Building a music server - tutorials...?

Run a dedicated music server (PC) and use J River Media Center for serving, organization, tagging, etc.

Control with JRemote app of desktop.

$$$$$$$

-Patrick

Hi Gajdzin

 for what it is worth here is my solution to get you started until you have built an understanding.

1. Buy a cheap windows laptop or 2nd hand ( mine was £120) with an optical drive and plug it into the back of your router with a network cable

2. Buy a 1TB USB hard drive and plug into the laptop

3 Download DBpoweramp and install..this is easy to set up and point to your USB hard drive to rip CD`s to

4. Download Asset UPNP its an easy config and point it at your USB hard drive where your music folder resides that you rip to.

5. turn the power saving features of the laptop to just screen off and not let it put the computer to sleep.

5. download nstream for Ipod/ iphone/ ipad

6. worry about file organisation and tags etc once you are up and running and have an understanding of vwhat you are doing and can see the results of your work in front of you.

Et Voila, leave it switched on and plugged in if you want or turn it off if you are not using it for long periods.

You get DBpoweramp and Asset upnp free for 30 days and then the combined cost is jus a litle over £40 for full licenced for life from illustrate.. just google it.

 Runs silently too

Just decide when before you start ripping your CD`s which lossless format you would like to configure dbpoweramp to and stick with It. I use Flac lossless. There is a tutorial on the Illustrate website how to set up and configure both DBpoweramp and Asset UPNP.

Finally, remember to regularly back up your folder on the USB drive that you have your ripped music files to.

Going forward buy a Nas with a Intel atom CPU and install Asset under debian / mint. create a share and copy your files across. Point DBpoeramp to rip to that share. The Nas will give you auto back up options to keep things in order.

 remember to back up your USB folder that you have your ripped music files in

hope this helps

regards

Keith

In many cases a basic headless I3 based PC - onboard graphics - 8gb ram with 2TB HDD - Bluray Drive and Vortexbox software and relax. Add Bliss to handle file structure tagging and cover art. Use Plex to handle your video collection with makemkv to rip from DVD/BD.

Or find an aesthetically pleasing case and build your own PC as above or with an audiophile grade USB card from SOtM.

Or buy a MacMini with an external HDD and use Minimserver, or JRiver Mac or Asset UPnP Mac.

The world is your lobster.

Tog

A variation on the Mac mini approach (if you like the size and asteriscs of the mini) is to run Windows on it.

You would need to consider how you would use it headless, though (I use it as a server via asynch USB using Mac OS and connect via other networked macs or via -  HDMI,TV and bluetooth trackpad).  Not sure how this would work with Windows.

Of course there is the mac laptop, option too.

HTH

J

J

So all of you recommend to buy a PC in some form (a laptop, a Mac mini or a cheap desktop on i3). Wouldn't it make better sense to buy a NAS server, something like this: http://www.synology.com/en-us/...s/overview/DS214play ?  Seems simpler, quieter, less power consumption... I just can't be sure how this will work with the ND5 SX / n-Stream...?

BTW, a laptop or any 1-disk PC is out of the question, because I cannot afford to spend hundreds of hours digitizing thousands of CDs only to have the HDD die on me... So the disks will have to be RAIDed.

Just buy an external USB Hard drive and make sure you do a regular backup.

I thought one of the main benefits of going the Mac route is not having to run windows.

Very true!

ATB from George

To digitize 2000CDs at maximum quality I'll need 1TB. To allow for future music purchases I'd need to push it to 2TB to last me till retirement To back up 2TB I'd need another 2TB hard disk. Might just as well get two 2TB disks and RAID them with RAID 1 (mirroring).

But all of that is a secondary issue - the main one is: should I get a PC, or a dedicated NAS like in the link I've posted above. NAS devices appear to be smaller, quieter, consuming less power and not more expensive than a cheap PC. The only question is: how do I ensure that such NAS works with ND5 SX / n-Stream? Will ripping the CDs into it be slower or more cumbersome than with a PC? Do I need to buy some additional software in addition to the box and the 2 internal drives for it?

Hi there,

Go with your idea of the synology NAS for data protection. They have a built in UPNP server that will serve up your music such that it can be played by your ND5SX and controlled via nstream and are very reliable NAS devices.

I would rip all CD's to FLAC format as it allows metadata to be stored easily and is truly lossless. Naim streamers prefer WAV format for playback but this can easily be addressed later via transcoding on the fly from the NAS and FLAC files sound very good in any case. Use Exact Audio Copy (free) to rip your CD's and you have complete control over the metadata as well as being assured of high quality rips.

I currently use a synology for my data storage, exact audio copy to rip the CD's and a raspberry pi running Asset UPnP to transcode to WAV. All works very nicely.

You will of course need access to a PC to rip the CD's via exact audio copy and copy the files to the NAS.

Hi

re RAID,  this provides redundancy within the device not a backup.  I would still recommend a backup to another device which you can take offsite if you really want to secure your ripped CD's. 

i am running on a NAS, it is more restricted in terms of the  media server that you can run on it.    Most of the best media servers run on PC's or Mac's, eg Asset.  It depends what you are looking for in functionality.  If you use a NAS you will have to use another device (PC) to rip the CD's or download files.

I hope this helps

david

@Gajdzin   - The Synology NAS is a DLNA compliant server, so as long as it's on the same network your ND5 SX will find it and play music from it.  Run nStream on your iPhone/iPad to select albums/tracks/build playlists etc. from your armchair.

I have a nait xs with nd5. I rip and download with simple laptop and dbpoweramp.  Storage is qnap 219 with twonky. This works for me, maybe the synology and asset storage solutions are even better.

Tom

If I at some time in the not to distant future will have to setup a server I am not going for a Nas with all the problems and restrictions people are having. For sure I will go for a silent Windows pc or vortecbox.

Of course my ns01 like  other Naim components will run without problems for the next  20 years knock on Wood.

Claus

Without acronyms where would we be?  Anyone would be able to understand this stuff... 

For my money:

A proliant microserver, currently coming it at 150 quid with a 50 quid cash back deal, N54L is more than enough.

4 Harddrives of similar spec, min 2.5tb ea 50 quid each

It comes with a 250 drive for the OS

You want a half metre sata data and power sata convertor and 5in to 3.5in adaptor, whole lot about 12 quid on ebay.

This sets you up with a nas far far more powerful than anything off the shelf and its dead easy to set up. You will have a minimum 3tb device, with dual core, 2 gig of ram which is expandable and basic graphics for set up.

On this you can install many a thing, but for my money on that 250 gig drive (That you will put in the top of the device with the bits and bobs from ebay, leaving four drives for raid) I would get Open Media Vault. Its  easy to install and a little geeky to set up, but does have a GUI and once running is rock solid.

Honestly unless you have a top top of the range qnap or what ever, this thing will mess all over it. 80MB/s down, 30MB/s up.

For around 450 quid.

Caveats:

You want something else to rip and something else to play. You asked for a server and this is a server it will happily deliver PLEX media server, UPN, MiniDNLA etc etc.

Its noisy, not for the living room. (any four drive device is noisy and no one can tell you differently.)

Up Side:

Best bang for buck

Proper server

You can install windows server etc if you are more comfortable with this.

PC solution is more flexible: choice of OS, media server, remote control capability, different cases, optical drives, Toslink output, USB3.0 etc.  Obviously flexibility can mean more complexity, but there is usually a way round any problem you hit.  Plenty of CPU power for transcoding, fast I/O speed for serving and backups.

NASs:  Some people report problems with bundled media server software - e.g. inability to sort content the way they want to, problems with album art etc.  Though with a bit of effort you can usually install a different media server. 

Hi Gajdzin

It isn't necessary to buy a new computer. You will need a computer available to do the rips but if you already have one capable of doing that you can just buy a NAS and copy the rips onto that. I don't say that this is necessarily the best way and it certainly isn't the only way but this is how I do it.

I have a Synology DS212j with 2 Western Digital 2TB drives configured as a 2TB mirror. All my music is copied into the 'music' folder where the built in server normally indexes it (based on tags) ready to be streamed in seconds. The built in UPnP server ("Media Server") does exactly what I need it to do and can be optimised in various ways (including only looking in certain directories). There may be better server applications out there but "Media Server" works for me so I don't see the point in changing.

When I get a new CD I rip it to FLAC using dbPowerAmp. I check the tags and album art before starting to rip it. The rip appears in the directory I have told it to rip to. From here I copy if into the music directory on the NAS and that's it ready to go. Downloaded tracks again just get copied into "music".

You can create directories for various types of music, separate users, or whatever else you want and put the music files into them. The "Media Server" indexing will still pick them up and stream them when you want. If you wanted to you could even just drop every FLAC, WAV, mp3, etc. into one massive directory and the Server would still display them under artists, albums, etc. assuming the tags are correct. Though I wouldn't recommend it.

My UnitiQute2 has no problem finding the NAS or streaming from it and neither do any other network devices I have ever tried from TVs and Bluray players to phones and tablets.

Hope this helps or at least gives you some ideas.

It certainly does, Sorren! I was looking at the same device, well, it's newer version, one supposedly optimized for multimedia streaming: Synology DS214play. Great to hear it worked for you and works with Naim products - I was concerned, because in products specifications on Synology web site there is no mention of UPnP...

Is the Synology unit in your house quiet? That's an important consideration for me.

If the standalone NAS works well and without the issues some posters were warning against then I will go with it, because a box like that is be smaller, quieter and using less power than a PC-based solution.

I do understand Noogle's points about flexibility, but if I do run into any problems, I actually have a small i3 - based Windows 7 PC under my TV that serves as a video library (unfortunately it only has internal space for 1 hard disk) and I could set up the streaming server there, while the actual music files would reside on the NAS connected as a network drive.

I have a similar setup.

I have an old PC, running XP. music is ripped to the 2TB HD using DB power amp. I have a single bay QNAP 2TB NAS, the NAS software is used to backup the music files on the PC. I manually do this every couple of weeks, any music files on the PC not on the NAS are copied to the NAS. A SBT streams the music from the NAS.

Probably not the most efficient way to do it, but I like the fact all the music is safely loaded on the PC. I'm confident I won't accidentally loose all the  music files on a PC, but I can't say the same for a NAS.

Hi Gajdzin.

At the moment I have the Synology sat in the same rack as the UQ about 6 feet away from me and I can honestly say that I can't hear any sound coming from it at all. It has always been quiet and I have run it now for a couple of years with no problems at all.

I have "music" mapped as the m: drive on my laptop which runs Foobar 2000 player reading from the mapped drive. This works fine even with hi-res files so your fallback plan of just storing the music on the NAS for the i3 PC shouldn't be a problem. Just thinking aloud, in theory you could even run both solutions side by side until you're sure which you prefer or at least very quickly enable/disable the one you want to test.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN. Thanks, guys, for the valuable help getting me started!