Which QNAP?

Posted by: SB on 09 August 2014

I am new to NAS and having read through many pages I see that Synology or QNAP are generally favourite. I am swinging towards QNAP, but now which one? Requirements are primarily audio streaming. I can see that I get a 2 Bay TS269L for about the same price as the 4 bay TS421. Both have 1G RAM, although with slightly different CPUs. So do I go for the slightly older 4 bay for greater capacity (which i don't really need now) or the newer 2 bay unit, which may have features I won't use?

Will be streaming to a ND5-XS which is on the purchase list. I have finally decided to give up on my Olive HD4 hard disk player, but that is another story. Any advice/experience greatly appreciated.

Posted on: 09 August 2014 by garyi

If the only purpose is streaming why not use an old computer and stick vortex box or daphile on it. It will be far cheaper and dedicated to the task and will do the ripping too,

 

daphile is very easy to use and instal

 

vortexbox is harder to use but has lots more options.

Posted on: 09 August 2014 by Harry

If you don't need four bays I'd not bother because it's just two more HDDs to potentially fail. 

Posted on: 09 August 2014 by badknees51

I agree with garyi, stream from a computer, use the NAS only as backup.

I have (and am satisfied with) the QNAP TS-212 with 2-2TB enterprise duty drives in a RAID 1 configuration that backs up my UnitiServe and the share on my computer. Don't have any experience with Synology, so can't comment.

Posted on: 09 August 2014 by Hmack

garyi originally posted:

 

"If the only purpose is streaming why not use an old computer and stick vortex box or daphile on it. It will be far cheaper and dedicated to the task and will do the ripping too", 

 

Yes - if you already have a free older computer. But it will also be noisier and probably more expensive to run, and you will still want at least a couple of new large hard drives to configure in RAID mode.

 

I would be inclined to pay the extra (not that much) and go for a QNAP or Synology NAS. I have never used a QNAP, but I am very happy with my Synology 212.

 

I would agree with Harry. Just get a 2 bay NAS with 2 large HDs.

 

 

Posted on: 09 August 2014 by Jack

I have an old laptop running Asset with QNAP and its worked really well for many years. But if I was buying a new NAS I would buy one that could run Asset and get rid of the laptop. Why run 2 devices when you can run one. You need to make sure you get one that has enough power to run the server without slowing down browsing etc. I've an old QNAP and when I ran Asset on it the browsing experience via n-Stream was very slow. I'm led to believe this wouldn't be the case with a newer more powerful NAS.

Posted on: 09 August 2014 by Sloop John B

I'm running a qnap 412 and it is more than capable of running asset ( once I don't have to many other apps running) and this has 256mb RAM So you should be fine with either of the above. I'd be inclined to go for the 4 bay but just insert 2 disks, then you have plenty of room to increase your storage capacity as if hires does fully take off, they do take up a lot more space than CD rips. 

 

Currently I'm listening to a playlist which has just gone from the Stones factory girl to Fables of Faustus, Mingus, with flac being transcoded to wav and increased to 24 bit to allow replay gain to work without sound quality loss and my Qute has never sounded better.  I can't imagine asking asset to do anymore work than I'm currently asking of it. 

 

 

SJB

Posted on: 10 August 2014 by garyi

Hmack, intel nuc 92 quid delivered. Practically silent, dual core 2.13 so far more powerful than the cheaper qnaps and a 3 tb harddrive is like 70 quid.

 

A great option to explore, powerful, nearly silent and could if wanted be a fully fledge audio solution as daphile will happily output direct to dsd/usb enabled dacs.

Posted on: 11 August 2014 by SB

Thanks for all the advice, much appreciated