Best Nas

QNAP have a silent NAS product, no experience of it though.

I have one of their standard NAS units, a TS-421 (running Asset) with WD Red NAS drives. the drives themselves are very clunky in operation and you can definitely hear them spin up from power saving mode. If you want truly silent then you are going to have install SSD drives which will be significantly more expensive.

Assetnas is excellent and comes preconfigured with Asset upnp, hence the name, its not silent but its certainly not noisy and it is ultra reliable

I have two Synology DS214play that run totally silent with WD Reds. I like their software and have had no problems.

I also have Synology DS214 & WD Reds.  It lives in a small cabinet in my listening room & is practically silent,  the only noise thats audible is during a shutdown & restart & thats just the warning peeps.  

Synology do not support other UPnP servers,  but Synology's own (included package ) Media Server,  its as good as anything. The one annoyance is it will not transcode 24-bit without reducing to 16-bit,  it does not affect me as all my audio is .wav anyhow.  But I wouldn't not be surprised if Synology have a DSM upgrade to solve that sometime soon.  

I run Minimserver on both of mine.

Mike-B originally posted:

"The one annoyance is it will not transcode 24-bit without reducing to 16-bit,  it does not affect me as all my audio is .wav anyhow"

I would also endorse the Synology DS212 and DS214 with WD Reds - I'm very happy with mine. But I expect that QNAP units would be just as good.

I would also point out that in many people's opinion (certainly mine. although not often expressed hereabouts), the jury is out on the benefits of transcoding to WAV from FLAC on the fly. I might run some more tests myself, but I have yet to hear a difference between WAV and FLAC files on any of my streaming devices.  

Still, this is what Naim recommends, so ....  Maybe age is catching up on me?

Thanks Dayjay, 

I rang Ripcaster up ( Great Service BTW) and after some sound advice i have sorted the new Qnap silent HS-251 NAS. It has the Intel chip on board and will be pre-configured ready to go with Asset premium and 2 x 2Tb WD Reds in raid mode.

Happy days

thanks

Ingenius 

Excellent, I'm sure it will serve you well.  Best wishes

Ingenius, I was considering the HS-251 myself but was told that when used with standard hard drives the they tend to overheat and shut down automatically.  With SSDs this is not an issue apparently, but given the current cost of SSDs in the size I require (2 x 3TB) I decided to wait.  I'd be interested to hear how this set up works for you.

@Ingenious - glad to hear you got a solution :-)

@Mike-B - I had thought that the latest DSM 5 did not downgrade the stream when transcoding? Might be wrong. And just to say, Synology will support at least one other UPNP server as I use Minimserver on Synology and it works very well, including transcoding. It's available in the package centre, albeit with a fair bit of faffing around with Java. Once installed, it's painless.

Hi Solid Air,   I am not sure about the latest DSM-5 & transcoding as I don't have anything other than .wav,  but it did not play at 24-bit about 2 rev ago.  Next time I get a .flac I will give it a go just to try it - not that it will make me change from all .wav tho'.

I did not say Synology will not work with anything other than their own Media Server, I said they will not support non-Synology servers, this means helping users with other servers on a Synology.  I know Synology's work with many others such as Asset & Minimserver, but also that some others are more problematic. Although Synology don't help,  the Synology Forum contributors look to be very helpful.

Hi digger628

mine arrives today so will report back but there is a member on this forum called phosphocreatine who reports on a current thread " need a new Nas" as follows:

" I have recently bought a Qnap HS-251 with 4Tb Red disc and I am very happy:

To serve music to my NDX I use Twonky (that was already installed on the Qnap); Assetnas (that I bought on the dbpoweramp site) with which I transcode Flac to Wav on the fly and Minimserver (got free from the Qnap store) as alternative server. Everything works flawlessly. The HS-251 can act also as XMBC server, Internet access for TV etc.

I can only recommend "

So.. No mention of overheating with standard drives, and i am sure after the lengthy discussion i had with Ripcaster which included reliability ( point no 4 in my OP),  that they would have mentioned this being an issue to the point of it not being an option. 

May i ask who were you told by, that there was an issue with overheating and shutting down when loaded with standard drives??

thanks

Ingenius

Hi Ingenious !

I can confirm you that my HS-251 works fine with Red HDD's without overheating. It is now some weeks that I don't switch it off !

The only thing I did (but I don't think that has influences on overheating) was to buy a linear power supply from HDplex and attach the HS-251 on it  in order to have a "clean power" for my music.

Hi Phosphocreatine, 

attached mine copied all my stuff over and it works like yours. No overheating during a large copy session . interesting to hear a few more details on your PSU if you don't mind sharing

thanks

Ingenius

HDPLEX is a little American company that produces fanless PC cases and PSU's. If you go in their web site you can see photos, details and so one. 1 year ago before buying the NDX I built a music server with their case and linear PSU. The linear PSU has 2 power rails (12 and 19 Volts) and due to the fact that the 12 Volts plug was free I tried with the HS-251 and it worked ! If you are asking me how this PSU can affect the sq I don't know because I didn't try the original Qnap one but in the worst case it will do absolutely nothing apart from looking really gorgeous on my Hifi rack and it was at 0 cost for me ! I don't know if I would invest 280 Euros just to power the Qnap !

Cheers

Hi phosphocreatine,

 I am nearly 3 weeks in full use with my HS 251 and couldn't be happier, its Rock solid and no overheating. Digger628 didn't have the courtesy to answer my question as to who the wise old sage was that told him that they were prone to overheating when fitted with normal drives. This forum is informative but some folk do spout some c**p without foundation or a willingness to explain with some substance,  their statements.

regards

ingenius

Hi Ingenious,

Please bear in mind that some things do behave differently in different people's domestic environments, it's not always without foundation (even if they haven't explained properly).

Hi Huge,

i think this may be the case in isolation, but I believe you are being too charitable in general. On this forum, There does on occasion , seem to be a smart arsed culture which can be a little undermining to those who have been brave enough to try something new. I still have had no response to a valid and relevant question that I requested of a poster,  who made a statement on the thread I originated. I believe this response to be of interest to other readers of this thread, who may be interested or thinking of purchasing similar.

but I take your point

regards

ingenius

Hi Ingenius,

Sorry for the late reply.  It might surprise you to learn that I do have a life outside this forum and only manage to catch up from time to time. These last two weeks have been particularly busy so I have neglected to keep your needs uppermost in my list of priorities.  Please forgive me.

To answer your question, it was the dealer who advised me that they had a couple of units returned due to overheating.  I'm glad to hear that you have not experienced this problem and suppose it might just be that these cases were due to more intensive use - several simultaneous users staming music, movies etc.  So I will maybe give this unit a try.

Hi digger628,

thanks for the reply, I appreciate that. Well I don't stream movies or have any other demand on it other than the music streamer.. In which case it is rock solid and reliable, and I can recommend it as a silent option. You can Interogate the event log if if ever falls over to see the cause, it monitors temperature also in there I believe.

regards

ingenius