NAS Specs...What do they mean and do they matter for Audio?

I'm looking to buy a diskless NAS in the future but am confused by all the specs and how they might be relevant when using the NAS to store FLAC and WAV files and use as a music server. I currently have several older hard drives that I periodically hook via USB to a Mac Mini or a Raspberry Pi. But this has become a hassle and I want to consolidate content into a 2 or 4 bay NAS with the primary disc being an SSD. In the future I'll probably either build a NUC or find some branded easy solution box to output into a Yggdrasil. I may consider ROON at some time in the future also.

I do have some software engineering experience so I know the fundamentals as they apply to general computing, but not as they may relate to audio. I also googled some of the terms but didn't find anything specific to audio.

1 GB DDR3 vs. 2GB DDR3L vs..... What is the difference between DDR3 and DDR3L and does it matter here? Also does the extra GB do much for me?

Processors - 2.0GHz vs. 2.41 GHz ...or.. something even faster. - What relevance does this have on audio, or is it simply related to how fast tracks can be accessed or multitasking capabilities?

Most of the NASs I've looked at mention they're using some specific operating system. ( not to be confused with the computers OS) Is this just marketing BS, or is there anything I should focus on (or avoid) or is it completely irrelevant for audio?

"DS218play does not support PLEX" - ok, I googled what PLEX is, but I'm not sure if this is of any benefit to me. Maybe someone can explain this further.

Being a cheap bastard, I guess I'm trying to find out if I could go with one of the cheaper NAS units with "worse" specs, or if I need to spend more to hit some level of minimal requirements that would work significantly better as a music server.

I've mostly been looking at Synology and Terramaster NAS units so far.

Thanks!

 

It depends on your workload. If you are just using it as a networked harddrive with a little bit of software management, then a basic NAS like an entry level Synology will do you just fine. I use mine (Synology DS218J with two 8TB drives in Raid 1) to store and serve my music, movies (bluray raws and x265 encodes), and photos and it does its job perfectly. If you are doing just music, I can't imagine needing more. If doing high bitrate videos, you do need to consider how many concurrent users you going to have and whether or not you will need to transcode anything (in which case stepping up to an intel based one or custom server build might make more sense). All of my endpoints do the decoding, so there is very little stress on my NAS in that regard. Synology seems to have the easiest OS to use.

 

Thanks! I don't have any plans to store ripped movies, and old home movies are edited and stored on a different Mac with external drive. So the plans are that this will be for music 95% of the time with maybe 1 drive dedicated to photos that are mostly archived and just put away for infrequent access.

 

Take a look at these benchmarks in this review of a $100 Synology unit.
https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas...119j-100-dollar-nas-reviewed?showall=&start=1

Keep in mind that your average uncompressed CD audio is like 9MB per MINUTE.

All a NAS is doing in your use case is making files available, then transferring them over the network. If you want a NAS that does fancy stuff, it will cost more. You're on the right path - getting a Pi, NUC or any other computer, configuring that how you want, and just letting the NAS store the files. If it is only serving up files to one or two locations at a time, it's a walk in the park. For Roon, you will want something with an Intel core i3 or better. Read more on their site. But you can get up and running with one of the popular Pi distros for audio. There is a thread on here for that.

 

Honestly, read this article. Any mentioned units are out of date by a few years, but the criteria remain similar. https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/basics/nas-basics/32626-how-to-buy-a-nas-2015-edition

 

So if you're considering Roon with a NAS, you have a couple options.
a) Run the Roon server on another computer you have, using the NAS only for storage:
It probably doesn't matter what NAS you use with this route. As long as the hard drive & network connection are fast enough, it's unlikely to be the bottleneck.

b) Run the Roon server on the NAS itself:

• Roon only supports Synology & QNAP
• You'll probably want 4+ GB RAM and an SSD for the Roon database. You can usually just buy RAM separately and slot it in, and most entry-level Synology boxes I've seen support at least 6GB. Roon is sort of unbearably slow without the SSD, so you're looking at either a 2 bay NAS with 1 SSD & 1 data HDD or a 4 bay with the SSD & a pair of RAID1 HDDs. I guess you could also just put two large SSDs in and RAID them, but that sounds excessive. Tl;dr get an SSD and figure out how much data resilience you need.
• I wrote all that and then remembered that Roon had a page on this on their site. https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Server_on_NAS
• I think they're exaggerating about needing an i3/i5 instead of a celeron, since Synology says their celeron NASs can do 4k transcoding.

(I don't actually have any experience with this yet, but I've been researching it for a few weeks and have been considering moving my Roon server to a NAS. Hope it's a little useful!)

 

All good info. I'm still learning about ROON, but glad I threw that into my initial inquiry just in case it mattered. It seems it does.

 

DDR3L is a low voltage version of DDR3 ram.

Processor speed is misleading. You really need to know the specific processor that's in there too determine how fast the processor is. For example, the QNAP TS-251+ is a pretty good home NAS. It is advertised as having a 2.0Ghz processor. The Synology DS218+ also has a 2.0Ghz processor. They should perform the same then, ya? NO.

The QNAP uses a Intel® Celeron® J1900 quad-core 2.0 GHz processor. The Synology uses Intel Celeron J3355 Dual-core 2.0 GHz.

Quad-core should be faster than dual-core, yes? Generally, yes, but the dual-core processor is newer, has more robust graphics processing, and the newer gen architectural improvements might close the gap in performance. If transcoding 4k video is important to you, the quad-core processor can't do it.

You'll also note that each are capable of burst speeds over 2.4Ghz. Some sellers advertise this number instead, because bigger is better in the minds of customers. It's misleading, but not untrue.

Generally speaking, either would be fine for a 2 bay NAS. Just avoid any NAS using an ARM processor. The performance is crap.

As far as what difference it makes for audio, it only matters that the NAS can fetch and send data fast enough for the endpoint not to stutter during playback or have to wait a really long time finding the next song.

My personal recommendation is to buy the Synology DS218+. It's a pretty solid little unit. If you want a more future proof unit, the DS918+ is very hard to beat.


I hope that helps.

 

The NAS operating system is your window into the management of the device, and a crappy one will drive you insane. It also manages the disk array, so yes, it is important. You also can't really control this, so just stick with good NAS makers who have good reputations in the market.

 

All really good info here. I think you're on the right track with something relatively simple like a Synology or Qnap.

Be sure to get good hard drives, and enable complete redundancy like RAID 1. This is the most valuable part of the equation so you should put the money here. I have always referenced https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2018/ this Backblaze report. They are a data center with a really cool blog where they report the failure rates throughout the life cycle of the HDDs they use. They use commercially available parts so it makes their experience relevant to what we would want as well. I am using 6x Seagate ST8000NM002 in my server without a single worry.

 

Since no one has yelled it yet: RAID truly is not a backup. Redundancy will make it easier to keep your NAS online or recover from a drive failure but it can not be the only place you have those files. If it's all about your music collection, buy a reputable drive big enough to store it, back it up and stick it in storage.

 

You just beat me to it. Raid is about availability, not long-term security. Don't forget the off-system, offsite backup(s).

And whenever anyone talks about performance needed to play audio, it is worth remembering that it plays just fine from a CD in a plain old PC optical drive.

(Which, of course, is fine for playing CDs, but not a method of maintaining a large music library)

 

This is a rabbit hole that most people don't bother to go down. We could start the discussion here, but the key takeaway is that HDDs fail. If you've spent money on digital files, or worse yet ripped your CD's to digital files, it's worth taking the necessary precautions to secure that data and make sure you didn't do it all for nothing. As much as I like hardware from the likes of Aurender, I cannot believe their low end stuff doesn't employ any kind of redundancy. It's completely useless in this regard.

I like this https://www.servethehome.com/raid-calculator/raid-reliability-calculator-simple-mttdl-model/ to showcase what the different types of RAID are supposed to do for you. MTTDL is Mean Time To Data Loss. You can use this model to put into perspective what you risk when you use the various types of RAID. If you couple this with the BackBlaze reliability data, you can be reasonably sure that you are minimizing risks and finding hardware that should be reliable. I wouldn't use this model in a life or death situation, but IMO it's enough supporting data for someone to make an informed decision.

Offsite backup is something super mega nerds do, and something normal people should strongly consider if they feel like their life would be impacted should their data be lost. If you are only entering the realm of securing your data for the first time as it seems the OP is doing here, then a robust RAID setup in a Synology or QNAP is the correct step IMO. I am using a ZFS file system which is similar to RAID6, but more robust for several reasons. I wouldn't recommend OP go this far. I struggled with the procedure myself. The envelope can be pushed farther and farther just like a normal pursuit of HiFi alone. But at some point you have to consider the pros and cons and choose what fits your needs and desires.

What all this means in a nutshell is that an external HDD is trash and it will burn you in the end. A well built NAS with good HDDs is the right choice. A well designed server is awesome if you can undertake the project yourself, or better yet have someone else with proven skills help you. Fourthly, you can employ a data center to store and manage the data loss risk for all of your music. But this just means you have a subscription to Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, etc..

 

Currently I have my music saved on three drives that back up to three more periodically. I want a NAS to consolidate the whole mess and to connect via ethernet instead of USB. So I do backups...but I don't keep the backups backed up offsite. Yet.

 

Have you considered using a Raspberry with external hard disk? One of those external drives that have 2/3 drivebays? It's a lot more nerdy for sure,but it does offer more options. Picoreplayer has Logitech Media server built in and Roon supports that. Just another option.

 

There is a lot of hype about NAS specs and its capabilities. Reliability and wired Ethernet connection are two the most important things. I would select the NAS with proven reliability. I have been using WDMyCloudEX4100 for the last 5 years without a single problem. redundant Ethernet wires, Raid 5. As long as Raid protects you against loss of one disk it's OK.
A lot was said here about Raid and backup.
It is simple: Raid protects against some cases of hardware failure. But if you, or some software you run, iTunes comes to mind first, does something stupid to your files, you lost them no matter what Raid level you use, unless you have a backup, which you already have.
About Roon: do not run it on NAS no matter what the NAS marketing tells you. Roon core requires a lot of resources, andfgood graphiics, the best place for it is your main system.

 

Opinions differ, but in my real world experience, as well as many professional articles published in the last decade, RAID 5 is to be avoided. Raid10 is preferred.

 

If you want to run Plex, you're going to need the higher performing NASs which cost a bit more than the entry level ones. In the end, it might be the same cost to go with a Mac mini and a couple of large external HDs. That's currently what I use. I have a 2012 mini and 3 4GB drives, one master and two clones that I swap monthly for backups. The mini works great with plex transcoding and I also have Roon Server installed for music. Another added benefit of the Mac is you could run Backblaze for cloudbackup.

 

Agree, Raid 5 was not a recommendation, if you prefer 10 that's OK. I work in IT for a very large bank and you can hear almost as many opinions on Raid as the # of IT architects around. The point was that: do not exclude NAS just because it does not support 10, reliability of disks, software, connections etc is way more important, and run backup no matter what.