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Article: Cloud Storage & High Resolution Streaming - Possible? Practical? Pricey?


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OK, so I'll bite. Why is this different to using a Synology & a combination of AudioStation, either browser or iOS App? or PureMusic & iTunes mapped to a Synology (which can be local or over the interweb?)

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OK, so I'll bite. Why is this different to using a Synology & a combination of AudioStation, either browser or iOS App? or PureMusic & iTunes mapped to a Synology (which can be local or over the interweb?)

It's very different.

 

Using a browser you don't have full control over your audio output device, the remote control interface is absent or terrible, you still have all the issues mentioned with respect to setup, maintenance, backup of a NAS, and just about everything else I mentioned in the article.

 

iOS app is hardly a replacement for a music server and will have trouble outputting to a USB DAC of choice.

 

Can AudioStation stream lossless 24/192 and DSD over the Internet?

 

It seems as if you skimmed over the article. No worries :~)

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Right until some fool hacks up the cloud, your account, or whatever, and you never see your stuff again.

 

No thanks.

I'll take the chance. The much more sensitive data we all store in the cloud, knowingly or unknowingly, is of far greater value to me and a hacker, but I'm willing to take the chance. Many businesses store all their data in the cloud. HDtracks music is served from the cloud. Many of the most popular website are run from the cloud (Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud).

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Interesting writeup Chris, makes one think about the cost of ,lets say a 10TB hard drive ( Lacie 10TB Thunderbolt Drive) for home vs the total cost of storing that much data on a cloud. I'll will trust Google before I trust any other cloud provider. Interesting read How Does Google Protect Your Data in The Cloud? – ReadWrite

 

As Nombedes noted, some fool will hack up the cloud, well these fools have already hacked, Target and The State of South Carolina's Department of Revenue so it's already taken place but these data centers were hanging to the old position that what we have in place is sufficient and ignoring new protection methods to prevent hackers.

 

The cloud might not be for everyone, I say it all depends on your wallet and what you want to do with your data.

The Truth Is Out There

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Interesting writeup Chris, makes one think about the cost of ,lets say a 10TB hard drive ( Lacie 10TB Thunderbolt Drive) for home vs the total cost of storing that much data on a cloud. I'll will trust Google before I trust any other cloud provider. Interesting read How Does Google Protect Your Data in The Cloud? – ReadWrite

 

As Nombedes noted, some fool will hack up the cloud, well these fools have already hacked, Target and The State of South Carolina's Department of Revenue so it's already taken place but these data centers were hanging to the old position that what we have in place is sufficient and ignoring new protection methods to prevent hackers.

 

The cloud might not be for everyone, I say it all depends on your wallet and what you want to do with your data.

My thoughts as well, it's not for everyone and everything.

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So, would you conclude that streaming from the net is a bit too expensive, but backup storage in the cloud makes sense? Backup storage is a bit less expensive, since of course, you are not accessing it all the time. Save to add or change items of course.

 

-Paul

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

Robert A. Heinlein

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So, would you conclude that streaming from the net is a bit too expensive, but backup storage in the cloud makes sense? Backup storage is a bit less expensive, since of course, you are not accessing it all the time. Save to add or change items of course.

 

-Paul

H Paul - It's actually the opposite. Take a look at the S3 price calculator. The cost of 4TB of storage is roughly $120 per month. The cost of streaming 5GB per day for one month is only about $15.

 

Make sure to select S3 on the left side.

http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html

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H Paul - It's actually the opposite. Take a look at the S3 price calculator. The cost of 4TB of storage is roughly $120 per month. The cost of streaming 5GB per day for one month is only about $15.

 

Make sure to select S3 on the left side.

Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator

 

I assumed the storage fees were inherent in streaming, and was suggesting that a backup only service might be cost competitive in some ways. For instance, 4gb of online storage from iDrive is $249/year. Carbonite has unlimited cloud storage space starting at $60/year.

 

I don't think streaming music from either service is viable though, due to the way the services are designed.

 

-Paul

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

Robert A. Heinlein

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I assumed the storage fees were inherent in streaming, and was suggesting that a backup only service might be cost competitive in some ways. For instance, 4gb of online storage from iDrive is $249/year. Carbonite has unlimited cloud storage space starting at $60/year.

 

I don't think streaming music from either service is viable though, due to the way the services are designed.

 

-Paul

Ah, now I got ya.

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I can see the great paradox here...

While I would feel unconfortable for having my tunes stored outside in a cloud, at the same time I must acknowledge that such a professional organization have much more means and know how to manage that data, comparing to myself.

 

The recent cloud sync on DSM 5.0 maybe can be explored as a "private cloud"...I will try that sometime, when I am able to purchase another NAS to stay at a secondary location....

 

Anyway, I praise Chris for taken the burden of doing such a informative and organized test. Thanks!

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High resolution audio streaming shouldn't be an issue. I've been streaming HD video from ITunes, Netflix, VUDU and Hulu flawlessly without buffering with the same comcast service as Chris. The tech and network to do the same for audio exists.

 

Building a high capacity reliable streaming service is not a simple task.

 

Building the storage network behind them is not a simple thing either.

 

Building both is fiendishly complex and expensive. ITune alone has more than two billion dollars invested in the infrastructure.

 

To put it in perspective, how many people have trouble with a simple little home NAS? Imagine those problems doubled, then squared, then cubed and doubled again on top of that. That would be a normal day, it gets worse when something goes wrong.

 

Paul

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

Robert A. Heinlein

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High resolution audio streaming shouldn't be an issue. I've been streaming HD video from ITunes, Netflix, VUDU and Hulu flawlessly without buffering with the same comcast service as Chris. The tech and network to do the same for audio exists.

Hi mayhem - All the services you mention stream incredibly lossy versions of the content. Streaming Blu-ray with lossless compression is another story. I'd love to see it though.

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I look forward to the day that 10TB of cloud storage is affordable. I think by the end of the year I'll put another NAS offsite and the two will auto sync. That's the only reasonable cost effective way at this point to me.

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Great article Chris. Always wondered how much something like this would cost. Jtwrace's idea about an offsite synched NAS is a good one, and relatively cheap.

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Great article Chris. Always wondered how much something like this would cost. Jtwrace's idea about an offsite synched NAS is a good one, and relatively cheap.

 

Kind of depends upon how much data is actually changing I think. If it is any significant amount, you need data reduplication over the transmission to make it seriously work well. Indeed, it is almost a absolute requirement.

 

-Paul

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

Robert A. Heinlein

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My internet connection allows streaming of mp3 formats only from 11 pm - 11 am and I tend to sleep 8 hrs of that time. Downloading works even if it is slow but one time would be enough. So any higher resolution streaming never happens for me anyhow. I have no idea why one wants to be dependent of Big Brother even if one could get fast and reliable ISP. Storage is getting quite cheap and small like my micro SDXC for my AK120.

That cloud idea is even more problematic for photography. I can not understand why anyone wants to be more dependent on commercial entities than necessary?

I back up all of my files on different HDs (iosafe) which I store separate of my system.

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Interesting that you have missed the qobuz.com hi-fi account which would seem to meet requirements. I'm really thinking why people with a huge collection with large NAS drives and back ups would not use a service like this?

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Kind of depends upon how much data is actually changing I think. If it is any significant amount, you need data reduplication over the transmission to make it seriously work well. Indeed, it is almost a absolute requirement.

 

-Paul

 

Can you explain what that is so it makes sense to a non-computer person like myself? Is having two NAS' syncing to eachother an issue? The initial backup I'd do connected together and then at most it might be 4-10 albums at a time to sync. Currently I have a Synology DX513 locally which works great and then I have drives offsite and stored onsite in a safe. It would be nice to add offsite replication though. I'm continually amazed at how many people have a NAS and do not backup. The thought of re-ripping all these albums again makes me sick.

W10 NUC i7 (Gen 10) > Roon (Audiolense FIR) > Motu UltraLite mk5 > (4) Hypex NCore NC502MP > JBL M2 Master Reference +4 subs

 

Watch my Podcast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXMw_bZWBMtRWNJQfTJ38kA/videos

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Can you explain what that is so it makes sense to a non-computer person like myself? Is having two NAS' syncing to eachother an issue? The initial backup I'd do connected together and then at most it might be 4-10 albums at a time to sync. Currently I have a Synology DX513 locally which works great and then I have drives offsite and stored onsite in a safe. It would be nice to add offsite replication though. I'm continually amazed at how many people have a NAS and do not backup. The thought of re-ripping all these albums again makes me sick.

I've setup two Synology NAS units at different sites to sync over the Internet. It works great. Adding 1 or 2 GB to sync isn't a big deal. As you said the initial sync must happen locally.

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Interesting that you have missed the qobuz.com hi-fi account which would seem to meet requirements. I'm really thinking why people with a huge collection with large NAS drives and back ups would not use a service like this?

Hi keeper - I looked at qobuz HiFi but it doesn't quite meet the requirements. It's not available in the US. Can stream no higher than 16/44.1, and has no remote control capability. It's really neat, but isn't a desktop app replacement or doesn't allow streaming through an app like JRiver Media Center.

 

I wish it was available here in the US. I really like that the app allows selection of one's audio device rather than just sending it to a default device.

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Deduplication is a neat trick where the data on your disk is analyzed and basically, only one copy of duplicate information is kept. So for example, your music database is copied once, but from then on, only the parts that change are actually transmitted. Another example, if you have two copies of a music file, only one copy will be kept and a pointer to the second one will be stored. Or a better example, if you have a copy of a file in AIFF and WAV, where they contain identical PCM data. In that case, only one copy of the PCM data would be saved, along with the wrapper information that makes each file unique.

 

When you restore a file it is "re-hydrated", a process that gives you back the exact file, or the exact version of a file that you need. It all works very well, and allows one to often store say, 10Tb of data in less than a Terabyte of physical space.

 

Big storage companies can take advantage of systems that do this on a massive scale, and may be storing 1000TB of data in a mere 50TB of real space. That's how the online companies can control cost and make a profit.

 

Where it applies here is kind of simple. To synchronize two remote devices, if they both understand Deduplication, you can compress and transmit only the deduplicated changes. In the real world this may mean the equivalent of transmitting a few Gigabytes of information in only a few hundred meg's. Huge savings.

 

Why is that important at all? ISP home transmission limits. We have a 350gb per month cap on a 117mbs connection. A successful trip to gather records or used CDs can result in 20-30 new albums, hi-res is that are digital transcriptions of vinyl records, to transmit. That can easily hit 45gbs to transmit. We do that perhaps once or twice per month, as well as buying a half dozen new discs or so very month. Add in streaming movies and Tv in high def, and we have hit or exceeded that number upon occasion.

 

Our phone one have 'unlimited' data grandfathered in,mouth get capped and slowdown at 3gb/month. Hi rest streaming and a few movies can hi that limit pretty easily too. (I stream ALAC to my phone.)

 

Conversely, I hold a lot of business data online in deduplicated form, transferring the equivalent of hundred gigs or more per week. That has it's own internet connection, and never even comes close to the limit.

 

Long explanation, but those are some of the technical reasons That force me to agree with Chris, hi res streaming just isn't ready for prime time yet.

 

-Paul

 

Typos courtesy of my iPad...

 

Can you explain what that is so it makes sense to a non-computer person like myself? Is having two NAS' syncing to eachother an issue? The initial backup I'd do connected together and then at most it might be 4-10 albums at a time to sync. Currently I have a Synology DX513 locally which works great and then I have drives offsite and stored onsite in a safe. It would be nice to add offsite replication though. I'm continually amazed at how many people have a NAS and do not backup. The thought of re-ripping all these albums again makes me sick.

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

Robert A. Heinlein

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