How to playback from a NAS

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Paul McGowan, PS Audio

4 ай бұрын

A NAS is a Network Attached hard drive. How to select and play music from it to your stereo system.

Пікірлер: 41

@PhillioDoede 3 ай бұрын

Not as focused as Roon but actually Plex / Plex Amp does a really good job with sorting music and handling metadata and is super easy to install on most common NASs.

@joshuaford4460 3 ай бұрын

Heck, even JellyFin is pretty good for this, albiet you have to be pretty organized with your folder structure/organization. I use JellyFin with Symfonium on mobile devices and Feishin on Linux PCs, or just the JellyFin client app anywhere else. It even makes transcoding and setting reduced bitrate on mobile connections pretty easy (at least with Symfonium). And all of it is free other than $5 one-time purchase for Symfonium.

@janwillemkuilenburg7561 3 ай бұрын

I used my NAS to stream, but that worked too slow. Instead I now use a Ifi Zen Streamer (has a Femto reclocker) with my music collection on an attached SSD as a digital transport. Works like a dream and delivers incredible sound quality.

@AndreMiguelLopes69 3 ай бұрын

I use Plex since 2014 for movies and TV Series. Since last year I star using it also for music and its awesome. I not using a real NAS, but a small server from 2015, that still got more power then a today NAS and uses only 20 watts at idle with two 14TB WD RED's.

@Chippie-O 3 ай бұрын

Hi Paul, thanks for the q&a's, slowly building my setup, thought I'd share that Linus over at Linus Media Group on KZfaq just did a video covering diy solid state NAS set ups, might be a good solution for this person's needs.

@phrtao 3 ай бұрын

You are brave to tackle this very complicated topic. I don't know if there is one perfect solution. It is a real shame since the lossless files have all the sound quality you could ever want but unlocking it is so difficult.

@ThinkingBetter 3 ай бұрын

Just sign up for a modern streaming service with FLAC lossless CD quality or better audio fidelity with access to many millions of tracks, and things are no longer complicated and life is better than ever.

@NoEgg4u 3 ай бұрын

An inexpensive mini PC, with a large enough SSD (500 GB should be enough for 99.9% of personal digital music collections) feeding a quality transport (to remove noise and jitter), such as the AirLens, you can then use any any media playing applications, such as Roon Lab's Roon, or JRiver's Media Center. Using a quality media player will allow Antonus, from Athens Greece, to convert his lossless wav files to lossless flac files. That will save him space (although he might have tons of free space). But flac files will also allow him to use loads more meta-data that is key to sorting and filtering and tagging songs. The wav format is extremely limited as it pertains to meta-data. If you want to have fun with your music library, searching for songs, and arranging them in every way under the sun, then wav is not going to help you. Antonus can store and source his music from his NAS. But spinning disks are not ideal for fast response times for searches, filtering, skipping around, etc. Perhaps his NAS contains only SSDs? Most people put spinning disks in their NAS. If Antonus uses his NAS, then the storage capacity of a mini PC is of little importance. If the mini PC runs a Pro version of Windows, then Antonus can enable Remote Desktop server, and use a tablet or almost any device to let him remotely control the PC that is running the media software. Macs probably have their version of Remote Desktop (I do not use a Mac), and Linux has free utilities to do the same. The above set-up will allow Antonus to sit in his listening chair, and remotely control a mini PC that sits close to his transport / music streamer. That can be done wirelessly. Yet, between the PC and the streamer, he can run a short Ethernet cable, for the best results (although Ethernet cables are not prone to latency issues, if you keep them under 100 meters for a quality cable (there are exceptions, depending on the Cat version and other factors). But any well made Cat 5 cable will be more than capable of handling even the highest sampling rates, with ease. And none of the above needs an internet connection. Amazon sells countless mini PCs. Many are in the $100 range. If you go for a renewed mini PC, you can get a more than capable i5 CPU, with 16 GB of RAM, for close to $100. Renewed PCs are hit or miss. I have purchased two. One had a broken connection for the fan, that I could not fix. So back it went. The seller replaced it with one that was as good as new, and clean as new. It was built for business use, probably cost $600+ new, and is built like a tank. My other one was also clean. But there are reports / reviews of filthy ones being delivered to customers. You can always send it back within 30 days if they send you a lemon.

@mrjalcgt 3 ай бұрын

A PC will be the best solution to send music to a streamer. I recommend Roon just because you can add eq and improve your room response.

@theshootindutchman 3 ай бұрын

Holy cow.......my head is spinning and I need an Advil 🤪

@NoEgg4u 3 ай бұрын

@@mrjalcgt "A PC will be the best solution to send music to a streamer. I recommend Roon just because you can add eq and improve your room response." Adding EQ for people seeking sound accuracy (which is to what this channel is devoted) is the Kryptonite of audio excellence. EQ is the simplest fix, while also being the least desirable fix. Proper speaker set-up and room treatments should come first. Even replacing a box that is adding, for example, too much boomy bass should come before running your audio signal through an EQ processor. EQ is active processing, and is a no-no in the world of accurate sound reproduction. Room treatments and gear changes will cost more and be more time consuming than using Roon's EQ. So a person's budget and free time need to be factored in. If the budget is very low or non-existent, then Roon's EQ would be a proper choice. But for people that have the disposable cash, EQ should be at the bottom of the "choice" list.

@EdLawless 3 ай бұрын

I find that Roon solves a lot of my problems with my music library. I have a NAS that is beefy enough to run the NAS Roon edition on it. Then I just hook up my streamers to the network and control them with the roon software on my phone / tablets. Works really well; but I do recommend restarting the roon services on the NAS once a day. So I have that scheduled to happen on my synology at night while I am sleeping. That stopped some of the run away resource issues I was running into with it. I primarily stream 24 bit 96Khz PCM audio that I sample myself from my turntable. All of this is in flac files.

@Specialist1Aim 3 ай бұрын

What does uPNP unsuccessful mean when you are connected to a LAN that is a public network

@Thunderbird139 3 ай бұрын

I don’t get using a NAS. I bought one to streamline my system and it made it so complicated! I understand all the tech involved but there are too many pieces required. If you have CDs why not just use a cd player?

@West3rror 3 ай бұрын

Media player with USB input or space for SSD and a DAC. Or a media streamer that can control a NAS via it's remote and display so the need for an app is optional. There. Done.

@user-od9iz9cv1w 3 ай бұрын

I don't know if I heard correctly, but I think he said his WAV files are on an SSD, not a NAS.

@PhineasFreakUK 3 ай бұрын

Yeah, that's what I was thinking...don't think there's a easy way to get files off that, and into a DAC, without a "computer" powering and running the SSD

@wholiddleolme476 3 ай бұрын

Knowing my luck I'd have the 0.00001% that doesn't work 😁

@bf0189 3 ай бұрын

I would recommend converting to AIFF if you don't want to transcode to FLAC for metadata purposes. There is no practical difference between AIFF and WAV other than the ability to add meta data

@chrismorgan3486 3 ай бұрын

But, I want to easily play my ripped CDs as well as stream from Qobuz or Tidal or Spotify. What does that setup look like?

@georgemoraleswork 3 ай бұрын

WiiM pro can play your CD collection and stream you fav music App

@georgemoraleswork 3 ай бұрын

I have a WiiM pro to bifrost DAC and xlr cables to vidar monoblocks

@howardskillington4445 3 ай бұрын

That all sounds absurdly elaborate. I put all my hi res files on cheap flash drives and simply use the USB socket on the front of my CD player. Easy peasy. Works fine.

@joeb4349 3 ай бұрын

Dear Howard: My McIntosh CD player will play SACDs. It also has a USB socket on the front. I assume these are hi res files on the SACD. Can I copy these hi rez files to a conventional USB flash drive and play them on my McIntosh using the player's SACD format? Any advice is appreciated.

@ThinkingBetter 3 ай бұрын

Yes, I sort of agree, but I also think nowadays streaming has already become so much better giving you much more content and still in lossless CD quality or better. But, in any case, you can hold 1.5TB on a single micro SD card nowadays if you are obsessed about owning music files. That's more than 2,000 CDs on the size of your finger nail. A NAS drive has the advantage of being able to support multiple streamers in a big house however. Still, nowadays I am 100% streaming only. Even my KEF LS60 speakers do excellent streaming so no need to waste time on managing music files.

@PanAmStyle 3 ай бұрын

Technically a *NAS* is Network Attached STORAGE

@boblehman1726 3 ай бұрын

I agree. I'm a retired degreed electrical engineer and have been playing with the "high end" (including DIY tube/solid state electronics and speakers) since high school and college in the '70s (including working at a hi-fi store and having an article published in Stereophile with a pre-CD digital audio proposal), and went through LPs, imports, direct-to-disc, open-reel, live recordings of professional performances with a tube preamp for electret condenser mics and dBx noise reduction, CDs, multichannel and stereo SACDs, DVD-Audios, Internet streaming, downloading hi-res files for storage on a PC's SSD and external hard drives and on USB sticks for playback in various ways including home Wi-Fi and direct connection through my Oppo UDP-205 and -203 universal players (including HD FLAC and DSF (up to DSD256) files ... and dare I say, as @phtao also commented, this all seems to be getting a bit too complicated. I definitely drew a line in the sand with Dolby Atmos. I still enjoy listening on any of my 6 or so home systems (including a 5.1 home theater, 3 different speaker & amp options in the stereo system, and 3 separate Stax electrostatic headphone subsystems) - which is ALSO a bit too complicated. But I seem to get about as much enjoyment out of my Kia Soul's premium JBL sound system with a subwoofer playing tens of gigabytes of WMA/MP3/WAV files ripped from my discs and copied to just 2 huge USB sticks that simply plug into the dash USB socket and provide great-sounding music with no repeats over months of driving.

@glenncurry3041 3 ай бұрын

"The PS Audio AirLens™ completely eliminates the problems of noise, jitter, and EMI influences through complete galvanic isolation and perfect reclocking of the digital audio signal." So it should not matter if any preconditioning exists before the AirLens because it would solve any and all such issues? My DELL Power Server through the Cisco L4 managed switch over regular CAT6? All that special cables, special switches,... would have no sonic difference because the AirLens does all that right before the DAC? I have some 150 GB of everything from low bitrate mp3 to locally ripped vinyl to 24/96. Still using WINAMP on PCs! But am being pushed towards FOOBAR by my IT geek sons.

@ThinkingBetter 3 ай бұрын

14 years ago I was helping a friend guiding some installers setting up his home theatre and multi room audio incl. audiophile setups in his crazy US$25 million house in Malibu, with a NAS serving movies and music. He always complained about this and that movie or music missing that he could get on his computer or phone; and ended up running online streaming instead (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Amazon Music Unlimited) for his home A/V. The NAS era is over at least for video media. Personally I still have my music NAS drive with 8TB running, but I completely stopped using it for the same reason. Does some ripped CD tracks sound better than lossless streaming? I used to believe so, but it's a shrinking argument without much of examples anymore.

@audiolover 3 ай бұрын

I have only FLAC, dsd files. No compressed music 🤷

@matteoromenghi 3 ай бұрын

@@audioloverWell done! 👍

@ThinkingBetter 3 ай бұрын

@@audiolover Yes, but FLAC is compressed. By "compressed" you probably mean "lossy" formats such as MP3 or MQA. I never listen to lossy formatted music at all. All streaming I do is lossless FLAC. Amazon Music Unlimited is using FLAC in up to 192kHz 24 bits (better than DSD-64). Streaming a FLAC 44.1kHz 16 bit track is identical to CD quality with zero losses.