To NAS, or not to NAS?

[Narcissus]

Hey Guys,

 

My chain consists of Mac (Audirvana +) > DAC a direct path if you will, my external HDD (I have 2 HDD's and I can only connect one at a time) is connected directly to my Mac. Would getting a NAS like Synology etc make sense so I could connect my HDD's to the NAS and connect it via Ethernet to the Mac?

 

Would this be the right way to do it & why? Is the Synology EDS 14 a good option for my requirement?

 

Fwiw, I use a Linksys router for wifi connectivity thru the house. Thanks in advance for all your replies.

[firedog]

It would certainly work. 

How big is your music collecton? 

The other option is using an internal HD as your storage for your music, whether it is on a NAS or inside your computer. 

[pkane2001]

27 minutes ago, Narcissus said:

Hey Guys,

 

My chain consists of Mac (Audirvana +) > DAC a direct path if you will, my external HDD (I have 2 HDD's and I can only connect one at a time) is connected directly to my Mac. Would getting a NAS like Synology etc make sense so I could connect my HDD's to the NAS and connect it via Ethernet to the Mac?

 

Would this be the right way to do it & why? Is the Synology EDS 14 a good option for my requirement?

 

Fwiw, I use a Linksys router for wifi connectivity thru the house. Thanks in advance for all your replies.

Be careful with WiFi, make sure you have a good enough signal (not just bandwidth, but low latency) if you use that to transmit files from the NAS to your DAC. I am using it this way now, but it took me a while to get the WiFi configuration straightened out with a repeater bridge. Without it, I had frequent drop-outs during playback, even though it seemed that I had plenty of bandwidth that appeared to be more than sufficient for the audio traffic. If you can use wired ethernet, that will probably make things easier. In term of bandwidth, playing redbook 44.1Khz/16bit FLAC files requires just about 1 Mb/s. For 192Khz/24bit content, this goes up to nearly 10Mb/s. But, again, low network latency is key.

[Cebolla]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

Be careful with WiFi, make sure you have a good enough signal (not just bandwidth, but low latency) if you use that to transmit files from the NAS to your DAC. I am using it this way now, but it took me a while to get the WiFi configuration straightened out with a repeater bridge. Without it, I had frequent drop-outs during playback, even though it seemed that I had plenty of bandwidth that appeared to be more than sufficient for the audio traffic. If you can use wired ethernet, that will probably make things easier. In term of bandwidth, playing redbook 44.1Khz/16bit FLAC files requires just about 1 Mb/s. For 192Khz/24bit content, this goes up to nearly 10Mb/s. But, again, low network latency is key.

All very good advice. However, the pedant in me couldn't help pointing out this particular bugbear of mine, often leading to misunderstandings in some.

 

DACs do not receive audio files - they receive the (realtime) digital audio signal that's been produced by decoding and playing those (very much non-realtime) audio files.

[pkane2001]

37 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

DACs do not receive audio files - they receive the (realtime) digital audio signal that's been produced by decoding and playing those (very much non-realtime) audio files.

 

Absolutely. My PC, connected to the WiFi bridge over ethernet, retrieves audio files from NAS using SMB protocol over Wi-Fi, converts it to native DSD512 that it then sends to a DDC via USB 2.0, the DDC re-clocks it and sends it over I2S to the DAC. I obviously attempted to omit some of the details in the interest of brevity 

 

[Cebolla]

Saying something like "...transmit files from the NAS to your Mac/computer/PC/etc", would have been just as brief, but crucially not open to misinterpretation (and would have avoided this conversation ). It would not surprise me if someone took your original statement to imply some sort of digital audio signal path between NAS and DAC.

 

Of course the reality is that the audio signal path is only ever between PC and DAC in this setup, with or without the network (and the NAS).

[Narcissus]

6 hours ago, firedog said:

It would certainly work. 

How big is your music collecton? 

The other option is using an internal HD as your storage for your music, whether it is on a NAS or inside your computer. 

 

My music collection comprises of 2 HDD's 4tb + 1tb. Since I already own external HDD's I would prefer to save the dough and utilise them instead of goin for internal HD's.

 

Thats the reason I feel the Synology EDS 14 might serve my purpose.

[Narcissus]

6 hours ago, pkane2001 said:

Be careful with WiFi, make sure you have a good enough signal (not just bandwidth, but low latency) if you use that to transmit files from the NAS to your DAC. I am using it this way now, but it took me a while to get the WiFi configuration straightened out with a repeater bridge. Without it, I had frequent drop-outs during playback, even though it seemed that I had plenty of bandwidth that appeared to be more than sufficient for the audio traffic. If you can use wired ethernet, that will probably make things easier. In term of bandwidth, playing redbook 44.1Khz/16bit FLAC files requires just about 1 Mb/s. For 192Khz/24bit content, this goes up to nearly 10Mb/s. But, again, low network latency is key.

Not using wifi for music, don't intend to. If I go the NAS way, I'd prefer to use Ethernet.