This article is about building the best possible
digital audio streamer
Over the years I
have learned, and after heaving a lot of experience with
ROON, JRiver, Daphile I came to the conclusion that a NAS
doesn't work for audio streaming.
Especially if you
have a large music collection
A NAS is just too slow,
this has many reasons.
I found the sollution in storing my music
collection not on a NAS anymore, but just on the hard-disks that are
directly attached in my PC.
This is called: "Direct Attached Storage"
or "DAS"
Why is this better for audio streaming?
If
you have a lot of large audio files then speed is important because you
want to scoll quickly through your music collection.
Speed is also
important because your DAC needs the audio data fast, audio streaming is
a time-critical process if the DAC get's the
data too late the sound quality will degrade...
There are more
reasons why you would like to have fast storage,
I will come back to
this later in the
article
The idea of creating a perfect backup
scenario
I have tried all kind of audio streaming software in the past, the
ones I like most are “ROON” and “JRiver Media Center”
Both programs
have their good en bad points.
ROON works very well, and your music
catologue really looks good when browsing your music collection with an
Ipad.
But ROON has two (maybe more) major disadvantages.
First of
al it needs a constant internet connection to function.
That
means ROON checks periodical if your license is in order.
At first
this doesn’t look like a problem, but for the long term it could be mean
then when ROON as company stops in the future, that it could mean that
it will be uncertain if your still will able to listen to your music
collection….
Another issue is that ROON when compared with other
audio streamer software doesn't has the best sound quality, others just
sound a bit better in my opinion.
Therefore I decided to create a
secondary audio streaming software solution,
that could work
independently alongside my ROON configuration, so that I always have an
alternative audio streaming solution
I also made sure that both
systems have their own storage for my music collection.
So I have two
identical storage solutions, which are constantly synchronized, so that
they are always the same.
This way I have created a perfect backup
solution.
If one of two systems gets a defective hard disk, I can
always restore the music to its original state.
Some will think
why put all this effort with creating two independent music storage
collections when you also can place your music collection on one NAS
that has a redundant Raid?
The problem of RAID on NAS
The problem of
using RAID on one NAS is that you have created not only one but more
“single point of failure vulnerabilities”
In theory if one
hard-disk fails in your RAID set you should not have a problem
Your
RAID set should solve this problem, because of it’s redundancy
But in practice the truth is something completely else ...
If a hard-disk breaks in a NAS with RAID you still should replace
it, otherwise you will no longer have redundancy …
And this is
precisely where the problem come in.
When you replace your broken
hard-disk with a new one
your RAID set has to be “rebuild”
And
this takes a very, very long time, even days or maybe weeks
And there
are more things the NAS manufacturer didn’t told you….
-
rebuilding a RAID set in not without risk
(it still can go wrong,
still you can loose all your music!)
- The replacement parts for
keeping your NAS alive during the years are limited.
NAS
manufacturers are changing their models also frequently,
so it is
questionable whether the part will be still available after all these
years if your NAS breaks…
The manufacturer prefers to sell you a
newer model NAS instead $$$ :-)
So as a user you are now in fact
depending on only one company, so you are actually a victim of the
so-called "Vendor lock-in"
But there is more ...
What many
experienced IT specialists have known for a long time, is that
"redundancy" is not that really important, often they say "redundancy is
not a backup!"
By this they mean that a complete backup is many times
more important than redundancy alone.
In addition, you should of
course also check your backup regularly, because you must be sure that
both backup copies of your music collection are 100% in order.
But there are even more disadvantages to a NAS, namely:
-
NAS is slow, not only because the music is transported over
Gigabit Ethernet, but also because the CPU is in a NAS does not have the
same processing power as for example an Intel i7 processor in custom DIY
storage server…
- Losing storage capacity
If
you use RAID you lose a lot of available storage capacity of at least
one (RAID 5) but sometimes even two hard disks! (RAID 6)
And that's a
shame because you want to use your capacity for your ever-growing music
collection
Partly because of the above disadvantages of a NAS, I
wanted to create a modular storage solution where I have complete
freedom:
- Free to choose which audio streaming software I want
to use (JRiver, Daphile, ROON, etc)
- Free so that I am not dependent
on any particular operating system (Windows, Linux, Mac, etc)
- Free
so that I do not depend on any form of (software) RAID
- Free so that
I do not depend on an intermediate hardware HBA or
RAID
controllers.
- I would like to have a system that has “local storage” DAS (Direct
Attached Storage)
so that it is much faster than NAS (Network
Attached Storage)
Building the ultimate JRiver DAS Media Center
Because my first audio streaming system uses ROON, I wanted to use
something different for my second system.
Daphile was my first
choice, but Daphile has the disadvantage that it works with a web-based
music browser, which in my case worked very slowly with my music
collection.
That's why I chose
for this project
"JRiver", which has a nice Ipad
remote app called “JRemote”, which is also very fast.
You can
effortlessly browse through your large music collection without any
delay
JRiver also sounds very good, it sounds better than ROON in
my opinion
and thanks to the recently released "RoPieeeXL" image, you
can now (just like ROON) also use your “HiFiBerry DAC +” as an
"endpoint" with JRiver!
The Best Way To Protect Your Music Collection
In the diagram above I try to make clear what
my current audio streaming solution looks like now
The top diagram is
my Synology NAS with ROON installed (this is also a DAS solution, only
the CPU of the NAS is not nearly as powerful as the i7 processor in my
JRiver DAS)
This is system A.
The bottom diagram is my new
JRiver DAS streamer / server
This is system B.
So there are just
as many hard drives in Synology NAS as in my JRiver DAS
Every hard
disk in System A has an excact copy in System B.
So
now I have a real backup of my entire music
collection,
this is much better then only redundancy what one standard
NAS provides...
The new idea:
No
RAID anymore
I always thought
that RAID was needed to join multiple harddisks together to create a
large volume
were I could store my music collection.
if it works
well when there is nothing wrong with it, but if it fails, then you
loose everything
and that’s a risk that I’m not willing to take.
So I was looking for other sollutions to store my music collection
Then I read about using “software RAID” by using a HBA (Host Bus
Adapter) instead of a hardware
RAID controller.
A big advantage of
software RAID is that it can be hardware agnostic when it comes to
migrating
drives and arrays.
So if the HBA adapter or computer
gets broken, you can replace the disks to another computer
and your
music collection is safe.
You don’t have the slow proces of
rebuilding your RAID set anymore, and you don’t have the risk
that
you loose all your data when if the rebuild process will fail.
But during serveral years using software RAID I found that also software
RAID has also disadvantages,
because every form of RAID is an extra
layer between the actual hardware (the disk) and your music
files.
More layers also means more chances that something could go wrong...
You can have software RAID on Linux and on Microsoft Windows operating
systems.
To use software RAID you need some basic IT skills, and this
is something not everybody has.
Also the performance of software RAID
is not better than for example using a “single disk”
So forget "Raid"
and "Software Raid" we are going to do it differently (better) and also
much easier!
Then there is the problem of adding a aditional disk
to your excisting RAID set.
I found out that adding a extra harddisk
to my Synology SHR (= software RAID) volume took very long.
Serveral
days I had to wait till my volume was extended with an extra harddisk.
The same problem exsist when one drive fails, then again you have to
wait very long till you volume
has been repaired.
So I also was
not happy with this solution, so what could I do?
What is the best
way to store my data?
I found out the simplest solution was the
correct one for me.
So I got rid of RAID, and formatted my
harddisks in NTFS “single disks”
I used NTFS because both “ROON” and
“JRiver” can read from these disks without any problems.
This setup
gave me the following benefits:
Its easy and faster to implement
(just format your harddisk to NTFS), it’s also gives better
performance, better protection and its easier to maintain and expand.
Because a single harddisk has no redundancy, I found out that a excact
“copy” of the entire harddisk to another hard-disk located in another PC
is
best way to protect my data.
So I ordered the same amount
of harddisks that I had in my NAS (6 disks) and placed these disks in a
different PC.
The disks are directly connected to the motherboard
SATA connectors, so no special HBA controller
anymore.
So no extra
layer between the hardware and my music files.
I named the disks,
“Disk 1” “Disk 2” “Disk 3” , etc.
and started copying all the music
from my NAS to my PC with 6 SATA harddisks.
This took of course so
time, but it resulted in that I created a complete backup of my music
collection.
and this is much better then just trusting on redundancy.
Currently I have still on my NAS a SHR volume, but when something goes
wrong in the future,
I will not take the effort of rebuilding my
volume anymore with SHR.
then I will just format all my disks to NTFS
“single disks” and copy the data from each disk to the other
corresponding disk.
One on one.
Data of “Disk 1” to “Disk 1”, data
of “Disk 2” to “Disk 2”, etc.
It may seem like a cumbersome way of working,
but in practice it is not too bad, you just manually copy all music
files to two network shares, that's it.
Now I know for sure that I
have a real backup of my entire music collection
By installing JRiver on this
new build PC I have created a secondary
independent
audio streaming system
So when my ROON system fails I can switch in
no time to my new JRiver DAS streamer!
Building Your Own JRiver DAS streamer
If you've never built a PC yourself before, don't let the thought put
you off
I have had good experiences with building computers myself, they are
reliable, versatile, modular and also cheap.
It is also a lot of fun
to do, and certainly it’s not difficult, just read carefully the
motherboard manual first.
Therefore I can heartily recommend
everybody to build a PC yourself!
You will not only learn a lot
during the process, and you will also be able to repair your own
creation.
I used a 5 bay computer case to build this DAS audio
streamer
With an Intel i7 processor CPU and MSI motherboard (with
good quality capacitors that last a very long time)
The hard-disks
will be connected straight to the motherboard
I will not use any Host
Bus Adapter (or RAID card) to connect the hard-disks to the motherboard.
Just standard SATA cables, that’s it.
Keep It Simple :-)
What is important if you are going to build an audio streamer are:
- Fast processor (Minimal Intel i7)
- Enough memory (16 Gb or more)
- Sufficient room for storage capacity (the computer
cabinet
should have space for five 5.25 inch bay's or more)
- The PC must be
very quiet (if the server is also going to stand in the living room were
you DAC is)
My Cooler
Master had five 5.25 inch bay's and internal there is space for two
hard-disks more
So in total I had space for 7 SATA hard-disks
That more then enough for me, I am using 6 TB WD Red hard-disks that
gives me a total storage of 42 TB!
I used 5 “ICY
DOCK” tray less brackets (Type:
IB-168SK-B)
that are
very
versatile, you
don’t need a tray or plastic side strips, you just place your hard-disks
in the holes, that’s it!
I used WD RED 6TB hard-disks because they are
reliable and quiet.
I also can recommend to use a ICY DOCK
“flexiDOCK MB521SP-B” for the operating system SSD
This way you can change easily and quickly
your operating system, to give your computer a new purpose (if needed)
Installing the
software
I prefere to
install open source operating systems and applications on my computers,
but in this case Windows 7 was a better choice.
The motherboard that
I had was Windows 7 optimized, and also the license I had of JRiver was
for the Windows operating system.
Activating Windows 7 (because it’s
out of support) became an incredibly annoying affair, the automatic
activation system via phone did not work, and the poorly speaking
telephone employee did everything to stop me from activating my legal
retail Windows 7 license...
But my perseverance was finally rewarded,
my Windows 7 became activated!
Installing JRiver is pretty plain
forward, then I add the hard-disks to the Library of JRiver.
I did it
one by one, and not everything in one time.
Adding each 6 TB
hard-disk took almost 2 hour, and I had five of them…
After the
computer was installed and configured I made a backup with “RedoBackUp”
program.
So that my Widows 7 image was secured.
My "HiFiBerry DAC+ XLR" with the new "RopieeeXL"
ROON works with "endpoints", which are small network devices that
can be placed in any room where you want music
You can link a DAC to
these "endpoints".
Some "endpoints" even have a DAC built in so you
can connect directly to your amplifier
The HiFiBerry DAC + XLR is one
such device
If you install "Ropieee" on this you get a Roon Certified
network endpoint and DAC!
The device costs about 200 euros
completely, which is certainly not much considering the sound quality.
What many people don't know is that this device also works with JRiver
Media Center.
Yes, you read that right, you just have to install
the free "RopieeeXL" version and
now your HiFiBerry DAC + XLR can be used by both ROON and JRiver!
So now I
can listen to music while the JRiver DAS server is located in another
room, and the "HiFiBerry DAC+ XLR" is located in my living room next to
my amplier and speakers
The "JRemote" app for IOS works perfectly and
very fast.
Now I can scroll through my music collection very fast without
any delay.
In fact I can search my music now much faster than with my
ROON app.
I found out thet JRiver has some advantages over ROON:
- JRiver can read SACD.ISO files (Roon cannot)
- JRiver can
automatically devide single ripped music albums in seperate tracks
-
JRiver sounds better than ROON, Yes it is a big difference...
-
JRiver doesn't need a constant internet connection to check your
activation
- JRiver also has "endpoints" like ROON with the
RopieeeXL image
- JRiver can read WavePack, ROON not
- JRiver
is cheaper
Audio Dandy
(Maarten van Druten)