Uniti Core vs. Synology NAS

Thanks. That’s probably made my mind up. I’ll probably stick with the external HDD back up as that’s useful in other ways. I use a MacBook for ripping (with XLD) and Metadatics for the tags.

I’ve mostly been ripping the albums that the Core doesn’t recognise with DB Poweramp ripper on my PC, although I’ve been using a mixture of MP3Tag or Metadatics on my PC and M1 Macbook for metadata editing.

I’ve also been buying a lot of digital music (mostly FLAC, but the occasional 24 bit WAV), and find that setting up a share on the NAS which the core indexes works quite well.

I’m also running Roon Core on my NAS (a Synology 718+ with a large RAM upgrade) as an experiment. The UI has been nice, but it’s a bit random in terms of indexing all of my music correctly.

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My geeky days are probably behind me now, although I do occasionally wonder about Roon. How much RAM do you have in the Synology to run it?

I’ve been using a QNAP NAS for several years. It seems to be working fine (touching wood, tightly) but I’ve been getting concerned about the possibility of it failing even though I do have backups. So I recently treated myself to a new Synology NAS and the QNAP is now used for backup. Worth it for the additional reassurance, IMO.

Roger

I’m running 8GB in it. I bought some 3rd part RAM (this one from Amazon ). I found that with the stock 2GB, I would get buffering delays playing from Roon, but haven’t encountered anything with 8GB. I’m running the database on my NAS spinning drives (i.e. not on an SSD, which will probably speed some database functions up). Generally, it works well. I’ve not really tried playing with DSP or filters on sound output yet.

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If you are interested in classical music, forget the Uniti Core. It runs a very primitive and poorly supported UPnP server that is completely unsuitable for organizing and serving classical music collections. Regrettably, one cannot run MinimServer or Asset on the Core. If you make the mistake of ripping CD to WAV with the Core, all metadata will be stored in a proprietary, non exportable data format.

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Thanks. Just wondered as a NAS seems a sensible always-on way to run Roon, if one didn’t want to splash out on a Nucleus. I looked up the Synology 718+ and they only recommend 6Gb, although user reviews do say that 8Gb works.

It’s forgotten! Thanks for your help.

Yep, it was easy to pop out the single 2GB DIMM and put in the 2*4GB chips. I’ve no problems at all with it. I use this as the primary share for my two music volumes (one for the Uniti Core-managed rips, and another volume for me to put my purchased digital music in), and back up both to the secondary (old) NAS using rsync. If the old NAS was a synology it would be a bit easier, but rsync does the job without too many troubles

I have a high regard for my Synology. So far it hasn’t let me down. I wish the mains connector in the back was a bit firmer, or could be clipped in place, as it’s been accidentally pulled out on occasion. That’s it. All good.

…and I just pointed Roon Core at the two shares, and it made sense of both volumes, including the metadata-obscured Uniti Core/UnitiServe rips.

I’ve repurposed the wardrobe in our spare bedroom as a comms closet, with the NAS on an upper shelf, so there’s little chance of the power cord being pulled out.

I also recommend a small UPS on the NAS - it’ll save your disks in the event that your power drops repeatedly (I had a NAS drive fail in the backup NAS when we had some electrical work being done. I had shut down the NAS, but it turned itself on each time the power came back, and the repeated power cuts killed the drive (1 of a 4 drive array, so fortunately no data loss)

Last time I pulled the power cable out the Synology recommended I get a UPS, but of course that wouldn’t help. But it made me think and I have been looking at some online. My NAS has to be manually switched on after a power cut.

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