At the moment, I’m looking at getting a Seagate Central 3TB, but I’m open to other suggestions.

The idea is to copy my Amazon cloud music (around 110 albums) on to it, as well as rip my CD collection on to it (probably around 800 CDs).

The questions are:

– Will 3TB be enough?
and
– is the Seagate the best solution?

The music will mainly be accessed via my laptop (MacBook Pro) that is connected to a Denon Hi-FI by a stereo RCA cable

There are 2 good makes of NAS – Synology and Qnap – do a search on here, there are loads of threads giving advice.

I have around 400 CDs and they take up 150 Gb ripped in FLAC (lossless ) format. Whatever you set up, make sure that you have a backup of your data – a NAS is a very useful thing to have, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Synology working well for me but a mate has a Seagate which seems to work equally as well.

Yeah, I’m aware of the QNAP devices. We even use them at work as the back-up. They are a little coiny, though.

Connecting your laptop to your amp via cable is so 1990’s

If you have an amp that supports DNLA (which some denon do) and ethernet connection then you can use your phone or laptop to send music to it wirelessly..no cables

I use foobar2000 on the pc and bubbleupnp on the android phone to send music (flac and mp3) to my tv and amp, which is also all connected to my NAS which is an old HP microserver running ubuntu and serviio media server amongst other things.

Synology and Qnap should be able to do this aswell
Something to consider to give a better overall experience

3tb will easily be enough.
I got a Synology after a recent thread on here. It’s good, but can’t help feeling the DS Audio app could be better. I think they were designed as a backup solution and the streaming options came later.. I could well be wrong there, but thats how it appears to me. Kind of wish I had bought a music specific device really.
Just installed Plex on my laptop for streaming movies to Chromecast and the interface is just so much nicer.

Unfortunately, my Hi-Fi is about 20 years old, so no digital connectivity, I’m afraid.

bump!! for the drunk evening crowd

I have a Synology and it’s been excellent. The DS Audio app will also mean you have access to your music away from home.

Which one?

I have a DS212+ and also use it for holding films, as an itunes server and my time machine backup server. You can use DS Audio with airplay too or DS Video with Airplay or a chromecast to watch films on a big screen.

Great bit of kit.

Zxyel nsa 325 v2 gets good reviews and much cheaper than Synology & qnap.

the Zyxel isn’t actually a NAS, though: It’s an enclosure to hold other drives. At £85 on it’s own, plus the cost of additional drives, it going to be more than the Seagate.

Looking at it: So is the Synology above.

mikey74 – Member
the Zyxel isn’t actually a NAS, though: It’s an enclosure to hold other drives. At £85 on it’s own, plus the cost of additional drives, it going to be more than the Seagate.

Looking at it: So is the Synology above.

Most of them are NAS enclosures that you can add your own choice of drives too.
Recently companies like Seagate and WD have bought out all in one solutions for people who just want something to plug in and go (which is probably what most people want and need).

When I was looking a while back, the Zyxel seemed to have most of the features that the more expensive systems, and the interface programs also seemed to get good reviews.

I appreciate that stumpy but if you can find an enclosure plus a 3tb hard drive for £110 or less I’d be happy to consider it.

3 TB is huge for just music – thats (very) roughly 7500 standard cd’s ripped in a lossless format.
Have currently got a WD NAS drive. It does the job ok but is incredibly slow to upload stuff to, even over a gigabit network. Don’t know if i’d get the same again tbh.

Yeah I read that the Seagate one was better, which is why I’m veering towards that one.

With regard to capacity: I’d rather have too much than too little. I suspect it won’t only be for music as I imagine I will put photos and videos on there too: However, the main focus is music, so seamless playback/connectivity is essential.

To be fair, the playback side of the WD is fine – fairly quick to respond over our home network.

Is that the My Cloud one?

Have currently got a WD NAS drive. It does the job ok but is incredibly slow to upload stuff to, even over a gigabit network. Don’t know if i’d get the same again tbh.

I’ve got a WD NAS and it’s the only thing in my life that I can say I truly hate.

Its a My Book Live.
Yeah frustrating, and the software isn’t great either.

My network currently has an ancient Lacie 1tb nas and a slightly less ancient 3tb WD one. Both have caused no problems in many years of always on use.