What NAS are you using?

Go to the Synology site. Have a look at the DS214play. In the UK this is about £500 with 2 3TB WD RED drives.

Phil and Huge each gave you some good advice.  You cannot go wrong following either path - QNAP or Synology.

_____________________________

(Or, stated another way, no matter whichever path you follow there is still a decent chance that some home networking issue with your home router and/or 400 year old foot-thick walls in your home will have you back here complaining that Naim do not put enough memory in their players, that their new app is hopelessly broken, and that Naim were lying when they said that streaming is the "Future of Hi Fi" because you cannot play Qobuz lossless streaming.  But I digress . . . )

OK, sticking my neck out here...

In my opinion, it depends on what you mostly listen to, and how comfortable you are about diagnosing network and software faults

If you are more comfortable with sorting out networks than software issues, then QNAP and Asset.

If you are more comfortable with sorting out software issues than networks, then Synology with Synology Media Server (take the time to get the tagging right though), then migrate to MinimServer.

If you listen to a lot of classical music then MinimServer has an advantage, but takes a lot of thinking things through and understanding the 'manual' (?) to get it right.

There will also be other answers!

Oh yes, and connect it through a metal cased unmanaged switch and use wired Ethernet rather than WiFi

I use a Qnap. I used Twonky for two years, but have now dumped that. Too wonky! PLEX Media Server is what I use now, and comes free with Qnap and Synology. Excellent artwork and metadata. On the odd occasion it gets it wrong, PLEX lets you add the arwork of your choice, and also tag within the server.

Gurbinder, I've never owned a QNAP, but I can attest that the Synology is easy to set up, easy to use, and its Media Server built-in UPnP server works.  It might be said to be 'plain vanilla,' but it works and will let you find your music by Artist, or Album name, or will let you browse with a folder view based on how you've set up your folders. 

It does a few funny things which I'm not sure are flaws or user error on my part. When I browse by "Genre," it shows me all of the tracks tagged with the given genre, but does not organize them first into albums.  Why that is . . . I don't know.  But I don't find it very useful at all.  But basic Artist and Album name browsing works fine. 

^ brilliant!

Hi Bart,  open Media Server > General Settings > DMA Menu Settings,

if you select Advanced Style you will get more browsing options & includes Genre/Artist & Genre/Artist/Album.  It does present complete albums as well as individual tracks contained in an Artist folder.

I opted for the QNAP 419PII Turbo NAS - approx. 30mths ago based on reviews and style.  My main problem at the time was: I didn't know what I needed to know in order to make an informed decision and these last 30mths have been a steep (if not totally straight) learning curve.

I've posted elsewhere that I have a problem with this NAS due to its limited RAM ... 512MB ... which becomes overloaded if I'm amending tags or adding more music files whilst also streaming music.  even running full scans of the music files causes the RAM meter to shoot up into the orange.

It's not been trouble free: i had a major crash one evening when doing a backup from one of my PCs to the NAS (a routine set-time procedure) and it needed QNAP support to get it working again.  As this happened just before Christmas there was a delay but I have great admiration for the support people ... my contact did all that was necessary and it's been almost trouble-free since.

Where I did have an issue was with the HDDs.  I took the trouble to source drives which were on the QNAP recommended list - I opted for Seagate ST1500DL003 - only to find that these were not trouble-free and as a direct result of the NAS problem above I found that Seagate did not recommend these drives for NAS use!  One of the regular QNAP forum members (who is well-known for his abrupt and often less than helpful replies) advised me I should have bought/installed recommended HDDs ... he was silent when I referred to the QNAP recommended list!

Moving on, I replaced all four drives with Seagate ST200VN000 drives and I'm happy to report that 12+ mths on they all appear to be working fine.  Further, they are particularly silent apart from the odd start-up sound and some churning when the RAM usage is high (as mentioned above).  The NAS sits on my desk about 12inch/30cm from my keyboard and I don't think I'd have any problem with it residing in the TV/Hi-fi room should this be necessary (I have it CAT6 wired to the router and from there to my NDX).

So, hardware done ... I'm not quite happy because of the RAM issue but will upgrade to another NAS with 4x as much RAM at some stage and use this QNAP as a backup.

For server, I use a range:

I tried QNAP's own but this was useless (or, at least, it wouldn't work for me without me uploading my music files)

Twonkey ... I use regularly though it is a pain

Logitech (QNAP based) ... my wife prefers this as it reads the artist directory (some quirks)

MinimServer ... I know this is good and I want to use it more but I've yet to understand how to deal with tagging and, more importantly, getting the artists/albums to appear in a sensible manner.

Asset (PC-based) ... I use regularly but it has its limitations, and the treatment of "The" in the album's title is most annoying!

Asset (QNAP-based) ... this is easily my favourite but it is heavy on RAM and I have to disable it when messing around with tags/adding music.

For Asset and MinimServer I have them set to transcode from FLAC to WAV.

I have been ripping a lot of CD boxed sets in recent months ... coming to an end soon ... at which point I shall spend more time learning how to use the servers (esp. MinimServer).

Music: FLAC lossless, heading towards and will exceed 49,000 tracks split over 9 genres (mostly: Soundtrack / Classical / Easy-Listening) and then by artist / album (where artist for classical is the composer not the performer).

Mitch (still learning ...)

Mitch...I have a Qnap, and use PLEX (available in the app section). Have you tried it? I have mentioned it further back in this thread. I give it 5*.

David (Forever learning!)

Hi Mitch,

The Seagate ST1500DL003 drive is the Barracuda Green, this is a low-energy consumption HDD designed for intermittent light use in desktop computers not for 24x7 operation in a NAS environment.

The Seagate ST200VN000 drive is the Barracuda 7200.10, again this is designed for intermittent moderate to heavy use in desktop computers not for 24x7 operation in a NAS environment.  Seagate don't really recommend these drives for NAS use either (they're just not as much of a problem as the greens).

N.B. Update to the above.

There appears to be two forms of the VN series drives, one is intended for NAS use, the other is a variant of the older Barracuda 7200.10.  The NAS one has a blue label and is labelled NAS HDD.

Using Desktop drives in NAS enclosures may well work, but is still a risk of unreliability as they're not really built for that use.

On the RAM usage front:  Just because almost all the RAM is in use doesn't indicate any sort of problem, much of that RAM usage could well be in use simply for caching.  In fact if you're editing tags directly on the NAS drive itself this is likely to be the case

Cache prediction for R/W access from an interactive application is notoriously unreliable, so systems tend to use a brute force 'cache as much as possible approach' and that uses a lot of memory at low priority.

Thank you for the suggestion.  No, I've seen the name mentioned but have yet to try this but will do so once I have completed my CD ripping (only another 40 or so CDs to go ... )

Cheers,

Mitch

An observation on NAS drives (after a little research)...

WD Reds default to TLER disabled

WD Red Pros default to TLER enabled

Seagate NAS (VN series) default to TLER enabled

This suggests that the basic WD Reds are optimised for non RAID NAS configurations where as the others are optimised for RAID.

Thank you for the info ... as i stated I purchased the original drives because they were on QNAP's recommended list.  When I had the NAS problem I contacted Seagate to see what their comment was ... i.e. was the NAS problem due to the Seagate drives?  I got an email back from Seagate support which advised me that the drives recommended by QNAP were not recommended by Seagate ... and a link to Seagate webpages which led me to buy the existing Seagate drives.  Maybe, given the passage of time, these drives are no longer recommended but back in Jan'14 they certainly were: I wasn't going to make the same mistake a second time.

As and when I think there is a risk of failure I shall replace the drives (or when I replace the NAS) with the then recommended drives but as I have 5 spare drives presently (which I use for backups of the NAS) I don't really want to junk the 4 I have installed ... and which appear to work perfectly well.

As for the RAM issue, I listed my query on the Asset forum and was advised that 512MB is not sufficient for my "large" library.  I've learned to work round the problem (the music simply stops when the RAM usage hits 95% or so) by disabling Asset until such times as I'm not messing around with tags, etc.  With Asset disabled I rarely have this problem and viewing the RAM usage it rarely hits 75-80%.  I particularly like Asset because it splits my multiple Artists / Composers into individual names whereas none of the other servers do (at least: I haven't yet found out how to! )

Mitch

Interesting ... even quoting directly from the WD Red overview web page they say that WD Red drives are...

"Specifically designed and tested for small office and home office, 1-8 bay NAS systems and PCs with RAID. (For systems that use more than 8 bays, please consider WD Red Pro hard drives.*)"

...whereas for the Red Pro's they say...

"Specifically designed and tested for medium to large business NAS applications with 8 – 16 bays.

(For systems that use less than 8 bays, please consider WD Red hard drives.*)"

...but that definitely says that Reds are optimised for RAID which *SHOULD* mean that TLER is enabled by default on them - otherwise they're not optimised for RAID.

Of course that leaves things a little ambiguous for their intention for 8-bay NAS users as in theory either type of drive is designated as suitable. ;-)

I have gone for the 6Tb Red's in my 8 bay Synology as the Red Pro's weren't available at the time and also the Red Pro's aren't available as a 6Tb drive and 28Tb just isn't enough. :-D

Phil

I have my NAS (4 Seagate drives) set at Raid 6 ...

Mitch

Hi Phil, I'll try and dig out the source of the information, it was from someone actually testing them (possibly AnandTech, but maybe one of the other H/W testers).

Interestingly if they actually got it wrong, then there's no good option for spanning or JBOD!

I am using a Synology DiskStation DS214se with 2 x Western Digital 2TB Red SATA (WD20EFRX) drives, and MimimServer. was until recently used with SONOS Connect, NAD amplifier, CEntrance DAC, and Dali loudspeakers. Now using with a Naim Mu-so, and very happy. Can definitely recommend. 

I have a Synology DS213+ with two Seagate 4GB NAS drives.  A Synology DX513, 5 bay expansion using 5 4GB Western Digital Reds for additional back ups.

I have the original rips (FLAC) across two hard drives on my PC.  All the rips on my NAS and a further back up on the expansion.

I recently bought a network switch - Netgear ProSafe GS108 for about 30 quid - and the speed difference in transferring files is immense as my router is 100Mb speeds.  The switch is 10 times that.

The switch also prioritises media streams - music and video - so if someone in the house is downloading like crazy my stream is unaffected.

One of my Seagates died recently and I could still stream my music collection, all 770GB of it, no problems.

Got a replacement HD, stuck it in the NAS then clicked 'Manage' and it rebuilds the Raid.

A good tip is to make sure you're happy with the tagging before putting albums on the NAS as you can write tags much, much faster on your PC than you can on a NAS.

The NAS can store all your photographs too and you can view them on your TV, phone or tablet.

I also back up a lot of things there too including my operating system of the PC.

PC With 4TB WD Red as Main Music Download and Store

WD My Cloud 4TB as Backup at Home

WD My Cloud 4TB as Backup at Work (Remote)

Headless PC Running Asset converting to Wav

Tagging Mp3 Tag (7 Tags Only)

Sitecom 7 Port Gigabit Router

Superuniti

SF Liuto Floorstanders

Musicmad that is unfortunate on the fact your RAM is soldered onto the Motherboard (like some other recent Apple products). 

But it does give others something to consider (the upgradeability of the RAM) when looking at a NAS model, or if it can't be upgraded, getting a device with a higher RAM number. 

If you aren't updating the tags when streaming does the system work well ?

Yes, if not quite 100% of the time!  Certainly the old Logitech~SB Touch was more reliable re: not falling-over and for flexibility but the sound quality improvement when I upgraded to the NDX makes all the on-going issues worthwhile.

But, yes, if Naim UPnP with the NDX was as user-friendly as LMS I'd be a very happy man ...

That said, some of the servers (esp. Asset) do provide me with more flexibility than I had with LMS so I shouldn't complain.

As and when I've reached the end of my CD ripping - which will take me to well over 49,000 tracks but hopefully less then the 1TB Seagate drive on which the WMA rips are stored (pre conversion to FLAC on the NAS) - I shall concentrate on learning how to use the Servers (especially MinimSever) better.  As much as I read the relevant forums I can't understand how I'm supposed to amend tags.  The one attempt I made crashed MinimServer!

Anyhow, yes, the lack of RAM is annoying and I'm thinking of replacing the NAS with a 2GB version which hopefully will solve this "issue".

As for amending file tags, I do try to get everything right on the PC~WMA version before converting to FLAC on the NAS but there's always something and the program I use "Tag&Rename" is very good at so-doing.

Mitch

I take it that you are using WMA lossless, otherwise there's little point in converting to FLAC as you'll already have lost a shed load of information from the data.

Yes

Apart from one album in mp3 which a friend passed onto me ... it sounds distinctly muffled in comparison!

Mitch

Sorry if my question doesn't make sense, but I'm very "new" in streaming: would it be possible forme to use Asset UpNp into my configuration (dB Poweramp for Mac, NDX, Synology NAS)?