I'll second the wired approach - I tried wireless for a few months and it really depends on your neighbours/familly members wireless usage. They can cause a lot of dropouts.
In the end went wired only and never looked back.
My NAS is a Sharecentre from dlink - dual drive with raid mirror. The only caveat is a slight delay on the first track of a listening session while the computer wakes up and then wakes up the NAS and waits for the track to load into Audirvana before it starts playing.
Once that is over and done with loading the next track is pretty fast - but 24/96 and192 tracks take a little longer to load.
Regards |
If you are going NAS then make sure you implement a Raid Mirror - I've had to re-load all my CD's because of disk failure - a raid mirror will protect against a single HD failure and recover from it without any re-loading - just replace the defective hard drive!
Is off-ramp critical? - I do not believe so, since I do not have it in my digital layback system (but I'm looking into it :-)
It can be added later, it really depends on how good YOU want your digital music to sound?
Get your feet wet first then look into refinements.
Regards... |
The spec on the NAS will state whether it has RAID quite clearly - you only
need "RAID 0" - the ability to mirror.
The D-Link NAS supports Raid and are very easy to setup.
You might want to go to a good computer store since there are better
quality drives suited to raid - only a couple of bucks more, but will last
much longer that drives suited to desktop computers
The Seagate Constellation line of drives are "enterprise drives" suited to
Raid. They are not as fast as other drives but very durable - 2 Tb $135 or
thereabouts. Take a look at the seagate site for details
Regards |
The NAS is like a small computer - the memory is for its internal use.
It does buffer, but not in the same way the oppo will
I don't think it will be an issue
Regards - Steve, bill, will, willie :-) |
Al - thanks for the correction - it is raid 1.
My situation regarding neigbours - I have between 4 and 10 routers active depending on the time of day from surrounding households, and changing channels never completely fixed the problem. Add to that some of the older cordless telephone systems in the neighbourhood, which I'm told can also contribute to dropouts and my number of dropouts were as high as several per hour depending on the number of active routers.
The number of dropouts also went up depending on the the size of the music file e.g. mp3 had very few, 24/192 had several, which makes sense to me.
Direct connection seemed to have fixed this and using Audirvana also ensures no dropouts because it loads the track into memory before playing. Haven't had a dropout since.
Regards |
Tim - it's actually Steve - aka Willie
But there is a nice ring to Mr. Wonka :-)
Your setup appears to be quite different from my own in that my computer is wired to the system and all remote function is provided via my tablet that controls playback on the computer, from the NAS drive.
In your proposed configuration it appears the TV can stream, but only the Oppo and the computer can stream from the NAS
However only the computer is capable of downloading music files from the web, which can be stored on the NAS for playback via the Oppo or the computer.
It also appears there is an ability to remotely control the Oppo from an Android device, but I couldn't fing anything about using a computer running OSX or Windows for remote control.
So the only issue I can see relates to how you are going to stream...
- via computer - then you have to connect to the Oppo (as a DAC) via USB or Optical or spdif
- via the Oppo - then you have to use the Oppo's remote to control playback.
I may not be aware of some other Oppo/Computer feature so it might be quite possible without any further hardware.
I would NOT worry about the dropouts in your case - I have three neighbours within 60ft of my house and I have two wireless routers in my house, so it became an issue.
I did come across one review that reported problems with the Seagate NAS, but reported the Synology NAS had worked OK. So you might want to go with the Synology.
Sorry I could be of more assistance. |
Bill - how do you get the samples to play on Sound Liason
?
I use a MAC - does it need windows"
Thanks |
Tim - I have taken a look at the user manual for the Oppo BDP105 and although it appears you can access media files on a NAS drive over a wireless network it starts getting quite complex and if you have never done this type of thing before it can suck the life right out of you.
My experience with another media player that used similar techniques and protocols to access data over a LAN was very frustrating and made me adopt a different solution that was much easier to setup and far more elegant to use, but that solution does not address your particular requirements.
Since I have no hands on experience of this type of player there is no real advice I can provide. Perhaps other members can assist you
Wished I could have been of more assistance :-(
Good Luck |
Tim - If your concern that the router will not have enough connection capability -then you should be ok - most routers of this type can handle upwards of 100 wireless links - at least the ones I have worked with - which include Bell and Rogers
I think the newer models can handle 256.
If you want more ethernet ports you can simply add a regular router and daisychain it to the wireless router.
If you are concerned about throughput - don't worry - high speed routers perform at rates much higher than audio requires.
I took my wired devices (computer and NAS) up to gigabit throughput and it made no difference to playback - even the 24/192 files
Hope that answers your question |
Tim - that's great - you are well on your way
Enjoy :-) |
Al - I get the impression that Tim's ultimate goal is to have a seperate hard
drive next to the Oppo (connected in some manner) and Tim sitting in his
listening chair with his laptop, using JRiver to control the next track to play,
or downloading song titles to said hard drive and it's all accomplished
wirelessly :-)
And that's a very reasonable expectation with the technology available
today!
However, I do not believe this is possible without considerable knowledge
of the various protocols cited in the manual and how to set them up on
each piece of equipment.
Remember "Plug and Pray" :-)
From the manual it looks as though it is achievable, but my own personal
experience tells me it might not be as straight forward as the manual
indicates and it could become very frustrating.
I may not be "Super Techie", but I'm a pretty savvy computer
user and now use windows and OSX for streaming, which I found very easy
to setup by comparison.
The media players I tried on the other hand, worked to a fashion, but were
very flaky and were sometimes affected by OS releases. The whole setup
became labour intensive. As they say - "the devil's in the
details"
As far as the network stuff, I agree Tim should not suffer dropouts or have
issues passing files between devices - once he gets it configured correctly
As far as the Oppo is concerned - unfortunately, I have no practical
experience to offer that will contribute to an operational solution.
Apologies if I'm not too positive on this one - perhaps just a little Media
Player battle weary :-)
Give me a computer any day - i can tweak them!
Regards |
Tim - here's a thought - is there anywhere near you that has the Oppo in a system so you can go and get a detailed demo of the interface?
That could save a lot of time and streamline your decision making
The one thing I have found with the media streamers and streaming software I have tried is their interface, although adequate in that they allow you to select tracks or make playlists, but they lack library viewing flexibility. They allow you to navigate the various hard drives and usb sticks, but the meta-data (song title, artist, composer, album) is not clearly visible/sortable.
My personal favoute is iTunes because of its interface - if you want to try it just download iTunes for Windows and play with it for a bit then you'll be able to see what features are available.
Don't get me wrong - iTunes is not perfect by any means, but it's a great fit for the way I like to view my library and play music
I just took a quick look at the Oppo remote control apps and most only replicate the functions of the remote - there is one that offers "media control" which displays folders and files, without having to turn the monitor on - HOWEVER - it is only for apple devices and it,s called Media Control HD - take a look at it.
So one last Oppo centric suggestion - since the Oppo has the ability to be controled from Apple devices how about...
1. Get the Oppo and use the wireless dongle to connect to the network
2. Get the NAS drive - it will connect the the network/Oppo wirelessly
3. Use your computer just to download files to the Nas drive wirelessly
4. Buy an Apple iPad and get the Oppo Media Control HD software - the iPad mini should suffice - or pickup a second hand iPad for much less.
This should get you full remote control ability from your armchair with minumum fuss and you don't have to turn on the TV :-)
It may not be ideal, since it brings in the iPad, which you may not be familiar with - but the iPad is pretty easy to use. You could also download files directly to the hard drive from the iPad while playing tunes:-)
Just a thought
Back to the tunes :-) |
Tim - it's sounding much better
I liked the part about pushing to the Oppo with the laptop - that's a nice feature of JRiver and sounds very simple.
Hope everything goes smoothly. |
Tim - not sure what your expectations are regarding quality of the different sample rates.
I've found it depends on the quality of the engineering and not the sample rate.
e.g. I downloaded a Melody Gardot album as MP3 - the engineering is superb and I do not find it any worse quality wise than my CD's or the 24/96 and 24/192 tracks I have downloaded
The 24/96-192 tracks are all superbly engineered so they can sound better than many CD's these days. But if you had the same album in all formats it would probably sound the same.
But this depends on your DAC and how it handles the different sample rates and whether it up-samples or not.
The Seagate Constellation line of drives are "enterprise drives" as I mentioned above
- yes, they are more suited to raid, but that's because RAID is hard on drives and they are a workhorse
- they will last much longer than other drives
- They may be a little more expensive and a little slower, but they are still the best drive for this application.
- I have friends with a computer store that only uses these in their servers (and the computers they sell me) because their failure rate is so low.
Question - do you know if the Oppo buffer the data before conversion?
That would be a bonus :-)
Regrds... |
Tim - the 512mb should be ok. You never need the entire track in the buffer - just enough to prevent gaps in the playback.
Bill - thanks for the heads up on Sound Liason - gonna check that out :-)
Cheers |
Tim - the hierachichal folder structure used by iTunes is...
Artist - album - tracks
Not sure if you need anything else.
On the downside - I have a few tracks that feature other artists - which results in multiple folders for a single artist..
E.g.
Emile Sande
Emile Sande feat. Naughty Boy
Info like Genre and Composer is held in metadata and is accessed by iTunes for generating playlists in those categories
Regards |
Tim - it's your preference - only you can define a structure that suits your needs.
I merely pointed out apple's structure as an example. It happens to work for me
To get to other structures of organizing - like sample size, composer and genre you may have to rely on software.
Take a look at the jriver method. I assume they have one.
Regards |
Tim - just google "free 24/96 24/192 music"
Odyssey Audio lists a few sites offering free-bees
They are mainly sample tracks but I've picked up about a dozen so far and they are very well recorded
Try this site also http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html
- they change their samples every couple of months
Congrats on the setup - enjoy:-) |
