NAS, Hard Drive or something else entirely ?

[Mr.Ian]

I have been playing with my SB touch over Christmas, its been sitting in system and somewhat unused of late but coupled with a remote control app on my phone I can see lots of upsides but 1 big downside.

The downside is I have the squeeze box server on my home pc which means I have to have it running all the time!

My initial though was to buy a Synology NAS and some drives but the cost starts to mount up and I see loads of posts about connectivity issues so I am thinking about other routes.

The SB touch outputs to either a Young Dac or a Topping D50 via USB with a preference for the Young Dac quality wise, I find its more musical than the Topping albeit at a price. I have other devices on the coax and optical inputs.

So the big questions are

1. is there a low cost NAS solutiion
2. Do I junk the SB touch and try a Pi with I guess 2 USB sockets, file input and music out
3. Try a USB hub to increase the number of USB sockets and get the Touch to do the decoding (doesnt sound a great idea to me)
4. Try something else entirely

[Alp]

I use a Synology NAS running LMS, doing up- sampling with my RPI4 and that works well.

The main connectivity issues I have had have been WiFi related.

I have previously run LMS (comes with Picoreplayer) on a RPI3 with a 500 GB SSD attached via a USB cable, which also works very well and doesn't need a separate power supply that an external drive would. You could thus use an RPI as a low cost NAS.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[Dave W]

I have a Synology NAS and a SB, and have no issues with it.

[Cycleallday]

I use 2 Synology NAS units at home. One has been running without problem for over 12years ( although i have upsized the discs in that time).

This NAS is timed to switch off (using its own internal settings) at midnight and restart at 8am each day.

It provides access to my large iTunes music file from all of my in house (wifi based) streaming devices including Pi, Naim, Bluesound node' smart tv's, etc.

It also provides cloud access when i am away from home via the phone based Synolgy media apps.

I have never had any setup up or connection problems caused by the unit itself - sometimes i have needed to carefully read the extensive on line help to get it to what I want !

For the use i have out of these units they are far from expensive and have proved incredibly reliable and very simple to upgrade discs as additional storage space becomes required

Out of interest I also deploy them into small business's for whom i provide IT support.

Mel

[Yatsushiro]

An RPi4 (2GB), a 2TB drive attached to the USB3 on the Pi, Ubuntu Server running LMS with a samba share defined to transfer files from your PC to your server. This will provide a low entry cost NAS, you can still use your SBT, and can grow the system with RPi based players (including synced multiroom if required) as your needs change.

[Mr.Ian]

This NAS is timed to switch off (using its own internal settings) at midnight and restart at 8am each day.
Mel

that sounds might useful, ds120j is only £90 inc vat.

[Mr.Ian]

An RPi4 (2GB), a 2TB drive attached to the USB3 on the Pi, Ubuntu Server running LMS with a samba share defined to transfer files from your PC to your server. This will provide a low entry cost NAS, you can still use your SBT, and can grow the system with RPi based players (including synced multiroom if required) as your needs change.

This sounds good too. Bit less tidy but probably more flexible longer term. Like the idea of syncing files from the pc

[StanleyB]

I have tried a NAS with my SB Touch twice, but ended up settling on a laptop to use as a server. It's faster than the NAS, I can edit music tags easily on the same machine that I use for any thing music related,and easier to back up the files on a separate drive. That's what caused me to give up on the NAS in the 1st place after a read/write error to the drive scrapped my whole music library stored on it.

[RMutt]

Is there much of a difference in convenience or energy saving between having a NAS box running all the time or a pc with the monitor off? It’s a genuine question. I have a similar situation as Mr.Ian and have toyed with the idea of NAS in the past.

[StanleyB]

If you are using a desktop or tower PC then the power consumption will be high. That's why I use a laptop. Plus it is possible to switch on and off many laptops remotely via the network if you know how, and if your laptop supports remote operatioon.