What NAS to link to my music streamer please
 

Just bought a Cambridge Audio NP30 digital streamer.

It's excellent, but has no hard drive.

Therefore i need a NAS that it can connect to wirelessly. 1TB will probably be enough.

Please can i have your recommendation. Quality preferred to economy. Thanks :)

Currently running a HP Proliant Microserver with Windows Home Server 2011. Long thread here: http://www.avforums.com/forums/netwo...rs-thread.html

Got 2x2Tb drives at the moment and room to double up in future.

Plan to install Asset on it at some point so I can stream FLAC. Currently in the process of ripping my CD collection into this lossless format. http://www.dbpoweramp.com/asset-upnp-dlna.htm

Asset looks interesting, thanks for that.

So is it a physical box you buy or just a program to install on your pc?

The server is a physical box but requires some DIY computer fiddling as it comes with no software installed and only a single hard drive. Got mine from here: http://www.crescentelectronics.co.uk...eo-n36l-13-ghz

The main reason everyone jumped on the band wagon with these earlier this year is that HP were doing a £100 cashback offer so the box cost around £130 new, i.e. £230 from the retailer, send off your invoice to HP and get a cheque in the post for £100. Unfortunately that offer has now ended.

I then bought 2*2TB drives for it, they were about £55 back then but with the current shortages due to the flooding in Thailand they're more than that now and an extra memory module bringing it up to 5Gb RAM ( http://www.ebuyer.com/244940-kingsto...-kth-pl313e-4g )

Once I'd bolted everything in I installed Microsoft's Windows Home Server 2011 operating system on it. The OS itself already has inbuilt capabilities for streaming audio, video, etc. just no native support for FLAC files. Hence I looked at Asset as it can run with this OS to stream lossless audio.

You can install Asset on a regular PC too.

I have recently bought 2x Qnap 219P+ for work and they are excellent. You have to buy HDs for them and I've put 2X Samsung Spinpoints in both. I bought 4 HDDs just as the floods began to effect prices - they've doubled since then :(

The Qnap has lots of functions and just works - yes you can build a NAS box from old PC parts but for reasonably simple Plug and Play - ability, you can't fault this one box options.

I went Qnap over Synology simply because I think the Qnap is a bit better but I doubt theres really that much in it.

I thought this might be a minefield :D

My over-riding requirement is to be able to stream high resolution 96kHz files. But i don't know enough about NAS systems to know whether they will all do that, or whether i need one type more than another.

All i really want is a ready built black box that i just plug in and switch on. Building a NAS isn't really where i want to go with it if i'm honest, even though i'm sure that would result in a superior bespoke bit of kit.

Dig out an old PC youve got stuck in the loft ...

whack in 2 TB sata's and install freenas ... & serviio

Job done


Mart

QNAP every day, they rock

Have setup loads of 119+P and they are not bad for the price

Tel

easiest solution a small 1TB usb drive plugged into the cambridge. one of those little pocket versions that uses a laptop drive. you could hide it behind the unit. just rip you cd collection in flac or lossless to the drive and away you go. no messing no fuss.