A little memory advice please.

[soileduk]

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been browsing the information contained in these pages and my brain is quietly closing down with information overload. I have a very basic knowledge of how a computer system would work but, frankly, some of the conversations go right over my head. So,my system consists of:-

Samsung R510 laptop - Windows Vista and with a full hard drive. This is connected wirelessly via a D-link router (works well) to a:-

Squeezebox Touch :- to a

Naim dac +xps2

I have eac installed for ripping CD and I have been downloading 24/96 flac from Chandos, Bis and Hyperion. I have about 5000 CDs to rip as well as the downloads.

My first need is to sort a suitable memory. I had thought of a pair of something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BP5RL10/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&psc=1&s=computers but I was wondering if a NAS of some kind would be better, especially if the NAS could 'talk' directly to the Squeezebox. Also for ripping, is it worth considering a stand alone Drive?

As you all can see I have a way to go and despite the search facility being available I am hoping for a little up to date guidance.

Peter Drew

 

[AmDismal]

I would recommend a NAS - make sure it has the Squeezebox Server software pre-installed for ease. The SB works much better this way - you don't need the laptop on, can control it from a phone or tablet and it will be more stable.

A single CD tends to be about 300MB in FLAC, ballpark, so you need about 1.5TB for the CDs. I would therefore recommend getting a single 3TB (min) drive for the NAS, and also the same as an external drive, to use as backup. Don't bother with RAID or whatever, the most important thing is to have an external drive to do scheduled backups

 

[Kev]

I'm a computer numpty and can only tell you what I've recently done with the help of the good folk on here.

I decided to install a NAS so that I didn't have to have the computer switched on. In very basic terms the NAS is a sort of mini computer that sits on the network and intelligently sends data to and from where it's requested. It's low power consumption and goes to sleep when not in use and is then very low power consumption.

I connected this to my broadband router which is connected to lan over mains TP link devices. This gives me a comprehensive network anywhere in the house so I'm not reliant on the wireless connection, which for me is poor.

The NAS has 2x1TB drives which I upload from my computer, I only keep a few tunes on my computer because the hard drive is nearly full. I used dBpoweramp to rip to Flac from the computer DVD drive.

The NAS has Logitech media server and also DS server running at the same time. I use a SB which is fed from the LMS and controlled from my Iphone using the Logitech app. I also have a Pioneer N50 which sees the DS server and is controlled by the DS app also from my iPhone.

This all works seamlessly and so far without glitches.

The NAS is a Synology DS213j which I was able to setup with only very minor niggles, bearing in mind my status as computer idiot I was impressed. Installing the hard drives, WD red, was easy, as was installing the software I needed.

After having gained experience with this I've decided to move the NAS into my listening room and use the USB output to go via a usb DAC into my preamp. The NAS is quiet tbh it's just about silent.

HTH

Kev

 

[vacdac]

A Synology DS213J would be a good place ter start for a NAS (I use its big Bro' the DS213)......Synology NAS's are extremely easy to setup, even for those with fairly limited IT/Network setup knowledge. You just install LMS* (*Logitech Media Server) from Synologys Package center.....which is all done Using the Web interface/Control Panel & its literally a couple of 'clicks' so a real P.O.P

With the size of Library you are going to have as a starting point.....you're gonna need 3TB drives I'd have though to still allow space for expansion...& you'll need 2 of these for a Dual bay NAS + an additional 3TB desktop drive for 'Belt & Braces backup. I'd recommend WD Red drives for t' NAS internal Drives as they're NAS specific in terms of being up to the demands of 24/7 up-time + are whisper quiet & v energy efficient......these drives also come with a v reassuring 3yr warranty which makes the higher price of these drives easier ter swallow......WD seem to have a good level of confidence in the reliability/longevity of these drives, so they seem to be a good bet ter me. :^

A standalone CD/DVD writer is a smart move IMV I've used EAC myself in the past & have found an external/standalone drive tends to give more consistently good clean/error free rips & that the internal drives on both laptops I've used fer ripping get tripped up far more often. A real + of having a second preferred drive fer ripping is that if you can't seem ter get a 'clean rip' using the 1st drive I seem to find that 9/10 times swapping to the 'spare drive' will do the trick nicely. :^ This was despite the fact that both drives had been carefully/correctly setup for EAC......(which a lot of people seem to struggle with when using this S/W which can be a little fiddly/'tweaky' to get working at its best)

Another Real + of having a second drive is that you can have another instance of DBpoweramp/EAC open in another window on your laptop & be ripping albums concurrently on both drives, which will speed up the process considerably.

IMV you'd be a lot better off installing DB Poweramp with t' amount of albums you have to rip, as it is peerless in terms of ease of use/setup IME & its simply shed loads better in terms of speed of ripping each album over EAC & in some cases can be 2/3 times faster for many albums. The batch convertor is also excellent for converting FLAC/ALAC/WAV etc to 'lossy codecs' for space efficiency for portable players that don't have gobloads of storage space. I did try a couple of alternative bits of S/W for Batch conversion & I found they were 'Glacially' slow in comparison (Most that I've tried don't seem to manage the trick of having multiple cores converting concurrently either:nup:.....at least IME that is:?) & that they also returned fairly large numbers of failed conversions when faced with a 'large scale' conversion task. DBpoweramp simply sailed through this & also working with modern multi core CPU machines it can multi task when carrying out conversions in my case with my Intel Core i-3 350m processor in my Acer Timeline X lappy it will manage to be doing 4 conversions simultaneously....I think this is the same for Intel Core i-5's as they are also 'Dual Core' IIRC but if you have an i-7 quad core then you should get 8 batch conversions simultaneously which would make light work of comparatively large libraries.

The ID Tag tag editing S/W included in the DBpoweramp package is also excellent & easy to use too. You can get a free 1month trial of the DBpoweramp package & if you plan accordingly + invest in a couple off board drives....no reason you couldn't be ripping several discs at the same time if you also use t' lappies onboard drive too. Still rather than go at it hammer & tongue you could use the month trial to 'Evaluate' this S/W & still get a good wedge of yer library done using DBpoweramp. Personally I wouldn't go back to using EAC & the paid licence for DB is well well worth it IMV.

Here's a recent thread in which I discuss my migration from my Netgear ReadyNas (my old NAS) to my new one, including some of my shortlist/decision making process.

http://www.hifiwigwam.com/showthread.php?88255-Upgrading-to-a-better-Nas-with-more-storage

 

[tonerei]

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/9814109/art/western-digital/elements-external-hard-dr.html

I have a few of these drives 2tb and they work well and are very quiet. Worth considering if you just get a hard drive. Got a verbatim one recently and it is really noisy the western digital is just a bland quiet black box.

I rip in wav as the advice I got when I started ripping was wav better than flac. Sure there is very little in it but maybe try both on a couple of disks before you get to far in the process.

 

[vacdac]

http://www.hifiwigwam.com/showthread.php?88255-Upgrading-to-a-better-Nas-with-more-storageI have a few of these drives 2tb and they work well and are very quiet. Worth considering if you just get a hard drive. Got a verbatim one recently and it is really noisy the western digital is just a bland quiet black box.

I rip in wav as the advice I got when I started ripping was wav better than flac. Sure there is very little in it but maybe try both on a couple of disks before you get to far in the process.

:nup: For a library of 5000+ albums, suggesting a standalone/directly attached HD fer use with a SBT, running off its own built in cut-down version of LMS simply isn't the best advice. :nup: With a smaller library you should prolly be fine right enough. However for a library of that size & growing I wouldn't expect the user experience to be as slick/glitch free as running from a NAS with decent processing grunt & library scans would be very slow in comparison too. In fact for this reason I think the full fat Synology DS213 or the DS213+ may be the ones to look at from Synology's current range.

Suggesting ripping to WAV is just simply terrible & completely PISS POOR advice IMV more so in the case of larger libraries where 'Good Tagging' is far more of an issue :doh: Given its tagging limitations/shortcomings, this just makes no sense at all & recommending it at all is just UTTER BOLLOCKS TBH. :roll: FLAC is LOSSLESS & 'Bit-Perfect' any COMPRESSION is just more space efficient packaging when compared to WAV & does not equate to any losses in SQ. :nup:

 

[AmDismal]

Suggesting ripping to WAV is just simply terrible & completely PISS POOR advice IMV more so in the case of larger libraries where 'Good Tagging' is far more of an issue :doh: Given its tagging limitations/shortcomings, this just makes no sense at all & recommending it at all is just UTTER BOLLOCKS TBH. :roll: FLAC is LOSSLESS & 'Bit-Perfect' any COMPRESSION is just more space efficient packaging when compared to WAV & does not equate to any losses in SQ. :nup:

Agreed. If you are paranoid about FLAC vs WAV, you can have the server stream WAV instead of FLAC (i.e. it decodes on the server, not the SBT), which is identical to storing the music in WAV (except you can tag it, and it takes up half the space). It sounds the same.

 

[iquadius]

I'm with you ... tonerei ...

I dont use exclusively WAV but vast majority of my 4500+ albums are ripped in this way, tagging not an issue using 'tag&rename' ....... there are a lot of naysayers who vehemently oppose this route but for me it has other benefits and storage space is cheap these days. I use a proliant microserver and windows7 for the donkey work of music/movie streaming with LMS (tho I prefer to stick with version 7.5.5) and XBMC ...... a very versatile alternative to a NAS ....... try both WAV and FLAC then decide for yourself, sound reproduction of either is faultless.

 

[tonerei]

I'm with you ... tonerei ... I don't use exclusively WAV but vast majority of my 4500+ albums are ripped in this way, tagging not an issue using 'tag&rename' ....... there are a lot of naysayers who vehemently oppose this route but for me it has other benefits and storage space is cheap these days. I use a proliant microserver and windows7 for the donkey work of music/movie streaming with LMS (tho I prefer to stick with version 7.5.5) and XBMC ...... a very versatile alternative to a NAS ....... try both WAV and FLAC then decide for yourself, sound reproduction of either is faultless.

Scary place this the op has a link to a £100 disk drive and you provide a link to similar that work fine and are reasonably priced and war erupts!

Re Wav or Flac not sure and dont care if somebody thinks mp3 sounds the best so be it.I have some on flac and most on wav I was just suggesting to the op to listen to both before he ripped all his cd's as 5000 cds will take a long time.

Nas drives as far as I can see are fairly expensive. But some of the robust suggestions above advise they work best in the Squeezebox arrangement the op wants to use. No experience on that so wouldn't offer any advice if others have implemented this route and advise it works. I have a Squeezebox but only ever really used it for internet radio. Personally I found pc audio using a dedicated dac to be far superior.Having said that I never invested in better power supplies or the other stuff used to improve SQ from the Squeezebox. I think it is accepted that this route will out perform a squeezebox set up but maybe Sbox users have tried both and disagree.

It might be worth considering the fact Squeezebox's aint being made anymore also. I understand the convenience SBox offers and realise it is versatile and has a really nifty remote control.

 

[browellm]

Jesus Christ, there are still people who think WAV sounds different to FLAC? :doh:

 

[tonerei]

Jesus Christ, there are still people who think WAV sounds different to FLAC? :doh:

Don't think anybody said that here just pointed out the options. Does it matter if somebody perceives or prefers a particular file type?

 

[AlanB]

Jesus Christ, there are still people who think WAV sounds different to FLAC? :doh:

Mark, I pride myself on having a pretty good ear but I can't tell FLAC from Apple Lossless.

Being a computer numpty I've not used WAV.

 

[Chumpy]

All of the best with keeping things as nice/simple as possible. I am all for myriad excellent cheap big-TB HDD used as backup. I preserve my original analogue rare vinyl/analogue tape otherwise unavailable on WAV on my myriad HDD (usually Seagate 'cos they are cheapest/fine).

If necessary, these myriad backup HDD can be played into suitable TV/PC etc.

Funny how when we bought most of our super analogue plastic that we did not purchase 3-4 copies ...

NAS = nasty/Nasri etc (Nastase was fine).