What NAS are you using?

I'm using a 2TB WD My Book World, with Twonky 5, and no, I wouldn't really recommend it.  I suspect that at least some of the clunkiness of the Naim app which I experience is down to the server.  Will eventually get around to getting a Synology.

That said, it does work, so the urge to change isn't that strong just yet.  And I recently found, courtesy of Dr. Po, IIRC,  that Twonky would display proper resolution artwork if you go into settings>receivers and change the receiver type listed against the MAC address of your streamer (in my case, a UQ2) and phone/tablet (in my case LG G3) from whatever the default is to 'something else'.  The 'something else' depends on what version of Twonky you have - later versions have entries for Naim gear, but I tried 'Kenwood Media Player', and it worked.

At the moment I have a Qnap TS-112, and use my iMac and portable USB drive for backups. I used to use Twonky, but as you say, the artwork is crap! Also, and more annoyingly, It displays and plays my albums alphabetically in Folder View, which is how I prefer to browse.

I now use PLEX media server. Crystal clear artwork, and excellent metadata. On the rare occasion it gets it wrong, you can edit your artwork and tags. Unfortunately, PLEX is not available for your WD Mybook Live, but it is available for PC and Mac for free! What ever you decide on, dump Twonky.

If my Qnap blew up tomorrow, I'd get a Synology, with PLEX of course!

QNAP TS-210 with Asset.  Hard disks are WD Red.   I used Twonky for a while and to be fair it worked fine until about a year in it just plain borked and I could only see a few albums, spent a couple days trying to fix then binned it.  I have tried Minimserver and Plex but prefer Asset.  Music is mainly Rock very little Classical.  Rips are done with dbPoweramp to FLAC via a PC.  

I sync the FLAC folder with another QNAP a TS-110 over the Internet to another location.  

Asset transcodes FLAC to WAV.   

Synology are well respected NAS boxes also, I helped a fellow Naim user fix his streaming and his NAS was a Synology and it seemed on a par with the QNAP feature wise.

Gus

Synology DS214

Synology's own Media Server UPnP (latest rev DSM 5.1 5022)

WD Red 2x 2TB in RAID-1 hybrid (Hybrid is a Synology feature)

Would I recommend it = 100%

Plug & Play, its simple, does not promise bells & whistles & fancy artwork , it just works

The only enhancements I've made over the stnd (default) is to set DMS Style Menu to Advanced & SSDP to 60.

2 x 2tb buffalo linkstation 410 NAS drives - 1 as main drive running itunes server (inbuilt) the other for back up and 24bit flacs.

Both are wired via ethernet to a netgear gigabit switch then my router (netgear wndr 3700), the UQ2 is also connected via ethernet to the router as is my laptop.

All flacs are converted to ALAC/all CD's ripped to ALAC, with flac files backed up to two other external USB drives as well.

I know its very much a belt and braces set up as regards backup but having lost an albums worth of my own music as well as all my digital photography/scanned film photography due to a past hard drive failure I don't take any chances these days.

Synologyy 512....

8 bays with 4tb drives each

set to the raid level allowing for two seperate drive failures... Before the raid fails...

(so two disks can go down and I can hot swap replacements without losing any data)

this is set up is undervalued by most people... Raid is not necessarily considered a back up... Call any support and they will say if raid array is your primary storage... Still back it up.

the 512 allows for auto backups to two seperate western digital world books.  Music and blue Rays are on the back up list...since I do not tend to keep the disks.

battery backup with auto power down....

raid arrays are sensitive!  They do not like the power drops or power spikes...

so battery back up is key...

additionally... Consider taking a backup copy off site... Fire or water will kill all your storage should disaster strike....

hope this helps!

Uniti Serve acts as a very good UPNP server.  Adding a linear power supply improves sound quality. 

Raspberry Pi running Asset as media server using various NASs including Netgear ReadyNAS. Advantages: reliability, capability, price and sound quality.

Simon

I use a Netgear ReadyNas RN104.  4 X 1tb Western Digital Black drives using XRAID (Raid 5).  I think the blacks are probably overkill as they are enterprise quality drives with 5 year warranty.

Daily backups onto a Netgear ReadyNas RN102.  This has 2 1.5tb disks in JBOD mode.  This NAS powers up overnight automatically to do the backups.  I also take a separate backup on to an external hard disk.

UPNP Server is Asset running on a Raspberry PI.  Works really well as Simon has already said and I don't have any plans to change this.  The only issue I have had is that the PI became unbootable once when I accidentally disconnected the power from it without properly shutting it down first.  I do have a UPS but this doesn't protect the PI from the idiot fumbling about in the understairs cupboard! 

Richard

Same here apart from I think I would recommend it (based on price and simplicity). I have 3 streamers and everything works well. My flac's seem to do what I want, once I have edited the metadata to my satisfaction and the 'naim' app (on two iPad minis) is not clunky for me. I backup 'as I go' manually to a MyPassport and also keep d/ls in a folder on my main PC.

An Assetnas, which is a small, silent, windows server running Asset for my music needs and a seperate server for my video streaming.  I back up to a seperate nas and to my PC.  The Assetnas is superb and I would very much recommend it. 

Have QNAP single bay & have just had to recently throw a 4tb Red in it..... which is max. size can handle. When need to go beyond 4tb I'd choose QNAP again as has never missed a beat.

That said was relying on Twonky which did drive me nuts & in fact eventually droves  me to a UnitiServe as came to conclusion that, as an techo imbecile, was only way to manage music easily & display properly.

QNAP TS421 with 2 x 3TB WD Red

Running Asset

Synology DS214play

MinimServer

WD Red 2x 2TB in RAID-1 hybrid

Synology DS112j, WD Red 2TB

Synology's own Media Server UPnP (latest rev DSM 5.1 5022)

Yes, I would recommend it for it's simplicity - if you get the tagging right, it just works.

I also use a network switch to (mostly) separate the audio network data from my broadband router and computer, this reduces the risk of network issues.

QNAP fanless NAS HS-251 with 2x 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs and Asset UPnP server as music storage in the living room with the HiFi system. Completely noise-less!

It also looks more like a hifi device, less like a computer or network device. No fiercely blinking LEDs all over.

If you can hide away the NAS in another room, the noise issue is of course less important.

Synology is in the same league (I have one in the office mainly for backup duty).

But specially for music use, keep in mind that there's a native Asset UPnP server for QNAP. But it's not available for Synology or most other bought NAS.

Intel NUC running Win7 and MM4.

Previously tried WD and Netgear offerings but I was sick of having to play with telnet and cli commands when things went wrong. The Intel solution has been like a breath of fresh air. Super easy to manage and never missed a beat!

Like @Huge, I use:

Synology DS112j, WD Red 2TB

Synology's own Media Server UPnP (latest rev DSM 5.1 5022)

Plus a (Netgear) network switch to (mostly) separate the audio network data from my broadband router and computer, this reduces the risk of network issue.

However, I generally use Minimserver for UPNP, and transcode from FLAC to WAV.

Works very well - recommended.

+1

i use it with 2x 2Tb Western digital Reds And Asset upnp installed on it. Superb .. Never gets hot and apart from the odd firmware update stays ready on the network ready to go. doddle to configure and set up.

regards

ingenius

qnap ts- 251 2x4tb 

no upnp.. Hosts an iTunes library mounted as share to a Mac mini

QNAP Fanless TS119, 2TB, running Twonky.

Used as  back up for my Unitiserve, and holds all my non-CD rips and hi res downloads (my US is the original 1TB version which is not able to store additional downloads on).

Unitiserve collates all music on the network and presents them through the App so I don't directly use Twonky, but if it has any part to play in what I see from the QNAP via the Unitiserve / App, I can't say I have any issues with it.

I know some people aren't keen on the QNAPs, but once it was set up, it's been rock solid.

Synology DS212j 2-bay NAS with 2 x 4Tb WD Red (recently upgraded from 2 x 2TB) in Synology's hybrid RAID and running Synology Media Server and recently installed MinimServer.

Easy to set up (Minimserver a little more difficult) and runs smoothly. I'd recommend it to anyone starting out.

Regards,

Vlad

Synology DS212, 

Synology's own Media Server UPnP (latest rev DSM 5.1 5022)

WD Red (2 x 2TB - mirrored)

TP-Link Network switches

I would very happily recommend both the Synology NAS and the pre-installed Synology media server.

I also find the Synology back-up utilities to be excellent & very user friendly. I regularly back up my NAS to an external hard drive that I locate elsewhere.

Wow! Majority are QNAP and Synology users.