I am considering adding a NAS to my system and ripping my CD collection to it, primarily for when my ISP (Virgin) goes down, which seems to happen more often these days.
I have had a look on the internet and searched this site, so I can see the broad brush requirements, but it’s the detail that’s a bit fuzzy, as I’ve never done this before.
A few initial questions:
Which NAS should I buy? Would this be a spinning disk or SSD storage?
Do I plug it into the Virgin router (or into the 333)? Will it come with a network cable or do I buy one separately, which is best?
I use an iMac and a MacBook Air, how do I find the NAS on the network?
I understand I need to get some server software, does this come with the NAS, if not do I buy it, where from, is it easy to install/use?
I will obviously need to physically rip the CDs, how do I do this? Neither computer has a CD drive but I have two cheap external USB drives, will they do - is there a risk I will lose information with a cheap drive and so impact the sound quality?
What then? I guess this data has to be configured/meta data collected…
Would it be easier to buy a high capacity USB stick and plug that into the 333? Would I still be able to navigate via album, artist etc., with album art? And what is the maximum capacity and how many albums would that store?
What else have I missed?
I think I am still so uninformed that I need to do some research, if so is there an idiot’s guide here or somewhere else on the internet? Or is it simply the case of searching this site and wading through the posts?
Thanks,
Tony
Sorry about the odd bullet point numbering
Edit: The bullet points have now re-ordered themselves (smart software), so no longer 1, 3, 5, 7 etc.
A lot depends on how many albums you have and whether you will want to add more. If it’s a few hundred then a stick in the back of the 333 will probably suffice, but remember that every time you want to add a new album you must remove the stick and connect it to your computer.
If you have thousands of albums then get a NAS, a Qnap or Synology. Load Asset as your upnp server. Use dBpoweramp to rip, using a decent USB CD drive. I have a Nolyth, which cost about £30 and rips perfectly. Part of the setup process will control for offset etc.
Make the decision on stick or NAS and go from there. There are lots of resources on line to help and it will pay dividends to do some research. It would take pages to answer every question in detail, and indeed all have been answered on here previously, most of them many, many times.
Just another point to consider, but anyone with a similar requirement who also backs up to a Time Capsule has two issues to address, given that the Time Capsule will shortly cease to operate as a back up drive via Time Machine (next OS update, I beleive).
For us, I think the obvious answer is a partitioned NAS drive with both backup and server firmware on it.
Yes, I back up to the cloud too, but I like to have a physical backup as well. Anyway, just thought it might be a point of interest so worth mentioning.
I have 300–400 albums (in addition to my use of Qobuz, but those have a mastering style I really like) on a small Samsung T5 external SSD that I plug into the back of my NOVA PE via USB.
It works really well.
Before, I used a fanless QNAP NAS with SSDs and minimserver.
I really love this little 1TB SSD.
I take it with me when I go to friends’ houses to listen to music—something I can’t do with a NAS.
The price is a steal compared to a NAS.
Plus, it saves me the hassle of dealing with the NAS’s power supply, networking, and so on…
And given the age of any extant Time Capsule, it’ll probably cease to operate on a permanent basis in the not too distant future, therefore a migration plan to an alternative backup strategy is pretty much essential now.
I now use my Time Capsules solely for WiFi and migrated backup to a NAS device.
I have a Mac mini which backs up to synology Nas via Time Machine.
I have no problems, no partioning required, synology NAS has an operating system which works extremely well well with Time Machine.
I run a DS124 with a 4TB hdd, it also supports storage of all my music, photos and video plus some other stuff.
I use the inbuilt synology music server which suits my needs and xld as the ripping software on the Mac mini. I am on my second synology Nas since 2013.
Why not buy a CD player. There are great sounding players available at relatively not a lot of money.
Marantz, Denon, Primare…Or Luxman if you want to spend a bit more.
I used a Qnap nas with about 600 albums for many years. Music server stopped working about 3 years and gave up trying to fix it, mainly because Qobuz works without a problem.
Some people will find installing and setting up the music server easy, some people will find it hard. If you’re not a patient person, it might not be a good idea.
For something a bit simpler, you could go for something like a Melco music server.
I started out by constructing a Raspberry Pi NAS using three USB hard drives. These were standard drives, not designed to be spinning all the time, and eventually they developed errors. My second attempt has been much more successful. It’s run by a tiny computer like a Raspberry Pi (but not a Raspberry Pi) which has a 2TB NVME drive attached. All the albums are stored (in FLAC format) on the NVME drive.
It’s plugged into the router.
The server software makes the music files available on the local network. They are accessible to Linux and Windows applications, including the streaming systems I use. I don’t use any Mac computers, so I can’t comment on that - but I imagine it would be just fine.
For the server software, I use Ubuntu Server. This is well supported, widely used software. There was a bit of a learning curve in getting things configured in a way a Linux sysadmin would approve of. But worth it.
To rip CDs, I used a Linux PC with a built-in CD drive. But I had, previously, used a PC with a USB CD drive. What matters most, I suspect, is the quality of the ripping software. I use Whipper, a Linux command line application.
The ripping software I use, Whipper, collects the metadata.
I don’t know the answer to this.
I could have easily purchased an off-the-shelf NAS. But I enjoyed the challenge of building my own. It cost only a modest amount and is easy to maintain.
As far as backup is concerned, the albums stored on my NAS are ripped from CD or purchased from the likes of Bandcamp. These sources (CD, Bandcamp) serve as the primary backup. Additionally, these albums are stored on a USB hard drive, kept separate from the NAS as a secondary backup.
Over the last few years I have had to answer some of the questions you have asked. Firstly my system is a bit different from yours and secondly I am not IT savvy and depend on others to help me out. However here are some points for consideration related to some of the questions you have asked:
Which NAS to buy.
My question to you, is what will you use the NAS for? If it is to store other data (photos, security camera video, etc) then a NAS is good. If it is only for your ripped CDs then I have found that a USB drive is simpler to use and cheaper to buy.
Over the years I have found the SSDs to be quieter and more reliable than the spinning storage types. The SSDs are more compact also.
I use a Windows based laptop with a plugin CD drive to rip CDs. The Innuos rips the vast majority of my CDs and the have been c. 20 out of 2700CDs that I have had to use the plugin Cd to rip, then transfer via USB plugin to the Innuos. I use an Asus CD plugin and have not noticed any issues with the SQ (however I don’t know what the quality on the CD is as i currently can’t play CDs on my system - only play ripped CDs).
Sorry to only respond to 2 of your questions but that is due to my limited IT knowledge and I don’t what to give misleading or plain wrong info. I will be reading all the responses in this thread to help improve my own knowledge gap.
I used to be very IT savvy (I even had certificates for it years ago ), but the technology moved on and I’m back to square one
I am not interested in building something myself and I do not want to be playing around with it the whole time.
So, as my CD collection is modest compared to many here, mid-to-high hundreds rather than thousands, I am going to either use the SSD I have already, or failing that a USB drive.
The main reason is to offer a decent selection of music, even when the nice people at Virgin Media are not having a good day, or if the streaming landscape changes and the likes of Tidal are no longer available.
We live in a strange world and who knows what the future holds, but music is important to me (all of us) so it would be good to have a back up solution.
I am no longer buying CDs or downloading hi res files, but if things change, I could start buying music again, in which case a NAS might become more relevant, but Tidal/Virgin are currently pretty good
Thanks for all the brilliant replies, this is such a great place, I’d be lost without it
Some time ago, my CD5si stopped working. I decided to rip all my CD’s and play them through my ND5XS2. I first tried a USB stick, but that was not ideal. The usability of the app is limited when using a USB stick, compared to a UPnP server. So, I tried a UPnP server (Asset UPnP) on my laptop an that was working fine, except for the fact that my laptop had to be on all the time. So, eventually I bought a QNAP TS-133, installed an SSD and installed Asset UPnP. I am now happy with that solution. The FLAC files sound great and it was a relatively cheap solution.
You know, deep down I felt that just plugging in a stick/SSD was probably too simple/easy, so I will give it a try and see how I get on.
If I need to get a NAS, I will immerse myself in the Community posts and work it out. But I’m in no rush. Just trying to future proof it and give myself an alternative, just in case.
), but the technology moved on and I’m back to square one 
