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In Reply to: RE: What's your next "digital" purchase for audio ? posted by AbeCollins on January 16, 2017 at 20:54:47
I started in summer 2016 to replace all our computer, audio and TV gear. So far, I bought (to replace)
- Netgear R6400 WiFi router (2009 vintage Apple Airport Extreme)
- NAS - Qnap TS-251+ (wasn't using a NAS before)
- Intel Skylake generation i5 NUC as my home office personal PC
(Sandy Bridge gen. i5 desktop PC AND a Sandy Bridge i3 desktop
serving as a dedicated music PC)
- Intel Skylake generation i5 NUC as my wife's home office personal PC
(Sandy Bridge gen. i5 desktop PC)
- JRiver Id to service as a DLNA renderer
- Audioquest Dragonfly Red for use with my personal PC
(replaced a TC Electronics DAC with SPDIF inputs which is now
in use in the library with the Id)
- Audioengine HDP6 powered speakers
(replaced Audioengine A5s which moved to my wife's PC)
-43" TCL Roku TV (replaced a 36" CRT based Sony Vega TV)
The TV has full Roku functionality and is a DLNA
player(controller and renderer together)
I'm quite happy with the changes. I simplified our gear setup, got new functionality and better sound. The HDP6 sound very good in near field and mid field listening.
I still intend to replace the 18 year old 3-way active speakers in the library with powered and probably active monitors. These monitors may have a digital input which would qualify them as digital audio purchases. Right now, Genelec M040 pro audio monitors are the leading candidates.
With the changes, a lot of cabling became obsolete for us. On Saturday, I stood at a recycling bin at BestBuy for ten minutes stuffing cables through a beer can sized hole. I also left a VHS player, a DVD player and a truly ancient PC there.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Follow Ups:
Are you satisfied with the speed of your NUCs?
Cut-Throat
Very satisfied with our NUCs. I am not conscious of any slowdown in any of the things I do with mine.Intel has made much more progress in GPU performance than in CPU performance in recent iterations. Photo editing and watching videos are handled without noticeable delays.
Each of our NUCs have a 1TB SSD and the fan profile is set to "quiet". That's the only moving part and it rarely moves.
If you get one, be sure and install the current Bios and drivers.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Edits: 01/17/17
I am looking at the Lenovo i7 M900 Tiny..... Which is much faster than the NUC.....
Cut-Throat
Well, an i7 is faster than an i5 where multiple cores can be used effectively. I thought that an i5 would be fast enough for my needs and it is.
I had 128 GB SSDs as boot drives in all our desktops with hard drives for data storage. The NUCs have 1 TB SSDs for boot OS and data. That makes a big difference.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I have all of my Data on a 6TB NAS system tucked away in my basement. I will have a fast small SSD in my mini PC used only booting and OS purposes.The NAS system was the biggest improvement to my Computer systems/Network. It is much easier to share files among computers than the Microsoft File Sharing software. It's also a Raid System that provides automatic instant Backup.
Cut-Throat
Edits: 01/18/17
I waited until I thought that an affordable NAS was fast enough, reliable enough and well enough documented before getting one. That has worked out well.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I also waited on the NAS until they were Better/Faster/Cheaper.... I only got mine a couple months ago....
A question though... Why do you even have storage on your NUC's? Why not everything on the NAS? After I moved all my files from my PC to my NAS, that is when I decided to go the Mini PC route and get rid of all the Spinning hard drives in my office.
Cut-Throat
Well, I expect that we'll be using these NUCs for perhaps 7 years. I don't know how my needs will change over that period. I went for some flexibility:
- tall NUC cases so that I could put both an m.2 SSD and a SATA drive (SSD or HD) in them.
- big 1TB SSDs rather than boot drives. I could migrate my files and my wife's to the NAS in a comfortable way. My local SSD has been useful for temporary project storage. I recently had 338 GB of image backups and such on that 1 TB drive. I keep photos on my local SSD until I've selected, edited and winnowed them.
- wireless keyboard and mouse. NUCs have only 4 USB ports, so managing connections requires thought.
- fewer USB audio connections. I have only one working USB DAC connected to my NUC. (The transmitter end of a wireless DAC is connected to allow me to park the Windows default playback device on something other than the DAC that I actually use. A lot of webpages now start up videos with sound without my permission. They defeat Windows muting by adjusting volume. UGLY!)
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
I have all of my audio streamed via Raspberry Pi's. So nothing connected directly to a PC.... I do run LMS on my PC which does any processing before passing it on to the Rasp. Pi's.
I am also planning on Wireless Keyboard, Mouse, Printer.... I am on a mission to get rid of Cables, Clutter, Noise and moving to a Small Form Factor....
Cut-Throat
"I have all of my audio streamed via Raspberry Pi's. So nothing connected directly to a PC.... I do run LMS on my PC which does any processing before passing it on to the Rasp. Pi's."
On my NUC, I listen to my music files via JRiver on the NUC. I also listen to browser output for YouTube videos and for eClassical samples. With my old PCXs, I was playing music from a dedicated MusicPC and browser output from my personal PC. Both outputs went into a two input DAC. Switching the active input was an effective way to silence unwanted browser audio. No more dedicated MusicPC so I needed a different solution.
"I am also planning on Wireless Keyboard, Mouse, Printer.... I am on a mission to get rid of Cables, Clutter, Noise and moving to a Small Form Factor.... "
Amen to that. And old, small hard drives. And software I don't use now. And KVM switches.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Are you backing up your 6TB NAS RAID to another disk? Some NAS will allow you to do this over USB or the network.
I mention this because the RAID itself is not really a "backup". The disks maybe mirrored or use parity (RAID 5, 6, whatever) so the disks themselves may be protected. However, there are several single points of failure in a consumer RAID. If the power supply goes out, your RAID is down. If the controller goes out, your RAID is down. Etc.
Backing up your NAS to another external disk is a good idea.
You asked Cut-Throat but I'll answer too.
I have a single 6TB WD Red hard drive in my QNAP NAS. I leave a 6 TB WD USB drive connected to the NAS.
Every evening, a scheduled task running robocopy on my NUC does a differential backup to the internal drive on the NAS. An hour later, a similar task does a backup from my wife's NUC to the NAS. A couple of hours later, a scheduled task on the NAS does a backup to the attached USB drive.
Periodically, I swap USB backup drives with a neighbor who keeps an offsite copy for me.
When the internal drive on the NAS gets closer to being full, I'll change the scheduled tasks to do backups from our NUCs directly to the USB drive on the NAS. That will free up some space but won't buy a lot of time.
I have USB thumb drives loaded with recovery images for the NUCs and a laptop. I also have full drive C: image backups for those drives.
my blog: http://carsmusicandnature.blogspot.com/
Yes, I always backup to an external disk and off site storage as well. I do this weekly however..... Having been in Information Systems since 1972, I learned these lessons over 40 years ago.
I also back up my files with an automatic program in the raid itself. I save 60 copies of my data daily(Excluding Music, Photos). In case I screw something up with my financial files and need to go back a month or so.
However, Whenever I have personally relied and used my Backups over the last 20 years, the raid backup system would have been suitable. The only problem I have had is with a single disk crash when I have needed to recover files. Or once in awhile where I have screwed up a financial File and need to retrieve a previous copy.
Cut-Throat
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