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I have a library of over 26,000 songs but realisticly listen to only 5,000 or so. I decided to load these songs on a NAS drive to remove Airplay from the streaming path. NAS drives are quite pricey ranging from $300-$600 or more DISKLESS. So add another couple of hundred to install a decent sized SSD.

I tried connecting an excellent SK Hynix 1Tb USB drive to my router USB port but there is an outstanding problem with Sonos S2 processing music libraries from a USB connected drive. Ethernet drives work fine and don’t have this problem. 

I calculated I would need approx 250 Gb to store 5000 FLAC files but the investment was over $500. for a good, reliable NAS. After a lot of research I decided to invest in an Amber X drive. I have no interest in using this to manage photos and videos or use any of the other available applications. Just music streaming. 

It has a very small footprint with both Ethernet and USB ports. The drive size is approx 480gB and I loaded all 5,080 FLAC files with room for another 2500 songs if needed. Setup was ridiculously simple and I now stream music flawlessly without the Airplay bugs, delays and other baggage. I now control my music stream without using my phone, iPad or computer. Just Sonos voice commands (sweet).

The Amber X was $169.00 for the 512Gb version (really only 480gB) and more than worth it for my NAS solution. 

 

Cheers!

 

 

 

Hi ​@Dragon Rider, welcome to the Sonos Community!

I’m glad to hear that you were able to get a drive that suits your needs.

I don’t use NAS drives myself so I’m not sure what makes a good or bad NAS drive, but the amount you saved with the Amber X is pretty substantial. I assume the steps to get it working with Sonos was the same as our Use a NAS drive with Sonos support article?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the community for other users to see, I hope this is helpful for anyone looking towards a NAS solution for their library.

Hi Jamie, the instructions in the Sonos support article were easy to follow and I had my NAS drive up and running within 30 minutes (Amber X installation, configs and registration took most of that time). I suspect there are a number of Sonos customers who may have experienced the issues I had when trying to use a USB router connection for their Sonos music library. The Amber X Ethernet solution works great and the small investment paid HUGE dividends.

It would be beneficial for Sonos customers to be aware of the USB issue before investing hours trying to figure out the problem. Is this specific problem documented anywhere in a Sonos support article(s)?

 

**UPDATE** The drive works great but on my last Sonos app update I could not authenticate into the Amber NAS drive. Not a Sonos problem and discovered the login parameters for the Amber drive “changed”.  Instead of using your Amber login user name  of USERID@XMAIL.COM, Sonos/Amber requires just the USERID part of the Amber username.

 

So MYUSERNAME@XMAIL.COM will truncate to just MYUSERNAME.

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