Earthenware541

Ditto. Looking forward to it.

Cool, I hope the Syno setup goes well. BTW coincidentally I used that Fractal Design Node 304 case for my last NAS project. I tried a number of different experiments with it but in the end set up Win7 as a host OS running Virtualbox, and ran Vortexbox on a virtual machine. Loaded up the RAM to 8gb and the mobo is one of those fanless ITX ones, I think some AMD E-350 board. Might go back to Freenas for the whole machine but it seems a bit too powerful for that and perhaps I could use the extra power for some other virtual machines or something. (Oh and I'm still experimenting with a simple way to back up the music collection from there (not too many options for backing up large open virtual disk file but trying some tricks). Didn't RAID or anything in the most recent configuration. It's quiet, but certainly not absolutely silent, and I missed the lack of optical drive bay at first but yeah it gets a few comments from people for its rather minimalist looks.) Am not using the virtual vortexbox to do the playing (and I fear what virtualisation might do to sound given virtual audio drivers etc available - but I don't really know). Playing it is the job of another machine running one of the several much-beloved software players on this site. Next project might be to try that Dragonfly DAC-hooked-up-direct-to-a-commercial-NAS thing that someone was doing recently. Enough digression anyways.

I think in general the answer is "yes" but for NAS you probably want to consider: - size of the box - what kind of NAS storage do you want - RAID 5 or just some mirroring like RAID 1? (and this will limit how small a NAS you can make to some extent) - hundreds of other things which I am sure people will add in this thread I think that if the Jetway has 2-3 sata ports (or you get a card which can do that and put it on the board) and case size isn't a problem, then a Freenas setup might be a fun project to try. A few gigs of ram and a decent CPU are already there on the board if it came from a CAPS 2 so I don't think performance will be a major problem. With Freenas I think you'll outperform any of the J-series of Syno products for starters. That being said, if you hate to tinker around and derive no satisfaction from building something like this, then buying a simple Synology gives you pretty much everything up front. I bought a Syno, used it for a few years and then decided I'd like to try making a NAS with old parts, which I did - that was great fun and the one I built way outperformed the Syno. But there are plenty of factors which could influence that. And somehow, I keep getting this nagging feeling that i need to check the status on the Freenas all the time as I am convinced that it's going to fall over one day and get me into a situation where my poor Linux knowledge will leave me marooned - but that hasn't happened and I see no reason why it should happen any sooner than if it were the Syno. Enjoy the setup!

Great to hear. Is you Syno's DSM version 4.1? I presume the FLAC files played without a problem? I'm interested in giving this a try. I replaced my Syno's drives with others and the new ones are noisy, so I might be investing in a USB extender cable to put the Dragonfly on the end of in order to keep the Syno away from the actives. Would rather lengthen that than the analog audio coming out of the DF although I am sure this will introduce new issues which people will point out to me without hesitation. Thanks for the update.

Vortexbox has Sonos support which you can activate from its web menu, or command line. I have built servers running Vortexbox (even as a virtual server on a windows host) and they supplied music to my Sonos no problem, even across wireless. For hardware, the suggestions above are good. I had a CAPS 2 from Small Green Computer with a large SSD. Now I have my own home-built SFF server (shoebox size) which is a bit of a compromise in order to cut down on the number of PCs in the room. OS (Win7) on an SSD, virtual Vortexbox on a 3.5" sata drive, runs JRIver as the player, outputs spdif optical to a Bifrost DAC (I could use USB instead but the Bifrost makes this crazy sound out though the speakers every so often when I do that, and it seems to be an accepted issue with them). I use it with JRiver in my study where the machine sits, and in the lounge the Sonos ZP unit reads the same vortexbox host and plays music there, admittedly only 16.1/44 which is the Sonos limitation. For managing your music library, there are plenty of choices. I've experimented with MediaMonkey, JRiver, and the 'Bliss' library manager that comes with Vortexbox. Mediamonkey was for me the easiest to use but JRiver I'm still looking into (its my choice of player so it will end up being my library manager as well, given that I am hosting the library on the same server as the player). I did a lot of wrong things with Bliss but that was because I didn't understand it properly so I can't really knock it. Now that I've read a lot more about managing music files (essential btw) I think I could handle Bliss properly. The guy who made Bliss also wrote a handy book on music file management which you can find links to around here on CA - I think in the Blog section? Anyway, plenty more choices for managing library and tags (Mp3tag, etc) which I know nothing about. Best of luck.

The 'hybrid' AFAIK usually means there's a CD layer in the disc for those of us without an SACD player. I've seen that fail with some disks but in general I think it works - one just gets CD quality, is all.

For Qobuz at least, using a VPN works eg VyprVPN which has a French VPN server option amongst other site options. I've witnessed it on someone else's machine but am not sure how legal that is so would never attempt it myself ;-).

Sounds like one/some of: (Disclaimer: Anything you do on my advice is at your own risk and I accept no responsibility if it leads you further into trouble. These are just my guesses): - Your SSD is not connected properly. Open up and take a look if you are familiar with what to look for. Just make sure the connector at the motherboard and the drive are on tightly. - Your bios settings (press a key like del or something during bootup - it tells you on the screen) in the "boot order/priority section" is defaulting to some other device that you have attached like a CD rom drive or another USB drive and doesn't have the option to boot to the SSD (unlikely though, if you have the SGC Caps 2 like me and haven't done anything to the hardware). If you have added another drive of some sort, try booting without the new addition. - SSD bootup is down due to some corruption/disk failure (worst outcome - need a new OS install) There might be other possibilities here - just my morning mind dump. Has the machine ever actually booted up into windows? Sounds like it was fine until you added the other devices. Are you using a USB hub with something else on it like another CD rom drive? If so, get rid of all that stuff and just direct connect the kb, mouse directly to the machine and try again.

+1 on Jane's. Great band and music, and Ritual is a super album.

Like a lot of people here in the forum I can only speak from experience of having tried some of your options listed, and give my own view, which hundreds will disagree with. Nevertheless, it's just my opinion and worth little: Before starting, think about how much tinkering you want to do once you get things basically going, and whether or not having the system down for long periods will be an issue while you recover from something you or the system did while it was operational eg an automatic OS patch applied or a USB drive you added and expected to work. I found the Hackintosh/Tonymac path to be unsuitable for me because I am this kind of person. It's tremendously satisfying to get a Mac working that one has built but it wasn't something that I could keep functional unless I could promise myself to leave it alone and let it do its job, nothing more. Yes yes there will be Hack people who will now yell "you did it wrong" at me or something like that but all I can remember is long nights of frustration on the Mac path as each attempt to build failed and the final 'success' being so sensitive to every little change I made, that the Hackintosh lasted about an hour before I realised just what I was really getting with a Hackintosh, and just started rebuilding as a PC under a number of configurations (virtual server, CAPS-like player with separate server, server & player etc etc). All of that worked without too much hassle, and it was a far more satisfying and learning experience. I can add and change things each week to make it "better" in my mind, and I learn something from it each time. But that's just me - I like to tinker and continue to refine my setup today (server and player are separate machines, Mac used for most other things). In summary, I think the PC building path will give you more options if you want to mess with it going forward. The dedicated hardware server (Aurender, SoTM and millions of others now emerging) is the simple, pricier way with little option to 'mess around', and everything else is something in between I think, including your MM server. Just my view.

THe Fostex's look comfortable. I like my Grado 325i but they are a bit painful after some time. Were the Fostex's ok on the ears for the time you had them?

I know it's been written in other places here in C.A. and other boards, but I think that if you've just got simple home user's typical music library (ok perhaps I should be more specific) then keeping the data protection as simple as possible is the best way. I've gone through this thought process so much over the past few months in rebuilding my system. But straight backup was the solution I chose, for simplicity. I love the concept of RAID1 or higher and I've implemented it in various ways before. The idea of having the data instantly there just sounds so neat to me (geek appeal?). But in the end my considerations were (and I don't pretend to assume that my requirements are like anyone else's): - What was my biggest risk (= probability of it happening * impact of it happening) Um, a drive failing and losing any of my music, movies etc (just under 1 TB). Impact: Long-term depression at losing the music I've been gathering for over 20 years (this goes back to tracker files in pre-MP3 days :-) ) - What was my main requirement if it did happen Um, get the music back within 24 hours or so with little hassle or $ spend - Do I need high data R/W performance from the media server No. I add about an album a week, and don't care how long backup takes, as long as it doesn't mess with the sound quality. And there's plenty written about various RAID levels, implementations and the performance gain or hit they bring in. With these requirements in mind, I just went for a regular external drive backup off the music server (Vortexbox just now, but have used NASs). Simple enough to recover files, and I'd only lose whatever didn't make the backup that day if I'd added it. Ok so to be sure, I set up another backup across the LAN to a NAS drive I had sitting elsewhere. That's enough cover for me. Rsync etc for the backup etc are all options to consider - depending on OS and your level of confidence in setting them up and more importantly bringing data back (see below). As my server is virtual, I just copy the virtual disk file using a Windows arrangement, once a day. Rsync is probably way more efficient and faster but messing with a USB 3 drive via free virtual hosting software was a challenge for me and the software. Some older RAID arrangements do require similar disks to be used as replacements. I know that when my Japanese I-O Data RAID5 NAS eventually loses a drive (it's over 5 years old) I'll be looking for a 256gb IDE drive to replace. Fat chance - I'll have to downscale the thing to a RAID0 box or throw it away. So it's just operating as a secondary backup target today, as mentioned. One thing I always do when changing arrangements around backup - TEST that I can actually RECOVER my data back to the way it was (tags, covers and associated stuff all intact). Whatever option(s) you go with, don't assume that like magic everything will be instantly accessible and recoverable. Do a real restore or drive hotswap&rebuild test if you can and don't just wait for it to happen. Especially when it comes to anything where you're less confident (like messing with lost Linux volumes through virtualisation etc for me). Some funny little extra things that needed to be done, I simply wrote down as I learned them, and stuck that bit of paper in a drawer for when the bad day comes.

Hi. Would be keen to see the link which discusses sonics. I've always thought that drive wouldn't make a difference when comparing two setups, if everything else was the same, including volume setting. Just as long as it provides the 0s and 1s accurately (and I think they do, else software loaded on them wouldn't work). I guess that leaves electric 'noise' from one drive being worse than another and affecting other components, hence the reason for things like SATA filters in CAPS 2 etc? I am sure I'll offend a technically more qualified person than me (which is everyone) with this layman-level assumption and bring down a chorus of correction, but I'll learn something in the process. Just guessing, but I figure the only way someone can tell you if their drive sounds better than your Oyen is if they already have an Oyen and another drive to compare it with, right?

Thanks, now downloading from Qobuz