New NAS drive

Well, from what I gather, an external HD doesnt provide indexing, album art, etc. For the music I listen to, seeing the album art makes it a lot more convenient for me to pick the music to listen to.
This is incorrect.

I use Jriver with my HDD contaiting 100,000 + tracks (16/44 wav, HiRes & DSD)

Each trach has, & displays Albumn art, Artist, Album, file format, bit rate, sampling frequency, track duration, etc.
 
Anyone have any experience with how well the Western Digital works as a media server for Sonos and BluOS?
Can't speak on Sonos or BluOS, but can say I've been running a WD PR4100 NAS 24/7/365 with four 6TB WD Red Pro drives in RAID10 since Apr of 2019, and it's still running today without issue. I use it as my Plex Server for my ripped music as well as data backups. No issues here.

One thing I would recommend, and what I did when I bought it, is up the default RAM of 4gig to 16gig.
It is an expensive setup, but... and again running 24/7/365 since 2019 without issue. BTW, it does natively support Plex.
 
This is incorrect.

I use Jriver with my HDD contaiting 100,000 + tracks (16/44 wav, HiRes & DSD)

Each trach has, & displays Albumn art, Artist, Album, file format, bit rate, sampling frequency, track duration, etc.
You are right. Indexing/storage and the rendering of meta data of albums/tracks is a function of the media player (or other software associated with it) and is independent of the storage medium of the tracks.
 
Well, from what I gather, an external HD doesnt provide indexing, album art, etc. For the music I listen to, seeing the album art makes it a lot more convenient for me to pick the music to listen to.
Depends on your streamer. On CXN I can see the album art if it’s on the file’s metadata (tag) and as a ‘folder.jpg’ or ‘cover.jpg’ in the same folder as the album. Yes, it feels good when you can see the album art as you listen to the music.

Indexing on a HDD (connected directly) is limited to the folder structure you create - so need to think through its design upfront.

If you don’t want to do all this and organising and retrieving is extremely important to you, then suggest using a platform like Roon which does lot of the work for you.
No real logical reason - just a separation that makes me feel happier.
Yes, some of us like to keep PC out of the equation. It just feels like work and not play. 😊

Anyway, i just ordered a Synology DS220+ drive. Arrives tomorrow.
👍🏼. Especially if you don’t mind the learning curve and access your media (not just music) from anywhere across the globe. Enjoy!
 
This is incorrect.

I use Jriver with my HDD contaiting 100,000 + tracks (16/44 wav, HiRes & DSD)

Each trach has, & displays Albumn art, Artist, Album, file format, bit rate, sampling frequency, track duration, etc.

Good to know. Perhaps I am confusing it with a different streamer (I definitely recall one streamer as saying that indexing of the ID3 info was not available with a USB-attached drive).

When using Sonos to access music via the stock uPnP off the old Synology, there would be issues with displaying the album cover art. When I changed to a different media server, i stopped having those issues. Not sure where this issue lies, though.
 
Indexing on a HDD (connected directly) is limited to the folder structure you create - so need to think through its design upfront.

If you don’t want to do all this and organising and retrieving is extremely important to you, then suggest using a platform like Roon which does lot of the work for you.

Yes, some of us like to keep PC out of the equation. It just feels like work and not play. 😊

👍🏼. Especially if you don’t mind the learning curve and access your media (not just music) from anywhere across the globe. Enjoy!

The music is organized in a fairly standard format: Album Artist / Conductor > Album > Songs. I went through several months of ripping CDs, properly tagging the files, assigning album covers, cleaning up excess ID3 fields, etc. That kinda sucked but was worth it in the long run, i guess.

Learning curve - i am still on the shallow end but i got enough to get the NAS server running, streaming music and backing up my files. All my essential work stuff is also backed up on OneDrive, which works really seamlessly with my different computing devices. That said, going forwards, it will be interesting to try to keep my entire Lightroom catalog (not just the files) on the NAS and accessing that remotely.
 
That said, going forwards, it will be interesting to try to keep my entire Lightroom catalog (not just the files) on the NAS and accessing that remotely.
I keep my Lightroom catalog local as I only work on my files from home. That said, I might move the catalog to the NAS out of curiosity just to see how well it works when trying to access from my laptop. Not a bit deal though as I don't process files from the laptop anyway. That's me.
 
I keep my Lightroom catalog local as I only work on my files from home. That said, I might move the catalog to the NAS out of curiosity just to see how well it works when trying to access from my laptop. Not a bit deal though as I don't process files from the laptop anyway. That's me.

That's what i do so far as well. But i just ponied up for a nice 14" iPad Pro as an alternative to taking my laptop when i travel - and i like the idea of being able to use the pen for masking, etc. So thought i'd give it a shot - and if i like it, it could replace the laptop as my primary editing tool.
 
I am using Synology DS 220+ with Seagate Iron Wolf drives, it's been a few months and it's working seemless in my network for movie watching.
 
Switching from the old 216j to the 220+ was seamless - I just used inserted the old drives and it carried over everything - login details, settings, apps.

I did have to swap the one wonky drive (who h os what triggered this switch) but that was real easy too.

Very happy I went with the 220+ instead of the 220j, even though the Synology helper picked the latter as being sufficient for my needs. The performance improvement of the + series is noticeable.
 
I have used Synology DS215J for 7 years with WD Red drives (2 drives 3TB each) without any issues, and very recently upgraded to DS220+ with 2 drives 6TB each. Never had issues with the WD Red's so far. I heavily use downloading, music and movies (PMS on nVidia Shield TV) and of course the awesome photo backup service Synology provides from smartphones. Recommend the WD Red drives.
 
I too have been a happy user of all WD Drives and WD RED in particular. Have been using my 4TB internal WD Red for 4 or 5 years... Working perfectly for music storage
 
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