Which NAS do list members prefer?

[fcormier]

So I have pulled the trigger on some NAS and backup solutions. I bought an 8TB (4+4) two drive Buffalo NAS and an 8 TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub. I also have a 500GB drive that I am going to use as separate storage too.

Of course wanting to put stuff onto them creates a huge number of new questions. For my about 700 CDs I bought a copy of of dbPowerAmp and am initially very happy with it. It does a much better job of composing tables of contents with titles already loaded, as well as finding Album Art, than Exact Audio Copy. Definitely worth the money imo.

The questions I have relate more to DVDs. I have a pretty good number of concert DVDs to rip. For my first attempt (The Concert for George) I downloaded Handbrake and MakeMKV. Handbrake did a nice rip so it seems. But in VLC on my computer all the sound tracks say stereo. I thought I had set the preferences to both Stereo , Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1 They all say stereo.

Also I am saving them as MKVs. Should I be using MP4? I don't expect to upload anything to You Tube or anything that requires MP4. But will I run afoul with my Marantz Pre Pro, or my Oppo, or my Samsung Smart TeeWee. ( I will look up the manuals and report back later) Also will HD DCP refuse to show these videos over HDMI. (I probably can send them to the TeeWee via Ethernet)

Would I be better off letting jRiver rip DVDs and Blu Rays? I intend to purchase it in the near future.
TIA

I still prefer EAC for CDs, but it needs some costumizing to get the correct folder and filename format. And I have to get the artwork manually.

For DVDs and Blu-rays, I use Handbrake, but it also has to be customized to get the correct format and you have to put some work in. Mine are correctly encoded with both stereo and surround audio and play correctly in MPC and VLC on my computer. For now, everything is played on Chromecast or Roku via Plex for TV and home theater system, but a Nvidia Shield or NUC may be in the future.

 

[Guy Robinson]

I don't have a NAS. I just keep adding drives to my Oppo 103 via a USB hub(s). Currently I have 7 x 4TB = 28TB drives attached to the Oppo. I also have 28TB's "offline" as a backup for the "live" drives. Every time I add a file to the "live" drives I also add that file to the backup drives. It's a manual process for me but works. Also power is not going to the backup drives all the time which I figure might save crashes of the backup drives over time. So far no crashes on the live drives either after a long time. One thing for sure, whatever size you start with you are going to have to add to it eventually. I started with a 4TB drive and thought that would be enough. Silly me. I use Makemkv for DVD ripping. Works great for that. The Oppo is a champ at playing files so I don't feel the need to get the computer involved other than for manipulating and writing the files to the Oppo drives.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

The questions I have relate more to DVDs. I have a pretty good number of concert DVDs to rip. For my first attempt (The Concert for George) I downloaded Handbrake and MakeMKV. Handbrake did a nice rip so it seems. But in VLC on my computer all the sound tracks say stereo. I thought I had set the preferences to both Stereo , Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1 They all say stereo.

So why do you need Handbrake at all when ripping video to MKV ? Or did I misunderstand that part?

 

[fcormier]

So why do you need Handbrake at all when ripping video to MKV ? Or did I misunderstand that part?

I don't understand. Handbrake instead of another tool? You can rip a DVD or Blu-ray uncompressed to mkv, but it a waste of space. And it depends on the codec support of the playback device.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I don't understand. Handbrake instead of another tool? You can rip a DVD or Blu-ray uncompressed to mkv, but it a waste of space. And it depends on the codec support of the playback device.

I guess then I'm wasting space. I rip all video to MKV. In my experience, nearly everything supports MKV playback as well.

Considering the low price of modern storage, I'm not too worried about the space issue.

 

[gene_stl]

I don't have a NAS. I just keep adding drives to my Oppo 103 via a USB hub(s). Currently I have 7 x 4TB = 28TB drives attached to the Oppo. I also have 28TB's "offline" as a backup for the "live" drives. Every time I add a file to the "live" drives I also add that file to the backup drives. It's a manual process for me but works. Also power is not going to the backup drives all the time which I figure might save crashes of the backup drives over time. So far no crashes on the live drives either after a long time. One thing for sure, whatever size you start with you are going to have to add to it eventually. I started with a 4TB drive and thought that would be enough. Silly me. I use Makemkv for DVD ripping. Works great for that. The Oppo is a champ at playing files so I don't feel the need to get the computer involved other than for manipulating and writing the files to the Oppo drives.

Do you use a powered USB hub? Sometimes stuff says "Don't hook Drives to this USB input" usually the reason being not enough Newtons in the power supply.

I can see that there will be "drive size creep" especially with over 100 SACDs to back up and a bunch of DVD video concerts. I am sure HD and SSD s are going to keep getting bigger and bigger. I have not had many drives go goofy on me in spite of most of mine running 24/7.

 

[gene_stl]

I downloaded both Handbrake and MakeMKV because I had not used either and some You Tube videos on the subject said you needed both. Likely much earlier versions and perhaps before the advent of the Handbrake .dll that decrypts the DVDs.
I did go into preferences and tried to set them but they reset themselves to stereo. There were three instances though as I had tried to set up for. (stereo, Dolby and DTS, 5.1)

I thank everyone for the replies. I suspect most of us have traveled similar learning curves, with variations based on our particular setups.

 

[gene_stl]

I still prefer EAC for CDs, but it needs some costumizing to get the correct folder and filename format. And I have to get the artwork manually.

For DVDs and Blu-rays, I use Handbrake, but it also has to be customized to get the correct format and you have to put some work in. Mine are correctly encoded with both stereo and surround audio and play correctly in MPC and VLC on my computer. For now, everything is played on Chromecast or Roku via Plex for TV and home theater system, but a Nvidia Shield or NUC may be in the future.

Why do you prefer EAC? They both have "Accurate Rip". I do have to admit that I am going to study the file naming details a little bit more. dbpoweamp adds file layers more than EAC in the naming it seems. NAS file naming is something else I would be very curious about how our list membership go about things.

I do have and use a Roku and locating one in the big music room would be easy.

 

[Wagonmaster_91]

MakeMKV to rip the disc, then Handbrake to reduce/compress the size of the file. Sort of like ripping to wav, then compressing to flac to save space.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Why do you prefer EAC? They both have "Accurate Rip". I do have to admit that I am going to study the file naming details a little bit more. dbpoweamp adds file layers more than EAC in the naming it seems. NAS file naming is something else I would be very curious about how our list membership go about things.

I also use EAC. If I understand it correctly, there is a free version of EAC and a paid version. The paid version has an auto tagging routine. The free version does not. They both use Accurate Rip. I use the free version.

I use Tagscanner for all tagging ops. Tagscanner can use several sources to hunt down tags and album art. I use Discogs.

For file naming I have three main directories on the NAS (which i have mapped as drive Q): Stereo, MC (Multi Channel), and Video. , this is my file structure:

In the music related directories (stereo and MC), there are subdirectories, one of which is FLAC. Others may be SACD ISOs, DVDA ISOs, etc. The only ones I currently use for playing music files from are the FLAC directories.

In each FLAC directory there are artist directories and in each Artist directory there are album folders which hold the tracks. Album folders include the source of the rip in the folder name. For example, below are all the versions of Dark Side I own and the corresponding paths:

Q:/MC/FLAC/Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon (5.1 SACD)/
Q:/MC/FLAC/Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon (4.1 AP mix)/
Q:/Stereo/FLAC/Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon (2.0 SACD)/
Q:/Stereo/FLAC/Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon/

The last path depicts a 16/44.1 RBCD rip. By default, for standard CD rips I do not include any additional source description. I do differentiate the 2.0 rips from SACD, DVDA, BRDs etc.

Kodi is my primary media player. I also occasionally use Foobar and Musicbee. All artist information resides in the Stereo directories. This might include fanart, bios, lyrics, etc. The players use this info when playing music.

The idea above is also incorporated in the tagged album names. The tagged album names for the above are:
Dark Side of the Moon (5.1 SACD)
Dark Side of the Moon (4.1 AP mix)
Dark Side of the Moon (2.0 SACD)
Dark Side of the Moon

Each version shows up as a separate album in my media player. Sometimes I purposely use different album artwork to make the MC, stereo, or otherwise "special" version of the albums stand out. So there may also be albums tagged like this:

Houses of the Holy (24/96 HDT)
Houses of the Holy - Companion Disc (24/96 HDT)
Houses of the Holy

Which would depict a 24/96 download from HD tracks, the companion disk with outtakes, and the RBCD version. The album art for each one is different.

Video is similar. Artist folders, then video albums. I don't rip non-concert movies or anything. So a typical path would be

Q:/Video/Music Videos/Big Big Train/Stone and Steel/

 

[LuvMyQuad]

MakeMKV to rip the disc, then Handbrake to reduce/compress the size of the file. Sort of like ripping to wav, then compressing to flac to save space.

I guess if I had a lot of video it might matter to me to compress the files. But as of now, I just don't see the need.

 

[atrocity]

I guess if I had a lot of video it might matter to me to compress the files. But as of now, I just don't see the need.

Especially since it's not lossless.

 

[gene_stl]

Similarly I am leaving RBCD files and SACD files as WAV. I would be more inclined to compress video than audio.

 

[atrocity]

Why do you prefer EAC? They both have "Accurate Rip".

I'm currently being paid by someone who appreciates my obsessive nature to rip his 1000+ CD collection. He had the money to buy in to the format early early and I'm finding several surprise discs with pre-emphasis (two just this morning, in fact).

I mention that because CueRipper is the only secure ripping software I know of with a current version that can identify PE whether it's in the TOC or subcode. It also consults AccurateRip.

It's not the end of the world if you don't identify PE discs and de-emphasize them but if you're sensitive to brightness you'll be annoyed.

 

[atrocity]

Similarly I am leaving RBCD files and SACD files as WAV. I would be more inclined to compress video than audio.

But as a practical matter, you're saving space by throwing away video bits while wasting space when WAV->FLAC is 100% lossless. FLAC also has the major advantage of having a standard tagging method.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Similarly I am leaving RBCD files and SACD files as WAV. I would be more inclined to compress video than audio.

So what's the rationale for that? The conversion to FLAC is lossless and pretty much universally accepted.

With the SACD, many leave those as DSD and play them back natively. It wont allow for DSP or room EQ though.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

FLAC also has the major advantage of having a standard tagging method.

That too.

 

[gene_stl]

Probably the reason I started doing that is that VLC does not seem to like to play FLAC files until they have been uncompressed. So far all the ripped files and other files are only listened to on headphones, I haven't tried anything on the primitive stereo. I presume jRiver will decompress FLAC "on the fly"

I haven't really saved any videos yet. The first one I tried didn't capture the mch so its gonna get deleted and redone.
I appreciate everyone chiming in with various, "points of order". Thank you.

 

[atrocity]

Probably the reason I started doing that is that VLC does not seem to like to play FLAC files until they have been uncompressed.

Interesting! I haven't found that to be the case, but I have other complaints with VLC for audio, so I rarely use it for that. It's great for video, though.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Probably the reason I started doing that is that VLC does not seem to like to play FLAC files until they have been uncompressed.

I presume jRiver will decompress FLAC "on the fly"

I have not run into that issue with VLC. I typically don't use it at all to play audio. All the media players I've ever used decompress FLAC on the fly. JRiver included. Its all completely seamless.