What's the best NAS for a music library

21 hours ago, Richard Dale said:

I have the original CDs that I have ripped, and I always keep the originals that I have bought and downloaded from sites like Qobuz. I also keep my collection in both AIFF and Apple lossless formats, and have multiple backups in multiple sites.
 

I agree the ZFS might be better than ext4 or the Apple file system, but in the context of audio systems with more modest sizes like mine (c. 3300 albums) RAID is just a solution looking for a problem. Modern hard disks have built in error correction and detection at the hardware level, and I am not too worried by bit rot.

As long as you are satisfied with your system that's great.

My own library contains a lifetime of photographs, home movies/videos, as well as audio recordings as well as purchased music. My own media is critically important to me. I've also been involved in archiving digital data for 40 years. Yes "smartctl" can be used to measure hardware error correction rates. When silent hardware errors start to get corrected with increasing frequency and as sectors start to go bad, that can be a sign of impending disc failure (I'm currently monitoring several drives from circa 2015 in my 15 disc array). It all comes down to cost vs how important the digital data is to you. My own system, for me, is very very cost effective compared with the high reliability and I demand a high degree of data integrity.

6 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

Yes give ZFS the entire drive. Drives are cheap, this isn't where you want to save a few bucks.

 

When you want to move the drives to a new host (possibly running a different OS) just:

$ zpool export <pool>

and then

$ zpool import <pool>

 

My drives are on an external SAS3 enclosure which connects to my NAS via a SAS3 cable (the enclosures can be daisey chained). At the very least:

1) get a cheap box which can run Ubuntu server

2) create a pool from a drive large enough to hold your entire library

3) add another drive to that pool to create a mirror

4) use SMB to share the filesystem over the network

(that's a NAS)

 

each of the OS you list can mount a network drive via SMB

Thanks. Yep, a NAS that can be mounted via network does seem to make by far the most sense.

It could be that I might want to retain one or both of the external USB drives separately. My inexpensive off-site backup (Backblaze personal) is happy running on Windows, where the external USB storage is seen as just another drive. And I like some of the MacOS utilities for tagging and ripping (Yate, XLD). So whenever I set up a NAS, I'll have to test whether the level of speed and convenience is reasonably similar using those apps with the NAS mounted as a network share.

20 hours ago, Jud said:

 

Thanks. Yep, a NAS that can be mounted via network does seem to make by far the most sense.

 

It could be that I might want to retain one or both of the external USB drives separately. My inexpensive off-site backup (Backblaze personal) is happy running on Windows, where the external USB storage is seen as just another drive. And I like some of the MacOS utilities for tagging and ripping (Yate, XLD). So whenever I set up a NAS, I'll have to test whether the level of speed and convenience is reasonably similar using those apps with the NAS mounted as a network share.

Sure.

SMB can be as fast as your network. At some point e.g 100/200Gbe the network speed equals your PCIe speed so the remote disks approach the same speed as local. This is driving the new NVMEoF protocol where the NVME drives are exposed over the network. Of course that's for big data applications like inferencing etc and Yate/XLD both of which I use, work perfectly fine over WiFi. I'm editing terabyte videos and photos over WiFi which can be a tad slow but somehow sitting in my den is better than my office even though my workstation (which serves double duty as my HQPE server) is hardwired at 100

That's enough nonsensical acronyms for the day! 😜

Take home message: if your datacrunching needs fast access to the disc drives, the results deserve to be protected! To paraphrase Neil Young "Everybody needs a NAS"

Why complicate things? Use a music server like the Grimm MU-1 with an 8TB SSD would give you the least complications and best SQ. 

I have an 8-bay Synology NAS with 40TB+ SHR synchronizing to an off-site 2-bay Synology with 40TB backed up to iDrive.com. Mostly for photography and video work.  Went down the path of building a silent PC running Roon Rock with NUC board, special case, linear power supply, fancy fiber cables, fancy switch (EtherRegen), Fancy clock for the switch, Fancy Ethernet Cable (AudioQuest). Super nice science project. Kept me entertained for a long time.  But at what cost... for an SQ that can be improved with a more elegant solution.

In the coming months I will replace the science project with an MU-1, 8TB drive.  Done and dusted for improved SQ, clutter and simplicity. The MU-1 doesn't even need a special ethernet switch, as so many have reported. 

The MU-1 connected via AES3 to my Tambaqui will provide even another improvement in SQ. yes, it is a more costly solution. 

Best

2 hours ago, Sangster said:

Why complicate things? Use a music server like the Grimm MU-1 with an 8TB SSD would give you the least complications and best SQ. 

For some at least, you have answered your own question. 🙂

2 hours ago, Sangster said:

yes, it is a more costly solution.

@Allan F,  If I understand @debt_collector's question, his end goal, final objective is to improve SQ with a step upgrade of replacing his NAS drives. Maybe my understanding is incorrect.... but, the end objective is improving SQ. 

I shared my journey and experience with a similar problem and objective. My solution sharing my experience with the suggestion  not to updated piece-meal like I did; replace drives, add LPS, replace copper network cable with fiber, etc... But to bite the bullet and replace with a music server/streamer... which achieves @debt_collector final objective, with a lot less pain, at a potentially a higher cos, but improved SQ in the end.

See link below for SQ journey form another site... head-fi.org 

Grimm Mu-1 SQ vs Roon, HPQ and NAS stored content 

"So, first decision - let the Grimm handle the upscaling. In every album I listened to, the sound was more resolved, more detailed and more enjoyable using the Grimm's scaler - more refined, more musical, more heft, better low registers....I could go on. Whatever Grimm did in this circuit, it's profoundly better than anything I can achieve in software via Roon or HQP....so I left it set to that and moved on  In terms fo Nas vs Local, local wins by a long way. Texture is better, detail is better, musicality is better. Again, I don't know the technical details, but the act of playing the exact same rip form the local drive is much more resolved than playing it from the NAS store."

These solutions are all too complex. The ROI, what ever that might be, is too low for the complexity. The PITA scale is high.

Since most of my owned music are ripped CDs, the “best” is the easiest. Which has always been to rip them to my Mac and access them via iTunes. The Tunes app is gone and is replaced by Apple Music which allows access to your library from mac and iOS.

This is of no help to Windows users but, for Mac users, I think this is the best out of shear simplicity and familiarity.

Streaming ALAC files from a Mac, and controlling using free iOS Remote app (AKA iTunes Remote) also means it will be 16/44 lossless via Airplay.

On 12/27/2023 at 11:25 AM, actuel audio said:

These solutions are all too complex. The ROI, what ever that might be, is too low for the complexity. The PITA scale is high.

Since most of my owned music are ripped CDs, the “best” is the easiest. Which has always been to rip them to my Mac and access them via iTunes. The Tunes app is gone and is replaced by Apple Music which allows access to your library from mac and iOS.

This is of no help to Windows users but, for Mac users, I think this is the best out of shear simplicity and familiarity.

Streaming ALAC files from a Mac, and controlling using free iOS Remote app (AKA iTunes Remote) also means it will be 16/44 lossless via Airplay.

I use iTunes (and now the Music app) to organize my music.  It’s configured to store all my music in a folder on my NAS.  That allows me to achieve much better sound quality than what you propose.  This has a low PITA score.

Ripping with iTunes should be avoided too as it has no ability to confirm that the rips are free of errors.