I have a NAS centric perspective on IT in the home environment, too, because, from an organizational point of view this still makes sense. On the other hand a NAS is overkill for running media services on an everyday basis because nobody really needs resilience or uptime protection here. Most probably there will also be few audiophiles with a fail-over setup with the power amp ;).
While I am still very attracted to a NAS my hair stand on end when reading that your Roon processor reading is only 1.9 to 2.1 when upsampling to DSD 128. This is really not much and I am afraid you did not make use of any further costly DSP function and the reading is true for only one DSD stream. In my home setup, with a 2.0 reading, I had spurious dropouts of the audio stream, which fortunately were cleanly muted by the DAC (I know there are DAC devices producing static in such a situation).
Thus I simply refuse to spend almost 1000 USD for a device which is overkill as a NAS in a home environment and which is too underpowered serving as a platform for resource hungry Roon DSP functions.
After some spreadsheeting I came to the conclusion that I will build a media server based on ASRock DeskMini 110 w/ INTEL i7 and an ultra fast 250GB M2.SSD plus 1 x 8TB WD Red in the enclosure - nobody will need RAID protection here. This is the optimal environment for Roon as an audio server with the capability to serve 2 DSD streams w/ DSP functions looped in. The little box will be capable to do 4K Video recoding/serving as well â plus it will be an autonomous device with all audio and video files residing on the 8TB disk. I can even take this to an other place (mobile or vacation home etc.). The whole setup will cost about 900 USD - which is as much as the empty NAS box.
I will keep my central Synology 1813+ NAS and go on using it as a private cloud server and for backups in a layered backup environment.
@Geefes Thanks for your remarks. I just wanted to show what this new QNAP-AMD-NAS is capable of, my Roon runs currently from it for testing, but like you, i too have a deskmini 110 which i currently reconfigure for better DSP-Functionality (currently have a i3-7100, should be at least a i5-6600). But the performance of this box with i3-7100 is in my opinion directly comparable to the AMD-APU used in the 473, maybe even a little slower bc 2 vs 4 cores. But this is no hard comparison, one runs on linux, the other on macOS.
No question, anyone who wants make heavy use of Roonâs dsp-functions and multiple users should use a dedicated machine with a qaudcore i5 or better i7. But why use a dedicated machine for Roon if you are a family wiith 1 dsp-user and max 2 others who want to use Roon ocassionally for easy listening without dsp? If there is already a capable NAS in the household (or 1 planned) then this use-case works very well. With HiFi-Gear for around 1 or 2000⏠there is IMHO not much sense to upsample to more then DSD 128 (or even 64), maybe add a bit equalizing.
Audiophiles with HiFi-Gear from around 5000$ upwards didnât even look at a NAS, they probably go to there HiFi-Dealer and buy a turnkey Solution which works OOB.
Everything else you said over the deskmini 110 is correct, this little box is âRoon-Nirvanaâ as i wrote in another thread in this forum. But the problem with such a box is you have to mess with Hard- and Software. As long as you could use a system like ROCK (Install, connect, use and forget) itâs OK, but if you do everything yourself, constantly messing with hard- and software, âŚnot the best user experience. While with a QNAP the System works day and night, not much attention needed, just listening to your music.
@Bernd_Hofmann I second your assessment. Have to realize that I am a poor guy but nonetheless an audiophile. So I will have to mess and fiddle with soft- and hardware for the rest of my life.
This thrilled me:
Are you running macOS on the ASRock 110 or did I understand something wrong? Is the hardware compatible with Hackintosh?? This would make things much easier
I have Roon running on a USB 3.0 connected SSD (60 Euro) connected to the QNAP TVS-471. Runs fine without any issue and the CPU is using less than 30% while doing searching and other applications. I think it is great value for money having 6500 albums in high res and photoâs and videos plus Roon server. No hassle with PCâs or other devices I donât understand. I can only recommend!
I use a 2012 MAC Mini i7 2.6GHz 16 GB RAM a 1TB SSD for Music files and a 1TB HDD for back up all inside the miniâŚ
My mini has been modified to run on 12 volts DC which I supply from a LPS. I only have about .5TB of music which is plenty for me. I really cannot imagine guys with 8TB of musicâŚthey canât possibly even know what they have!
I run my Mini with Roon Server and control with my iPad.
I use a QNAP TS-269L NAS, with an Audiolab M-DAC+ directly connected to it via USB2 port. Works great.
Before that I tried running Roon core on a QNAP TS-459Pro2, but although Roon itself worked fine, it failed at detecting the USB DAC connected to the NAS. There is a problem either with the QNAP NAS itself or with QTS 4.2.0 thru 4.2.6 - preventing the Alsa setup from working properly with Roon. It may also be due to the Alsa libs embedded in the Roon installer packager for QNAP.
My Mac Mini -IS- a NAS. Any âPCâ can also serve as a NAS. Iâm running a similar setup as you:
Mac Mini (2012) Intel i7 Quad-Core 2.6GHz 16GB RAM, internal 1TB SSD & 1TB HDD, on 12v LPS - Automated scheduled âbootableâ backups from internal SSD to internal HDD in addition to⌠automated backups to two mirrored 2.5" external USB disks. All spinning disks are powered down automatically unless a backup starts (in the wee hours of the morning). If any disk fails, I can simply boot from another. So itâs not only the music that is backed up but the entire bootable operating environment.
The i7 Quad-Core 2.6GHz in the Mini is much more capable than most consumer NAS CPU and more than sufficient for many Roon DSP operations. The Mac Mini is also acting as a NAS when I stream to my basement system.
Mac Mini above is:
Direct attached to my DAC in my office system.
And acts as a NAS streaming over home network to microRendu in my basement system.
Is power efficient and draws < 15-Watts idle, a bit more playing music.
All controlled with the Roon App on my iPad.
For me a NAS makes sense if I used it for more than a music repository. But for a dedicated music-only setup I canât justify having another box in the system.
Iâm in the same boat and have the same âwhich NASâ question? I was thinking about getting the Synology DS3018XS to use both for core and storage. This NAS has the Intel Pentium D1508 CPU. What are your thoughts on this?
I have both DS1815+ and DS918+, they can be made to âworkâ with core. I now run core on a quad core i7 and will never look back. Pricing of NAS with i5/i7 are sky high, you are better off getting a cheap NAS for storage and a separate i5/i7 for core, total cost about the same.
QNAP gives on its website a noise level of: 17.3 dB(A)* (LpAm)
(Sound Level Test Environment: Refer to ISO 7779 ; Maximum HDD loaded ; Bystander Position ; Average data from 1 meter in front of operating NAS.)
It mainly depends on the disks, that are inserted into the NAS.
If you insert only SSDs in the internal trays, it wonât be very loud. If you add more regular spinning HDD, it will get louderâŚ
I also swapped the cooling fan on my device to a more quiet one from Noctua.
Thank you for your prompt reply. the 7200rpm louder than 5400prm is already clear to me. but I do not know yet, if in 1m distance the NAS is so loud that it disturbs listening to the music. Of course, everyone has a different feeling.
