NAS setup if you had your time again...

I'd do exactly the same again - FLAC files, Netgear switch, Syno NAS, Minim UPNP and transcoding. For me, it's the best option, and not even expensive (relatively). No RAID, which isn't relevant to my household set-up, and inexpensive ethernet cables. It's been flawless.

A QNAP NAS and Asset would be equally good, and next time I get a NAS I'll probably do that, but more out of curiosity than because there's anything wrong with what I have now. 

I wouldn't do anything differently because at each stage of adopting streaming I did the things that sounded best and made the most sense to me at the time. The beauty of ripping and streaming is that you are not forced down one inflexible path. When I got my HDX, dedicated streamers were thin on the ground. I got some years good use out of it before it slipped behind the sound quality curve compared to running Asset into NDS from a NAS. But it was a top quality solution at its price point, and one of the best quality solutions at any price for some time. FLAC has never sounded as good as WAV to me so I wouldn't do that any differently either.

If I was starting from scratch today I would obviously omit some of my historical steps.  There is much more choice and quality now.  And if I was starting a whole system from scratch I'd be seriously considering French and Scottish alternatives.  But I'd still be using WAV. 

The main thing I would (and did) change is not running the wired connection to my Unitiserve all the way back through the switch and router to my phone line. It's amazing how much electrical energy can be carried down such a thin wire - in this case, a direct lightning strike annihilated all of the aforementioned kit as well as a heavy mahogany cabinet in which it lived, made an extremely loud bang, and filled the room with smoke. If it happens again, I doubt the insurance company will cough up.

use FLAC Files through  NDX - have been very happy, even more so with the move to Asset - best advise was rip once rip right - also get a good backup on sep drive

Backup, backup again, and ideally make a third backup!

But as general advice... use a NAS which supports MinimServer, ideally supports a modern filing system such as BTRFS or ZFS which can report and correct bit rot.  Simple mirror'd drives.  

Rip to FLAC and spend some time on working out a tagging methodology which works for you.  Consider (for example) with classical adding tags for Work/Composition and Movement; these can then easily be combined to create the track Title tag.  Also add Conductor and Orchestra - such tags just add to flexibility when it comes to browsing your music.

I'd do two things differently. First, rip to flac and thence to mp3 if required, rather than only to mp3. I started ripping CDs a long time ago for use with an iPod. Re-ripping isn't a great deal of fun. Not really a problem nowadays with file sizes being easy to accommodate etc. Thankfully now done.

Second, be obsessive about tagging. Hunting down incomplete, incorrect or missing tags sprinkled throughout a collection is a lot more hassle than spending a small amount of extra time making sure everything's right in the first place.

Actually, 2.5, learn that tagging formats can matter - getting an errant AC/DC mp3 track to appear in the list with its flac brethren rather than under AC really did my head in until I figured it out yesterday!

I wouldn't do anything different.. I have DSD, ALAC, FLAC and WAV files in my media stores. I use two separate UPnP media servers running on their own micro servers.. This allows me to seperate my NASs from my media playout for optimum SQ and performance.. I let the media server transcode the media, apart from the DSD,  to WAV PCM.

i use two UPnP servers as I have found.. and it is subtle, but noticeable on long immersive listening sessions, that my Asset on my RPi sounds better than my MinimServer on my RPi2 into my NDX .. but the latter is more responsive for navigating and searching my growing collection and does DSD.

in the late 90s when I started streaming I ripped some of my CDs to MP3 using LAME. Although I don't use this content  for the most part now, and have replaced it with lossless I still have it... Clearly I wouldn't do this now.. But in the late 90s the world looked different ... WAV was too big and FLAC didn't exist...

Mike-B posted:

Synology - Synology DLNA/UPnP Media Server (I have Minimserver loaded & have used it)

All wired LAN (just changed to Meicord Cat6)  - Netgear GS105v4 (with iPower)  

Hi Mike-B, what's iPower on your switch?

enjoy

ken

ken c posted:   

Hi Mike-B, what's iPower on your switch?

 

good day

i'd like to know with a NAS direct into usb ndac how does it sounds ?

it's the way i'd like to go but not sure about the final SQ result any advices will be helpful

i found very little around to be convinced to buy or not a nas or streamer

thank you

Silent.

A NAS drive connects via an Ethernet cable not a USB cable. If you intend to use an nDac or other USB DAC, you will need to feed it using server software on a computer or a mac mini.

With synology you can connect via usb playback output to ndac and used there DS audio app

is it correct? synology users could confirmed

is someone tried this set up and how is the SQ ?

Hi Mike, which voltage do you need for the GS105? There also seems to be something about polarity inverters, which presumably is not needed? Thanks!

It's 12 volts with the GS1xx range.

marc john posted:

With synology you can connect via usb playback output to ndac and used there DS audio app

is it correct? synology users could confirmed

is someone tried this set up and how is the SQ ?

The ndac has a usb port (for playing files of pen drives etc)  but unlike its little brother (the V1) it is not a USB DAC and so wouldn't play ball with the Synology. 

O.K

if i can't use the rear usb port on the ndac with a Nas to read files why it's working with a mini mac?

I'm confused the best way to get hi-fi sound in my naim gear !! using a nas

any help

I doubt it's connected directly via USB to the Mac mini - it'll be via either optical toslink or if USB then via a USB to S/PDIF converter and using one of the coaxial inputs on the nDAC. The DAC V1 can connect directly to the Mac Mini's via USB as this has an Asynchronous USB input. 

according to naim dac last upgrade only usb port can read dsd  up to 128

if I want to have access is a stick the only way, i'm more confused  

Yes you're correct but the USB port on the ndac will only support DSD files from a memory stick. It cannot connect directly to a USB port on a computer.

It can take DSD via the S/PDIF connection from a suitable source which is where the Mac mini and a USB to S/PDIF converter comes in. There's been a few threads on it so worth a search.

Here is one to get you going 

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...o-ndac-through-spdif

it can take dsd only up to 64 with S/PDIF, how i can get 128 from a synology Nas

i'd like to know the good viable connection before i buy any more gear. i found no clear solution reading old posts maybe i didn't found the good one

thanks James i will go throught this post i hope it will answer

In direct answer to the OP:

Metadata!!! I would start by thinking very carefully about metadata and what I will want for sorting, reseatch how the streamer library allows or encourages sorting, assess what metadata typically is -and isn't- consistent between different CDs and downloads, plan how I want the metadata to work, with minimum adjustments to each new album: All that before starting, though in reality it takes a good few albums to find the common variants - and then make sure I fix the metadata on every album as I add it.

The mistake I made was ripping 100s of LPs and 100s of CDs before having a streamer and understanding the problems...

Like Simon I started encoding back in mid 90's. This was using a Dos program called l3enc and my PC hard drive was a massive 1GB in size.  It took loads of time to encode and had I known now what I did then, I wouldn't have spent the time doing, as going 128 up to 320 over the years and re doing takes time and now it's done better in 5 mins.

Now I'm going through for the final time - dual encoding of uncompressed FLAC (because of the tagging vs WAV) and 320k MP3 - because it works in the car, with lo brow iTunes streaming etc. I have separate folder tree's for the FLAC, MP3 and Blu/DVD audio.  For FLAC it's the max info I can get out of my CD's and if a new format comes along I will convert using the FLAC and 'set and forget'.  I'm also paying great attention to multi disc sets i.e. So a 4 disc set plays continuous rather than split into 4 album folders, remastered versions of the same album name, correct art work and track info.  Making sure it's correct at time of encode rather than fixing after the fact.

That said when I got my 4 bay QNAP in 2012, I wish I had got the 6 bay as I think that will have more future proofing, but I'm still a few years away from having to get a new one. At the time I bought 5 3TB Hitachi drives ( which were the biggest size at the time) - 4 for the NAS and one spare. When formatted and put into RAID 5 it went down to just over 8TB usable space.  I have music, Digital films and DSLR raw photos on the NAS, so the space was getting used up and the speed wasn't as good as I thought.  I made sure the backups were good and formatted the drives and put them in JBOD ( Just a bunch of Disk ) and the transfer speed was better and I had just under 11TB of space, of which currently I have just under 5TB free - and still a ways to go on the music encoding :-(

If I was starting now, I'd do the rips in FLAC/MP3 dual encode. Get a 6 bay NAS, with 6TB SSD's, in JBOD format.  And get some cheap stand alone 6TB drives for backup.  That should have enough future proofing.

Just some general advice ... if you are using larger drives (over 4TB statistically but worthwhile for 2TB +) RAID5 is no longer recommended / advisable as in the event of a drive failure, the rebuilding process is almost guaranteed to come across an unrecoverable error so causing the whole array to fail.