Music server VS NAS for sound quality

Daniel H. posted:

 I have heard conflicting opinions on this. 

Brace yourself for more of the same!

As a Unitiserve user, I would say that if you have £2k to spend on improving your system, you would be much better off putting it towards, say, an NDX than a fancy music server. 

At a recent demo I had at the dealers place He tried to convince me that I needed a music server over my NAS. To my ears there is no way I would drop $5k on a Melco whatever model to replace my $500 NAS investment. I just didn't hear a clear difference to justify the investment to upgrade. If it's an upgrade at all. 

If you already have a NAS I would not really try to optimise things by getting a dedicated music server. 

If anything look at the quality of your network components and streaming cables. This is bound to have more impact.

I undertook a fair amount of assessments on this a year back with an NDX. It’s not so much whether the media server on a NAS or standalone computer/server sounds better, but I did find certain operating system/platform media server combinations sounded better than others albeit subtly. I examined the network data flows. Although the payload data was identical, I found the degree of interframe timing variability as well as the extent of flow control did affect sound performance. I found the media server/platform/os combination that provided the most consistent interframe timing, using zero window sizing flow control sounded the best, and was more impactful than fiddling around Ethernet cables etc.

A music server that handles ripping and storage makes sense if:

1. You have no clue/patience for setting up a properly optimised NAS to perform it's best.

2. You want a solution that will outlive you for use by the rest of the household.

Only item 1 really relates to sound quality. Only you can answer that question. For some people, setting up or even making your own NAS is as easy as going to your dealer and buying a music server, only it costs very little. Not everyone is there, nor should they be expected to be. 

The second item is for some the big issue. Certainly for me, I know that without one, if something should happen to me, the hifi becomes useless for everyone at home.

So although I use a self built NAS with heavily modded OS and could build 10 for the cost of one Uniti Core that might not perform any better, I see the resolution of just one of those two problems more than justifies the cost of such devices. 

So do they outperform a NAS? I expect they certainly outperform some NAS devices. 

Are they good value? Regardless of whether you are an IT smartass or not, I think the devices can definitely be value for money. More so the more people that live under your roof.

I think it does make a significant difference in quality. But then I am perhaps also too much biased with my Melco. But on a serious note on the why’s....

1. A good music server has done a lot on separating out the network noise and disturbing aspects in general of the network. Giving the separation as suc, galvanization....

2. A good music server tends to have a optimized chassis for the music.

3. A good music server has a much more advanced power supply, which also makes it better.

4. A good music server is protected against intermittent power brakes.

....and perhaps a couple of more arguments......

For me sufficient as I hear the difference as being significant enough. In all honesty some of the aspects of the above consideration can be had through separate investments. So you could pimp you NAS a bit. But in my opinion it would get closer but not beat a good music server which also gives you ease of use, fit into the hierarchy of black boxes etc....

For you to answer if that’s worth the premium price.

The local naim dealer says that the Uniti core sounds better than the Unitiserve.

Bert above has outlined why a dedicated music server “ should” sound better than a NAS.

Given the Core  sounds so good I would get that and eventually a better streamer.

There is a local all Naim Statement/ NDS/2x 555dr/ Ovator 800 system in this town and apparently the core was significantly better than a heavily pimped Unitiserve.

You don’t buy Naim to save money. The Core is relatively cheap for a Naim product. Keep the NAS as a backup in case of Core failure. And enjoy the convenience and state of the art server sound quality.

Having said all that, many here think a well set up NAS can be superb. And perhaps that may be right for them and you. But I know which I would prefer.

When I first started streaming I bought a UnitiServe, largely because I was scared to set up a nas and didn’t really understand the concept. After a couple of years, and with the Serve’s ripping capabilities rarely used, I decided to load MinumServer on my Synology NAS, which I used as backup, and see how it compared soundwise. It turned out that the nas sounded a bit better, and certainly no worse. The Serve had a separate power supply and the nas was standard. 

So I sold the Serve. Make of this what you will, but in my view spending £2,000 to get no sound improvement seems an odd approach. As said above, you’d be better putting the money into a better streamer. In my opinion, of course. 

My answer is "It's complicated."  I have a UnitServe and a Synology NAS playing into the same system... but that's where the similarities end.  Everything on the US is WAV from CDs, so 16 bit 44.1 kHz.  Almost everything on the NAS is higher res, at least 24 bit 48kHz or higher, FLAC encoded.  Also the US outputs directly to the nDAC via digital cable; the NAS plays to a ND5 XS via Ethernet and then out to the nDAC via Naim BNC.  So who knows what causes any differences I'm hearing?

All that said the NAS content seems to be crisper and more alive than the US stream, but not by much.  If the Core is indeed better sounding than a US then any differential might be vanishingly small.

One aspect hasn't been mentioned, however, and that's convenience.  If you have a lot of CDs to rip then the US (and the Core I assume) is as plug and play as you can get: tip in a CD, wait five minutes, go on to the next.  All your indexing, metadata tagging etc. is done for you.  Ripping a bunch of CDs to a NAS I found to be a royal PITA which is why I first went with the US to grab all the content from my CD collection and only later got the NAS to store downloads from Bandcamp, HD Tracks, etc.

Good luck with whichever way you go.

I have to take something back regarding the above: my US started with direct digital connection to the nDAC, but some months ago I changed it to network (Ethernet) feed to the ND5 XS, so any differences in SQ are either intrinsic or the result of the differences in resolutions and encoding.  Sorry for the confusion.

Tallan posted:

My answer is "It's complicated."  I have a UnitServe and a Synology NAS playing into the same system... but that's where the similarities end.  Everything on the US is WAV from CDs, so 16 bit 44.1 kHz.  Almost everything on the NAS is higher res, at least 24 bit 48kHz or higher, FLAC encoded.  Also the US outputs directly to the nDAC via digital cable; the NAS plays to a ND5 XS via Ethernet and then out to the nDAC via Naim BNC.  So who knows what causes any differences I'm hearing?

All that said the NAS content seems to be crisper and more alive than the US stream, but not by much.  If the Core is indeed better sounding than a US then any differential might be vanishingly small.

One aspect hasn't been mentioned, however, and that's convenience.  If you have a lot of CDs to rip then the US (and the Core I assume) is as plug and play as you can get: tip in a CD, wait five minutes, go on to the next.  All your indexing, metadata tagging etc. is done for you.  Ripping a bunch of CDs to a NAS I found to be a royal PITA which is why I first went with the US to grab all the content from my CD collection and only later got the NAS to store downloads from Bandcamp, HD Tracks, etc.

Good luck with whichever way you go.

why not connect your ndac to your nd5xs and put all your high rez files on the unitserve ?  your nd5xs would be improved and your cds rips and downloads would be together on the serve.... or perhaps i miss something.

Hey Tallan, i have not read enough precisely :  your ndac is already connected to the nd5xs.  But the second question remains.  

I use both. NAS for storing the media itself, dedicated PC running vortexbox OS to rip and run my Roon Core which I use for library management. I ran the core on the NAS before getting the separate server, the only difference was the speed of the library for Roon as I run Plex in it too and a couple of VM's. Sounded the same to me though as the dedicated server. If you want to have something in your rack that's convenient to use then I suppose the dedicated servers maybe better due to low noise, less RF that might interfere with sensitive analogue stages and look better etc. But as I have all mine hidden away in a cupboard under the stairs far away from the hifi so I can spend my money on better improvements and have no difference in sq.

The choice is yours.

I have been asking myself the same question. As a good compromise I would be looking at the Innuos Zen mini which is a bit pricier than a basic NAS but is silent, music dedicated, includes a ripper and acts as Roon core. My current NAS is perceptibky noisy for the living room and a Zen mini would not cost more than a silent NAS with Roon core.

DrPo posted:

I have been asking myself the same question. As a good compromise I would be looking at the Innuos Zen mini which is a bit pricier than a basic NAS but is silent, music dedicated, includes a ripper and acts as Roon core. My current NAS is perceptibky noisy for the living room and a Zen mini would not cost more than a silent NAS with Roon core.

I thought about an Innuos Zen Mini. I started reading up, and learned that the Zen Mini is poorly spec‘ed for running Roon.  The Mini might be good to try Roon for a while, but possibly not as a long-term solution.

I think this is true if you want to run full DSP in Roon. But then it’s  a different ballgame and a dedicated Roon server will be  must -  no NAS could do the job. 

DrPo posted:

I think this is true if you want to run full DSP in Roon. But then it’s  a different ballgame and a dedicated Roon server will be  must -  no NAS could do the job. 

I agree with DrPo.

I run Roon on a Zenith II and it's a quality piece of kit. They are not designed to utilise the CPU intensive DSP functions in favour of sound quality.

The Innuos servers are a fantastic fit and forget component which just works. "If" you have any issues their customer service and support is second to none.

I can wholeheartedly recommend.

I started with the HDX HDD. I compared music ripped by the HDX, internally stored on the HDX, with music ripped by the HDX to a NAS. I could detect any difference. For this reason I ripped to the NAS routinely because I didn't see the point of using the HDX's internal HDD, which if failed, would have to be returned to base to recover my files. Much easier and more scalable to manage my music on a NAS which I could back up, replicate, etc. I then had my HDX converted to SSD. This setup served me well for some years and brought great enjoyment. I consider it to be far enough in front of my CDX2 to allow me to sell the CDP. I never missed it.

When the NDS turned up I kept the HDX as the server because it had always served me so well. And it could hardly interfere with the sound, could it? Well, as it turned out, it could. When the HDX failed and needed to go back to Naim, I hastily installed Minimserver on my NAS in an effort to keep the music flowing. The results stunned me. I'm not exaggerating. The NDX was an audio bottleneck. I don't know why or how. When it came back from the factory, all fixed up and shiny, I asked my dealer to hang onto it to sell. It ended up being traded in against some of the cost of a full SL loom. 

In summary, my personal experience is that there is no difference between HDX internal storage and NAS storage in terms of sound quality/musical enjoyment. When used with an S level dedicated streamer, the HDX acting as a server for NAS stored music got in the way. Removing it and running server software on the NAS improved the sound quality/musical enjoyment. It could be that my HDX was knackered. It's moot. The performance of Minimserver and Asset on a number of QNAPs in my system has been superior, and not by a small margin.

Melco have supposedly swung this back in favour of  the proprietary server model. I've yet to get my ears on one and am in no hurry.

Muttonjef posted:

DrPo posted:

I think this is true if you want to run full DSP in Roon. But then it’s  a different ballgame and a dedicated Roon server will be  must -  no NAS could do the job. 

I agree with DrPo.

I run Roon on a Zenith II and it's a quality piece of kit. They are not designed to utilise the CPU intensive DSP functions in favour of sound quality.

The Innuos servers are a fantastic fit and forget component which just works. "If" you have any issues their customer service and support is second to none.

I can wholeheartedly recommend.

 

I am no engineer, just a social scientist... But I guess the Zenith might be in a different league -- £2,299 compared to £699 (Zen Mini)...

Timo posted:

Muttonjef posted:

DrPo posted:

I think this is true if you want to run full DSP in Roon. But then it’s  a different ballgame and a dedicated Roon server will be  must -  no NAS could do the job. 

I agree with DrPo.

I run Roon on a Zenith II and it's a quality piece of kit. They are not designed to utilise the CPU intensive DSP functions in favour of sound quality.

The Innuos servers are a fantastic fit and forget component which just works. "If" you have any issues their customer service and support is second to none.

I can wholeheartedly recommend.

 

I am no engineer, just a social scientist... But I guess the Zenith might be in a different league -- £2,299 compared to £699 (Zen Mini)...

Agreed the Zen is lower spec'd but the functionality etc are exactly the same. 

French Rooster posted:

Hey Tallan, i have not read enough precisely :  your ndac is already connected to the nd5xs.  But the second question remains.  

Couple of reasons.  Size is one of them: the US is only 2TB whereas my NAS is already 4TB in RAID mirror configuration and can be easily expanded to 10TB or more.  With movies and high-res photos as well as music the space fills up fast.  Redundant storage is another reason; frankly I don't trust Naim's backup scheme, such as it is: if the US drive goes kaput the whole thing has to go back to Naim where they will "try to" recover data.  My NAS is fully RAID compliant, customer serviceable, and has a separate USB backup drive.  So the US backs up to the NAS, the NAS backs up to a drive that can be disconnected and taken away in seconds (in the case of fire, say).  Belt and suspenders, yes, but with what I have invested in both time & dollars in digital music cheap insurance.

Daniel H. posted:

...

My specific question is, all things being equal, in your experience, does a music server used as a NAS, produce better sound quality than a regular NAS?

...

For sure not! Consider, for instance, the case in which the connection to the streamer is broken: a NAS and a music server will produce the same sound quality, namely, no sound at all.

I frankly doubt that your question can be meaningfully answered: you would have to define a specific network layout and, even in this case, I very much doubt that music servers can be found to perform better (or worse) than NAS devices in general. I would expect the results to depend on the specific music server, NAS, OSs and software involved.

I’m not qualified to comment on the merits of dedicated music servers... I’ve been streaming for 11 years now, started using SlimServer, then onto Asset. Both started off on a separate PC, but migrated to running on a QNAP NAS as soon as the software was ported. I’ve never bothered to explore dedicate music servers. No need. Enough said.

I've tried pc and mac audio and had Innuos and Melco on home trial, ended up with a Qnap HS 251+ with Samsung 2tb ssds with an Isreali power supply running Asset. (Whatever you choose remember to back up your music!) Cheeper as well, more money for music content! Love Roon but discover new music in the music room forum here

Tallan posted:

frankly I don't trust Naim's backup scheme, such as it is: if the US drive goes kaput the whole thing has to go back to Naim where they will "try to" recover data.  

You may have to return a Naim server to the factory for repair, and yes, that is likely to be expensive, but if you have set up the automated backup built into it, you are not dependent on Naim to try to recover the data. A repaired unit can have the data restored to it from your backup, and while you are awaiting the repair, you can still play your music by pointing a server at your backup folder.