Best NAS for Storing Ripped CDS and How to rip (Flac? Lossless?)
I need to move my CD Collection off my hard drive and onto a NAS so I don't have to open my computer everytime...also how should I be ripping? FLAC? Lossless? AIFF? Which will give me the best quality?
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Since I use iTunes+Mac, I used Apple Lossless; but any lossless codec that Sonos can handle is fine for replicating CD quality. If I remember right, AIFF is not necessary.
Equally important is storing the ripped files in a separate hard disc because hard discs crash, and you don't want to do the tedious ripping task more than once. I have my music on my computer - that isn't accessed for music play, on the NAS, and on a separate hard disc.
Equally important is storing the ripped files in a separate hard disc because hard discs crash, and you don't want to do the tedious ripping task more than once. I have my music on my computer - that isn't accessed for music play, on the NAS, and on a separate hard disc.
I used to rip to FLAC and determined that the extra drive space over 320 MP3 really wasn’t worth it... I personally couldn’t hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC. I have two 2 TB MyBookLive Duos. They are no longer available, but the built in mirroring on each gives me some redundancy. Then I use MirrorFolder to mirror one to the other so I have a backup. Probably overkill, but I spent a ton of time ripping my massive CD collection.
I agree; it is just that with memory being so cheap, I hesitate to deny someone the psychological benefits of listening to lossless codecs.
I don't buy CDs anymore - indeed, I don't even buy music anymore - but when I do so once in a blue moon, it is in the form of 256 kbps AAC from the iTunes store. And it sounds just as good as any other recorded music, so long as it has been well mastered.
I'd go for FLAC - it's lossless and not tied to any one manufacturer. I worked on the basis that ripping all my CDs was such a huge chore that I might as well go for a lossless approach, as it means that I should never have to re-rip them - you can always down sample, but not up. In addition, storage is now very cheap.
I use a NAS for normal music access, make complete backups to another NAS (that also carries my other data backups) and then back up that NAS to external hard drives, some kept off-site.Depends how paranoid you want to be, but I have no intention of ever re-ripping my music, if it can possibly be avoided.
I agree with the comments about high quality MP3 v FLAC, though - I'm not sure that I can tell the difference - but would still go for lossless if I did have to do it all again.
Thanks for this...now could you suggest a NAS that will work with my router? The world of NAS is a bit confusing...I've been just using a portable hard drive attached to my Apple Airport Extreme...but not sure that's the best way to go.
I used a portable hard drive - WD Passport - at the start of my Sonos use in 2011. It worked fine, except when playing different music in different zones, when CPU lacking hard drive set up caused music stuttering because the Apple Time Capsule it was wired to could not cope as well as needed with the tasks. Moving to a WD My Cloud NAS wired to the same Apple device, the service of music has been flawless for the last four or so years.
Userlevel 7
Hi Boutsik
Here's a link to recommended Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/294930/the-best-nas-network-attached-storage-devices
Now here's the truth I use a NetGear NAS device set in RAID with 4TB's of drive space. To that I have a 6TB USB drive connected as a backup to my NAS. My point here is that BEST really comes down to features you want and capacity. For instance in regards to features I have my NetGear NAS set to power down at 11PM it even has it's own antivirus. I can create custom shares and access it remotely. The Synology brand is excellent but so are Buffalo and Drobo. Quite frankly the brands other than Synology in the link I provided I've never heard of (although they must be good if recommended by PC Magazine...right :8)
In truth features aside for NetGear and the other brands it comes down to what type of Hard Drive(s) you want to install. The HD is where your data is stored which IMO is the heart of a NAS. I use Western Digital (WD) Red as I have had good performance and reliability with WD drives. However, even WD has performance levels meaning some are budget friendly and others may break the bank. Personally, I don't like a NAS device that is non-configurable or pre-loaded with generic drives.
Here's a link that explains NAS and also gives links to other topics: https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/network-attached-storage
After you do your research seek advice from a knowledgeable friend or sales person you trust. I hope this helps.
Cheers!
Here's a link to recommended Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/294930/the-best-nas-network-attached-storage-devices
Now here's the truth I use a NetGear NAS device set in RAID with 4TB's of drive space. To that I have a 6TB USB drive connected as a backup to my NAS. My point here is that BEST really comes down to features you want and capacity. For instance in regards to features I have my NetGear NAS set to power down at 11PM it even has it's own antivirus. I can create custom shares and access it remotely. The Synology brand is excellent but so are Buffalo and Drobo. Quite frankly the brands other than Synology in the link I provided I've never heard of (although they must be good if recommended by PC Magazine...right :8)
In truth features aside for NetGear and the other brands it comes down to what type of Hard Drive(s) you want to install. The HD is where your data is stored which IMO is the heart of a NAS. I use Western Digital (WD) Red as I have had good performance and reliability with WD drives. However, even WD has performance levels meaning some are budget friendly and others may break the bank. Personally, I don't like a NAS device that is non-configurable or pre-loaded with generic drives.
Here's a link that explains NAS and also gives links to other topics: https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/network-attached-storage
After you do your research seek advice from a knowledgeable friend or sales person you trust. I hope this helps.
Cheers!
Have used WD NAS drives for years, have a 500 GB for music and a 3 TB for video and backups. Inexpensive, quiet, and reliable (my music NAS has been chugging along for 9 years now).
I still use old Netgear Readynas Pro boxes too, and bought them diskless many years ago and installed the cheaper WD Green drives into them, setup on the proprietary X-Raid-2, which is similar to Raid 5 redundancy. It allows the drives to be hot-swapped for larger ones as capacity is reached, or if a drive fails...
They power on/off automatically (daily schedule) and backup to each other, once a week. The boxes I bought allowed the user to add additional Ram and so I added as much as allowed, which I think was 2gig of DDR3.
The boxes also have teaming and fallover support that allows the two full duplex gigabit Ethernet ports to be grouped together for much faster performance.
Sadly my boxes are now fairly old and no longer supported by netgear for about 18 months to 2 years, or more, so no support for the later versions of SMB other than v1 .. but that’s all Sonos supports anyway at the moment.
These boxes cope well too with sudden power outages and were extremely good in their day. They can often be found 'cheap' and 'used' on eBay and similar sites. in either 2, 4, 6 bay formats.
They power on/off automatically (daily schedule) and backup to each other, once a week. The boxes I bought allowed the user to add additional Ram and so I added as much as allowed, which I think was 2gig of DDR3.
The boxes also have teaming and fallover support that allows the two full duplex gigabit Ethernet ports to be grouped together for much faster performance.
Sadly my boxes are now fairly old and no longer supported by netgear for about 18 months to 2 years, or more, so no support for the later versions of SMB other than v1 .. but that’s all Sonos supports anyway at the moment.
These boxes cope well too with sudden power outages and were extremely good in their day. They can often be found 'cheap' and 'used' on eBay and similar sites. in either 2, 4, 6 bay formats.
I use an LG NAS, bought in 2011 and running fairly continuously since then for the music. My main NAS is a Synology with WD Red drives, which can also, if needed, be used on Sonos. WD NAS devices have a good rep at the cheaper end, I'm less keen on Buffalo.
Sonos can only use SMB1, which may affect how you feel about security. My LG uses SMB1, so is the sacrificial drive for Sonos, and SMB1 is usually locked off on the Synology.
You can go well over the top is you want the 'best' - multi disk RAID etc - but you only really need something very simple for Sonos.
What is SMB1?
Server Message Block, version 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block
Userlevel 7
+22
I recommend ripping to a lossless format, not so much because you will hear a difference but because from that format you can convert to any other format you may need without adding an extra layer of conversion to the process.
I have my master copy on a external drive, a working copy on my computer drive and the copy that Sonos uses hooked to a Raspberry Pi (tiny cheap computer) as WD quit supporting the expensive NAS I bought from them after a few years.
I have my master copy on a external drive, a working copy on my computer drive and the copy that Sonos uses hooked to a Raspberry Pi (tiny cheap computer) as WD quit supporting the expensive NAS I bought from them after a few years.
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