Taking the Plunge: NAS Storage

aboroth00 · February 2015

Hey all,

Finally taking the plunge into digitizing my media library. I know I'm a little behind the curve as I didn't want to abandon my cd library to just sit in boxes but my system is not getting nearly enough exercise.

I stopped by my local audio shop in San Diego and saw their network streaming options. They suggested either a Bluesound Node or the Aurelic Aries as their streaming device of choice to support high res media. Not too familiar with either of these so I'll be doing more research in the days coming.

It seems the very least to accomplish this is having a hard drive attached to my network. The only computer I have is a laptop but I have an Apple Airport Extreme next to my audio equipment for LAN and another one as a router to provide internet. I was thinking of buying a 1TB-2TB WD HDD to hook up to the router because it has a USB port and use it as network attached storage. I intend to rip all my CD's to the HDD and keep my music there to be accessed by either my computer, my Oppo 105 or the Bluesound Node/Aries. One question I have is whether I should buy a second HDD to act as a back up for the 1st HDD. I intend to probably buy higher res tracks on HD tracks instead of CD's moving forward if the quality is higher than 44.1/16.

Any advice or suggestions are highly appreciated! Just want to make sure I'm heading in the right direction.

-Will

BlueFox · February 2015

You are going in the right direction.

I would go with the Auralic Aries for a couple of reasons. One, I have the Auralic Vega DAC, and it is absolutely great. Second, the Aries will stream from a NAS, or you can attach a USB drive directly to it, and read files from there. I use the Bryston BDP-1 and that is how it works, attach a USB drive and play the files. If you get the Aries go with the two clocks version, and upgraded power supply.

aboroth00 · February 2015

Thanks for the reply. If I'm not mistaken, can't the bluesound also do streaming from NAS and an attached USB drive? I think that's the impression I got from the sales guy who helped me.

I'm not sure what the differences I would notice between the Bluenote and the Aries. He did mention the dual femto clocks thing and again I'm not sure what that means practically. There's a 500$ difference between the two models you speak of.

BlueFox · February 2015

I don't know anything about the Bluenote. It hasn't come up on other audio forums I read, while the Aries is getting good press. The dual clocks lower jitter and give better sound.

tonyb · February 2015

Yes, the Bluesound can stream from a Nas. It's the preferred option to Sonos users who want Hi-rez music and it sounds good to boot. I think the Sony players can do dsd though and that may be something worthy of a look.

gce · February 2015

I don't know about the 2 streamers you listed but for your storage for your digital files (NAS) hooking up a HDD to your network will work but you should have a devise like a Synology or other devise to store and manage your files. They hold the hard drives you pick, keep all your files in order and back them up automatically. They will also store all your digital pictures and you can if you want store movies you can stream to your TV. You can control everything from your laptop or your streaming devise, I use my Marantz as the streamer. Here's a screen shot of my Synology NAS.

Also I'd recommend dbpower for ripping CD's to FLAC. Very simple to use and you can set it to uncompressed to get an exact copy. Here's a screen shot of dbpower.

Whatever you do once you get it setup you're going love it for the convenience and sound. I got mine all setup and then went to Vinyl and now my NAS just sits idle most of the time but I have it and the wife uses it more than me. Don't get my wrong I love my NAS setup and will probably get back into it when this Vinyl phase wears off...if it does!

aboroth00 · February 2015

gce wrote: »

I don't know about the 2 streamers you listed but for your storage for your digital files (NAS) hooking up a HDD to your network will work but you should have a devise like a Synology or other devise to store and manage your files. They hold the hard drives you pick, keep all your files in order and back them up automatically. They will also store all your digital pictures and you can if you want store movies you can stream to your TV. You can control everything from your laptop or your streaming devise, I use my Marantz as the streamer. Here's a screen shot of my Synology NAS.

Is there any reason I need the Synology NAS? I was assuming I could just use any hard drive formatted correctly with my Apple Airport Extreme. This goes back to my question of whether to have a back up for my NAS. I've spoken to several people and they had recommended me to wait on purchasing multiple drives as back up because drives will get cheaper over time and the current drive I buy now will be reliable enough to last until the next hard drive purchase.

gce wrote: »

Also I'd recommend dbpower for ripping CD's to FLAC. Very simple to use and you can set it to uncompressed to get an exact copy. Here's a screen shot of dbpower.

Whatever you do once you get it setup you're going love it for the convenience and sound. I got mine all setup and then went to Vinyl and now my NAS just sits idle most of the time but I have it and the wife uses it more than me. Don't get my wrong I love my NAS setup and will probably get back into it when this Vinyl phase wears off...if it does!

I was actually planning to use Jriver as that was what was recommended to me. I believe either software program is not free. Any particular advantage with dbpower over jriver?

It seems like the Auralic is not android compatible and I don't have apple products so it might just be the Bluesound from here on out. So any one with experience with it is much appreciated.

coolsax · February 2015

I have Bluesound node and I really enjoy it... Sounds great and the UI is a definite step up from the Squeezebox it replaced. it streams directly from the NAS. You just have to make sure the folder where you placed the music you are streaming from is shared on your home network. I am not familiar with Auralic at all.

D'prived · February 2015

I have a QNap TS-421 with 4 2TB WD Red HD's. I use it for back up and to store and stream my music (uncompressed FLAC) to a Yamaha NP-S2000. I use Seviio with my Yamaha app on my tablet to control and select what music I want to listen to.

aboroth00 · February 2015

D'prived wrote: »

I have a QNap TS-421 with 4 2TB WD Red HD's. I use it for back up and to store and stream my music (uncompressed FLAC) to a Yamaha NP-S2000. I use Seviio with my Yamaha app on my tablet to control and select what music I want to listen to.

Seems like the big problem I have is that I have an apple router and a PC as my computer. I can hook up a hard drive formatted to FAT32 to the Apple router, but I don't think I can hook up a NAS device like the one you mentioned and have it work with the router. I really don't want to leave my laptop on 24/7 either. I was just planning to use a portable hard drive (WD Passport) as a NAS device to the Bluesound. Thoughts on that setup?

gce · February 2015

aboroth00 wrote: »

Is there any reason I need the Synology NAS?

I was actually planning to use Jriver as that was what was recommended to me.

I'm just telling you how it worked out for me. I like the way Synology keeps my files organized and it works flawlessly with streaming whatever I throw at it.

As for dbpower I did my research and it seemed that that was the why to go but a lot of people use jriver too. I've never used jriver so I can't comment on it.

Good luck on you journey!

GospelTruth · February 2015

Is there any reason I need the Synology NAS? I was assuming I could just use any hard drive formatted correctly with my Apple Airport Extreme. This goes back to my question of whether to have a back up for my NAS. I've spoken to several people and they had recommended me to wait on purchasing multiple drives as back up because drives will get cheaper over time and the current drive I buy now will be reliable enough to last until the next hard drive purchase.

In my opinion, that's poor advice. While hard drives are reliable for the most part, there is no drive that is fail proof. Storage size continues to grow and gets cheaper for the most part all the time. I don't think that's a good reason to hold off on purchasing another drive as a backup. I've had drives fail within the first 3 months and lost a lot of data in the process. I don't mess with that any longer. If you are using your drive to also hold family photos as well as your music then it would be my advice to get a backup drive immediately. You just have to ask yourself... if this drive fails, how much time and energy have I dedicated to ripping and organizing my music and/or photos? I can't even begin to count how long it would take me to rip all my CDs again - definitely more than the cost of an external drive. My advise, get an external WD 2.5" external 2TB drive for $99 on Amazon and call it money well spent for your backup.

aboroth00 · February 2015

GospelTruth wrote: »

Is there any reason I need the Synology NAS? I was assuming I could just use any hard drive formatted correctly with my Apple Airport Extreme. This goes back to my question of whether to have a back up for my NAS. I've spoken to several people and they had recommended me to wait on purchasing multiple drives as back up because drives will get cheaper over time and the current drive I buy now will be reliable enough to last until the next hard drive purchase.

In my opinion, that's poor advice. While hard drives are reliable for the most part, there is no drive that is fail proof. Storage size continues to grow and gets cheaper for the most part all the time. I don't think that's a good reason to hold off on purchasing another drive as a backup. I've had drives fail within the first 3 months and lost a lot of data in the process. I don't mess with that any longer. If you are using your drive to also hold family photos as well as your music then it would be my advice to get a backup drive immediately. You just have to ask yourself... if this drive fails, how much time and energy have I dedicated to ripping and organizing my music and/or photos? I can't even begin to count how long it would take me to rip all my CDs again - definitely more than the cost of an external drive. My advise, get an external WD 2.5" external 2TB drive for $99 on Amazon and call it money well spent for your backup.

Very good point. This actually anticipates my next question. To me as you stated, the risk isn't worth the 100$ or so dollars it takes to buy another hard drive. So my question now is how do I automatically back up an external hard drive to another external hard drive. I could possibly try to back up the NAS to let's say another external hard drive connected to my computer or another NAS or even vice versa. I just want to be able to have redundancy. Is there a 3rd party software someone could recommend that could do this for me? I've done a little searching to no avail.

GospelTruth · February 2015

If you are connecting these drives to your router, then it would depend if the router has any backup capabilities in the router firmware. If not, then you would need to map both drives to your PC and then copy the directories from one NAS to the other. There are plenty of free applications out there for windows machines to schedule backups if you are looking for something along those lines. A Free List of Backup Programs

I think why one of the other members here was recommending the Synology solution is that it has a very nice User Interface for a NAS solution that allows you to do more than you can just hooking a hard drive directly to a router. Again, it will depend on the router. I have a router than can connect a USB drive and I also have a Synology NAS. I went the Synology NAS route for the ease of backup along with all the added applications that come with it and the easy to navigate front end. With Synology, you can also hook up an external USB drive to the unit as well giving either more space or allowing it for regularly scheduled backup via configuration on the NAS itself.

It all comes down to what you want and convenience. I like the Synology solution, but it's not necessarily for everyone. The Synology will cost you an additional $199 for the unit (model DS215j & no hard drives). You can put two drives in it at 2TB a piece and one can be the backup for the other or you can configure it in RAID for mirroring in case one drive fails.

gce · February 2015

GospelTruth wrote: »

It all comes down to what you want and convenience.

^^^^ This!

I have the DS212J with two 2TB Hard drives in it. I also have a 2TB external hard drive (USB) that handles the backups automatically. It all depends on how you want to do this. I just like the easy of the Synology. it can handle it all.

GospelTruth · February 2015

gce wrote: »

I have the DS212J with two 2TB Hard drives in it. I also have a 2TB external hard drive (USB) that handles the backups automatically. It all depends on how you want to do this. I just like the easy of the Synology. it can handle it all.

I have the DS212j as well. Works like a champ and with all the applications on there it's hard to beat for the price. I think it can be hard to understand what it all does unless you get one. Since we've gotten it, it's been an awesome way to share information not only in the house, but on the road and also with family.

ZLTFUL · February 2015

A DS212J owner here too. I didn't start running into issues until I started asking it to do more than it was meant for.
I have moved up to a dedicated HTPC/Media Server that I recently built.
It isn't a knock on the DiskStation...just that my needs evolved. If all you're looking for is a solid reliable storage source, it is hard to beat for the money.

aboroth00 · April 2015

Thanks all for the advice.

I decided against the NAS storage, because the only thing I will be storing is media and not any sensitive files (they're stored on the cloud) and the added expense. I went with two separate HDD's one attached to my computer and one attached to the router each backed up to each other via software off the web. The read/write off the HDD attached to the router is much poorer than a NAS storage, but I don't need to back up additional files very often.

I tried the Bluesound Node and the Sonos to compare the two. They are both hooked up hard wired to my router and an optical out to my Oppo 105. With the Node, I have to say it beat out the Sonos slightly based on the sound, but the interface is not nearly where the Sonos is. I had a difficult time loading my entire library into the Node and it took a couple days working with CS to get it figured out. It's all via email correspondence so it took a little longer than I would've liked. The Bluesound interface on my android tablet is alright, but again no where near the ease of use and search function like it is on the Sonos. The sonos is definitely the king when it comes to ease of use and its interface. I found out earlier that the Auralic has not yet released their android version so can't try that device out.

So currently my setup is external HDD -> router (Backed up locally on my external HD attached to my computer) -> Sonos -> Oppo 105

Taking the Plunge: NAS Storage

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