I consider buying a Netgear RND2110-100ISS. One of my major wanted feature is a multiroom audio streaming possibility.
But some background infos beforehand:
We have a living room with a playstation 3 a bedroom with a PC (Windows 7) and antoher bedroom with a Mac (MBP - Lion)
All of these devices have their own soundsystem connected with the individual device. Now I want that in each room the same music is playing synchroniously.
I've read that the Netgear RND2110-100ISS can stream audio files, but does this include the wanted multiroom streaming? Can many devices get and play this stream at the same time?
I've googled a lot, but didn't find a satisfying answer. Hopefully you can give me one?! 🙂
Suggest you get a Sonos system to solve that problem. See : http://www.sonos.com/ Sonos works fine from a ReadyNAS and does synchronised multiroom audio streaming at Gold Medal Olympic level. I had 6 simultaneous audio streams from a Duo (actually 1 stream replicated to 6 units).
no, that kind of ability doesn't really have anything to do with NAS's.
Can many devices get and play this stream at the same time?
As mentioned Sonos can, but is rather expensive.
Logitechs squeeze products may be able to, you would have to research that on your own.
Another option would be to have an audio/home theater receiver with multiroom audio.
In any case, syncronized multiroom audio is something that is a high end feature of streaming players, not really anything to do with NAS's or network storage.
This is perfectley doable with the squeezebox server software on the readynas. Just install the squeezebox emulator called 'squeezeplay' on all your computers, and you can play music from the readynas server software. you can then sync the connected clients, even the emulated ones, so all players are exactly playing the same thing. Later you can integrate the Squeezebox devices in your setup, if you like (and which i recommend, because i find the squeezeboxes excellent!) But on the other hand, if you don't need hardware squeezeboxes, this is a completely free (and open source) solution! It does take some time to set up the squeezebox server, but it's quite user friendly, and really easy to use.
The opensource solution timvd mentioned seems to be what I am looking for! Unfortunately, as a student, I have no money for expensive Sonos hardware 😛 I'll try the squeezebox emulating and contact you in case of any problems.
Merenon, you might want to check if the particular nas you're interested in, is powerful enough to run the squeezebox server software. It needs some processing power and ram to run smoothly...
The RND2110 has a IT3107 networkprocessor and 256 MB PC2700 DDR-SDRAM SO-DIMM. To be honest I have no idea which NAS-processors are good ones and didn't find any requirement list for the squeezeplay-emulator. Do you think that's enough power?
You could alway do what I have done for years, simply store the music files on the Duo and use the music player on the PC to play the music. Of course you can't synchronize it so the same music is playing in all the rooms, but, that does take processing power on the server.
Another alternative is to maybe start with the Ultra 2 and only one drive, making sure that every time you add a lot of music you update your backup (always a good idea). That will narrow the gap a bit. I looked at Newegg and the Duo (diskless) is $181 with shipping, the Ultra 2 is $299 with free shipping. Considering the increase processing power and memory as well as the future expansion capability that difference is well worth it. In a few months, you can add the second drive to gain the redundancy. (Still maintain your backup). The advantage of the redundancy is so you don't have resort to the backup in the case of a single drive failure. But, in the rare case of a dual drive failure or problems with the unit, the backup is still a very good thing to have.
I agree. Here (Belgium) the ultra 2 is only 199€. If you only put in one disk now, it's the same price as the nvx with 2 disks. Add storage when you have money available. Or, you install squeezeboxserver on 1 of your home computers, but then it needs to be turned on when you want to play music somewhere. Or, you assemble yourself an atom server with some free os. But this will cost you actually more 🙂
