Do i need a CD player, or can I use Mc Book?

sfar has spoken some very wise words.

After several reloads of my entire library I decided to to upgrade to a NAS drive thar supports dual drives in a mirrored RAID configuration.

This approach guarantees that both drives carry a copy of my library and in the event of a drive failure, I simply replace the faulty drive and the NAS drive takes care of copying data to the new drive automatically. No backups are required.

When I first built the NAS DRIVE i used a couple of spare drives from old computers. they worked very well, but I later found out that RAID really requires server quality drives.

You guessed it - one of the drives failed.

I simply popped in a new server quality drive and the system took care of everything else. I then replaced the other old drive with a second server quality drive.

The system has been running flawlessly.

I've downloaded tracks up to sample rates of 24/192 and never encountered any problem with this configuration. 

I stream via my iMac that is connected to my DAC via USB. Both the iMac and NAS drive run over an ethernet wired connection (not wireless) to maximize transfer rates.

I use iTunes for library management and Audirvana to trnafer data to the DAC

Hope that helps :

Once network (Ethernet, WiFi, Async USB) is used payback program does not make any difference (unless it is making additional processing - like oversampling). It is because data and not the music is sent (no timing) while timing is recreated on the other side of the network bridge. At this point nothing on computer side makes any difference (program, speed, amount of RAM etc) - saves a lot of money. You can also use computer during playback (as I do) - it won't make any difference.

That's not strictly true.
- Audirvana caches the entire track - before it sends to the DAC, hence eliminating all possible network related issues - then it's just the USB cable issues to overcome
- It also bypasses the crappy Apple audio and streaming program code for significantly improved performance over stock iTunes playback

I've tried Audirvana and Amarra and to these ears Audirvana had an audible slight edge - it's also a lot cheaper :-)

BTW - my NAS drive, along with the various routers etc..are all on a very good UPS + seperate Surge protection just because of what Al pointed out

My NAS drive is from DLINK and it works very well - at least for me so far

But if you have a fire you've got a lot more problems than reloading your music - even my paranoia has to draw the line somewhere :-)

Regards...

Kijanki - I think I may have grabbed the wrong end of the stick and we may be talking about two different things

My setup...
- NAS Drive Library in the basement connected via Ethernet cable to router
- iMac in Living room connected via Ethernet cable to the same router
- iMac connected to DAC via USB cable
- iTunes used for Library management
- Aurdirvana used to move content to my DAC

I was referring to streaming content from my NAS drive to my DAC

Then there is streaming content directly from the web - in which case you are absolutely correct - Audirvana does not cache in this instance and basically allows iTunes to control playback (i.e. in my setup)

To me it is all streaming and I may be misusing this term.

I guess I should have been more detailed in my comments - my apologies

So just to let other members understand what I have observed(suffered) - when playing content from my NAS drive using iTunes only.
- originally I had the whole setup configured using a wireless network
- I experience severe breaks in the music - sometime playback just stopped
- I even talked with an Apple support guy - he advised I convert everything to MP3 :-)
- I then decided to implement a gigabit Ethernet between the NAS drive and the iMac
- this reduced the severity of the breaks but did not provide a complete remedy to the problem - especially with 24/192 files
- I still encountered frequent clicks and pops, especially when using the computer for other stuff at the same time
- Audirvana not only fixed the clicks and pops, but also improved the quality of playback significantly when splaying content from the NAS drive only.

As for the "Backups" - I think the ease of backing up these days is affording us a new luxury.
- back in the days of vinyl - some people might have taped each album and stored tapes off-site
- then with the advent of CD's and computer technology - some might have burned duplicates for off-site storage
- now it is so simple to copy the entire library to a hard drive and place it somewhere off-site for the most protection we've ever had to this point.

So I have to wonder - is anyone using "the cloud" to store their library???
- perhaps the ultimate solution

I would like to understand the details of what you have implemented please.

Regards...