NAS vs Re-purposed PC

The primary issue is that there does not appear to be a upnp streamer for macs that actually works.

THe built in services of say a QNAP are erxcellent and require very little to set up. You are obviosuly competent on mac, but its a whole different ball park setting up a mac (or a pc) to for instance to supply such services as supply access outside of the LAN, raid, etc.

The other aspect is power consumption and noise. I had a G5, an could them things ever fly. 

Finally, by selling the G5 but keeping the drives you could get a kick ass NAS, and a decent dac, enabling you to use the digitial facility of the express. Which will be a very significant upgrade right now.

@Nick 

It is an annoying fact that for the best sound into Naim gear you have only two real choices:

1. Mac into dec  (async usb or coax/optical)

2. Standalone UPnP Server/NAS (managed by Mac)

I'm making the perfectly reasonable assumption that you appear to be a man of discerning tastes who wishes to steer well clear of Windows.

For 1 you have a wide range of high quality dacs (M2Tech Young, Weiss, Naim ) - face little disruption in that you can continue to use Mac hardware/software and rip to aiff.

For 2 you shift everything into the UPnP world as there simply isn't a UPnP server for the Mac you would stomach for longer than a few minutes - believe me I have tried the all - simply dire. You can buy the UnitiServe which, though lovingly crafted, is still a ludicrously expensive XP based PC and live with using its Windows control software and paternalistic approach to network shares. Alternatively you can buy a high quality NAS (QNAP, Synology) for a simpler approach and manage the UPnP server from your Mac.

I struggled with deciding which route to take and really wanted to continue using my Macs to manage my music. In the end I choose Vortexbox as it gave me the best of both worlds. It removes the need to run UPnP on my Macs whilst allowing me to manage all aspects of my installation from a simple web GUI or with terminal. I have Bliss running on my server to manage the cover art and file structure with Picard and XLD on my Macs to manage the tagging and conversion of flac files.

I have run numerous Vortexbox installations on old Mac hardware but it needs Intel Processors so your G5 wouldn't work in this case. In any case Apple don't make it easy and bizzarely their EFI firmware is very fussy about running headless Linux servers. You could either continue to use the Powermac as Mac storage or swap out its G5 main board or an Asus Intel board and install Vortexbox, the cost would be minimal and you would get a fantastic server. 

In the end I put together a i3 based, 2 terabyte Vortexbox server that sits in a small case hidden away quietly pushing out music to my Naim gear. 

Tog

All good Tog. But what if your long term goal is an NDX? There seems to be a growing consensus that the NDX does not play FLAC files as well as WAV or at least that WAV on NDX sounds better. As far as I can make out there is currently no way to have Vortexbox serve up WAV files, even though it initially rips to WAV and you can adjust settings so that it keeps them stored too. In some of your very early posts you expressed a desire to upgrade to the NDX eventually. Are you going to have your VB serve FLAC?

I am asking because, although I have not heard what difference FLAC vs. WAV comes down to with the NDX, this is a lingering concern in the back of my mind and it has prevented me from going down the VB route so far.

Cheers

tp

Hi tp

By the time I get to the NDX - Naim will have released (or shown??) their new Summer streamers and we will know a little more about their intentions regarding Airplay. Things are changing quickly and the for a very small outlay ( £380 to date ) the Vortexbox gives me great flexibility ( UPnP & DAAP) whilst allowing me to adopt a different approach in the future if I need to.

I believe VB / MiniDLNA can be configured to dish up Wav - not sure how yet.

The jury is still out on flac v Wav on the NDX

Tog

How would airplay be of benefit to your VB based set up?

If you figure out how to do this, do let us know. Judging by what one of the administrators on the VB forum said serving WAV does not seem to be a focus of the project at all because VB has been developed primarily with Squeezbox and Sonos users in mind. Plus they do not believe that there is an audible difference between FLAC and WAV. But who knows, if enough people request it, it may get developed. Maybe more Naimees should post on the VB forum

Probably true. It would also be interesting to know from what system level onwards this becomes more apparent, if indeed the case..

Thanks

tp

Hi Gary -

Am in a similar situation to Nick.   Am enjoying my Mac laptops, iPad, etc., but am also using the NDX, so I need to provide the most reliable, flexible UPnP service I can find.  For me, right now, that is Asset on a separate Windows 7 PC.  IME, Asset does a few things very well:

1) Reliable - no reboots since initial install.  It and W7 have been 100% reliable for 2+ months.

2) Fast - everything of mine (other than iPad of course) is hard wired.  N-Stream response time is very good, and I have never experienced an NDX dropout, or hiccup of any sort.

3) Quick rescans - after I add new music files and folders, I remotely log in to my PC (using Remote Desktop Connection for Mac), hit the rescan button (am too impatient to wait for it to autoscan).  Within a few minutes, N-Stream sees those updates (my library is approx. 1500 rips and 600GB+ of FLAC files).

4) Trancodes FLAC to WAV.

My main complaint about Asset is its lack of intelligent downsampling.  Because the NDX has a 24/96 limitation, I would love for Asset to be able to downsample 24/192 to 24/96, and 24/176.4 to 24/88.2.  Unfortunately, the only option is downsample *everything* to 16/48.   As a result, I do no downsampling, and simply avoid adding any files larger than 24/96 to my music library.  No big deal really, and a pretty small complaint compared to how well it does all of the other stuff.

Still, if I could find a NAS that does everything that Asset does, and does it equally well, I would gladly re-purpose the PC server elsewhere.   Have tried to find descriptions of QNAP/Twonky setup options, but could not.   Saw a couple of high-level screen shots in their wiki, but that was about it.  

Can you see any reason why I could not replace Asset and my old NAS with a new QNAP?  If Twonky can do the downsampling I just described, that would be the icing on the cake!

Hook

PS - Nick - hopefully these questions help with your decision as well.   For me Asset is going to be a very tough act to follow.   And even though it would be nice to remove the extra network traffic, and put both the storage and the service behind one IP address, so far it has not been an issue for me.   My real issue is that my old NAS box (an almost 4-year old Buffalo Linkstation) is close to full.  If I cannot make a new NAS decision soon, am going to move my 320kbps MP3 folder (a copy of my FLAC folder) off the NAS and on to a USB drive to free up some space.   But I'm also thinking that at the 4 year mark, I am likely running on borrowed time with my current NAS...

Hi TP -

I cannot reliably tell the difference in my setup on a quick a/b.   Mrs. Hook said she thought that the NDX sounded a little better when Asset transcoded to WAV, but that was just for one quick sighted test.   Am hoping this upcoming weekend is a quiet one and, if so, am going to bribe her into yet another blind test.   She's pretty good at reliably detecting subtle differences in sound quality.

I figure better safe than sorry, and since there does not seem to be any impact on performance, I've left transcoding turned on.  There have been several times in the last couple of years where, even though I could not reliably pick up a difference on a quick a/b, the longer-term effects were noticeable.   These days, whenever I make a change, I try to listen for at least a week, and then look back at my notes to see if my listening sessions were longer and/or more enjoyable.  I may be mistaken, and maybe there may be better ways, but right now that is the only way I feel I can trust my decisions.

Hook

Yes - those VB guys really don't get the flac to wav transcoding gig at all - huh? They remain wav refusniks ... but in theory there is no reason why MiniDLNA shouldn't be able to serve up wav.

Asset is a fine bit of software - but I can't face the windows thing .... Nick should try running asset under Crossover Mac on the Powermac beast IMHO

Tog

There is a glimmer of hope then. I guess the good thing about VB being an open source project is that, if someone put his mind to it, VB could have this feature in future - whenever that is...

tp

Hi Hook,

It would be great if you found the time to run that test at some point and convince Mrs. Hook to spend some of her valuable time for the sake of us loonies, the forum will thank her greatly for her generous way

Just one thing, it might also be helpful to do the test with and without nDAC attached to NDX. If I remember correctly Simon reported that in his set up the nDAC took away the slight "harshness" that he heard when streaming FLAC. If it is not too much trouble of course...

Many thanks

tp

Asset IS a fine bit of software and since settling on it, life with Naim streaming has been rock solid (the same with the other UPnP players I have around).

I use both windows machines and Apple and for the life of me I can't figure out the huge bias against the Windows machines on so many music, hifi, sites.  I never and I truly mean never, have issuse with my Windows machines so I'm truly at a loss to understand the deep dislike.  If someone could enlighten me that would great.

PS.  I like (and own) Apple computers too by the way, in fact their iOS products and laptops are fantastic.

PPS. I was once taking classes in both Graphic Arts and Autocad at the same time and it was always the Apples in the Arts department that had problems and not the other way around.  The PCs in the Autocad lab were rock solid.

Back in the days of Mac OS8 - things were a bit flakey - but since Tiger Mac OS is very stable.

I too use both - under protest and can't imagine why anyone would use XP/Win 7 out of choice. The hardware is even worse HP, Dell and Lenovo - give me a break. All from the "Pin The Tail On The Donkey" school of design. The only thing I found that was worse were the Sequent Minis I had to use at Uni - Oh, and Postgres ...Ugh. 

However, I would like to know if there is a good UPnP server for NEXTstep!

It is probably an emotional thing - but a start menu to log off???

Tog

There are a number of installs on qnap that can be done by its gui. Installed is twonky 5, but you can install twonky 6 and also PS3 server, which is a DNLA server (read UPNP) that transcodes on the fly.

You are not the only one.  Strangely enough it is mostly a one way street it seems.  I dont like iTunes.  But not any more than I dislike WMP, or Winamp. 

The most hilarious thing is that I am CONSTANTLY asked by Mac honks that "why dont you just run Windows on a Mac?", in response to me saying I cant use one (work software, EAC, JRiver, UPNP etc).  It is THHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT important to them to use a Mac.  It is pure form over function.  Sure, I would use a Mac exclusively running XP or 7.... but why would I?  Makes no sense.

Then you get the "HATE MICROSOFT CROWD", like Apple and Jobs are ANY different than ANY other multi-billion dollar global company with shareholders.

Sometimes you get the super cool, typically annoying, logical combination of "MUST HAVE MACS" and "HATES MICROSOFT".  It is soooooooooooooooooo tired.  Moooooooooooo. 

That said I would never roll an Android phone/pad.  No thanks.  But if it ran iOS????  Sure why not.  If it was less than 25% of the cost, i would be into it.

-patrick

Sorry for the slow reaction to the excellent dialogue.  Thank you for the many thoughtful and generous responses!  (Must remember to post to Hook’s query on why we value this forum.)

My replies are in order of appearance:

@Tog:

The tantalizing unanswered Q in your first response is why you ultimately chose your #2 over #1.  I am planning an intermediary stop at MBPro > M-Audio Audiophile Firewire > Chord Crimson > NAC 112.  (I know I am walking in the footsteps of my forebears here, but I am in it for the journey!)

@LGCS1

Thank you for the link; very good post.  I will look at Synology as well as QNAP if I decide to go the UPnP route.

@tp:

FLAC vs WAV vs AIFF vs ALAC.  I have been lurking on many posts to try to glean the “consensus of the crowd”:  FLAC only sounds best on NDX + nDAC + 555PS (thank you, Hook); WAV has inherent tagging issues across different applications; ALAC is too proprietary; and AIFF files are too large!  For archiving, it seems ALAC is the most compact lossless format; and it can ultimately be transcoded to a different lossless format without any loss (though not necessarily on the fly while playing).  Having recently lost my entire ALAC library due to an indefensible backup plan, the idea of using one drive as the archive-only in one lossless format and transcoding the entire archive to a second drive in a different lossless format optimized for playback in the system du jour seems to kill two birds.  Which format would you use, strictly for archiving?

@Hook:

After I exhaust myself testing the MBPro > M-Audio etc., I am very likely to try Asset on a Win7 virtual machine.  I am not opposed at all to buying dedicated hardware of any platform if VM’s do not make the grade.  On the other hand, keeping box-counts low as possible is not only a Naim game!

@garyi:  Thanks again.

@Patrick

I appreciate your experienced and passionate posts.  I am sure I am not alone in celebrating what appears to be the end of most of the exhausting debates about the primacy of one computer platform over another.  I am sure I cannot pick an absolute favorite.  From my perspective, the best thing Macs have going for them is I already own 'em.  My G5 will serve best as a file backup server from here out, which is a fairly agnostic duty.

Lately, I have found Macs (finally) run Windows tolerably enough in a VM that even my wife takes it for granted.  I love PC’s and Macs, and would probably love a Linux box if I ever got around to trying it in earnest.  Heck -- I’ve admired the computers in my toaster and toothbrush.  I think first impressions affect people profoundly; some old guys like me are still holding a grudge because of Windows 3.1, while those who learned to love 3.1 hated the Mac’s tempting siren song because it was undeniably irrelevant for business.  Fact is, I owned a Mac SE first, but came to appreciate Win 3.1 after I got used to it at work; and I joined the chorus of complainers about Win 95 because I missed the old 3.1 file manager.  Ah, happy days. . . I am not joking, truly!  Today, administering a SharePoint farm is my daily pleasure at work.

@Simon:

Thanks for joining in.  On other threads you have added to what has become my current understanding of my best options.  As I consider my path, your preference for the XPS over the 555PS in certain cases gives me important food for thought.  (BTW, your enthusiasm for your new Harbeths led me to discover there is a dealer here in Seattle; I look forward to my first listen soon.) 

Thanks one and all.

Nick