Qnap 109 problems

[Rezillo]

I've been using a Qnap 109 as my music server for some time, with an old firmware version to retain Twonky v4 (which unlike v5 and v6 had easily configurable menu trees for large music collections). Having got fed up with its low-res album art, yesterday I tried the trial version of Asset as a qpkg.

This worked really well and I paid for the registered version today (although a wrong button press on my part meant I ended up paying for a Windows version that I didn't want!). With the music server working with the trial Asset version, I upgraded the Qnap's firmware to the latest version. The upgrade went ok but after then installing the paid-for Asset qpkg, it no longer found my music files. Uninstalled and reinstalled Asset, rebooted NAS, but with no success.

I got Asset to start indexing the collection by changing the file path. Originally, I had these for the trial version on the old firmware:

/Qmultimedia/mp3s N to Z/
/Qmultimedia/mp3s A to M/

These paths worked fine with the trial version. The only downside was that library scanning took a long time - 40 minutes in Twonky, 3 hours with Asset.

In order to get the paid-for Asset to work on the latest firmware (Version 3.3.2 build 0918T) I had to change these paths to:

/share/HDA_DATA/Qmultimedia/mp3s N to Z/
/share/HDA_DATA/Qmultimedia/mp3s A to M/

Asset then displayed progress messages for counting tracks and scanning. Like the trial version it still took several hours. Unlike the trial version, it went from "Scanning Library...Track 1000 of 26758" etc. etc. to, on completion (or at least after a stage for scanning for split albums), displaying 0 albums 0 tracks. I've restarted the server and now its scanning the whole library again - I won't know for a few hours if the same thing will happen at the end.

Any suggestions as to what is causing this?

[Spoon]

Upgrading the firmware likely changed the paths internally within the qnap.

We release Asset 4.3 for qnap perhaps tomorrow, this might fix an issue you are having with multiple library paths defined.

You are best just having the one path set to:

/share/HDA_DATA/Qmultimedia/

Then do a refresh all rescan.

[Rezillo]

OK, thanks - I'll give it a try.

[Rezillo]

I had to shift a lot of other stuff in subfolders out of the Qmultimedia folder but this did work and the server is running. I haven't tried to configure it in detail if I have to do a new install with 4.3 in the next day or two.

My only observation so far is that it is a bit slow to respond to menu selection - I know the 109 is old hardware but the trial version of Asset was noticeably quicker. I don't actually need all the extra features of the premium version, if these account for the slow down - is there any way to disable them? I can remove dynamic browsing from the menu tree, for example, but I don't know if that turns it off or just hides it.

[Spoon]

The speed should be identical between premium and free.

[Rezillo]

Thanks - I'll see how 4.3 goes.

It's the upper tier menu items, particularly album/artist, that take a few seconds to open - going down to album and track selection is fine. I'll try turning off upstream artwork.

[edit] I did this, switched off some of the title display settings and changed the sort mode - much quicker now.

[Rezillo]

Still having problems, unfortunately. A power cut caused the server to go through a full library scan on reboot and I ended up with the same problem as when I defined two library paths. After over 3.5 hours (!) of scanning 26758 tracks, it went through counting album tracks, then detecting split compilations only to end up displaying 0 albums and 0 tracks.

In case there was some file corruption from the power cut, I uninstalled the qpkg and reinstalled it. It's now scanning the library again. This is a painfully slow process - it scans about 12000 files in the first hour then gets slower and slower. As mentioned earlier, Twonky v4 did the lot in around 40 minutes.

Will 4.3 fix this?

[Spoon]

Potentially yes

[Rezillo]

While wating for 4.3, I tried the qpkg for Twonky 7 but didn't like its 'less than configurable' menu trees at all. I then tried Twonky 6, having found instructions for setting up custom trees and a dedicated cache folder on the Linn forum. This worked very well, albeit it was not something for the faint-hearted to do.

Asset 4.3 came out yesterday and that is working ok - thanks. Unlike Twonky 6, it is very easy to set up for large collections, the defaults work well and it can do much more than Twonky can in respect of audio streaming and transcoding.

The big downside is that, on my aging TS109 hardware, the library scan takes a very long time. 4 hours from server start to completion, with over three hours of that scanning the files, then quite a while doing the other library functions that follow on from scanning.

I disabled Asset 4.3, enabled Twonky 6 and timed the latter - 25 minutes to database completion, including 6000 photos. That is faster than when I was using Twonky 4. I appreciate that Asset is doing much more than Twonky in terms of analysing and sorting track data but there is a huge difference in scanning speed. It means that if I make a change in Asset that triggers a rescan, then there is a four hour wait to fully evaluate it then another 4 hours to change it back if I prefer the original setting.

For me, I'll probably continue with Twonky 6 unless I hit any problems but I'd prefer to use Asset, if there is any prospect of scan time improvement. Unlike Twonky, your support is excellent!

[Spoon]

Once Asset has scanned the tracks once, as long as you do not change the design of Asset (ie a major config change) then rescanning when adding new tracks will be fast as only new tracks are scanned.

[Rezillo]

That's true - just that without knowing which setting changes cause a database rebuild, it can make experimenting with the configuration settings a very drawn-out process if you select one that does.