I’m looking at purchasing a Synology DS120J 1 bay NAS System with 1x 3Tb WD Red HDD to use as storage for all my music CDs (a mix of standard and SACD formats). I would like to connect the Synology NAS to my Sonos system which is made up of 5 Sonos ZP120 Amps and 1 Sonos ZP90 Zone Player in order to play my music throughout the house via the Sonos App.
Could you please advise if this setup will work for me.
I am sure the NAS would be fine. As far as Sonos is concerned it is little more than a hard drive with folders. There would be file sharing permissions to create but it would surely be possible. I have a Synology NAS myself, although a different model.
The SACD disks might be a problem though. Certainly Sonos didn’t support that format in the past, and i doubt that is changed. If you can rip to FLAC format, say, you would be able to play them. Whether anything better than that is possible, I don’t know.
Thanks John that gives me a lot more confidence around the NAS.
Luckily I don’t have many SACD CDs and from memory they’re all hybrids so I should be able to rip to FLAC.
Just out of curiosity, is there an external CD reader that you’d recommend for ripping my CDs with? I thought to use DB PowerAmp software.
Because you are using the Sonos S1 App with your devices, I don’t think that NAS supports SMB v1 (which is used by S1 for the library share) straight ‘out the box’, but there maybe the option to enable it.
Note however there are some security concerns with SMB v1, which you can perhaps look at via a search online.
I did come across this workaround link in the Synology community…
https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/20/post/139200
which mentions this…
"NTLMv1 is disabled in DSM 7.0 for security concerns, and only NTLMv2 is supported by default. If an SMB client, such as Windows XP, 2003, media player, network printer, samrt TV or camera, still uses NTLMv1, it will be unable to access the NAS nor play the music from NAS”
… but it’s not clear if the stated workaround applies to this Synology disk station model, so I would just check that fact prior to purchase.
+17
An important thing to remember if you have a large collection: the Sonos database has a 65k limit for the amount of songs it can hold. For a larger collection you could use Plex or LMS. I use Plex, but severely miss a folder view for Plex in the Sonos app.
That’s a good catch by
I used dbPowerAmp to rip my CDs and was very happy with it.
With S1 Sonos you have no choice but to use SMBv1. For this reason I use a sacrificial NAS for Sonos. This is an LG, which has now been running pretty much 24x7x365 for 11 years - I’m expecting it to fail sometime, so have a spare Buffalo NAS ready to switch in when it does.
My main data is on a Synology, which doesn’t have SMBv1 enabled.
I know nothing against dbPowerAmp, but i’ve always used Exact Audio Copy (EAC) which is free. For updating metadata I use MP3Tag, which is also free.
The 65k limit on tracks is not fixed - if you have lots of metadata or long filenames/paths then you will hit the Sonos limits much sooner.
As
I have a DS920 and a DS411 both Synology and both running during day hours for a few years. The 920 serves music and audio books to the home, the 411 does weekly backups of the playable libraries. Never had a problem, a couple of cheaper disc platters failed but replacement was effortless. i recommend Synology and/or QNAP, both reliable and well priced.
Thanks for all the information you’ve provided above. It’s really useful but I would like to understand how risky is it if I use the Synology NAS with SMBv1 enabled and play my music using Sonos 1.
I will be plugging the Synology NAS directly to my router and the only thing on it will be my music. All my private data is on my laptop (linked to my router by WIFI) and in the cloud (I use Office 365). So is the only thing at risk the Synology NAS (i.e. my music) or would all my data be at risk? If it’s just my music then I don’t have a problem with using SMBv1.
For me to upgrade the 4 older Sonos components to achieve Sonos 2 is really expensive, hence my follow up questions.
I suppose the alternative is to look at a different NAS (I don’t want one with RAID) but would I hit the same problem given I need to use Sonos 1? If not, what other NAS might be suitable? I don’t have heaps of music so it can be quite small.
Thanks everyone.
If you search online for “smb v1 vulnerability and wannacry ransomeware” you should be able to read all about the issues that relate to that version of the sharing protocol.
Unfortunately the older Sonos S1 software uses that version of SMB for a NAS library share, so using a different brand of NAS is not going to make any difference, but there are ways of sharing local music files for playback on Sonos without using that version of SMB and one example of that is sharing files using Plex, or you could opt to share a library via a PC/MAC instead using the ‘http’ protocol. However the latter means having to leave a computer switched on.
In my own case I happily ran a NAS on my own LAN with SMB v1 for a number of years, but many did advise against it. I eventually switched to SMB v3 and so now mainly use my library share with my Sonos S2 devices only.
+22
I use a Raspberry Pi for my Sonos NAS, it is happy to do SMB v1 and that lets me keep my main NAS set more securely. Pi are badly overpriced right now (supply issues) but if you can find a used one they are great.
Lots of schools used Pi in the classroom and to send home with the kids. Any Pi will work, Pi 1 or newer, any of the Zero’s. Add a thumb drive to store the music.
If it’s just my music then I don’t have a problem with using SMBv1.
….
I don’t have heaps of music so it can be quite small.
My understanding was that the NAS would be at risk, but not the other non-SMB1 devices. Others may know better, though.
How much music do you actually have?
I had about 300gbs on my previous storage (it was a MusicM8) but it died a while ago and I can’t remember if I ripped to FLAC or WAV - I suspect WAV. I’m going to rerip everything plus I have probably double the number of CDs to do now. I’m guessing I’ll need about 500-800gbs which is not heaps so I have lots of space for FLAC files if I get a 2 or 3TB drive.
I had about 300gbs on my previous storage (it was a MusicM8) but it died a while ago and I can’t remember if I ripped to FLAC or WAV - I suspect WAV. I’m going to rerip everything plus I have probably double the number of CDs to do now. I’m guessing I’ll need about 500-800gbs which is not heaps so I have lots of space for FLAC files if I get a 2 or 3TB drive.
Although that’s not huge, it’s still large by Sonos standards. I have about 735Gb of files at the moment, mostly FLAC - a few MP3. There are about 39k files. Sonos cannot handle any more, so I have to move files in and out to keep the overall library size down.
I do have the full set of files on my Synology, and run a music server on it. By plugging a Chromecast Audio into your ZP90 (or amps, if you prefer) you can then cast music using the entire set. This gets around the SMB1 issue completely and also natively plays hi-res files. I use Hificast to do the casting part. if needed.
I hae used Sonos S1 with my synology disk station for years. Just updated to S2.
As they say, above, if you use synology with S1 you do need to enable SMB1 and some insecure authentication protocol. But it works just fine with the current Synology 7 DSM, it does support that old stuff, it’s just not the SMB default.
If you can use S2, however, I would do that. In fact I updated to S2 just so I wouldn’t need to turn on those ancient protocols.
Thanks @robokitty
That gives me much more confidence that it’ll all work.
If you can use S2, however, I would do that. In fact I updated to S2 just so I wouldn’t need to turn on those ancient protocols.
The OP said “I would like to connect the Synology NAS to my Sonos system which is made up of 5 Sonos ZP120 Amps and 1 Sonos ZP90 Zone Player“ - so no S2
If you can use S2, however, I would do that. In fact I updated to S2 just so I wouldn’t need to turn on those ancient protocols.
The OP said “I would like to connect the Synology NAS to my Sonos system which is made up of 5 Sonos ZP120 Amps and 1 Sonos ZP90 Zone Player“ - so no S2
oh, sorry. good point. So OP will need to enable SMB1 and also NTLMv1. Then Sonos S1 will work fine with synology DS.I did it last week, it works fine. Synology will warn you that these are obsolete and insecure protocols, but then it will work.
Hi All,
I have an S1 set up. I have played around with using Plex to cast my music directly to the Sonos speakers (thereby avoiding the SMB1 issue). It works fine so far, though I must admit I prefer the Sonos app.
One question - so Sonos S2 does support SMB2? I’ve read conflicting posts about that. Thanks!
Steven
+17
Hi All,
I have an S1 set up. I have played around with using Plex to cast my music directly to the Sonos speakers (thereby avoiding the SMB1 issue). It works fine so far, though I must admit I prefer the Sonos app.
One question - so Sonos S2 does support SMB2? I’ve read conflicting posts about that. Thanks!
Steven
Hi
Yes. S2 supports both SMBv2 and v3 🙂
Thanks!
For sure Sonos S2 does not require SMB1 nor NTLMv1. I needed to turn both of those on to make S1 work - once I updated to S2 I turned both off and am happily playing music.
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