A cheap NAS/music solution for a beginner

Whoop · 28 Jan 2019 at 15:24

I already run Plex and Volumio for most of my needs however I have a friend who has a very good audio setup but is still reliant on CD's of which he now has thousands.

He doesn't own a laptop so I'll have to work out a ripping process/lend him something! But he'd like a central music library that doesn't break the bank. As it currently stands he uses his minidisc recorder to get music from his CD's to take around with him... (no way to get CD's to his phone yet).

What would be a nice clean cheapish way to get him up and running, any recommendations? I thought about giving him my Pi+DAC but I still think it's too much effort for him.

Cheers

P.S. he is 38 haha

whitecrook · 28 Jan 2019 at 15:38

Maybe a Vortex Box ?

OR if you can make him one, and then let him use it ?

Doesn't sound likes hes the kind to do half-assed DIY type solutions, he want something easy and to just work. So I can't Imagine he's going to sit down in front of EAC and calculate offsets etc.

hornetstinger · 28 Jan 2019 at 15:45

Older Nas for music storage will be fine if it's just used for streaming audio, just check hard disc capacity support. Got a couple of old nas and fast enough for that and one has large tb support thanks to open source Nas firmware.

lucid · 28 Jan 2019 at 20:49

Whoop said:
I already run Plex and Volumio for most of my needs however I have a friend who has a very good audio setup but is still reliant on CD's of which he now has thousands.

He doesn't own a laptop so I'll have to work out a ripping process/lend him something! But he'd like a central music library that doesn't break the bank. As it currently stands he uses his minidisc recorder to get music from his CD's to take around with him... (no way to get CD's to his phone yet).

What would be a nice clean cheapish way to get him up and running, any recommendations? I thought about giving him my Pi+DAC but I still think it's too much effort for him.

Cheers

P.S. he is 38 haha

Honest advice; walk away.

With the best will in the world, your idea of easy-to-use is probably a million miles away from his, and so the compromises and hoops you'll go through personally are going to be something he finds unacceptable.

I think you've already identified some of the biggest hurdles, such as teaching him how to rip his CDs. But you're also going to have to teach him how to manage his music library. That's a big ask of you, and of him.

There are easy-to-use media player devices such as Sonos, but you're still going to have to cross the ripping/management bridge, and that's where anything based on him ripping his own music collection will fall down. Products such as the Brennan B2 were designed to make ripping easy. The rub is that it's not a Hi-Fi product. You might be much better off pointing him at Spotify Premium or some other high quality online streamed library service. That way, you'll save him and you a who lot of trouble.

I know that's not what you had in mind when you started this thread, but I've been down this road too many times; in the early days it was me pushing some solutions when something interesting came along. Later and more recently it has been where customers have expressed an interest because they've seen an advert or a friend has showed them the fun bits of a new toy without really being told what needs to go on in the background to make them work.

jellybeard999 · 29 Jan 2019 at 09:21

No idea if they're any good, but I'm sure I've seen hifi CD players which have a HDD and autorip to the drive advertised for non tech people.

Edit - www.brennan.co.uk

Martynt74 · 29 Jan 2019 at 10:57

I'm going to agree with both @whitecrook and @lucid here

Vortexbox is excellent. Build a small pc (presume you'd do this), install the software and set it up. Then all your friend has to do is stick a cd in, let it auto rip and it'll eject. Rinse and repeat. It also has built in streaming software so you could either stream to an external device or output to a dac and use something like Volumio on it. You could also pay for Bliss which does a good job of adding any album art not initially found.

The issue is when things go wrong. It's all Linux based so any issues are a bit fiddly to diagnose (this is ultimately what stopped me using it). Whilst it does have a web based front end that's fairly easy to use. I'm not sure how your friend is going to play around with it without a pc/laptop and inevitably some cd's will be ripped wrong and need editing.

I think Lucids point is valid. Just let him use Spotify for everyday listening, and then when he wants to properly sit down and listen to an album he can just use his CD's that he currently owns. If a Pi and Dac is going to be too much for him (i'm not sure what's complicated there? i'm not sure what other options are available. Especially without breaking the bank.

xs2man · 29 Jan 2019 at 11:00

There are options.

I was going to setup a HP microserver with an automated process for ripping discs. You can put an optical drive in the microserver, and set it up to auto rip whatever disc you put in. Something like this: https://b3n.org/automatic-ripping-machine/

So you insert disc, and it'll automatically rip it how you choose. So it would need some setting up initially, but once set-up, it could rip CD's to FLAC, and BR discs to MKV, then transcode. So all your friend would need to do is insert the disc, and wait for it to stop spinning basically. Then stick in the next disc.

But there will still be the issues of managing the library, as Lucid suggests. Which could really just make it a non starter.

In the end, I ended up re-using an older PC and a case I got pretty cheap, but didn't have a slot for an optical drive. In fact, none of my computers in the house now have optical drives, so when I want to rip a cd, I have one on the shelf I have to hook up. But then I quite like ripping my CD's to FLAC with EAC, and usually with the CD's being brand new, I have to name and tag the files manually anyway. But such an automated system may work for older / more popular cd's

jpaul · 29 Jan 2019 at 19:30

Personally still not got round to such a digitization
... with the 6x samsung BR drive I have, would be pretty boring changing cd's every 10mins and take some months, a few every evening (if you can rip that fast with low errors - EAC would say)
.... storeage at, what, 400MB a cd with flac, so his 2000cd's ~ 1TB - how much would that storage cost, with appropriate back-up/RAID solution.
.... biggest issue is then how you deal with having a lossy version to use on your phone, or in the car , do you mirror all the flacs with lossy/AAC versions ?

TIDAL high quality /FLAC remains expensive @£20p/m

divuk83 · 29 Jan 2019 at 20:11

As someone who ripped several hundred albums to flac when I moved from CD to streaming a few years ago it's worth the effort, but it is a lot of effort and took weeks. It also pretty much finished off my DVD drive as I ripped at low ish speed with error correction on so it took even more time (and effort on the drives part). I have them stored on my NAS in Raid 1 and I keep an offline backup (usb hard drive that lives in a drawer) of them as well as I never, ever want to have to repeat that process. I just kept my computer running all the time and switched disks every time I was passing. I ripped using dBpoweramp, which does a decent job of it and seemed to get most of the tags right. I found the album thumbnails in half decent resolution and stored them in the correct folder with the album for the streamer to read. I have a Naim streamer and have had better results with some servers than others. Twonky worked well (I had it on my old Netgear) and the standard Netgear software was rubbish. I have a Synology now and much prefer MinimServer to the Synology one as it's more customisable. What hifi does he have and is he replacing his CD player with a streamer? While it's a good idea, I would not be offering to rip that many cd's for anyone!

Dave

FurryLemon · 29 Jan 2019 at 22:30

Waste of time if you ask me considering his lack/interest in tech (no computer?), but one of the best and cheapest options (if you can get his stuff digitized) is a Teufel Raumfeld Connect with the additional Expand. This will allow him to store 100k tracks with artwork (more without) for around 200 notes, and it has the added benefit of coming with Spotify/Tidal/Qoubuz/TuneIn + a built in CCA.

connect - https://www.teufelaudio.fr/multiroom/raumfeld-connector-p18477.html
expand - https://www.teufelaudio.fr/multiroom/raumfeld-expand-p9525.html

jpaul · 30 Jan 2019 at 11:53

FurryLemon said:
is a Teufel Raumfeld Connect with the additional Expand.

interesting not heard of them - is there any particular review/thread you have seen on these ? could't see one, even on French sites

FurryLemon · 30 Jan 2019 at 17:57

@jpaul - It's a German brand. Cheap because there is no middle man to pay. You order directly from them.

Best review in English - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr8ifL__q78

SimonR · 30 Jan 2019 at 18:47

If you go over to AV Forums, quite a lot of people highly rate the Raumfeld Connector.

jpaul · 30 Jan 2019 at 21:48

FurryLemon said:
Best review in English - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr8ifL__q78

Thanks ... they don't seem to open the box I want to see the circuit board, not raving about sound quality or dacs either https://youtu.be/pr8ifL__q78?t=430
no apparent modern/webm codec support, that's on my must have list.

SimonR said:
If you go over to AV Forums, quite a lot of people highly rate the Raumfeld Connector.

there are a few threads http://www.google.com/search?q=Raumfeld+Connector+avforums++forum&btnG=Search&hl=en-GB&gbv=1
not too many recent posts though - 20 odd last year.

AndyPee · 15 Sep 2020 at 23:46

Apologies I'm late to the party, but if he still needs a neat, simple solution I'd look for a 2nd hand Innuos ripper

Too pricey new now, but my Mark1 mini, bought 2nd hand is 4 years old and still going strong - I back up to an HP microserver, which brought me here !
Does a decent job of finding artwork and handling tracklistings and remarkably few CDs have been not found and required manual input.

Could try a Bluesound Vault to do both ripping and streaming - again probably 2nd hand for value.

sHo0sH · 16 Sep 2020 at 11:28

Seconding Andy's suggestion of the Bluesound Vault. This isn't cheap, but its a great simple solution - https://www.sevenoakssoundandvision..._BYE65VKyhePghKX166IMUFFOcxOfUsRoC1O4QAvD_BwE

Would also provide airplay, 2 way bluetooth and streaming from spotify, tidal etc with a pretty decent in-built DAC so would also make his hifi a smart one.