SuperUniti and Nas

Vortexbox 

Vortexbox. So if you buy one of the hardware versions, 1, 2 or 3TB it is an NAS in itself and you wont need a dedicated NAS, right?

What about replay?

Thanks, S

Vortexbox could be option I will look at.

Does anyone have the Time Capsule and what is their opinion about it?

You will struggle using a time capsule in the fashion you describe. For one thing you would need a computer running a UPNP server to pick it up. Not a good look.

Vortexbox is fine if you don't mind loosing all the functionality of a decent NAS. It is what it is, a music ripper and storer.

A NAS is so much more, and if purchasing something new I would take a NAS over Vortexbox any day.

QNAP is what I own, personally I would avoid Drobo, but the decision is yours.

One last thing, HArddrives are at an amazing high price at the moment due to flooding, so its not really a good time to be doing this, unless you are flush.

You don't need a separate NAS, the Vortexbox will stream music to your SuperUniti or render it for your SuperUniti if you prefer. It will also rip CDs if you want. You just get the functions you want, which is the nice thing about it. It is design primarily as music server. 

As always, best thing to do is get an old PC (needs a CD and network card), load Vortexbox on it and see if you like it. If you do then you can go for a more permanent set-up. That is what I do and found so easy to use and reliable that I took the next step. 

You can get 6TB ones if you want, but using FLAC that is a lot of CDs - probably upwards of 15,000 CDs, which is around 250,000 songs (or 15 Genesis' tracks if you like that kind of thing). I only have around 3,000. 

You can use RAID if you want so if a hard disk failed it can just be replaced though you can simply back-up to an external drive and give it a friend to keep safe for you. I do this - not bothered with RAID. 

Personally for music serving I've not come across anything better. A general purpose NAS does lots of things I'll never need (I can't think of one thing I need to do that a Vortexbox doesn't), but I can understand why some folk might like them. Me, I love music and have no interest in films, photo and if I want to store documents then there plenty of on-line services I could use. You could do that on a Vortexbox if you really must using NFS from a Mac or whatever PC's use (get an ordinary NAS though if that is what you plan to use it for general purposes things). 

It is horses for courses and my horse is a Vortexbox.

I think it is the perfect partner for any Naim component like the Naim Uniti, UQ or SuperUniti. 

Try it - the software is free, if you don't like it bin it. 

Al the best, Guy 

Hi Guido

What vortexbox version are you using?  I'm looking into getting one and the uk supplier offers a range of options ie, midi, mini, appliance etc. Its a bit confusing.

Hello Pixies

My current Vortexbox is a Silent PC/128GB SDD (VB Software) 3TB Seagate HDD (Music). 

How many CDs do you plan to put on the server?

[Allow 400 MB/CD in FLAC,

so if you want to store 1000 CD that's 400,000 MB, roughly 400 GB

1TB disk would hold all your CDs, Vortexbox software with plenty of free space] 

Do you want to use the Vortexbox to rip CDs? 

Do you want two music disks just in case one fails with automatic recovery?  

Or are you happy to do manual backups? 

Do you want S/PDIF out in to your Naim box or will you stream music to your Naim box?

Do you want a nice looking a box or are you going to keep it out of sight? 

With this info, it should be possible to suggest a few options. 

All the best, Guy 

Phew! Ok Guy here we go...

Currently have music all stored on old HP PC (windows), with upgraded 1TB hard drive.  I have 600 albums all stored as FLAC which have been ripped using DBpoweramp and backed up to external hard drive.  Don’t expect to ever have more than 800 to 1000 albums.

Music is streamed to variety of squeezebox products around the house. Main Squeezebox Transporter is directly linked to BT hub via Ethernet.   Everything is working fine, however I don’t like to have the PC on 24/7.  It is quite loud and is next to main bedroom.  Also the PC is very slow.  I also have my own laptop and it would be nice to access squeeze server via that to create playlists, run updates etc.

Will be borrowing Naim ND5XS next weekend so want to ensure I can run this as well as squeezeboxes.

Vortexbox can be kept out of site in same spare room/study.  Have seen various options on Vortexbox web site including midi, mini, appliance plus some special make ups that are not yet in full production.

Hope this helps

Hi Pixies 

With those requirements I'd go for the VortexBox Mini Appliance within the VortexBox Europe Products category and specify a 1TB low power drive and ask for the DNLA to be enabled so it will serve the ND5XS. 

This would have plenty of space and because it has no fan it should be no more noisy than a domestic CD player.

You need to plug it in to your LAN. If your Home Hub is your study and has a spare port you could plug it in to that. If no spare ports then you need a small network switch, to give you some more ports. 

You could leave out the CD/DVD drive in the Vortexbox and continue ripping with dBPowerAmp as you do now and just move the files across at the end. That way you always have a safety copy.  

All the best, Guy 

@Pixies

The beauty of Vortexbox is that you can try it out on anything - an Atom based netbook attached to your router with a 250 Gb drive works really well as a testbed or any old laptop or intel based PC.

in an i3 or i5 based configuration it zips along and can rip DVD's to mkv as well.

Latest software version is VB 2 and uses Fedora 16 as its base. This update caused a few issues but updates and bug fixes come thick and fast (applied by clicking the update button - not returning it to a dealer - looking at you Naim) and in a week most of the wrinkles were sorted.

Tog

Thanks Guy.  Very helpful as usual.  I would not have thought that I could keep the dBPowerAmp option. Could you just explain a bit more about the DNLA being enabled (what does this mean) and will it effect use of my squeezebox products?

Regards

How to copy PC FLAC files made with dBPowerAmp to a VortexBox

1. On your Windows PC connect to network, press “Win+R” 

2. In the Run box type \\vortexbox and click OK
    This will bring up a window for the VortexBox

3. Click in files -> music -> flac to go to the folder where VB stores the music

4. Drag all your FLAC album folders to this folder.

DNLA stands for Digital Living Network Alliance.

They set a standard for streaming music.

Their standard uses Universal Plug n Play (UPnP)

Naim follows that standard.

Enabling means a Naim player (ND5 XS, UQ, SuperUniti, NDX) can talk to the Vortexbox.

Squeezebox has its own standard, I'm not absolutely sure what is, 'cos I don't have any Logitech kit. but the Vortexbox runs it and can do so at the same time as it does DNLA UPnP for Naim. So you can use your SB Transporter too. I'm not sure if they'll be perfect synchronisation though.

Sonos uses another for of UPnP and the Vortexbox supports that too, so you could also have a Sonos system running.

Apple uses DAAP for iTunes sharing and Vortexbox supports that to.

So in theory, I've not tried it - you could stream to Naim in Room 1, Logitech SB Transporter in another, Sonos in another and Apple Mac Mini in a forth. The simultaneous playing of UQ and Sonos works, so I trust others who report SB does too.

Don't forget, as Tog points out, if you can get an old PC or have one then you can try this for free and make sure you are 100% happy. You just download Vortexbox make a CD with it and boot the old PC with it in it and follow the prompts. 

All the best, Guy

Yes Guido, thanks from me as well. Excellent advice and most helpful!

In the QNAP family of fully standalone servers, I would add AssetNas. Comes with Asset UPNP pre-loaded. My experience has been flawless on the 3TB version.

I am in doubt about which way to go but Time Capsule is not an option. I think I will wait and see what happens in the new year.

And thanks Guido for your info about Vortexbox.