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Questions about Sonos and NAS

FoolForARadio

FoolForARadio

Super Member
Hi - I have spent the weekend using jriver to rip my cds (flac) onto a 1TB external HD I had sitting around. Classical first, I case I flame out. Slow going but I have made a dent.

I want to move the files onto an NAS device so Sonos can get at them.

What's a good plug and play NAS?

How do I move the music from the HD to the NAS?

When I have got the files transferred, I will plug the NAS into my router - is that correct?

Thanks....
 
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Not a simple answer to your questions and there are hundreds of people here who can give you much more detailed answers and technical help.

But a good start is to buy a Synology DS214+ with two RED Western Digital 3 TB hard drives and a UPS to save it from power gremlins.

As for how to move the files, there are many ways but the easiest is to simply connect your USB HD to the Synology and use the file management software, VIA a PC, to copy it. The NAS, once set up, looks just like another hard drive on your PC.

YES, your NAS should be hardwired via Ethernet cable to your Router, then you can connect to it via wifi throughout your house in a myriad of ways.
 
You could build a cheap Vortexbox appliance out of an old PC and a couple of hard drives. Very easy to do, automatically rips, encodes, and fetches artwork for albums, simple backups via USB, and can function as a player as well as a server if you so choose.
 
crwilli said:
Not a simple answer to your questions and there are hundreds of people here who can give you much more detailed answers and technical help.

But a good start is to buy a Synology DS214+ with two RED Western Digital 3 TB hard drives and a UPS to save it from power gremlins.

As for how to move the files, there are many ways but the easiest is to simply connect your USB HD to the Synology and use the file management software, VIA a PC, to copy it. The NAS, once set up, looks just like another hard drive on your PC.

YES, your NAS should be hardwired via Ethernet cable to your Router, then you can connect to it via wifi throughout your house in a myriad of ways.
Click to expand...


I've never used it on my Synology NAS, but it has a "Copy" button that'll copy files right off a USB storage device to a specified folder on the NAS.
 
Western Digital Personal Cloud NAS works well with Sonos. Sonos doesn't need a NAS to do anything except provide a CIFS/SMB share. Plug the NAS in, connect to Ethernet. Point your PC at the shared drive that the NAS offers, and copy your music files to its Music directory. Finally, point Sonos at the same shared drive, set it to index on a schedule. Done. :music:
 
crwilli said:
Not a simple answer to your questions and there are hundreds of people here who can give you much more detailed answers and technical help.

But a good start is to buy a Synology DS214+ with two RED Western Digital 3 TB hard drives and a UPS to save it from power gremlins.

As for how to move the files, there are many ways but the easiest is to simply connect your USB HD to the Synology and use the file management software, VIA a PC, to copy it. The NAS, once set up, looks just like another hard drive on your PC.

YES, your NAS should be hardwired via Ethernet cable to your Router, then you can connect to it via wifi throughout your house in a myriad of ways.
Click to expand...
+1 on Synology. I have one and if I remember correctly it was pretty easy to setup. It comes with some apps you can install if you want, but you don't have to. They have several apps for smartphones than make them easy to control as well. You can use RAID or their Hybrid Raid system to add a level of protection for the files.

Personally, I would keep at least another copy on a separate drive outside of the NAS to be on the safe side.

I also have a Seagate cloud type of setup at home (since I got it for free), but it doesn't have RAID and the internal apps aren't as useful or plentiful as you get with Synology, but if you don't care about that, this type of setup is cheaper than a NAS.
 
BuffaloLinkstation 421e on sale at Amazon for $90, Smallnetbuilder.net ranks it well. I just ordered on. :) Along with 2 3 TB Red Drives. Will be deciding on the renderer next, but sonos is on the list, or a PC with SSD for speed and video streaming.
 
Thanks for the info. I don't have a large collection - maybe 300 cds and I am not interested in storing movies or photos. Well, maybe photos. I think I will put everything I want to keep on the external HD and keep it for back up.
 
I only store music, as well, no videos or photos. I've moved from a NAS with HDDs to a USB thumb drive hanging off my router. 256GB thumb drives are cheap. You can copy your files to it directly on your PC, or across your LAN. Many newer AC routers have the ability to mount and share thumb drives.

Flash drives are extremely reliable, will store your data safely for many more years than rotating media, will never wear out if it's used only for reading music files once you've done the bulk copy.

Again, one of the many advantages of the Sonos system is that it doesn't require anything but a standard file share, no other NAS features; a flash drive shared by your router works very well.
 
The Western Digital Personal Cloud was a very easy purchase, install and set-up. I dislike dealing with IT stuff at home, so ease was important to me. Since the music files are on my PC I'm not concerned about the lack of redundant disks on the WD box.
 
Big Synology fan here,

I have been working in technology for 25 years. I went from a Windows share to Server 2003, to Windows home server then tried a couple of cheaper NAS setups. Once I made the jump to the Synology, I never looked back. I am running the WD Red drives; five of them have been running non stop for two years. Couldn't be happier and my Sonos is tied right in. Works flawlessly with either Sonos or through my laptop connecting to a hidden share. I do movies through it and backup my PC as well. I still have tons of space but I have the capability of going to 5 - 4 terabyte drives if the need arises. That's 16 Terabytes with RAID 5 redundancy. I stuck it on a Monster power conditioner and my file share problems are gone. I don't even think about it anymore.
 
FWIW, back-up, back-up, back-up...

I see lots of talk about RAID, and that's great for hardware redundancy/up time, but always remember RAID array in and of itself is not back-up.
 
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I'm running Debian 7 as a virtual machine host, 8x 2TB Hitachi 7k1000 in RAIDZ2, and 2x 120GB Intel 530 SSD's in RAID1 for the OS and virtual machines. Virtual machines are Vortexbox, Ubuntu/MythTV, Debian/Transmission Daemon, CentOS/Sabnzbd/Sickbeard/Couch Potato, CentOS/OpenVPN, and a few test VM's. Hardware is dual Xeon L5420, 16GB FB-DIMM's, Supermicro X7DWE, and a LSI M1015 HBA. This system has been in continuous use for nearly 4 years with the only downtime being a couple power outages. I have ~$900 into the whole setup. All drives were purchased new, other hardware was purchased used on eBay.
 
TudorTurtle said:
The Western Digital Personal Cloud was a very easy purchase, install and set-up. I dislike dealing with IT stuff at home, so ease was important to me. Since the music files are on my PC I'm not concerned about the lack of redundant disks on the WD box.
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Bingo. I deal with it all day at work, last thing I want is a complex system at home. Sonos, a few streaming services, and a flash drive for the CDs I ripped years ago. Simple access to unlimited content. Happy camper. :music:
 
Well, I thought I would report back. I ripped every thing using Jriver flac format to a 1T usb hard drive, which I'll keep for backup. That took a long time, ended up about 8000 files. Some are corrupt, I know, some are CD's I will probably never listen to again, but it was a good process. Some of the classical stuff got indexed weird, but I understand that is not unusual. I listened to a lot of stuff I hadn't heard in a long time, and I rediscovered my cd collection.

I bought a 2T WD Mycloud for $100 at Staples, and copied everything. That took about 4 hours. Now I am happily listening, running the Sonos signal into the preamp section of my Cambridge Audio 851c and into the Dynaudio Focus monitors.

Lots more room, lots less clutter now, without all those jewel boxes! I might trade the cd player out for a nice DAC next.
 
Question:
I am about to do something similar with a WD personal cloud and EAC. What does Sonos do for you?
 
Aspen said:
What does Sonos do for you?
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It's just a handy little plug-n-play streaming device. It'd stream your music files off your NAS, or you can stream content off the internet. If you have more than one Sonos, you can stream the same or different content off each and control the whole shebang off a phone, tablet, or computer.

They're handier than a shirt pocket, but the initial cost can be a bit of a shocker if you're just getting started.
 
For me, I got used to using a streaming service (Mog), internet radio, and a Squeezebox Touch. Then Mog folded and the SBT got abandoned. Anyway the SBT was horrible about switching from the www to my own library of files. The Sonos Connect does that seamlessly.
 
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