munich? What was the view?

Phil

Stephen Tate posted:

I think so too James, thanks.

Actually, i'm now getting quite excited about the prospect of owning one of Naim's latest generation network players.

I have started to re-rip all my CDs again - at least this time around i'm not so lost and can better catalogue them. I need to find a way of backing it all up so I don't lose the lot again. 

An external USB drive is a good idea?

i am not a specialist on nas, even far from it.  But if you have 2 bays on your nas( 2 hdd), the backup can be made automatically on the second bay.   But we will wait for the right response by HH or other nas owner....

Which streamer will you hear today at dealer shop ?    possibility to borrow one for some days ?

French Rooster posted:

Stephen Tate posted:

I think so too James, thanks.

Actually, i'm now getting quite excited about the prospect of owning one of Naim's latest generation network players.

I have started to re-rip all my CDs again - at least this time around i'm not so lost and can better catalogue them. I need to find a way of backing it all up so I don't lose the lot again. 

An external USB drive is a good idea?

i am not a specialist on nas, even far from it.  But if you have 2 bays on your nas( 2 hdd), the backup can be made automatically on the second bay.   But we will wait for the right response by HH or other nas owner....

Which streamer will you hear today at dealer shop ?    possibility to borrow one for some days ?

Yes - it can. 

However, having a backup disk sitting in the same NAS as the main disk really isn't good enough.

You should take a backup onto a separate device (usually a USB drive), and ideally (if you can) store the backup device at a separate location. This is what I do. Every so often I retrieve the USB backup drive to synchronise it with my NAS drive, but normally keep it offsite with a relative.   

French Rooster posted:

Which streamer will you hear today at dealer shop ?    possibility to borrow one for some days ?

Hi FR,

I did pop to see my dealer yesterday and although I didn't actually audition anything as such I was assured that when they receive a ND5 XS 2 they will give me a bell. They did try to push a ND5XS onto me but because I don't want a PSU upgrade option, it kind of turned me off. They also said in their opinion that the Naim streamers are the best sounding and waiting for a ND5 XS 2 to arrive is a wise thing to do!

I can't wait!

In a 2 bay NAS, you can mirror one disk to another, but that leaves you vulnerable to a chassis failure corrupting both drives. The two safer approaches are mirroring to a second NAS or backing up to a removable USB drive.

In the first case you get a second NAS and connect it to the network, then set the primary NAS to mirror to the other one. If your primary NAS fails you can immediately work from the backup.

In the second case, get a removable USB drive, plug it into the USB port on the NAS and use the backup software on the NAS. This is cheaper, and you can keep the backup away from the house, but has the disadvantage that if your NAS fails you have to wait for a replacement NAS and restore the backup.

Given the amount of time it would take to re-rip my 1,600 or so CDs, I have 2 NASes with mirroring, and also do a USB backup to a 4TB removable drive every month or so which I keep in a different house. (I actually have 2 removable drives and alternate them, the more recent copy in the other house, the previous one in this house.)

Thanks guys.

I have ordered a external 3TB USB back up drive.

Stephen Tate posted:

French Rooster posted:

Which streamer will you hear today at dealer shop ?    possibility to borrow one for some days ?

Hi FR,

I did pop to see my dealer yesterday and although I didn't actually audition anything as such I was assured that when they receive a ND5 XS 2 they will give me a bell. They did try to push a ND5XS onto me but because I don't want a PSU upgrade option, it kind of turned me off. They also said in their opinion that the Naim streamers are the best sounding and waiting for a ND5 XS 2 to arrive is a wise thing to do!

I can't wait!

ah ok, it is what you wrote yesterday.  The problem is that you will have to wait some months now.  Can’t you buy their nd5xs now and when the nd5xs2 arrives, they will take back the nd5xs  for the same price ?

Naim are setting up dealer demo,s of the ND555, my dealer has an evening for June 14 th. So, it’s happening, just bide your time and use the knowledge on the forum and watch the feedback as the streamers roll out. I have an itch that the streamer you would like could be the bargain, with a huge potential for upgrade.......but we have to wait and see.

Filipe posted:

james n posted:

Stephen Tate posted:

I didn't know what the full retail price was for a ND5XS but because it was £200 cheaper than the newer item, I assumed this is tempting. Anyway, I want a ND5 XS 2.

Good man - The ND5XS2 sounds very good so it\s worth hanging on for this player rather than a bargain ND5XS. 

James

Hi [@mention:1566878603926433]

Somehow I missed feedback on the sound of the latest generation. Did people hear it at Munich? What was the view?

Phil

Hi Phil - i think it was on at Munich. Have a look at Bert's Munich thread in Hi-Fi Corner

Cheers

James

Stephen Tate posted:

Thanks guys.

I have ordered a external 3TB USB back up drive.

A good move, and of course a secondary backup for all the CDs you have ripped is, er, those funny round shiny things that you stick into a CD Player..........

james n posted:

Filipe posted:

james n posted:

Stephen Tate posted:

I didn't know what the full retail price was for a ND5XS but because it was £200 cheaper than the newer item, I assumed this is tempting. Anyway, I want a ND5 XS 2.

Good man - The ND5XS2 sounds very good so it\s worth hanging on for this player rather than a bargain ND5XS. 

James

Hi [@mention:1566878603926433]

Somehow I missed feedback on the sound of the latest generation. Did people hear it at Munich? What was the view?

Phil

Hi Phil - i think it was on at Munich. Have a look at Bert's Munich thread in Hi-Fi Corner

Cheers

James

Hi James - Such a lot of posts. Bert’s  [@mention:13111295364991225] was a needle in a hay stack! 

Phil

trickydickie posted:

Remember you should have a copy of all your previously copied music on the NAS so you could copy these files back to the laptop and only re-rip anything missing.

Thanks Richard, I did not know you could this, it will obviously save a lot of time. 

Hi,

upon using dBpoweramp and sticking with it's recommended settings such as the [lossless encoding] drop box which I have set at - level5 (recommended) I am wondering what the other settings are for, such as - level 0 (fastest) or level 9 (uncompressed)? 

Stephen Tate posted:

Hi,

upon using dBpoweramp and sticking with it's recommended settings such as the [lossless encoding] drop box which I have set at - level5 (recommended) I am wondering what the other settings are for, such as - level 0 (fastest) or level 9 (uncompressed)? 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/s...ac-level-Compression 

Googled dbpoweramp what difference does flac level make - that was the first hit. Come on Stephen, you can make a bit of effort.

ChrisR_EPL posted:

Stephen Tate posted:

Hi,

upon using dBpoweramp and sticking with it's recommended settings such as the [lossless encoding] drop box which I have set at - level5 (recommended) I am wondering what the other settings are for, such as - level 0 (fastest) or level 9 (uncompressed)? 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/s...ac-level-Compression 

Googled dbpoweramp what difference does flac level make - that was the first hit. Come on Stephen, you can make a bit of effort.

i think Stephen had made a lot of efforts.  the first was to buy a nas, as being not a computer guy....the second was to keep it, with all the problems he encountered....

ChrisR_EPL posted:

Stephen Tate posted:

Hi,

upon using dBpoweramp and sticking with it's recommended settings such as the [lossless encoding] drop box which I have set at - level5 (recommended) I am wondering what the other settings are for, such as - level 0 (fastest) or level 9 (uncompressed)? 

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/s...ac-level-Compression 

Googled dbpoweramp what difference does flac level make - that was the first hit. Come on Stephen, you can make a bit of effort.

Yes, you're right Chris. I should try to make some effort in finding out these things.

Thanks.

Hi all,

I have managed to re-rip all my CDs again and managed to transfer (I think?) to the QNAP. However, I am still stuck with the same problem, in that if I rip new CDs into the laptop, I still cannot see where the new rips have gone, there is nothing telling me - recent rips?

I have to manually search for the new rips and when I send those new rips to the QNAP I can't see them in Asset after (I think?) they have gone through...

I think that dBpoweramp is a breeze to use and works faultlessly. A superb piece of software!

The QNAP and Asset on the other hand are far from user friendly - i'm really struggling with these.

My approach is to point dBPoweramp at a known 'base' directory in the PC, then let it create sub-directories based on the artist and album data.

I have exactly the same directory structure in the /music share on the Synology I use.  Transfer from one to the other is simply a matter of copy and paste - so is backup!
(Except for backup I actually use Robocopy as I can set it to only copy new or changed files.)
This way the main (NAS) data and backup (PC) data structures mirror each other.

The base directory for dBPoweramp is actually my backup directory on the PC, so I always know where everything is on both devices.  If I need to find the most recently ripped stuff, I just sort the directory by the 'modified' date.

Huge posted:

My approach is to point dBPoweramp at a known 'base' directory in the PC, then let it create sub-directories based on the artist and album data.

 

I do exactly that too, but have the base directory in a dBpoweramp as a mounted directory on my NAS - it has worked flawlessly for the last 6 years or so... this way you rip and forget.. no copying of files and album art etc.. and from a security point of view of accidental mishaps I prefer to not manually copy data in and around my media store.

As far as media servers, I agree MinimServer is a bit of faff to setup, Asset is reasonably straightforward to very straightforward, and ReadyDLNA on my Netgear NAS  just works with no user intervention needed to setup other than tell it where your base directory is

Sorry, my thinking's still quite slow at the moment (i.e. not within the 15 minutes allowed!)

I should also have made the comment that for downloads, I extract the data (and in my case process to WAVE files) in a working directory before creating the same directories that dBPoweramp would do in my backup store on the PC.  Then I copy the files into the backup store, so I can check them before transferring them to the /music store on the NAS.

Incidentally although I said copy and paste, I'm actually more likely to use Robocopy (I have a Restore command file that is the inverse of the Backup command file that I use, but this requires writing suitable command files).

DB Poweramp shows you/allows you to set where it will save the rip: At the bottom left of the window under the transport symbols it lists ‘Profile’, ‘Rip to’, ‘Path’, ‘Naming’ and ‘CD Drive’.

‘Path’ shows you, and has a dropdown of some preset options, whily the ‘Set’ button allows you to browse and select any folder on your computer (or linked network). By default it is the System’s Music’ folder, however I think it retains whatever may have been set before, so if you set  to something specific for one rip, the following ones will also go there unless you reset. If you don’t want them to go wherever they are at the moment, select a new location, mayvpbe creating a folder somewhere logical to you -even on the desktop - called something you obvious e.g  ‘CD rips for checking’.

You could set it up so dBPoweramp sends the rips direct to the store (NAS in your case) as SiS does, but I prefer to do on the PC then copy, first checking on the PC, including amending any metadata, then the PC copy remains on PC until after I’ve done my backup of the store, which is only periodic (so if store were to decide t trash itself any rips (or downloads) since last backup are not lost.

Please forgive me here chaps - my brain is so slow that last four posts to me are another world language - I don't understand any of it.

I may have to start thinking about abandoning this streaming malarkey, I am finding it just all too confusing. None of it (apart from ripping CDs using dBpoweramp) is easy. So far I have found the whole experience a ball ache to say the least.

A Rega P6 is starting to seem very appealing even though I have very little vinyl!