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To NAS or not to NAS
I am in the process of trying to work out a solution to an audio steaming problem. Currently I am using a PC running windows 7 on which over a TB of music in mainly Flac and Ape files are stored,...
chopinhauer wrote:
As for the NAS, still an option is all else doesn't work.
Ours is now essential. Our media, documents and backups are all consolidated onto the NAS (which is backed up to other NAS and to the cloud). Those files are available remotely when I travel on my laptop, my android phone and my iPad. I just replaced our aging family desktop PC with a small form-factor desktop that uses a modest SSD. We simply don't need a lot of storage in the PCs because everything is on the NAS.
So it could be worth the learning curve - but maybe it would be best to start in your new setup. Also, since Apple provides a relatively closed ecosystem it is a bit easier to fit the NAS into a PC environment.
102 is entry level. slow cpu and inadequate ram
for good sound get a 212 or 312 plus 7200rpm hard drives for nas
cpu8088 wrote:
102 is entry level. slow cpu and inadequate ram
for good sound get a 212 or 312 plus 7200rpm hard drives for nas
To be sure the RN212 is a much more powerful NAS, but its more than what is needed for simple audio streaming. If you don't need server transcoding an RN102 is certainly enough. Audio streaming with flac requires about 1 mbit per second, and the RN102 does well over 400 mbits per second. There is no need for 7200 rpm for this application either. Price-wise an RN102 with two 3 TB WD30EFRX drives (raid-1) would run about $450. An RN212 with two 3 TB Wed Pro drives (7200 rpm) would cost about $675.
I think the bigger concern here is that the ex is computer illiterate. ReadyNAS do require some care and feeding, and someone who is not comfortable administering a Mac or PC is likely to run into trouble with any NAS. You probably shouldn't be the IT person for your ex (you don't use the NAS yourself, plus you are going your separate ways).
I'm not real keen on putting the music on an external drive connected to the router. Performance with the ASUS is probably good enough, but USB drives connected to routers generally don't spin down when not in use.
I'd first look at upgrading the disk drive of the "newish mac in the cupboard", and run LMS on that mac with no external disk.
streaming audio is not simple. u may go to many computer audiophile forum and see that there are many views about what hardware and software to use to achieve good sound
just like going from point a to point b u may drive a hyundai or toyota and it is incomparable from a fast ferrari or comfort of a bentley rolls royce
- I don't think changing the disk in the iMac to a 2TB or 4TB disk is either easy or going to resolve the problem. First, the iMac is an all-in-one box, which means it will take just one HD. This means I will have to reinstall the OS, backup data etc etc if I change disks all of which is beyond me on a Mac being as a PC guy. Second, as I understand it, Macs don't do Flac, the main file type I use, or other open source music files. So streaming the music from the Mac won't work unless there is an easy fix for this issue. And I mean easy, because I am not fiddling around with 1TB of music that is perfectly calibrated to run on Squeezebox in its current form. So unless I'm wrong about these things, then this leaves me with the two options in my original email. If I do go down the NAS route then, yes, I will have to be the computer maintenance guy (which is OK because we share a kid so its not as if I'm completely severing diplomatic relations). This will be a minor added involement not a major imposition. Music is important for all of us, young kid included, so I have to find a way to get that 1TB of music around the house without the PC set up we have relied on to date.
chopinhauer wrote:
I don't think changing the disk in the iMac to a 2TB or 4TB disk is either easy or going to resolve the problem. First, the iMac is an all-in-one box, which means it will take just one HD. This means I will have to reinstall the OS, backup data etc etc if I change disks all of which is beyond me on a Mac being as a PC guy.There are some kits available for this, and you possibly could pay someone to do it for less money than the NAS would cost. But I do take your point here. There would be some learning on your part. But there will be some with a NAS too - don't kid yourself on that.
chopinhauer wrote:
Second, as I understand it, Macs don't do Flac, the main file type I use, or other open source music files.Your asus USB drive idea also required streaming from the mac. The files would be hosted on the asus, but LMS itself would run on the mac. That means files are read by LMS over the network and then streamed to your players over the network from the mac.
So your fallback solution requires the mac to do the streaming anyway, the only difference in my solution was I was suggesting avoiding the external USB drive. If you can't run LMS on the macs, then clearly you will need a new PC, the only question would be whether it should be a NAS or a windows PC. You can of course install LMS on the iMac now (with a small test music library) and see if it works or not.
chopinhauer wrote:
So unless I'm wrong about these things, then this leaves me with the two options in my original email.Well you are wrong on at least one point. Either the iMac can run LMS and stream flac, or your asus option isn't an option.
And there is at least one more option - get a small (perhaps used) win7 PC with a couple TB of storage, and just keep doing what you are doing now. You already know how to maintain that.
The NAS will do what you want. But you will need to invest some time learning how to set it up, and maintain it. That includes backing up the music library somewhere else (since it is precious), updating it with new music, updating the NAS firmware from time to time, replacing disks as they fail, etc. You can do many of these functions remotely (either with ReadyCloud or by installing OpenVPN on the Asus), and you can set up email alerts on the NAS so it will tell you if something is wrong.
OK, thanks Stephen for your response. Very helpful and thorough.
I guess, I might dig out the iMac, install LMS and try to stream the music from there. If it works, then I might look into upping the HD in the iMac. All this will take a while so I won't be back on this thread until I do this.
The second option is to leave my PC with my ex, and get a new PC for myself. I've been wanting to upgrade for a while now so this could be the opportunity. But I doubt my ex will like this much as she hates the size of the 'black box' and all things PC in general (Mac adverstising did a great job in forming her perceptions).
As for the NAS, still an option is all else doesn't work.
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