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Storage of hi-res music from Tidal, Qobuz etc. on appropriate hardware?

82.39.184.201
Posted on May 9, 2017 at 03:55:22
hesslemount@yahoo.com
Audiophile

Posts: 28
Location: Barnsley
Joined: May 6, 2017
 Hi All,
I'm owning a Cambridge Audio CXA60, a pair of Bowers & Wilkins 635 s1 bookshelf speakers on stands and a soon to buy network streaming device DAC (either CA CXN or Oppo Sonica SDAC-3 [which is best considering I already own a CA CXA60?]). I will be subscribing to probably Tidal for my music. What I would like to know is exactly what to purchase with regards to effective storage of my music (and maybe films but that's secondary). I get the impression that NAS drives are the thing but which NAS drive and which discs? The Synology DS212j has taken my interest but which hard drives do I need to support it? What is the average amount of TB's required by an average audiophile? Is there a better option of NAS drive that comes with the hard drives? Or is there better options instead of NAS drives? Remember audio quality is paramount for me here.

 

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RE: Storage of hi-res music from Tidal, Qobuz etc. on appropriate hardware?, posted on May 9, 2017 at 07:58:03
PAR
 Me again :-)

You can't store music from Tidal or Qobuz. They are streaming services - a stream cannot be saved on your computer. Qobuz will sell you a download, even a hi-rez download (at a big discount), but you have said elswhere that you are not going to buy tracks at this time.

Qobuz certainly offers a feature by which an album that you have streamed is stored within the app on your machine so that you can listen again offline. I don't know if Tidal offers something similar, I expect so. However you have no need to take any decisions on storage media as this all happens automatically within the Qobuz (or Tidal) app. It is also not permanent storage as the app allocates a certain % of computer memory for this activity and once the limit is reached the next album that is streamed will replace one of those held in the storage.

 

RE: Storage of hi-res music from Tidal, Qobuz etc. on appropriate hardware?, posted on May 9, 2017 at 08:02:52
Rod M
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Posts: 16245
Location: So. California
Joined: March 1, 1999
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  Since: March 1, 1999
 A good NAS drive can get expensive. We use one for backups, music and video. My wife also does video production, so our storage needs are fairly large. Ultimately, we went with a QNAP TS-853 Pro 8-Bay NAS Server. Loaded with 4TB drives in a RAID 6 configuration, it yields about 21TB of storage.

A two drive NAS can only be configured for disk mirroring, so it's maximum storage would be the size of one drive, up to 6TB if it supports 6TB drives. For music. 2 or 3TB would be plenty. I've got over 1,800 albums stored as lossless wav files and it amounts to less than 1TB.

Video is a whole other animal. An hour of mp4 HD video will run about 2GB. Depending on length and encoding, a movie can be 3-5GB for HD, and a lot more for 4K, up to 4X as much.

I prefer to buy diskless and then, I know what kind of drives I'm using and can have a spare drive in case of a failure. My preference is 7,200 RPM HGST Deskstar NAS drives. WD Red NAS drives are also well regarded though they're 5,400 RPM drives which typically are slightly slower, not that you'd likely notice the difference for streaming.

If you think that you'll exceed a single drive capacity, I advise going to a 4 bay NAS. with RAID5, you could store about 16TB using 6TB drives or 10TB with 4TB drives.

-Rod

 

RE: Storage of hi-res music from Tidal, Qobuz etc. on appropriate hardware?, posted on May 9, 2017 at 08:16:07
AbeCollins
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Posts: 46301
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
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  Since: February 2, 2002
 Whatever NAS you decide on be sure to back it up. You'll need another set of disks with enough capacity for the backups..... or use the NAS to backup the other disks.

Consumer NAS alone regardless of RAID level is no guarantee against user error or catastrophic failure, like losing the controller or power supply.

Good luck!



 

What I've discovered, posted on May 9, 2017 at 14:06:14
E-Stat
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  Since: April 5, 2002
 My preference is 7,200 RPM HGST Deskstar NAS drives. WD Red NAS drives are also well regarded though they're 5,400 RPM drives which typically are slightly slower, not that you'd likely notice the difference for streaming.

Is that (at least with Seagate and WD) that the 2.5" drives running a 5400 RPM spindle speed have similar benchmarks as 7200 RPM 3.5" drives. I could only locate one HGST drive at PassMark, but you can see some comparative data here.

I'm using a 3.5" 7200 drive currently, but when it needs replacing will do so with a 2.5" model.

 

Snip: A stream cannot be saved on your computer. No? , posted on May 9, 2017 at 15:15:44
Byrd69
Audiophile

Posts: 2881
Location: East Syracuse, New York
Joined: August 23, 2004
 Spotify is a streaming service...correct?

With the right tool, you can bring a stream to a file on your computer. I do it.


Your interest may vary but the results will be same. (Byrd 2020)

I can't compete with the dead. (Buck W. 2010)

Cowards can't be heroes. (Byrd 2017)

Why don't catfish have kittens? (Moe Howard 1937)

 

RE: What I've discovered, posted on May 9, 2017 at 17:20:02
Rod M
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Posts: 16245
Location: So. California
Joined: March 1, 1999
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 Interesting. Unfortunately, those benchmarks are more oriented toward SSDs which would be great if I could afford them in a NAS. Samsung has a 4TB SSD for just $1,500.

I found another benchmark that is more oriented to NAS drives. The WD Blacks lead the parade. And the Reds are right there with the HGST. What I noticed on their new Red drives is that while it's still 5,400 RPM, it seems like they're added more cache, pushing up the benchmarks. Of course, if you need 8 of them, price becomes a factor along with reliability and warranty.




-Rod

 

What is potentially confusing, posted on May 9, 2017 at 17:46:33
E-Stat
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Posts: 37658
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  Since: April 5, 2002
 About the PassMark data Is that the benchmarks are divided into performance classes. If you scroll down (I did a page search), you'll find large numbers of spinning rust models. The linked page is the second down from the top called "High-Midrange" models. Indeed there is another category above this one that is exclusively SSD and you'll find other pages of even slower models.

If you click the "Select a Page" option to the right, you can choose which category you want to view. I found it useful to directly compare my Seagate ST2000 with SSDs.

 

RE: Snip: A stream cannot be saved on your computer. No? , posted on May 9, 2017 at 23:55:27
PAR
 Yes I am aware that it is technically possible to save a stream using a special tool. However the OP is a beginner and we are therefore dealing with basic information. I am also not going to recommend that he does something that is actually illegal ( it is an infringement of copyright in the UK where the OP is situated).

 

RE: What is potentially confusing, posted on May 10, 2017 at 09:06:22
Rod M
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 I looked at the other pages and still didn't find much on NAS type drives. SSDs will blow away any spinning drive and RAID arrays are inherently slower than a single drive because you have to get data from multiple drives though it can depend on the controller, size of files and a zillion other factors including the drives.

Everything that that I've bought or put together in the last couple years has an SSD for the boot drive and a second fast 4TB drive for data. Booting and loading programs is nearly instantaneous.

Another issue with some of these benchmarks is that if they come from users, the systems vary widely. The processor, memory and motherboard bus speed will have have significant effects on overall throughput. In the past, bus speed was the biggest bottleneck and still is a major factor.

-Rod

 

RE: What is potentially confusing, posted on May 10, 2017 at 09:23:30
AbeCollins
Audiophile

Posts: 46301
Location: USA
Joined: June 22, 2001
Contributor
  Since: February 2, 2002
 There's not a huge performance difference between HDDs of the same type with deliberate design choices made for speed, noise, power/heat, capacity, number of platters, etc. but there is field data collected over time that charts reliability. I stole this slide from last year's "Storage Summit" meeting that our storage products development team puts together for us field folks. Shorter bar is better.


 

Drive Capacity Needs, posted on May 10, 2017 at 10:19:31
Inmate51
 Approximate uncompressed WAV files:

16 bit/44.1 Khz/stereo sampling: 10 MB per minute
24/44.1: 15 MB per minute
16/88.2: 20 MB per minute
24/88.2: 30 MB per minute

and so on.

For this reason, when I record talk radio broadcasts, I use 16/22/mono.
If you use one of the above stats as a baseline, you can figure out the rest.

:)

 

FWIW, posted on May 10, 2017 at 14:26:18
Kal Rubinson
Reviewer

Posts: 12436
Location: New York
Joined: June 5, 2002
 Agreed. One can read all about it but ultimately one takes a leap. I did and so far, so good.

1. I bought QNAP NAS boxes (3 so far) and have learned their exosystem which works well. I have close friends with similar setups and they have either QNAP or Synology.

2. I have WD Red HDs on my two older NAS boxes and, so far, none have failed. As for their speeds as related to access, I regularly stream DSD256 and DXD multichannel files from them over my wired LAN and have no problems.

3. My newest NAS uses HGST drives and, although these spin faster, I do not notice any difference.

 

RE: What is potentially confusing, posted on May 10, 2017 at 14:41:09
Rod M
Web Geek

Posts: 16245
Location: So. California
Joined: March 1, 1999
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  Since: March 1, 1999
 Nice data, Abe. There's no doubt that early failures give one far more grief than a few milliseconds of speed.

-Rod

 

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