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Setting up a NAS with Squeezebox Touch


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I have a SBT that I'm using with a USB hard drive to store/serve music. It sucks. I'd like to set up a NAS to use as the server/storage.

 

Can anyone who has a set up like this advise me on what model to buy, and the best (most foolproof) way to get it working? I've about had it with my little SBT. It sounds nice, but freezes too often, which makes my listening experience less a listening experience and more of an IT experience.

 

On a separate but related note, does anyone know the ETA on the Auraliti file server? In case I have to ditch the Squeezebox altogether?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

PL

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I have a SBT that I'm using with a USB hard drive to store/serve music. It sucks. I'd like to set up a NAS to use as the server/storage.

 

Can anyone who has a set up like this advise me on what model to buy, and the best (most foolproof) way to get it working? I've about had it with my little SBT. It sounds nice, but freezes too often, which makes my listening experience less a listening experience and more of an IT experience.

 

On a separate but related note, does anyone know the ETA on the Auraliti file server? In case I have to ditch the Squeezebox altogether?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

PL

 

Small Green Computers has a Vortexbox Server and NAS, complete, that will do a bang up job for you. Much nicer, I would think. :)

 

-Paul

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat DAC.

Robert A. Heinlein

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Something else you can do if you don't want to spend the money and have an old computer around (or any available computer). Use it and attach your USB Hdd to it and set the SBT to use the Hdd. The only thing you might have to do is rename the drive letter to make sure it stays the same when you reboot.

 

I've been doing that because I had the same problem with the straight USB Hdd connection and it's been working perfectly. I let the computer sleep when I don't use it and everything starts right up when I restart the SBT.

 

-Chris

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Paul's suggestion was a good one. I'm sure that will work great. You will find a huge improvement in performance with this setup over your present one with the USB drive. All you will have to do with this is copy your files over to it's HD and tell your Touch to use it as the server. Then you'll basically be good to go.

 

The only thing you might want to consider is if you'd prefer a totally fanless system. I'm sure it's a quiet setup, but if you sit right next to the PC you might hear the fan.

Main listening (small home office):

Main setup: Surge protector +>Isol-8 Mini sub Axis Power Strip/Isolation>QuietPC Low Noise Server>Roon (Audiolense DRC)>Stack Audio Link II>Kii Control>Kii Three (on their own electric circuit) >GIK Room Treatments.

Secondary Path: Server with Audiolense RC>RPi4 or analog>Cayin iDAC6 MKII (tube mode) (XLR)>Kii Three .

Bedroom: SBTouch to Cambridge Soundworks Desktop Setup.
Living Room/Kitchen: Ropieee (RPi3b+ with touchscreen) + Schiit Modi3E to a pair of Morel Hogtalare. 

All absolute statements about audio are false :)

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The fan issue might be a problem with any NAS I would think... although it seems like there are a few smaller NAS units these days without a fan... I will enquire into how loud the Small Green Computer VortexBox is... Thanks for pointing me in this direction.

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The fan issue might be a problem with any NAS I would think... although it seems like there are a few smaller NAS units these days without a fan... I will enquire into how loud the Small Green Computer VortexBox is... Thanks for pointing me in this direction.

 

The NAS / Vortexbox does not have to be physically very near the Touch, not even in the same room. Utterly silent networking devices are a godsend to audiophiles, I should think!

 

Paul

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat DAC.

Robert A. Heinlein

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The NAS / Vortexbox does not have to be physically very near the Touch, not even in the same room. Utterly silent networking devices are a godsend to audiophiles, I should think!

 

Paul

 

I have a Qnap 809 Pro that I just started using again.

The firmware is very much improved since I bought it in 2009.

At the time it was the fastest SMB/Soho NAS available giving 90 - 95MB/s over NFS with RAID 6.

 

I swapped in 8x 2TB Western Digital Enterprise RE 4 drives I had from another project, installed the latest firmware and it is good to go.

It has a host of features including being a Time Machine backup for all your Macs and the ability to spin down the drives to save power after a fixed amount of inactivity.

 

BTW, I work as a senior architect for the largest storage company in the world, and have worked in this field for the past 8 years, so I'm not exactly a novice at this.

I also ran SqueezeCenter from my NAS for the past 5 years and just upgraded to a Berkeley USB + DAC Series 2 and Fidelia.

With the Touch et all, you can set a minimum phase filter in software and have it upsample everything.

The Transporter I was using was limited to 24/96 but it had a great Web based interface that I miss and a plugin for Spotify Premium.

 

Let me know if you have any questions...

 

ET

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BTW, I work as a senior architect for the largest storage company in the world, and have worked in this field for the past 8 years, so I'm not exactly a novice at this.

I also ran SqueezeCenter from my NAS for the past 5 years and just upgraded to a Berkeley USB + DAC Series 2 and Fidelia.

With the Touch et all, you can set a minimum phase filter in software and have it upsample everything.

The Transporter I was using was limited to 24/96 but it had a great Web based interface that I miss and a plugin for Spotify Premium.

 

Let me know if you have any questions...

 

ET

 

(grin) Well, I have an unused Sym at the office you are probably familiar with - I can let you have for a song... And an ESS800 just replaced with a DS8800 that will also be available soon for the same kind of song. I'll even help you pick 'em up. :)

 

Do have a question, how do you up-sample with the Touch? Haven't figured that one out yet.

 

Amazingly, with the changes here iTunes set to upsample to 88.2K is about our favorite player right now. No hassles, no crashes, and very few or no interface issues.

 

Fidelia sounds the most fun though, but it has interface issues that drive me bonkers.

 

-Paul

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat DAC.

Robert A. Heinlein

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(grin) Well, I have an unused Sym at the office you are probably familiar with - I can let you have for a song... And an ESS800 just replaced with a DS8800 that will also be available soon for the same kind of song. I'll even help you pick 'em up. :)

 

Do have a question, how do you up-sample with the Touch? Haven't figured that one out yet.

 

Amazingly, with the changes here iTunes set to upsample to 88.2K is about our favorite player right now. No hassles, no crashes, and very few or no interface issues.

 

Fidelia sounds the most fun though, but it has interface issues that drive me bonkers.

 

-Paul

 

BTW, IBM are not the largest storage company in the world ;)

 

Lots of information here. You just modify some lines in a config file and restart the server:

 

Antipodal filtering

 

What are the issues you are having with Fidelia?

 

ET

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(grin) The three letters on the first one I mentioned are not IBM.

 

Thanks for the link, more fun stuff to play with! I had ignored that thread having no idea at all what "Antipodal" filtering was.

 

Fidelia actually has the PRAT that I like, but interface wise, from the remote, if I select an album to play, it won't stop at the end of the album, but just go on and play whatever the next track is. Most annoying.

 

Less important, but still a source of disappointment, no album art.

 

More and more surprising, playing around blind testing with the system this morning, iTunes sounded better (up sampling 44.1k material to 88.2k) than Amarra, Audivarna+, and BitPerfect. We consistently picked iTunes as the best sounding player. It might be the speakers we changed back out, or something. In any case, iTunes is sounding really good on the system right now.

 

So do the Touch players, though they sound very different indeed.

 

-Paul

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat DAC.

Robert A. Heinlein

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