Transfering songs from hard drive to NAS

[Dan.m]

I currently have itunes songs (lossless) stored on my maxtor external hard drive connected to a PC. I share this folder with my lap top so I have a more mobile music 'base'. However, i am going to purchase a sonos mainly for the multiroom flexibility and new sonos controller! Rather than have my PC turned on just to play music, i am thinking of a NAS

1) Can i transfer or 'dump' my music library/folders to the NAS without having to burn my CD collection?

2) Any suggestions on NAS? AVA 3 looks good but expensive - what about theBuffalo's, Would the quailty of music reproduction vary using different NAS assuming music is lossless. I assume it is the DAC in the sonos units (or external DAC) that control this.

 

[Anonymous]

I've just managed to do exactly this!

1) Yes you can, but if you use iTunes to manage your music there some things you have to move manually in order for iTunes to continue to work properly following a move of the library to your NAS. I followed the instructions on this page to achieve it: http://lifehacker.com/238296/ultranewb--how-to-move-your-itunes-library-to-an-external-drive

I think SONOS simply finds the music on whatever drive you point it at, so if you don't use iTunes simply copy it across.

2) I use a Buffalo Linkstation Live 1TB from Amazon. Not knowing a huge amount about these things, frankly, if I can get one set up, anyone can. I wouldn't have thought there would be much difference in sound quality between NASs, though it might be an interesting test! The SONOS ZonePlayers stream data from the source with the DACs (and Amp in ZP120) all being in the ZonePlayer itself.

You'll find the Customer Service team at Sonos EXTREMELY helpful people. There are friendly helpful forums on their website. They run a live chat facility through their website but are also contactable by email and they're on twitter too (search for Sonos and SonosSupport). There's a UK based team as well with a phone number where you can talk to very knowledgeable people. The few problems I've had (and they've been virtually all the fault of iTunes, not Sonos themselves!) have been solved within about an hour of me posting a question.

Go for a Sonos. Richer Sounds have a very good deal on the 150 bundle (with the CR100 controller) if you can cope with not having the latest 200 controller!

 

[Anonymous]

Nas's are great, but what you should do, for flexibility and to save yourself a fortune, is get a Dell refurbished tower PC. (I got an optiplex 755 for £100). Get 3 or 4 Sata Drives, put those in, and install FreeNAS. Its an open source NAS software solution based on FreeBSD. The software is free, has a web interface, can be extended with third party addons, and supports RAID. If you set it up to use RAID 5, you can get a 1.5 TB Raid Array from 4x500Gb disks. Definitely the cheapest method, with most features, most disk space, and also if one of the drives dies, you will not lose all of your music.

Any questions about how to set it up, feel free to ask.

Oh yeah, as for sound quality, there is no difference, unless bandwidth is limited. If you are worried about that you can use Gigabit ethernet, which a lot of the Dells have in them already. (I use 100Mbit and it is more than enough).

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry I didnt answerquestion 1 🙂

You can plug your external disk into the PC, and FreeNAS will make it available as an extra network drive. Before that you can use it to transfer all of your tracks to your RAID array. I know this solution sounds hard to implement, but it really isnt that tough, and there are tutorials on the internet on how to get up and running 🙂

 

[kena]

I can recommend Netgear ReadyNAS Duo , great little box.

 

[Anonymous]

I've also got a ready nas duo but I would only give it a warm rather than glowing recommendation.

It stores and streams data perfectly well but the other features they advertise don't really work unless you happen to be an IT expert. I've also got ongoing problems writing data to the drive which I can not find an answer to. The latest reply I had on the ready nas forum told me that I may have to contact a jedi if the problem continues. When the customer support people call themselves jedi and you don't own a light sabre then you know you have bought the wrong product.

 

[Anonymous]

I too use a Buffalo Linkstation Live 1TB from Amazon. It's fairly quiet and i've not had any problems so far streaming to the Xbox so I assume a Sonos would be fine too. I'm not too good on iTunes so can't really help there. I just drag and dropped from my usb hdd into the music folder on the Linkstation. iTunes picks them up ok, as does MediaMonkey. Pukka!