HDD Capacity

A CD is around 700MB capacity, WAV rips are the same size, so call it 1,300-1,4000 CDs, my 1,600 or simalbums take up a bit under 1.2 TB. Note that hires will reduce number of albums, and CDs which were originally LPs are often shorter.

I would allow for about 1200 CDs per terabyte in WAV. Obviously, CDs vary in size by album, but that gives you quite a bit of leeway, as well as allowing for the fact it is a bad idea to completely fill a drive. Other lossless formats like FLAC will reduce file size quite a bit.

Most people rip to flac to preserve space and decode on the fly. With  flac most cd’s fit within the 400mb, with a good mix it might be even 350mb per cd. I guess that wav is the same as the cd size, so you are looking at close to 700mb per cd.

I have about 1200 albums, mixed 16/44 and various highe resolutions, as .flac files on my 1TB drive, occupying 800GB.

Great, Thanks all

Don't forget that you shouldn't run HDDs more than 80% full, otherwise some of the defragmentation strategies stop working.  This may be less of a problem for a data only drive just holding music, but if the NAS OS system is on the drive as well (even as RAID), then it becomes a potential problem.

Don’t forget that a 1TB Hard Drive when installed in a NAS isn’t actually what it says on the label. You’ll only get about 93% of pure storage capacity.

Oh, I see from your profile you’re based in Outer Mongolia nice place. 

AndyP19 posted:

Don’t forget that a 1TB Hard Drive when installed in a NAS isn’t actually what it says on the label. You’ll only get about 93% of pure storage capacity.

Oh, I see from your profile you’re based in Outer Mongolia nice place. 

Thanks, I'm more thinking about a Core and whether I need a 1 or 2 TB drive, probably 2 to be on the safe side! It wont be for a while though as shipping to here takes a few months with the last leg of the journey on Llamas.

Given the cost of storage these days, I’d always go high as the price difference isn’t massive. I found that since I started ripping a couple of years ago, I buy large numbers of CDs and downloads, probably 4-500 of my 1,600 come from the last 2 years, so extra storage may well be needed in the future.

Storage capacity is so cheap these days. I’m not familiar with the in’s and out’s of the Core but In addition a back-up strategy for your up-front data is essential.

Eoink posted:

Given the cost of storage these days, I’d always go high as the price difference isn’t massive. I found that since I started ripping a couple of years ago, I buy large numbers of CDs and downloads, probably 4-500 of my 1,600 come from the last 2 years, so extra storage may well be needed in the future.

Yes agreed, It was more in the context of whether to buy an SSD or HDD for a Core if I get one, 2Tb SSD's are fairly pricey at around €500 vs about €100 for a HDD. I havent made up my mind about the Core though as I'm in a bit of a dilemma with my music. I currently listen to Tidal pretty much 100% of the time, I have about 350 CD's from old but havent bought one in about 5 years so to start ripping now will mean a big catch up and expenditure on CD's. I've a fairly diverse musical taste and when I look at all my playlists on Tidal there's a vast collection of stuff that I listen to regularly. I was probably a perfect contender for a Star but i wanted to jump as high as I could when upgrading so went for the Nova which I still think was the right choice. 

Mercky posted:

... I havent made up my mind about the Core though as I'm in a bit of a dilemma with my music...

No need for something as expensive as a Uniti Core, a PC (Windows, Linux or Mac) and a NAS drive will do the same for a lot less expenditure.

Mercky posted:. 

Thanks, I'm more thinking about a Core and whether I need a 1 or 2 TB drive, probably 2 to be on the safe side! It wont be for a while though as shipping to here takes a few months with the last leg of the journey on Llamas.

 

Withh HDDs as opposed to SSDs, price of 2TB - or 4TB - - is not a lot more tham 1TB, so go for larger to play safe. SSD prices are more expensive and roughly proportional to capacity, so require more of a decision...

Interesing - you've got enough CDs to be worthwhile ripping them, but as you spend most of your listening time with Tidal it doesn't sound as though you can justify the cost of a Core unless you give up on Tidal and buy everything on CD instead.

I think what I'd do is get a copy of dBpoweramp and rip your CDs to either a USB disk (or stick) and plug into the rear USB socket on the Nova, or a cheap NAS so that the old material is available to you, but carry on with Tidal.

There's quite a few cheap NAS devices to choose from - WD and Seagate do "My Cloud" type things, which would work, or use a cheap QNAP or Synology device. My secondary NAS is a QNAP TS128A which cost about £120 + a 2TB Seagate disk (that's virtually silent)*  which is only slightly more than the "My Cloud" type devices, but much more flexible. While I bought it as a file store, not for streaming music, it's more than capable of that - it takes an ages to reboot if you ever have to, but is speedy in operation. You could certainly run Asset on it without issues. It's easy enough to put together and get working.

I don't have a Core, but I believe it's slightly easier to use initially than a 'general' NAS solution, but once you know what you're doing the NAS process is  easy enough.  The big advantage is that it's much cheaper to implement than the Core so you can try it, and if persuaded, go for a Core at a later date.

I wouldn't get too worked up over SSD vs disk - the disks approved for the Core by Naim are incredibly quiet so there's a good chance you won't hear it from your listening position anyway - the SSD has no other advantage over disks for audio streaming.

*WD Red drives were about a tenner more and out of stock, hence the Seagate, which surprised me with its quietness - I've found Seagate drives to be noisier than WD in the past.

Unless perhaps you want the core as a store-renderer feeding direst to a DAC...

Mercky posted:

AndyP19 posted:

Don’t forget that a 1TB Hard Drive when installed in a NAS isn’t actually what it says on the label. You’ll only get about 93% of pure storage capacity.

Oh, I see from your profile you’re based in Outer Mongolia nice place. 

Thanks, I'm more thinking about a Core and whether I need a 1 or 2 TB drive, probably 2 to be on the safe side! It wont be for a while though as shipping to here takes a few months with the last leg of the journey on Llamas.

Yaks, surely?!

 If you start buying hi-res downloads, these will take up a lot more space than CD rips, so you might want to allow for that. Personally, I don’t often buy them as I think they are often grossly overpriced, and not always guaranteed to sound that great. Conversely, if you use FLAC instead of WAV you will save quite a bit of space. 

On the other hand some Hi-Res files are well worth it; for instance the SCO / Ticciati recording of Berioz Symphonie Fantastique is absolutely sublime, both technically and in the rendition.

Innocent Bystander posted:

Unless perhaps you want the core as a store-renderer feeding direst to a DAC...

Okay, I'll gran't you that, but Merky did mention a Nova, hence the reply being specific for that (well the Uniti range really).

TallGuy posted:

Interesing - you've got enough CDs to be worthwhile ripping them, but as you spend most of your listening time with Tidal it doesn't sound as though you can justify the cost of a Core unless you give up on Tidal and buy everything on CD instead.

I think what I'd do is get a copy of dBpoweramp and rip your CDs to either a USB disk (or stick) and plug into the rear USB socket on the Nova, or a cheap NAS so that the old material is available to you, but carry on with Tidal.

Hi Merky-

To get started with local streaming, given you have a Nova, you really only need minimal extra hardware. Ripping a few CDs to FLAC using your home computer and putting them on a USB stick or a simple USB external drive would be a great way to start. This not only plugs into your Nova for direct play (via the USB input) as Talllguy says, but if you switch on the Nova’s UPnP server mode (via settings) then it can stream to itself (via the Seevers input) and anything else on your network. Even if you only have the Nova and no other streamers, this is a worthwhile thing to do since the presentation options are much better: with USB you get only the “files” view, whereas with UPnP you also get “artist”, “album” and other useful presentations that take advantage of the metadata tags that get added via your ripping software.

If you decide to buy extra hardware later, like the Core or a NAS, it’s easy to copy your existing ripped CDs over and then start using the external drive as your backup storage location.

Good luck, don’t worry, choose a software package for your PC (check out EAC)  or Mac (check out XLD), and give it a whirl  it’s easier to do than to explain! Like you, I mainly listen to Tidal and my new CD purchases have fallen to zero ... but I still listen to some of my rips and will surely buy one or two new discs at some point when something grabs me or captures my imagination.

Regards alan

alan33 posted:

TallGuy posted:

Interesing - you've got enough CDs to be worthwhile ripping them, but as you spend most of your listening time with Tidal it doesn't sound as though you can justify the cost of a Core unless you give up on Tidal and buy everything on CD instead.

I think what I'd do is get a copy of dBpoweramp and rip your CDs to either a USB disk (or stick) and plug into the rear USB socket on the Nova, or a cheap NAS so that the old material is available to you, but carry on with Tidal.

Hi Merky-

To get started with local streaming, given you have a Nova, you really only need minimal extra hardware. Ripping a few CDs to FLAC using your home computer and putting them on a USB stick or a simple USB external drive would be a great way to start. This not only plugs into your Nova for direct play (via the USB input) as Talllguy says, but if you switch on the Nova’s UPnP server mode (via settings) then it can stream to itself (via the Seevers input) and anything else on your network. Even if you only have the Nova and no other streamers, this is a worthwhile thing to do since the presentation options are much better: with USB you get only the “files” view, whereas with UPnP you also get “artist”, “album” and other useful presentations that take advantage of the metadata tags that get added via your ripping software.

If you decide to buy extra hardware later, like the Core or a NAS, it’s easy to copy your existing ripped CDs over and then start using the external drive as your backup storage location.

Good luck, don’t worry, choose a software package for your PC (check out EAC)  or Mac (check out XLD), and give it a whirl  it’s easier to do than to explain! Like you, I mainly listen to Tidal and my new CD purchases have fallen to zero ... but I still listen to some of my rips and will surely buy one or two new discs at some point when something grabs me or captures my imagination.

Regards alan

 

 

Thanks Alan, that's very helpful. I have already ripped a few albums to a USB stick via protools as a test and as you say it's annoying as there appears to be no metadata coming through, it would certainly be a nightmare with 350 Cd's but I'll mess around with UpnP as you say. Presumably if I rip via a proper ripping engine the artist/album info will come through and I can store on a USB drive? The other issue of course is SQ, like many I don't find much of a difference between rips and Tidal which sort of makes the whole exercise moot but I dont really like the philosophy of been completely dependent on a provider for my music and also you have no ownership of anything at the end despite paying out a lot of cash to Tidal! Last night on Tidal I made up a great playlist of ECM Jazz, to replicate on CD would probably cost me a few hundred quid so it's a hard one to decide on.

TallGuy posted:

Interesing - you've got enough CDs to be worthwhile ripping them, but as you spend most of your listening time with Tidal it doesn't sound as though you can justify the cost of a Core unless you give up on Tidal and buy everything on CD instead.

I think what I'd do is get a copy of dBpoweramp and rip your CDs to either a USB disk (or stick) and plug into the rear USB socket on the Nova, or a cheap NAS so that the old material is available to you, but carry on with Tidal.

There's quite a few cheap NAS devices to choose from - WD and Seagate do "My Cloud" type things, which would work, or use a cheap QNAP or Synology device. My secondary NAS is a QNAP TS128A which cost about £120 + a 2TB Seagate disk (that's virtually silent)*  which is only slightly more than the "My Cloud" type devices, but much more flexible. While I bought it as a file store, not for streaming music, it's more than capable of that - it takes an ages to reboot if you ever have to, but is speedy in operation. You could certainly run Asset on it without issues. It's easy enough to put together and get working.

I don't have a Core, but I believe it's slightly easier to use initially than a 'general' NAS solution, but once you know what you're doing the NAS process is  easy enough.  The big advantage is that it's much cheaper to implement than the Core so you can try it, and if persuaded, go for a Core at a later date.

I wouldn't get too worked up over SSD vs disk - the disks approved for the Core by Naim are incredibly quiet so there's a good chance you won't hear it from your listening position anyway - the SSD has no other advantage over disks for audio streaming.

*WD Red drives were about a tenner more and out of stock, hence the Seagate, which surprised me with its quietness - I've found Seagate drives to be noisier than WD in the past.

WD Red aren't recommended for the Core because, according to Phil Harris, they have some parameters (I forget what) set for multi user NAS use and that could mean the drive gives up trying to read an error too easily. The recommended Seagate drive is designed for 24 video applications. The Core drive spins 24/7 unless you put it into deep sleep, so In the Core the HDD runs hot, although within the Seagate's design temperature. Apart from being silent, SSDs run cool. So you pay your money and make your choice.

best

David

The parameter setting that can cause problems is TLER: On  - Time Limited Error Recovery.

Mercky posted:

Thanks Alan, that's very helpful. I have already ripped a few albums to a USB stick via protools as a test and as you say it's annoying as there appears to be no metadata coming through, it would certainly be a nightmare with 350 Cd's but I'll mess around with UpnP as you say. Presumably if I rip via a proper ripping engine the artist/album info will come through and I can store on a USB drive? The other issue of course is SQ, like many I don't find much of a difference between rips and Tidal which sort of makes the whole exercise moot but I dont really like the philosophy of been completely dependent on a provider for my music and also you have no ownership of anything at the end despite paying out a lot of cash to Tidal! Last night on Tidal I made up a great playlist of ECM Jazz, to replicate on CD would probably cost me a few hundred quid so it's a hard one to decide on.

If you use EAC or dBPoweramp then they will look up the CD in a number of online databases and get the metadata from them - both programmes allow you to review and edit the metadata before writing it (and the data) to the audio file.

Both these also use a more sophisticated way of verifying the audio data to ensure you have a clean rip.

Huge posted:

The parameter setting that can cause problems is TLER: On  - Time Limited Error Recovery.

Thanks Huge. Yes it is indeed that. You have reminded me!

best

David

David Hendon posted:

TallGuy posted:

 

There's quite a few cheap NAS devices to choose from - WD and Seagate do "My Cloud" type things, which would work, or use a cheap QNAP or Synology device. My secondary NAS is a QNAP TS128A which cost about £120 + a 2TB Seagate disk (that's virtually silent)*  which is only slightly more than the "My Cloud" type devices, but much more flexible. While I bought it as a file store, not for streaming music, it's more than capable of that - it takes an ages to reboot if you ever have to, but is speedy in operation. You could certainly run Asset on it without issues. It's easy enough to put together and get working.

 

*WD Red drives were about a tenner more and out of stock, hence the Seagate, which surprised me with its quietness - I've found Seagate drives to be noisier than WD in the past.

WD Red aren't recommended for the Core because, according to Phil Harris, they have some parameters (I forget what) set for multi user NAS use and that could mean the drive gives up trying to read an error too easily. The recommended Seagate drive is designed for 24 video applications. The Core drive spins 24/7 unless you put it into deep sleep, so In the Core the HDD runs hot, although within the Seagate's design temperature. Apart from being silent, SSDs run cool. So you pay your money and make your choice.

best

David

Yes, I know, but I was talking about NAS there. My suggestion was to try using direct connect USB or a cheap NAS and to go for a Core if that persuaded the change of spend from Tidal to CDs and a Core. Sorry if it wasn’t clear. The Seagate drive I used in the NAS isn’t suitable for the Core either as it’s a "Red equivalent”.

(Note I’ve edited down some of my original comments)