A NAS ty Question

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

holland123

1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Joined
Feb 1, 2010
Messages
1,087
Location
detroit, michigan.usa
ok Garry, so everywhere I go now it's Nas, Nas, Nas. Am I correct in assuming that you are streaming your hi rez surround files and movies through the intel nuc over your wifi into your reciever? And is the sound quality as good as a direct connection to the nuc from the external hard drive? I'm guessing that it can't be? And I'm also guessing you deal with streaming dropouts from time to time as well, depending on whatever of course? Trying to decide if i need a Nas. Kevin
 
Hi Kevin.

I have been thinking of starting a ‘What is a NAS thread?’ on QQ. I’ll do that very soon.

My NAS is connected to using CAT6 Ethernet cabling so it can transfer files at over 100MB/s (not that playback requires that sort of speed, but much faster for loading it with media files). I have two NUCs and both can play all my music, concerts and movies stored on the NAS.

I’d recommend using Ethernet cabling as wireless can prove problematic, depending on distance to your wifi router and is generally slower.

The main advantage of a NAS is it’s a single server that can hold multiple drives. It can also be configured to have the discs in a RAID configuration. This is where the data is stored on what appears to the user as a single drive but in fact the data is split across two or three drives in such a way that if one drive fails all the data is still available on the remaining drive(s) so you can replace the faulty drive and that drive is auto rebuilt so that RAID is back to its original data. This acts like an automatic backup.

Once set up you just copy your files like normal from your PC to the NAS and the NAS auto copies the files across the RAID drives. When you read the files the NAS auto finds the bits from the RAID. It’s invisible to you.

The NAS can still have multiple logical drives. Example one for Surround Audio, one for concerts, two for movies etc. But instead of having to remember which USB hard drive to plug in to your player you can configure your Kodi NUC (or other player) to find everything on the NAS. So switch on the NUC and every album, concert and movie is seen in the Kodi interface, just select what to play and it does.

The NAS logical drives can be seen in your Windows Explorer as just another disk drive so you can access just It just like it is an internal disk in your PC.

I’d recommend using a Synology NAS as it has a great user interface (and my NAS thread will eventually show how to setup und use one). The thing for you to decide is how much disk space do you need?

I also use mine to back up all my lovely Holland123 DVDA upmix ISOs, SACD ISOs, DVDA, BDAs ISOs etc. I have around 4TB of surround and stereo FLACs that I play. 4TB of concerts. About 20TB movies not including another nearly 8TB of war movies and another 6TB of 4K movies. Plus about 8TB of TV series. So if you have lots of music and blurays you can soon fill all the disks you have.

It’s cheaper to buy a 4, 5 or 8 bay NAS up front and add drives as you go that to replace the NAS after a couple of years with a new one. (I started with a 2 drive, then 4, now a 12).

The NAS also has free apps, one is a bit torrent program that can do all your torrenting with your PC off. They’re pretty low power usage and built to run 24/7/365.

Hopefully this helps.

Garry
 
Last edited:
Am I correct in assuming that you are streaming your hi rez surround files and movies through the intel nuc over your wifi into your reciever?

NAS -> Ethernet -> Router-> Ethernet -> NUC -> hdmi -> AVR -> hdmi -> TV

Same audio and video quality as hard drive to NUC or AVR
 
Regarding RAM in a NAS, doesn’t take much to use it the way you do, Homer? I mean your NUC is doing most of the work, the NAS is more of a store unit, and unless you’re not using it as a media player but merely submit the file info to the router and on to the NUC it shouldn’t be that RAM hungry? (I ask because I’m on my way to upgrade to a NAS with more disc stations but the one I’m looking at is only 512 mb RAM).
 
If you’re not running many apps 512MB should be ok. My first NAS had 1GB and that worked perfectly as a file server.

Maybe other members have experience with 512MB RAM?

Synology higher end NAS can run with btrfs file system which can auto fix bit rot if using RAID. This basically compares the file against the backup version (the file is kind of stored on three discs in RAID5) so if one of the 3 versions is different it is fixed automatically (this description is a simplification). I think this is only available on 64bit Intel versions, not sure though.
 
Last edited:
ok G, this helped, so you guys are not actually playing the hi rez Multichannel files and movies via wireless, the nas is connected with ethernet cable to the nuc, then what is this i hear from folks who are accessing their files remotely and playing them throughout their house, I'm assuming via wifi or Bluetooth, is it actually a download to the remote device and then play?
 
I think most are playing from the NAS via Ethernet (I am) but you could do I via wifi if signal is good enough. Most NAS would still require an Ethernet cable to a separate wifi hot spot or router though.

The biggest issue for most is getting the Ethernet to the NUC. The NAS can be anywhere. No need to have that in your listening room if you have a dedicated room. Mine is in my ‘office’ along with my PC where I do ripping/conversions.

There’s also cheap Network Switches that allow Ethernet cables to be interconnected. Example. I have one in each listening room. Each has a single Ethernet cable back to my router. Each has Ethernet cables to a NUC, TV (for streaming Netflix etc), STB for cable and AVR for firmware updates and internet radio). These switches are usually 5 port or 8 port and run at under $50. These limit the number of long cable runs back to the router/internet connection.
 
Last edited:
My setup is mostly wireless. I've only been doing this for about 2 months, and I've almost never get any jitter or drop outs...I can't remember the last time that happened to be honest. Here's a description of my set-up (hope this is useful).

I have a QNAP NAS in my upstairs office that I'm using to store my ripped SACD, DVD-A and Blu-Ray music files. The QNAP is Raid 10 with 4 drives (each 10TB WD 7200 Red), and it's connected via 2 10Gig Ethernet cables to my Apple AirPort Extreme Wifi network router. The QNAP and AirPort Extreme sit nearly adjacent to each other. The AirPort Extreme provides Wifi throughout my home, along with a couple of Airport Express's in far corners (these are hooked up via hard wired Ethernet).

I play the ripped multi-channel music with my Oppo 205 in my downstairs listening room. The Oppo is connected via my home Wifi network to the QNAP. The Oppo and the AirPort Extreme are technically about 20' from each other. The Oppo is connected via analog cables to my Integra amp.

I've done a listening comparison by playing back ripped vs SACD or DVD-A discs and hear no difference...both sounded fantastic. I'm still not able to figure out how to rip Blu-Ray's (I just bought a Pioneer blu-ray player for my iMac and hopefully will have this figured out soon).

I wish the Oppo had a better interface for playing back the music. It's OK, but after you get a few dozen titles it starts getting hard to scroll through the list (very plain interface). Would be nice to have something that displayed the artwork for each album, and maybe a nicer interface during playback. I'm sure there's some better way of doing this, if anyone has suggestions I would appreciate the input...thanks!
 
ok G, this helped, so you guys are not actually playing the hi rez Multichannel files and movies via wireless, the nas is connected with ethernet cable to the nuc, then what is this i hear from folks who are accessing their files remotely and playing them throughout their house, I'm assuming via wifi or Bluetooth, is it actually a download to the remote device and then play?
My NAS is connected to my surround system via Ethernet. In addition to that there are several other spots in the house that are limited to stereo. Most of those systems play the stereo NAS files over WiFi. The system in my master bedroom is wired, and that is where I do all the ripping and tagging.

There is no download involved. It all just streams in real time. Each system also has its own Kodi setup.

I've never tried it, but I believe you can also access the NAS contents over the internet at a completely different location and play the music files.
 
Last edited:
I have a QNAP NAS in my upstairs office that I'm using to store my ripped SACD, DVD-A and Blu-Ray music files. The QNAP is Raid 10 with 4 drives (each 10TB WD 7200 Red), and it's connected via 2 10Gig Ethernet cables to my Apple AirPort Extreme Wifi network router.

Why do you need 2 Ethernet cables going to the NAS? I also have a QNAP NAS. It runs under Linux, and it does indeed have two Ethernet ports, but only one is actually accessed when in use. I thought the other was only useful if I were to add a second OS, like a windows partition.
 
Looks like I posted this too soon... I just saw the posts on Kodi, looks like exactly what I was looking for!
Once you try an interface like Kodi, Foobar, or JRiver, you will never go back to what you get with a simple long list like you get with an internal AVR or disk player interface. The difference in presentation and function is pretty extreme.
 
Ok, thank you all, so me thinks me understands now, you can stream off your Nas depending on signal and interference, but for loading it wired is much faster. The Nas automatically backs itself up if you have enough drives loaded into it and configured properly. Sounds like i can possibly even go to a friend's house access the Nas and playback my files at his house. So if i want to be able to do these things and have the autobackup option then the Nas is a good purchase.

a few more questions for this awesome group.
Will the Nas inform me when a drive is faulty?
Are there only special drives that can be installed in Nas?
Is there a password and address that allows me to access the files on the Nas from a remote place.
 
a few more questions for this awesome group.
Will the Nas inform me when a drive is faulty?
Are there only special drives that can be installed in Nas?
Is there a password and address that allows me to access the files on the Nas from a remote place.
  1. Yes. Most will beep and/or flash. Most, I think, can be programmed to send an email notice as well.
  2. Yes. Physically, any drive of the right physical size will fit and function. However, there are HDs specialized for long-term, 24/7 operations.
  3. If you set it up, yes.
 
One thing to note is that RAID is not really backup. It's absolutely better than nothing, but if the RAID box does something really nasty that damages all the drives, you're in trouble.

Even having everything backed up to a second piece of local hardware doesn't protect against fire, flood or theft. There's a lot of offsite storage out there, but I haven't found one yet with the magic combination of space, speed and price.

For now I'm using CrashPlan because of price and space, but it's SLOW.
 
One thing to note is that RAID is not really backup. It's absolutely better than nothing, but if the RAID box does something really nasty that damages all the drives, you're in trouble.

Even having everything backed up to a second piece of local hardware doesn't protect against fire, flood or theft. There's a lot of offsite storage out there, but I haven't found one yet with the magic combination of space, speed and price.

For now I'm using CrashPlan because of price and space, but it's SLOW.
I just use a portable external HD and store it at my office for external backup. I re-do the backup every few months.
 
All you guys with NAS should form a cloud based library collective and sell subscription access to lazy bums like me that just want to stream off the net.
 
Back
Top