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Post by audiogeek on Aug 21, 2013 20:59:18 GMT -5
The problem with QoS is that QoS alone won't add anything all that much useful without it also including Flow Control of some sort, which tends to get expensive rather quickly and / or which often just trades one set of problems for another. A simple cheap unmanaged ethernet switch from the brand called ASUS will give you a VIP port that will go a very long way on letting you enjoy easy traffic prioritization in a typical home environment. If you're on Windows, just using the HomeGroup feature combined with a piece of software called NetLimiter Pro can be not only cheaper, but also actually even better than streaming combined with QoS. Similarly, RAID storage is not necessarily always (or should I say, is hardly ever) the best choice for playback of files, especially if you're talking music files. Anyone who has a fair background in IT ought to tell you that, even at the enterprise level, there has been a trend of recent years, moving away from RAID, and towards MAID. Rather than waste hard currency on enterprise harddrives, the extra power consumption that results from letting them spin 24/7, and a fancy NAS with limited upgrade options on top of it all, there is an old, simple and free software utility called revoSleep. It can keep your SATA drives from spinning up again each time when you don't need them to. The bottom line IMO is that PCs usually hate people who know very little about PCs.  That's me!! And I hate em too! |
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Post by arthurz on Aug 21, 2013 22:05:13 GMT -5
Anyone who has a fair background in IT ought to tell you that, even at the enterprise level, there has been a trend of recent years, moving away from RAID, and towards MAID. Rather than waste hard currency on enterprise harddrives, the extra power consumption that results from letting them spin 24/7, and a fancy NAS with limited upgrade options on top of it all, there is an old, simple and free software utility called revoSleep. It can keep your SATA drives from spinning up again each time when you don't need them to. The bottom line IMO is that PCs usually hate people who know very little about PCs. Who said anything about using enterprise drives? Horizontally scaled backend storage used in data centers has NOTHING to do with traditional filesystems, which is how consumers store their music. You're comparing two completely different things. Consumer-level RAID, such as Drobo, or just your basic OS-level software RAID is probably the best shot that a typical person has at having reliable storage. Zero problems playing music from it... |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2013 22:36:28 GMT -5
Similarly, RAID storage is not necessarily always (or should I say, is hardly ever) the best choice for playback of files, especially if you're talking music files. Anyone who has a fair background in IT ought to tell you that, even at the enterprise level, there has been a trend of recent years, moving away from RAID, and towards MAID. Rather than waste hard currency on enterprise harddrives, the extra power consumption that results from letting them spin 24/7, and a fancy NAS with limited upgrade options on top of it all, there is an old, simple and free software utility called revoSleep. It can keep your SATA drives from spinning up again each time when you don't need them to. The bottom line IMO is that PCs usually hate people who know very little about PCs. NAS drives don't have to be one 24/7, the OS is but you can set them to sleep when not in use. NAS drives are pretty much on par with regular old drives. I got both my WDR 2TB drives for $112 each. I like things that work with no hiccups. I can play any video format, 1080p, 1080p 3D, 4K etc. I can play any audio format that any of the dlna devices will support and any that they dont, you can encode on the fly to whatever you equipment will play. I can DL torrents on the NAS's os and don't need my pc on, I can use it in the cloud, on my phone or tablet. I can link my phone up and stream anything from the nas that a device thats not DLNA certified and use it anywhere. I dunno, works pretty well for me. Sure there may be other way to do it but you don't have to be a donkey just because you don't agree IT man. |
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Post by garbulky on Aug 22, 2013 0:27:26 GMT -5
there has been a trend of recent years, moving away from RAID, and towards MAID. The bottom line IMO is that PCs usually hate people who know very little about PCs. That's why my company moved towards the MAID system after disastrous results with RAID. RAID was great for reducing all those pesky mosquito bites but the smell was getting a bit much. The MAID system is simply more elegant. Now all she does is dust the hard drives and servers every few days and we haven't had a data failure yet. Best move in computing innovation yet! But it's not been without issues. Whenever we ask for some cofee she hands us a CD for a pascal computer. |
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emovac
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Post by emovac on Aug 22, 2013 1:39:15 GMT -5
USB connected hard drives _____ wifi DLNA. I am using the same flac files, but the attached USB drives sound so much crisper.
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Post by drtrey3 on Aug 22, 2013 8:07:00 GMT -5
Backup is essential in computer based music. You can't have too many of them either. dBPoweramp is excellent for this. You can rip to multiple locations at the same time,. When i rip a cd it is written to two different network locations. Both of those locations are mirrored, so i get 4 copies of the music. ( i also rip 3 formats at the same time (flac, alac and windows lossless) News to me! Good news to me actually, I will be using this feature from now on! Thanks Brucabba! Trey |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Aug 22, 2013 14:11:50 GMT -5
WiFi is very variable.... in some installations it works very well, but not in others. Another thing to remember when setting up a home is that WiFi is really *REALLY* "line of sight" - or, more properly, STRAIGHT LINE. You may set up your laptop or other receiver in a certain spot and get no signal (because there's a water pipe in the wall between it and the main router), yet get great reception if you move it six inches. It really is *THAT* fussy - especially about metal between the router and your device. One time my SqueezeBox (connected wirelessly) stopped working; turned out a metal bookend had been moved to the other end of the shelf - directly in between it and the router. This is why older houses with metal-sheathed power lines and copper water pipes can be so interesting. Dense materials like actual plaster and cement are also problematic... and a nearby source of high-power noise (like a microwave oven) can interfere as well. You can buy external antennas for most routers (a little antenna on a stand with a wire); they sometimes help; and there are fancier alternatives. WiFi connections also decrease in bandwidth as the signal gets weaker, while wired connections are usually more consistent (and much faster to begin with). If it's practical, a plain old WIRED connection is easier and more reliable. I stream 24/96 files around my house wirelessly all day long with no twitchy-ness. Then consider yourself lucky... I've all but given up on it in my setup. |
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Post by brubacca on Aug 22, 2013 15:20:03 GMT -5
This is why we need Emotiva to come out with a media streamer so we don't need computers at our stereo. A squeezebox front end with DC-1 Dac inside. I vote for slots in the back where you could have internal storage, maybe a hot swap tray for 2.5" drives... Basically a dedicated hardened operating system without all the home OS glitches.
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Aug 22, 2013 15:47:48 GMT -5
Well, YMMV of course. And a hard-wire is almost always the most reliable networking connection for any purposes. But in my house, I've got my Vortexbox server streaming music via 801.n to four different receivers, two of them connected via access points because they are not wireless unto themselves, and I've had no issues. I also have an Apple TV and a Blu Ray player connected to the web via the same wireless network to stream HD video from Netflix and Amazon without issues. And a few computers and iOS devices connected as well. So wireless can work just fine for home theater, computers and music services. It all depends on your specific setup. And yes, I also hope that Emotiva puts out a killer streaming media playback device like they've hinted at in the past. I'd seriously consider one. |
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Post by Gary Cook on Aug 22, 2013 21:20:56 GMT -5
I did a wifi upgrade a few months ago from an ~8 year old Netgear to an Airport Extreme and the speed isn't much greater but the consistency all over the house definitely is. Plus it handles traffic much better, from 4 laptops, 2 Ipads, 4 iPhones, an ATV3, a MacMini and a couple of hard wired PC's. I did locate it (and its predecessor) fairly carefully, it's in my home office, elevated and has good line of site to the major areas of the house, which is split level with cathedral ceilings. In my cousin's 2 storey house I have installed another Airport Extreme downstairs linked with an Airport Express upstairs, that set up works just as well. To me location planning is the most important thing in setting up a home wifi network, much like subwoofers in fact.
Cheers
Gary
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2013 22:17:57 GMT -5
WiFi is very variable.... in some installations it works very well, but not in others. Another thing to remember when setting up a home is that WiFi is really *REALLY* "line of sight" - or, more properly, STRAIGHT LINE. You may set up your laptop or other receiver in a certain spot and get no signal (because there's a water pipe in the wall between it and the main router), yet get great reception if you move it six inches. It really is *THAT* fussy - especially about metal between the router and your device. One time my SqueezeBox (connected wirelessly) stopped working; turned out a metal bookend had been moved to the other end of the shelf - directly in between it and the router. This is why older houses with metal-sheathed power lines and copper water pipes can be so interesting. Dense materials like actual plaster and cement are also problematic... and a nearby source of high-power noise (like a microwave oven) can interfere as well. You can buy external antennas for most routers (a little antenna on a stand with a wire); they sometimes help; and there are fancier alternatives. WiFi connections also decrease in bandwidth as the signal gets weaker, while wired connections are usually more consistent (and much faster to begin with). If it's practical, a plain old WIRED connection is easier and more reliable. Then consider yourself lucky... I've all but given up on it in my setup. What kind of garbage router are you using? What ever you have, throw it in the garbage and spend some money. Every single one of your problems is a complete non issue with any even half decent router. Moving a bookend to the other end of the shelf made you drop connection? LMAO! |
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Post by novisnick on Aug 22, 2013 23:02:34 GMT -5
WiFi is very variable.... in some installations it works very well, but not in others. Another thing to remember when setting up a home is that WiFi is really *REALLY* "line of sight" - or, more properly, STRAIGHT LINE. You may set up your laptop or other receiver in a certain spot and get no signal (because there's a water pipe in the wall between it and the main router), yet get great reception if you move it six inches. It really is *THAT* fussy - especially about metal between the router and your device. One time my SqueezeBox (connected wirelessly) stopped working; turned out a metal bookend had been moved to the other end of the shelf - directly in between it and the router. This is why older houses with metal-sheathed power lines and copper water pipes can be so interesting. Dense materials like actual plaster and cement are also problematic... and a nearby source of high-power noise (like a microwave oven) can interfere as well. You can buy external antennas for most routers (a little antenna on a stand with a wire); they sometimes help; and there are fancier alternatives. WiFi connections also decrease in bandwidth as the signal gets weaker, while wired connections are usually more consistent (and much faster to begin with). If it's practical, a plain old WIRED connection is easier and more reliable. What kind of garbage router are you using? What ever you have, throw it in the garbage and spend some money. Every single one of your problems is a complete non issue with any even half decent router. Moving a bookend to the other end of the shelf made you drop connection? LMAO! Get a Netgear 6300 and forget your trobles, itll reach anywhere and it also makes a great DLNA.I plugged a Mybook into it with all kinds of stuff and back-ups on it and all my systems see the music and video.My printer is even wireless now |
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Post by monkumonku on Aug 22, 2013 23:15:15 GMT -5
I use the devices that run the signal through the electrical wiring in the house. I forgot what they are called, but you hardwire the router output to one of them and plug it into the wall. Then you have another device plugged into a wall outlet where you want the signal to go, and hardwire from that receiving device into whatever is supposed to get the signal, like a TV or another PC/laptop, Roku, Sonos, etc. It works a lot better than wireless and as far as I can tell the signal is clean.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Aug 23, 2013 10:40:04 GMT -5
I hate to disagree - but, as was my point, it all depends.... on many many things. If you use a single router, and place a piece of metal directly between your receiver antenna and the router, your signal will stop; dead; zero bars (try it with a six inch square of aluminum foil). The frequencies used by WiFi do NOT penetrate metal - at all, and they do NOT go around corners. (They do spread and bounce slightly, but very slightly.) Most modern routers have dual antennas, which gives them a better chance, and many laptops have a larger or multiple antenna in the cover, but if you place a large enough piece of metal in between to keep one antenna from "seeing" the other, then your signal will be blocked. Having a more powerful signal makes no difference - any more than a brighter light will penetrate a piece of cardboard - although it will surely help if distance was your problem, or if your plaster walls attenuate but don't actually shadow the signal. The SqueezeBox has a smallish antenna, and a six inch metal square is plenty to block it entirely. Likewise, most WiFi cards for desktop PCs use a single small "rubber duckie" which is very sensitive to placement - although you can usually replace it with an antenna you can place nearby and connect with a wire. If you'd done enough WiFi installs in houses, especially older ones, or commercial offices, you would know that sometimes you get 50 or even 100 meters, while, other times, you can't get the signal even into the next room without repeaters and extra access points.
WiFi routers also deliver variable performance depending on range and signal strength. Wired connections will always give you better speed, better consistency, and less likelihood of other network traffic impinging on your audio. Yes, WiFi often works well enough, but wired is a better bet if you can manage it.
And, yes, sitting one of my nice antique bronze bookends directly behind my Squeezebox will do a very effective job of shielding it - even with a powerful router, and even if it's only five feet away (and it will also block interference from a nearby microwave oven from reaching the SB if placed properly).
WiFi is very variable.... in some installations it works very well, but not in others. Another thing to remember when setting up a home is that WiFi is really *REALLY* "line of sight" - or, more properly, STRAIGHT LINE. You may set up your laptop or other receiver in a certain spot and get no signal (because there's a water pipe in the wall between it and the main router), yet get great reception if you move it six inches. It really is *THAT* fussy - especially about metal between the router and your device. One time my SqueezeBox (connected wirelessly) stopped working; turned out a metal bookend had been moved to the other end of the shelf - directly in between it and the router. This is why older houses with metal-sheathed power lines and copper water pipes can be so interesting. Dense materials like actual plaster and cement are also problematic... and a nearby source of high-power noise (like a microwave oven) can interfere as well. You can buy external antennas for most routers (a little antenna on a stand with a wire); they sometimes help; and there are fancier alternatives. WiFi connections also decrease in bandwidth as the signal gets weaker, while wired connections are usually more consistent (and much faster to begin with). If it's practical, a plain old WIRED connection is easier and more reliable. What kind of garbage router are you using? What ever you have, throw it in the garbage and spend some money. Every single one of your problems is a complete non issue with any even half decent router. Moving a bookend to the other end of the shelf made you drop connection? LMAO!
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Aug 23, 2013 11:04:32 GMT -5
Keith: While your experience is your experience, mine is completely different. I have a single dlink router in my office that streams to two dlink access points and two Squeezebox receivers in completely different areas of my 2500 sq-ft home, one of them (a SB3 receiver) out in my garage, and also to my Apple TV and Sony BDP-S790 both wirelessly in my living room on the other side of the house, all with perfect, drop-out and buffer-free performance. Wireless can work perfectly. YMMV.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Aug 23, 2013 11:41:54 GMT -5
Keith: While your experience is your experience, mine is completely different. I have a single dlink router in my office that streams to two dlink access points and two Squeezebox receivers in completely different areas of my 2500 sq-ft home, one of them (a SB3 receiver) out in my garage, and also to my Apple TV and Sony BDP-S790 both wirelessly in my living room on the other side of the house, all with perfect, drop-out and buffer-free performance. Wireless can work perfectly. YMMV. Indeed it can.... my only point is that it doesn't always do so for everyone. I think I would go as far as to say that it usually works fine for most people - but I have known several who weren't that lucky. In contrast, 100 gB Ethernet over wire, with even a crappy switch, almost always works well. About the only way you can screw it up is to run wires that are too long, or use something worse than Cat5 cable (which is really cheap), and 100 gB Ethernet is good for a few hundred feet per jump. (I also want to make it plain to anybody who tries WiFi and has problems that, if they give up on using WiFi, they should still consider a wired connection - which is virtually assured of working.) It also has a lot to do with your application. Audio is a pretty light load for a network, as is most "casual Web browsing"; even four or five digital audio streams only add up to a few percent of the theoretical capacity for a modern WiFi router; if you were trying to download a 5 gB concert video from a fast server, through that same router, while listening to music - both over WiFi - I wouldn't be as sure of your chance of success. (So, for anybody out there planning to do THAT, use a wired connection for the mondo download.) But WiFi is a lot more convenient... |
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Post by yves on Aug 23, 2013 13:44:21 GMT -5
Anyone who has a fair background in IT ought to tell you that, even at the enterprise level, there has been a trend of recent years, moving away from RAID, and towards MAID. Rather than waste hard currency on enterprise harddrives, the extra power consumption that results from letting them spin 24/7, and a fancy NAS with limited upgrade options on top of it all, there is an old, simple and free software utility called revoSleep. It can keep your SATA drives from spinning up again each time when you don't need them to. The bottom line IMO is that PCs usually hate people who know very little about PCs. Who said anything about using enterprise drives? Horizontally scaled backend storage used in data centers has NOTHING to do with traditional filesystems, which is how consumers store their music. You're comparing two completely different things. Consumer-level RAID, such as Drobo, or just your basic OS-level software RAID is probably the best shot that a typical person has at having reliable storage. Zero problems playing music from it... My obvious point was that, yes, you can play your music files from a RAID 1 array (aka the Cadillac of RAID) so that, if only one drive fails, the music playback will not be interrupted. That is what mirroring will add to the table re playback of music files in a typical small home environment. Nothing more, nothing less. RAID 6 is very much absolutely pointless for that. To minimize the risk of a drive failing, by all means, sure, be my guest, go for the WD Red harddrives. I deliberately mentioned enterprise harddrives instead. Because, after all... money is no object, right?  |
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Post by yves on Aug 23, 2013 13:51:20 GMT -5
Similarly, RAID storage is not necessarily always (or should I say, is hardly ever) the best choice for playback of files, especially if you're talking music files. Anyone who has a fair background in IT ought to tell you that, even at the enterprise level, there has been a trend of recent years, moving away from RAID, and towards MAID. Rather than waste hard currency on enterprise harddrives, the extra power consumption that results from letting them spin 24/7, and a fancy NAS with limited upgrade options on top of it all, there is an old, simple and free software utility called revoSleep. It can keep your SATA drives from spinning up again each time when you don't need them to. The bottom line IMO is that PCs usually hate people who know very little about PCs. NAS drives don't have to be one 24/7, the OS is but you can set them to sleep when not in use. NAS drives are pretty much on par with regular old drives. I got both my WDR 2TB drives for $112 each. I like things that work with no hiccups. I can play any video format, 1080p, 1080p 3D, 4K etc. I can play any audio format that any of the dlna devices will support and any that they dont, you can encode on the fly to whatever you equipment will play. I can DL torrents on the NAS's os and don't need my pc on, I can use it in the cloud, on my phone or tablet. I can link my phone up and stream anything from the nas that a device thats not DLNA certified and use it anywhere. I dunno, works pretty well for me. Sure there may be other way to do it but you don't have to be a donkey just because you don't agree IT man. I never said it wouldn't work. The thing that works for me, though, is to spend as little dough as I possibly can, on stuff that *also* works... |
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Aug 23, 2013 14:48:18 GMT -5
I've had WD blue and green drives fail in my music server (which is on 24/7) but since I upgraded to Red drives, it's been rock solid. Spend a little more up front so you don't have headaches later is now my mantra. |
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Post by yves on Aug 23, 2013 16:46:49 GMT -5
I tried listening to music 24/7. (But it didn't work...). |
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