so how much processing power does a NAS CPU need to have anyway?

[PaleMarsh]

hi all

 

thinking about putting together a:

Synology NAS / MinimServer / FLAC / Aries

 

for the NAS the rack mountable RS814 has caught my eye

but I'm a bit concerned about the grunt of the CPU

another thread warned that transcoding = a heavy workload

most of my files are red-book into FLAC (level 6)

but there'll be more higher-res files in time

 

further, if at a later date I added an RX415 -

would this increase the load on the main NAS CPU to impossible levels?

 

so, would the RS814 (Marvell Armada XP / 1.33 dual) be 'good enough'

or would the RS814+ (Intel Atom / 2.13 dual) be a safer bet?

 

any thoughts appreciated - thanks!

[firedog]

Depends what you mean when you talk about transcoding. Just about any reasonable modern NAS like the Synology will playback any music file in any format. Playing back flac at any compression level won't be a problem. Even hi-res.

 

Where it will run into trouble is if you try to do things like converting PCM to DSD on the fly during playback or upsampling Redbook to hi-res sample rates during playback.

 

The other setups you mentioned will also have trouble doing the above. But for just straight "playback" they will all do fine.

[Cebolla]

PaleMarsh

 

Your proposed network streaming setup does not require transcoding, since the Aries UPnP renderer supports playback of FLAC files natively over the network. Hence the NAS has no need for any extra processing power, regardless of the compression level and the resolution of the FLAC files. It's the Aries's that'll do all the music playback work and it has nothing to do with the NAS. All the NAS has to do is supply the music file data, via the MinimServer UPnP media server running on it, to the Aries renderer. If the NAS doesn't normally have any problems transferring large files over the network to a computer, say, then it shouldn't have any problems when the FLAC files it contains are being streamed to the Aries renderer.

 

John

[Cebolla]

Where it will run into trouble is if you try to do things like converting PCM to DSD on the fly during playback or upsampling Redbook to hi-res sample rates during playback.

The MinimServer (optional) transcoder module, MinimStreamer, is not able to convert PCM to DSD nor upsample Redbook to hi-res. It can be set to increase the bit depth of Redbook to 24 bits (output as WAV only), though. Hardly a huge strain on the NAS, but you never know.

[tgb]

Hi PaleMarsh,

With the RS814 it will be no problem at all to run MnimServer and do the job you want it to do.

 

This is my story concerning your inquiry :

I have a Syno 212J. I have Minim installed, Minim does the transcode of flacs to wave. No problem to transcode & stream Redbooks & HDs.

A guy contacted me because he got failure with this same process with its 112J.

We checked CPU load & memory during transcoding : it appears that with my 212J, CPU jumps to 100% during the last seconds of a song, due to gapless, to prepare the next song to be streamed in wave. With a 112J the smaller processor was not able to process the next transcode properly leading to failure.

Thus, from a 212J, using transcoding capability of Minim is OK ; with a 112J, it is not.

I let you check the processors of 212J & 112J, and RAMs but we are far below the specifications of RS814 ! :-)

 

You'll ask a muscle car to drive in a city. It can do it... but much more :-)

Rgds

[PaleMarsh]

appreciated - thanks all!