Another Request for Help!

[admin_exported]

Hi all

Think I am in the right forum here. Basically Ive been persuaded that the best option for me is to ditch the cd player plans and to stick with a good amp and a system to utilise my digital library in its full (DAC and wireless streaming).

I am a heavy iTunes, iPhone, Last.FM and Spotify user so looking for some sort of system that will get me the best out of that and some advice in general would be most appreciated. Id also prefer not to have the laptop on all the time to access music so a NAS thing (novice here) would be a preferred option too. After taking the amp into account I prob have about £500 tops to take care of all of this.

So, would the Airport Express or Squeezebox Duet suit me best? With the potential for Spotify through the Squeezebox in the near future I suppose that would suit but Im not entirely sure. The iPhone as a controller sounds great but Id still need the pc to access my Spotify playlists (I am a premium user not that it helps much!).

I prefer the DACMagic with its better connectivity options (for any future upgrades/additions) too. As far as NASs go I havent a clue. Could something like the HDX 1000 offer me PCless streaming via the Squeezebox? Would also be handy for storing all my movies/tv programmes. Id prefer not to go down the Apple TV route - not enough storage and file types are limited.

The DAC plus Squeezebox would zap most of my budget but it would be great if someone could at least tell me an easy system for accessing my tunes without the laptop being on.

As always, all help greatly appreciated!

 

[Anonymous]

Anyone? Pretty please!

 

[Anonymous]

I always tell people on a budget the same thing, build your own NAS. I'm not sure what your IT skills are, but even if they are almost non existent, its not as daunting as you might think. It can save a lot of money on the NAS front. I recently bought a refurbished PC for £74, stuck in some old hard disks, and used some free software, and built a NAS with more functionality that you get on things like the Buffalo Terrastations, and Drobos etc. I can go into a little more detail how to do this if its of use to anyone.

Something like that, storing your music, along with a DAC and the Squeezebox would do exactly what you are after. So would any NAS really, but I'm trying to offer an alternative that might help you stay within your budget

 

[lordmortlock]

Defo the best way to keep in budget in this instance. I looked at NAS recently but my pcs pretty much always on so I'm not sure I really need it. Genfish how about a 'how to build your own NAS' post if you have the time? I'm sure lots of people would find it interesting.

 

[Anonymous]

Agreed it would be a great help. Im sure Im not the only one who wants to have some sort of access to all their music library without the pc on but doesnt have a clue how to go about it!!!

My brother has a pc thatis gathering dust at the moment. Wi Fi enabled, large hard disk. Im sure I could get it off him for nothing, stick it somewhere out the way and use it that way. Assuming that'll work!

I just liked the size and coneinience of something like the Buffalo Link Station. Plus it was cheap!

 

[idc]

I had a Buffalo Drivestation 2share network hard drive for a short time. Setup and use was very easy. I noticed no SQ issues. It went after I realised that I had been sent the wrong size and I had to go into dispute through Amazon with the company Avides who had supplied it. I eventually got my money back as they refused to supply me with the correct size, which is what I wanted. I never understood why they did that.

Out of interest I had a little look at Amazon and there are loads of Drivestations 2share now available, cheaper than a year ago and you can avoid having to buy from Avides.

 

[Anonymous]

Price wise thats definately more like it! As a storage system I dont doubt it would be fairly straightforward to set up but from reading on the net lots of people have had a nightmare trying to get squeezecentre working on these things.

I only brieffly looked but I couldnt find a good guide online for something like this using Vista and Squeezecentre. Now THAT would be a great help!!!

 

[lordmortlock]

I think I remember JD suggesting in another post that it might be better to buy the NAS with any software installed. We were discussing itunes server at the time - complete *** to install yourself apparently.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah thats the general jist I get from the net. With the route it looks like Im taking its not really something that is essential any time soon but it definately something I want to sort out sooner or later.

We have two laptops in the house. One is a horse, and general pretty useless (probably because it was an Advent and the girlfriend bought it!) and the other is my MSI gaming laptop. My laptop works a treat and is very fast but from past experiences with these sort of machines you dont really want to be leaving them on ALL the time plus a laptop in general, with it being carted about a lot, is a fair bit more likely to have hard drive issues. Takling from experience here!

I can get my brothers oldish computer for nothing and clean it out and get a decent HDD into it, stick it in the cupboard and use it as a NAS but the options like the BUffalo and QNAP are appealing due to their size and ease of use (for non Squeezebox set up!).

 

[idc]

lordmortlock:I think I remember JD suggesting in another post that it might be better to buy the NAS with any software installed. We were discussing itunes server at the time - complete *** to install yourself apparently.

Just checking, but should that be 'buy the NAS without any software'. That is why I went the Buffalo route and will do again once I have a new laptop that doesnt crackle with itunes........

 

[Alec]

idc:

lordmortlock:I think I remember JD suggesting in another post that it might be better to buy the NAS with any software installed. We were discussing itunes server at the time - complete *** to install yourself apparently.

Just checking, but should that be 'buy the NAS without any software'. That is why I went the Buffalo route and will do again once I have a new laptop that doesnt crackle with itunes........

I think it means the pain of setting it up can be alleviated by getting a NAS with the relevant software pre-installed. I have heard of such things but have no actual experience.

 

[idc]

al7478:idc:

lordmortlock:I think I remember JD suggesting in another post that it might be better to buy the NAS with any software installed. We were discussing itunes server at the time - complete *** to install yourself apparently.

Just checking, but should that be 'buy the NAS without any software'. That is why I went the Buffalo route and will do again once I have a new laptop that doesnt crackle with itunes........

I think it means the pain of setting it up can be alleviated by getting a NAS with the relevant software pre-installed. I have heard of such things but have no actual experience.

Cheers al, probably getting myself confused again as NAS seems to be term which covers Network Hard Drives such as the Buffalo Drivestation 2share as well as other stuff, see here

http://www.amazon.com/Servers-Network-Attached-Storage-devices/lm/R2KE9MFKB2L76S

 

[Anonymous]

Christ now Im confused!

I think Im right in saying that various NASs have different communication protocals (or whatever you call them) and also as discussed having your software pre installed is a great benefit. Hence why some people buy the cheaper NASs thinking they can set things up easily but find it to be a right pain in the rear end.

If the Buffalo that you spoke off was able to be set up easily with the squeezebox software and work independantly of an pc then Im there. Im probably missing sometihng but I struggle to see why I should have to spend £200 more on a QNAP (or alternative) that only seems to offer the fact that it has everything pre installed. I accept that data transfer is probably quite a bit faster but for playing tunes on the fly I wouldnt have thought it to be matter much.

 

[Anonymous]

J0n35y:
Christ now Im confused!

I think Im right in saying that various NASs have different communication protocals (or whatever you call them) and also as discussed having your software pre installed is a great benefit. Hence why some people buy the cheaper NASs thinking they can set things up easily but find it to be a right pain in the rear end.

If the Buffalo that you spoke off was able to be set up easily with the squeezebox software and work independantly of an pc then Im there. Im probably missing sometihng but I struggle to see why I should have to spend £200 more on a QNAP (or alternative) that only seems to offer the fact that it has everything pre installed. I accept that data transfer is probably quite a bit faster but for playing tunes on the fly I wouldnt have thought it to be matter much.

If it says it is a NAS in the description, this probably means it has an RJ45 port (for a network cable) and is a true NAS, andis what you are looking for. If something says it is an "external hard drive" then it could just be USB or Firewire and this is not what you are looking for. If you let me know which models you are looking at, i'll take a look for you.

The protocols dont matter, Network attached storage devices (well, all the ones you are interested in) use TCP/IP, so u dont need to worry about that. This basically means it will work with your wireless router (i.e. get its own address, and will communicate with other devices on your network, like the squeezebox).

edit: also, most good NAS's have litte computers inside them, which usually run a cut down version of unix. Then when its plugged into your router, you can use your PC to configure it through your web browser. The Buffalo Drivestation 2share doesnt have this. It is a kind of combination of a NAS and 'External Hard Drive'. It will do what you want, but its a little rubbish on the features front. For the same price you could build a really good one, as I suggested earlier

 

[idc]

I got very confused when I first started to look into this, because I found different sellers and manufacturers often mix up the terms, so here is my very simplistic guide

External Hard Drive - acts as extra memory and needs to be hard wired, usually with a USB cable to the computer.

Network Hard Drive - acts as extra memory for the computer. But it is wireless and works by connecting by an ethernet cable to the wireless router. This was my wireless route with the laptop acting as the server. More than one computer on the same wirless network can access the NHD.

Network Attached Storage - acts as extra memory, works as the NHD, but it also has programmes installed so it can act independently of the computer. But you still need a server to control it and access the music and determine what you want to play.

 

[Anonymous]

idc:

External Hard Drive - acts as extra memory and needs to be hard wired, usually with a USB cable to the computer.

Network Hard Drive - acts as extra memory for the computer. But it is wireless and works by connecting by an ethernet cable to the wireless router. This was my wireless route with the laptop acting as the server. More than one computer on the same wirless network can access the NHD.

Network Attached Storage - acts as extra memory, works as the NHD, but it also has programmes installed so it can act independently of the computer. But you still need a server to control it and access the music and determine what you want to play.

By extra memory, idc means Disk Space, its nothing to do with RAM. Network Hard Drive and Network Attached Storage are the same here, but some of them have features which you can access using your desktop PC.

Going back to the building a NAS thing I've been rabbitting on about, if anyone is interested, theres a little description here

 

[idc]

Thanks Chris, I only do simplistic so it is not RAM it is the other thingy that sounds like RAM, but is'nt....I think......

 

[Alec]

There was a discussion the other day about what exactly constitutes a source.

Confused the heck out of me!

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Genfish

Not that Im dismissing the "build your own" route, it interests me especially if I can score my bros old pc, but Im clearly getting muddled up with what retailers are classing as NASs and with what would be suitable for my needs. So, from what I can gather I should be forgetting about the Buffalo route then!

Have you got any non build your own suggestions for under £200 and with 1tb of hdd space that can operate without a pc on? From internet searches it looks as though that the NASs that are most music server capable appear to be fairly reasonable in the whole installing squeezecenter thing but then I still dont have a clue!

 

[idc]

Don't dish the old Buffalo just yet! I picked on Buffalo due to its high ratings on Amazon. This may of use to you

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buffalo-LinkStation-MultiMedia-Attached-BitTorrent/dp/B001FNYWFU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1254078027&sr=8-1

The Drivestation is a Network Hard Drive, but the Linkstation is a NAS. 1TB for £115.49.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks idc. I think due to the volume of network HDs aand NASs out there it all gets majorly confusing!

The Linkstation price is spot on for me. Im prepared to pay more if required though. Have you or anyone else had experience getting squeezebox software onto it and having the whole thing run without the pc on?

 

[idc]

I dont, hopefully someone will come along who does. However, meantime it might be worthwhile reading through the Amazon reviews for all of the Linkstations. Helpfully I have found reviews for other products which talk about connectivity and what works with what. You may get lucky.

 

[Anonymous]

The buffalo units are really good. For the money as well, you wont get anything similar that does what you want. A lot of the NAS's that are a bit more expensive have more than one hard drive in them, for backup incase one of them fails. Those small units only have one drive in them, but if you arent bothered about the extra features of larger NAS's, and will have your music backed up elsewhere, then one of those will be fine for you and there will be quite a lot of your budget left for the DAC and Squeezebox

edit: I should probably say I've never used a squeezebox, I'm assuming here that you can configure it to access a windows network drive to stream the media from, without having to install any custom software on the server (which u cant with these NAS's)

 

[Anonymous]

I think thats the problem. You have to install squeezecenter and configuring it with something like the Buffalo Linkstation will probably be either impossible or a nightmare.

Im not entirely fussed about a NASs functionality as long as it can stream music to the squeezebox without a pc on Im more than happy. I have an old portable hard drive that I would back everything up on to as well as keeping everything backed up on the laptop. Might be overkill but when we are talking about ripping hundreds of album in lossless format its better to be safe than sorry!

 

[professorhat]

Very wise on the backup front - worth pointing out that even if you do get a NAS with redundancy built in (known as RAID), do not rely on it as a backup. There's a reason it's called redundancy and that's because any changes are instantly made to another drive meaning if one drive fails, you can continue to use it and access all the files, giving you time to replace the faulty unit and restore the redundancy.

For a backup, you should always regularly and manually be copying the files off to another drive - this is because if you were to accidentally delete a file or if one became corrupt, on your redundant system above, this accidental deletion / corruption would instantly be copied over to the redundant drive, meaning you've lost it forever. If you have the manual backup copy process as well, you can easily recover from this situation.