NAS Specs for fastest search rate of FLAC file library

[Jackie Treehorn]

I'm planning on ripping my 800 CD collection to FLAC files and then giving access to that library through my SONOS system. I've gotten a couple different opinions from NAS server manufacturers so I thought I'd try to clear that up here. I'm presuming the music stream is no issue so the only real other speed thing for me will be the ability for the SONOS App to open an album once it's been selected. One manufacturer said I'd want a dual drive with Intel processor to end up fastest but that seemed a little like overkill to me. Can I simply use an out of the box solution like a WD NAS drive or will I in fact gain a benefit by using a more robust server with multiple drives and an Intel CPU?

 

[thiggins]

FLAC bitrate is 1 Mbps or so, so any NAS can handle that, even a USB drive attached to a router.

With drive capacity now at 10TB, unless you have a huge music library, you should be fine with one drive. Go for two-bay RAID1 for a little more protection against drive failure.

 

[Jackie Treehorn]

FLAC bitrate is 1 Mbps or so, so any NAS can handle that, even a USB drive attached to a router.

With drive capacity now at 10TB, unless you have a huge music library, you should be fine with one drive. Go for two-bay RAID1 for a little more protection against drive failure.

Thanks Tim-

Does that FLAC bitrate also limit the search response? I'm ideally hoping to use a tablet with the SONOS app on it that will have all the music CDs on the menu and call them up from any location where I have speakers in the SONOS network. My main concern has been how quickly the command from that SONOS app finds the music file and then initiates playing it?

 

[BrianBloom]

The bitrate probably has zero impact to the search response. Apps like Sonos build an index of all your songs with hashed pointers to each. The search scans this database, not the files themselves. Traversing the collection entries is the slow bit. Once found, it has a link to the song in question directly and can immediately play it.

For me, the size of the index (# of songs) has seemed to be only factor contributing to slowness, not the songs themselves. This gets proven when the nas is offline and it finds the song (successfully) and then attempts to play it (fails), and the time for this to happen isn't much different than when the nas is active. For the record, I have about 44 thousand songs in my NAS/Sonos collection, albeit in MP3 rather than FLAC format.

I think your best bet for performance would be a reasonable snappy NAS CPU and adequate RAM to hold the index. Those are your most likely bottlenecks.

 

[Jackie Treehorn]

I think your best bet for performance would be a reasonable snappy NAS CPU and adequate RAM to hold the index. Those are your most likely bottlenecks.

Would that mean running two drives in a Raid 0 array would also increase speeds?Would an ARM processor be just as effective as an Intel for this?

 

[thiggins]

How fast a response are you expecting? Milliseconds?
Do NOT run in RAID0. If a drive fails all your data is gone.

 

[Jackie Treehorn]

How fast a response are you expecting? Milliseconds?
Do NOT run in RAID0. If a drive fails all your data is gone.

If I ran it in RAID 0 I'd keep a separate backup drive in the event of a loss. I just don't want to choose an album and then have a noticeable gap between the command and the music starting?

 

[sfx2000]

Sonos, in my experience, isn't too picky about latency as it is about keeping a constant stream going.... and there, it's fairly particular, as the Sonos root node is coordinating with the other nodes...

A two-bay NAS should be fine - doesn't matter of ARM or Intel, it's more important that Sonos has tested them, or that the NAS vendor has tested Sonos.

Whether RAID0, RAID1, or even a JBOD config on the NAS - the important thing to note is that the NAS needs to be backed up - RAID is not a backup in any case...

Most of the NAS units will have some means to back up the NAS to either an external disk via USB, or over the network.

 

[Jackie Treehorn]

A two-bay NAS should be fine - doesn't matter of ARM or Intel, it's more important that Sonos has tested them, or that the NAS vendor has tested Sonos.

Whether RAID0, RAID1, or even a JBOD config on the NAS - the important thing to note is that the NAS needs to be backed up - RAID is not a backup in any case...

All advice from all greatly appreciated. I'll contact SONOS and Synology to see if either has tested the other's products.