Kijanki...it was a tough choice deciding on the nas. connecting a usb hd to my computer would be cumbersome. the player is on my laptop which floats around my house and would not care much for anything connected. i do not even really like the n+dualband dongle i use hanging off but, unlike the post above, g band does not handle the streams/transfers as well. i do not find the nas slow in comparison to any other configuration either. this nas was not much more expensive than an external drive, $165 for the small, fanless and simple box at best buy. so at 1tb, maybe $60 more give or take. i do find that a good router is really important for smooth, fast performance.
i went through a bunch of trials before choosing this and still do question it. i tried the readynas duo which runs the player on the nas. i tried a external hd connected via usb to my router. finally i just flipped a coin (actually i asked my wife which one she thought was prettiest) and picked the blackarmor nas 110. |
Blindjim -
Your internal drive could be maxed out, or heavily fragmented. There is so many other possibilities - for instance Itunes could be updated or options changed exactly at the time of switch to new drive.
Fat32 is garbage. Using non-journaled format is asking for a disaster.
If bits would "decay" then checksum errors would be reported all the time with hundreds of thousand of files on computer, compressed files (including jpegs) would be corrupted etc.
The fact that you need partitioning software to split drive or "redo" OS every year tells me that you have PC and Windows (I'm sorry).
Firewire does not load main processor (has own processing unit) the way USB does. It is also more elegant, in my opinion, with daisy chaining instead of hub (only one cable coming out of computer).
Richard_stacy - I'm not sure why you bother with NAS, unless you have network of people using it. It does nothing other than making hard disk slower. Why not just plug external drive into computer. External drives are also cheaper than NAS drives. |
I should add that an audio/video specialist at the store where I bought the stuff said he had never heard of somebody streaming music from an external hard drive to a Macbook wirelessly! Am I pioneering with this or what? |
FYI - I just picked up an Airport Extreme and a Glyph GT050Q 1T drive, if that means anything to anybody out there... Will report back on the sound when I get everything hooked up, and thanks again! |
SSD's, that support trim and garbage collection, are pretty much plug and play with Windows 7. I've installed SSD's in all my laptops and desk tops. Music is stilled stored on conventional HD's (all 2.5"). With the older SSD's, and older OS's, it was a bit of a PITA setting up offsets, OS specific block lengths, and doing manual trim and garbage collection. |
mapman...same files, same dac cables etc. the only change was moving them from my laptop to nas. weird huh? my system is very revealing and i am certain of the difference. glad it's for the better!
things that should not make a difference sometimes do. i recently switched digital cables (to an mit oracle ma-x) from my transporter to berkeley alpha dac and it is the biggest change i have ever experienced in my system. that cable is spooky, very spooky. sorry to get of topic... |
Blindjim,
Hmm, do you notice deterioration in your digital photos, video or other files stored as well or only with audio files? |
Everytime I've bought a brand new hard drive, regardless if USB, NAS, or just another one to put into the box, the music files or video files I put onto it sound fresher, crisper, more open and just better overall.
So thereÂs something to be said for newe HDDs.
I've also heard slight diffs from the format of the disc. Finding FAT to 32 sound more open than NTFS. Go figure. Maybe it was the drive materials... the format... the cabling... beats me. But new drives with freshly transfered files always sounds best to me.
There is too a thing called "bit decay" or something like that which says files stored on magnetic mediums tend after time passes, to begin deteriorating. Slowly. So slowly in fact it takes a while. A good while and a side by side comparison to truly notice these desparities.
I've discovered this in my own drives and pcs but only after some years of storage. 2-3 perhaps. Wiping/reformating and reloading the files usually fixes that incidence. again, it's near non noticeable unless you compare similar files on an older drive and a new one.
ThatÂs why backing up and reloading from time to time is important . For the more anal of us, and to be sure it is more pertinent to redoing the OS about once every year to two years depending upon usage, in addition to the norm of error checking and defragging. Your disc (s) .
In general if the OS is on the drive with the media files, and you are at or above 75% capacity, things will begin to act up and/or slow down. If at all possible, and today it is more than ever before, add another storage center. usb, NAS ESATA, etc., or at least another physical Drive into the box.
unless you have on hand some partitioning software and can create or split, your drive into two, with one being a logical drive merely for storage data.... get a secondary drive!. Things will spped up and become more stable too.
SS drives now, in the USA anyhow are still very costly and not terribly large. There are also bugs with interfacing them into 64 bit OS, and OS older than Win 7.... or so my Geek buddy is finding out with his new 30GB SS unit where he places only his Wind 7 64 gbit OS.
Even adding a new ROM drive for ripping will aid the freshening up sound of the ripped files to some degree.
your results may vary, but these thoughts are those which I've discovered over the past eighht to ten years, using various OS, boxes, AND drives in various configs.
Good luck.
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The biggest issue I see with networked storage is with backup times.
I have almost 300Gb of music on my USB drive currently. It takes several hours to back all this up initially to a second attached USB drive. It would take many times longer than that to a network drive using wireless G.
Key is having a backup program that only backs up new files and not everything everytime. |
Thanks folks - some very helpful comments all around. Sounds like the consensus is that even a wireless external drive shouldn't compromise sound quality provided the network is fast enough. I've seen a couple of comments to the contrary elsewhere, but I think I will go ahead and give it a try - for my Macbook, probably an Aiport Extreme coupled with a Western Digital of some kind. Will let you know how it goes, and thanks a bunch! |
Two different computer configurations can and may well sound different but guaranteed it is other factors in either the ripping process to disk or the D to A conversion process at play and not the location of the hard drive. I'll stand by that assertion! |
Take a look at Western Digital's heavy duty drives enterprise class. |
You ask a question that only you can answer. The only way you can tell is to try it and see if you hear a difference. These types of questions always get 2 types of responses which has already occurred.
1. bits are bits, how could it possibly matter?
2. Everything matters. I tried it and heard a difference.
Go to the audioasylum.com PC audio forum and you can find a lot of discussion about this. People propose that solid state drives sound better, lower rpm drives sound better, if you have a usb dac then a firewire drive sounds better and vice versa, different usb ports sound different, etc.
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i have some recent experience with this topic and some odd observations. i began, as you, ripping and storing on my laptop and about 6 weeks ago had filled it. this led to the process of evaluating external storage...nas, usb hd etc and i finally decided an a seagate blackarmor nas 110. i transfered all my music from the laptop on to the nas and to my big surprise, i had a noticeable improvement. things were airy and open where as i had a muddy, loose sound with my laptop (this negative change in sonics occurred as it got closer to full, was not always like this). very strange but very real. my guess is this had to do with overload on the processor in my laptop as there were more than a few quirks with the drive full. i realize many will say i am crazy but that is what happened. i am finding more and more that everything matters in computer audio. stuff we used to think did not actually does. i have a feeling we will all learn allot as this format begins to mature.
good luck with your transition... |
Mapman and Blindjim are quite correct. There is no sonic drawback to using external hard drives. I use 2 LaCie d2 Quadras connected by firewire 800, with good results. Haven't tried a wireless hard drive, so I can't advise about that. Good luck. |
I agree with there is no appreciable sonic improvement or degredation going onboard or outboard with the drives containing the files.
Wireless G allows sufficient through put of packets so it should be good enough to allow seamless playback. Interruptions can occur, but these are normally caused by outside factors affecting the frequency 'G' operates at. Vista as well using it's Windows default packet sending settings can be an issue for streaming wireless info, but it's an easy fix.... another thread I posted here shows exactly how to overcome slow feeds/seek and interruptions or 'drop outs'.
I can stream DVD's I've place onto a NAS drive via G to my laptop without interruption of either the audio or video stream, and I did not compress The DVD's orig info... it/they were ripped at 1:1.
There are threads here which expand upon which way is better, wireless or wired, if you look into the discussions search engine. I seem to recall the use of ethernet wire as being better.... I think.
I've tried both ways but not both ways with the exact same PC OS. Just XP Pro SP3 and Vista SP2.
Reportedly Macs have an easier time of it sonically, than do PCs. As with your own audio rig though, theres more than just a couple things which will come into play that can and will affect the audio output from your personal confuser and the overall SQ.
Enjoy.
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Bits are bits...no inherent difference in sound quality between internal and external drives.
The thing that matters with a disk (other than storage capacity) is how fast data can be retrieved when needed and whether data can be retrieved off the disk fast enough to keep the music playing without audible delays. Some disks are faster than others. An external drive storing just music files can be beneficial in that there is no disk access contention issues with other programs on the computer that must access the internal system drive in order for the computer to operate.
I use 2 Seagate multi Tb USB drives for my music files and disc speed is no issue.
Occasional defragmentation of the disk, internal or external especially as it starts to fill up, is beneficial in that this puts related bits onj the same part of the disk more and that helps read data faster.
Data retrieval from a wireless hard drive is inherently slower than a disk with a wired connection and this can become a factor. I'd consider newer wireless N technology for router and all networked devices that will intereact with a network storage drive probably before relying too heavily on wireless network drives alone. |
