Several questions

[sculen]

Thank you. Yes, I lot to absorb. But all good know!

[schmidj]

Well, my opinion, which is not necessarily always accurate: 14 days?? I'd look for a different flash brand! Makes thumb drives and SD cards pretty useless. My Canon camera uses an SD card for storing the images I take, and I obviously don't necessarily take photos every two weeks, particularly that most simple photos are with my phone now. The SLR is for longer focal lengths, wider depth of field, better lighting, etc. A group shot of some friends or whatever, the phone JPG is fine. But somehow, I really suspect is that they are afraid of getting sued because those photos you took 6 months ago mysteriously disappeared and that was when you were on your honeymoon in bora-bora...

Sounds like you do have some IT background, which is good. After the Fortran class I took in 1994 (which got e my first job out of college) Most of mine was via the school of hard knocks (oh, yes I did take that database course in the 1980s, learned a lot there. and got deeply involved with the programmers who did the radio network automation system in 1984.) Basically I designed, specified and supervised the construction of audio systems for ABC TV for 36 years, also volunteered in a college radio station. But as the years went by, that audio equipment became computers inside and became connected by Ethernet or whatever. Now almost all TV, both video and audio is packetized, just bits running through IT switches. Even my little studio at home here is interconnected by Dante, an Ethernet based interconnection which runs nicely through a consumer unmanaged switch. At ABC we had our own IT engineering people thankfully independent of corporate IT. But even they wouldn't let us engineers near their CISCO switches and routers. Yes, we could plug our Ethernet cables in to the switch, and configure the connected devices, but they were the only ones to configure the switch subnets and ports. Very protective of their turf, even though I might be standing right behind them feeding them MAC addresses and confirming IP addresses as they were configuring the switch seeing every entry (except the switch password!!) as they did the configuration. More recently worked as Chief Engineer of a couple of radio stations before (mostly) completely retiring. One of the stations used an automation playback system with an obtuse user interface, to me far worse than the one I helped design in 1984, which I could completely bollix up when trying to make programming changes (which I wasn't supposed to have to do, but the guy who was never answered his phone after hours.) At least my general understanding of the Windows operating system (I would never in the world use Windows for something that was supposed to operate 24/7/365 without trouble!!!) and databases in general (the automation system was essentially a fairly complex SQL database with some supporting software and, as I said, this obtuse user interface. The source files all lived on the (windows) server, there were I think three computers that accessed it with the automation software, one did the over-the-air playout, the other two were used to input both the audio files (and metadata) and the playout schedules.

When I got my first QNAP about 15 years ago, it was to replace a very basic Western Digital server, two drives which I set up as a raid. No apps, just storage. Appeared as drive letters on my PCs. Used that to back up the drives on my PCs (after a bad experience with a drive failure which almost lost me some irreplaceable location audio I had recorded a year earlier) ( I more recently lost some more recordings which were backed up on CDRs in 1999. The CDRs are now unreadable. - Well, the media was said to last 10 years and that was 15 now 16 years ago. My bad. Additionally, the source was from a DAT tape that now has a couple of dropouts. But luckily, there were multiple takes of the same songs, so I was able a year ago when asked about the session to recover, as I had at least a good take of each song.) Anyway, I filled up the WD server, and ended up buying a QNAP. 6 drives, Raid 6 My IT friends at ABC said use raid 6 not 5 because in the eventual event of a drive failure whe you try to rebuild raid 5 it works the hell out of the remaining drives, all too often causing one of the remaining ones to fail, and you are sunk, no recovery. Raid 6 is much easier on a drive when rebuilding from a single drive failure. About 4 years ago (right in the middle of the great hard drive shortage) I filled up the 12 TB on that server. My backups, the audio files, both the ones in my library and the ones from my years of location recording, a bunch of documents and thousands of photos, mostly the digital ones but some scans from earlier times. I could have swapped the drives to larger ones but that QNAP was then at "end of life" with no software updates so I bought a newer model (also 6 drives again set up as Raid 6) with I think about 50 TB. Loads of space left for now.

Any good IT person will tell you that RAID by itself is not a good backup. If the raid controller fails, forget it, game over. Other single point failures are there also. But a drive failure is the highest probability. I've had drive failures on both the old and the new QNAPs. The new one was apparently infant mortality, I think less than a year. Both failures were covered by the warranty on the (server speced) drives. Remember that typically your PC runs a few hours a day at most. The server is running 24/7.

I back the servers up automatically weekly onto a set of multi-terabite USB brick drives, using software which runs on the servers (I still have some unimportant stuff on the old server) I have had two of those USB drives that do the backup fail over the years. It pays to look at the server logs to see if a backup fails. Basically one or two directories from the server per drive.

The biggest PITA with the QNAP servers is maintaining them. About once a month there is a firmware update on the newer one (only occasional serious security updates on the old one). And updates to the apps even more often. And you think Windows updates are slow, the QNAP updates take much longer. The new one is not too bad, give me an hour to update firmware, the old one with a really wimpy processor took two to three hours to update. I used to think it had crashed.

I also keep another USB drive backup of the audio files, one of my recording audio, and one of all my photos. I only update them every few months (yes I know, bad) and I take them on my annual trips to the Caribbean so I have access to the files there (I have Team Viewer on the new server and on an older laptop which I leave on when I travel so I actually have access to the files on the servers, but you don't want ro know how slow the Internet can be there.

But to start, you really don't need the QNAP or whoever expensive server unless you have other stuff to store on it or like some of the apps you can run on it. You can just as well use a much less expensive USB drive for your music, if you run the library software on the laptop, it will never know the difference,

Or you can make your own server on a Raspberry Pi like Gary if you don't mind dealing with Linux. Cost, pennies (well what, now something like $100 total not including the storage drive total.)

I recently stuck a R Pi 400 in my kitchen, using an HDMI connection to a cheap 22 inch TV (hung on the wall) with a so-so soundbar (which cost more than either the Pi or the TV) to listen to music from my server DLNA. (20-20 hindsight I'd be better with the Pi 4 or now 5, with a WiFi/Bluetooth keyboard, together with the trackball I'm already using, getting rid of the dangling wires, from the Pi 400, the Pi could sit on the shelf with the soundbar.)

A question or 2 for Gary, who is probably more of a Pi expert than I, first for a decent DLNA client (not server). I've been using VLC media player which is buggy and not a nice user interface, But I couldn't get the other players that I've tried that run under native Raspberryan to see the DLNA feed from my server, No problem seeing the server files themselves via SAMBA (crazy because the files are on a Linux (QNAP) server, or by mounting the QNAP directory on the PI. And I've never figured out how to "mount" the DLNA on the PI. I know it can be done, because VLC does it, but every attempt to do it with supposedly DLNA smart players on the Pi has failed. Any thoughts. I'm probably stupid. (and yes, I do struggle with Linux).

Excuse the long blabbering...

John

[simbun]

Also, now that I've learned more throughout the initial ripping process, I am questioning what to do about delivering the music to my streamers. Was going to store everything on the NAS which I believe would then be "picked-up" by the streamers thru DLNA. All the streamers (WiiM Pro Plus, Bluesound Node Nano, Cambridge Audio MXN10) have this capability I am told by the companies, with the Bluesound and Cambridge able to handle up to 10TB of music (not so sure about the WiiM's capacity).

Cambridge Audio and WiiM do support DLNA/UPnP but Bluesound doesn't, so your options are limited unless you're ok with AirPlay to Bluesound? Having said that AirPlay is the only unifying protocol, so the only option for multiroom playback anyway - though newer WiiM products lack support.

I'd start by installing the free version of MinimServer (AssetUPnP has a 15 day free trial but I think you may need more time) which will appear in the Cambridge Audio and WiiM apps. Unfortunately the only third party UPnP control points (to control both CA and WiiM) I know on iOS are mconnect (not very good) and JPlay (expensive), but they should get you started at least.

Ultimately I think Roon, MusicAssistant or Lyrion might be the ultimate solution for you, mainly because you're on iOS, though if you're ok with AirPlay - and Amperfy Music works well - an OpenSubsonic solution is an option.

[simbun]

first for a decent DLNA client (not server). I've been using VLC media player which is buggy and not a nice user interface, But I couldn't get the other players that I've tried that run under native Raspberryan to see the DLNA feed from my server

Is Rapberry Pi OS the playback device or you selecting a UPnP renderer from 'Playback > Renderer'?
Is VLC accessing your DLNA server via 'Local Network > Universal Plug'n'Play'?

If you're looking for a DLNA/UPnP control point (not player) have you tried Upplay?

[garym]

All good points. Thanks schmidj for your usual excellent explanation of what a server is.

• Yes DLNA is ubiquitous across lots of things (TVs etc.). It has some limitations, but some companies/systems have made some enhancements to it. But these limitations led to development of different streaming approaches (such as Roon or LMS and others).
• Roon does not use DLNA and calls its streaming protocol RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Transport).
• https://community.roonlabs.com/
• LMS (Lyrion Music Server, formerly Logitech Music Server) is also not DLNA. Not sure what its protocol is called, but it dates back to Slimdevices, Squeezeboxes, etc., a company and a streaming approach that was way ahead of its time. Slimdevices/Squeezebox was sold to Logitech 20+ years ago, and Logitech didn't really know how to exploit it and shut it down 10 years ago. But LMS has a robust community of supporters that have kept it alive (and actually improved it considerably).
• https://forums.lyrion.org/

And I will second the important point made about RAID not being a backup. Some people have mistakenly believed that a RAID setup on their NAS, etc. is a BACKUP. It is not. RAID is a duplicate that is designed for systems that can't afford for even a few minutes of downtime. So a Bank, etc. likely has RAID systems. But as noted, the duplicate created by the RAID system can have the same errors as the original. You can read lots of horror stories on the internet about major data loss from people you incorrectly thought RAID was a backup (google "Raid is not a backup").

[Jordan Taylar]

Poweramp doesn’t have a built-in timer, but you can use a third-party app like Sleep Timer to automatically stop playback after a set time. To back up playlists, go to Library > Playlists > Menu > Export; this will save them as .m3u8 files on your device, usually in the Music or Playlists folder.

[garym]

Poweramp doesn’t have a built-in timer, but you can use a third-party app like Sleep Timer to automatically stop playback after a set time. To back up playlists, go to Library > Playlists > Menu > Export; this will save them as .m3u8 files on your device, usually in the Music or Playlists folder.

Wrong forum. Poweramp is a completely different program, not connected with dbpoweramp (a ripper and converter, NOT a player).