Any simple, reliable stand-alone (non-innuos, Sonos) NAS products out there?

Small follow-up before you order a new NASif you starting out . You might wanna consider using the HD on your computer for now , as a 1st step to play digital files as you get comfy ( AUDIRVĀNA. Has a free 1 month fully functional trisl period )

You can order the NAS later if you need the HD space for a monster file library .

WHY? Let me explain ,

In a better or arguably a perfect digital file playback world, some  suggest a SSD over a SATA disk hard drivesto play prerecorded digital audio files in your audio library. Their rationale is less electronic noise / jitter / U name it .

I Cannot support this personally YET while im evaluating options,….but it makes sense while I test it further

THE THEORY

The AUDIRVĀNA setup asks where your audio library resides to access it . Intuitively, a home HD location for your library is easiest BUT limited by its available disk space , Intuitively, a twin RAID HD array in a NAS expands it to mega space , but that is not a requirement YET . Just sayin‘ cuz AUDIRVANA has a free 30 day trial option .

Moreover, the QNAP or SYNOLOGY NAS drives setup are arguably the best for audio $  video files, can be a more confusing setup than their marketing hype purports,

Just sayin again

Threadcap:  Trialing the software….it was easy to install and configure.

It not only seems to address my need, it solved some other annoyances for me!

Have not ordered the hardware yet…suspect it’s utilitarian, as it should be.

Thank so very much, AKG!!!!!!

Every NAS takes some care and feeding and technical knowlege, but the one that requires the least is Synology,   I have a QNAP NAS, and it requires a fair amount of technology knowledge to use it.  

The Synologies tends to hide a lot of the technical complexity (not all)   No NAS is inexpensive or simple, but the Synology require the least amount of fussing with after they're set up. 

It's important to note that if you're going to try to use WiFi, a NAS really isn't for you.  Despite what people say, Ethernet has far more bandwidth and speed than any WiFi standard.

I have not found the Zenith mk3  a problem currently  IHave had no issues  updates 

they let you know as long as you have it on , very smooth  . What. Has  been your issues ?

Why a nas? I spent the last 20 years of my career in the high tech storage sector, worked for the largest hard drive/solid storage manufacturer in the world.

I use a newer M2 Mac mini as my server and it acts as a nas for all my other computers/devices. This Mac mini has a very large disk drive for backups from all my he other Mac’s/iphones/ipads. I also have 10TB of ssd/nvme m.2 storage to share amongst all my other computers/devices.

I also have a Linux (Mint) server running Roon and I share the Roon music files off the Mac mini server. I have a 128g ssd on the Linux server for the Roon backups.

You do have RAID options on the Mac for NAS (0,1). If I wanted to use RAID 5 or RAID 10, I would buy a 5 bay external ssd storage device with included RAID software and hook it up to the Mac mini. This Mac does a lot more than just serve up shared storage, it handles all my home automations and other programs with power to spare. I ran Roon on this server for a while but moved Roon to a Linux server that sounds better.