New home server, Synology DS718+. Questions on setup.

stupidhead

aka Ratdogheads
Subscriber
Hello folks. My wife and I have talked about having a home server for a number of years. We have modest requirements on the lines of playing music on our various 2 channel systems and have accumulated a decent amount of Hi-Res files for this. We have mostly Apple devices such as iphone, ipad and MacBooks. There is no gaming needs nor 5.1 audio or the like. We have all vintage equipment for audio and a Panasonic smart TV.
The other day she surprised me and told me she had ordered the Synology 718+ and two Seagate IronWolf Pro 8TB hard drives. Not sure when but soon we will hook it all up. Seems pretty straight forward but looking for any guidance,tips etc. on the initial configure. Seems raid1 is the way to go. The house is pretty much cat5 wired and cable for internet is from Comcast.

thanx,

Geoff
 
In my opinion, you just did yourself a huge favor. I did the same thing 6-7 years ago and never looked back. I went with 5 3TB Western Digital Red drives and I haven't lost a single drive (knock on wood). I'm running RAID 5 so I lose a drive to redundancy but so far - so good. I bought a 5TB USB external and I keep the music collection backed up on that - along with 30-40 classic movies and 20 years worth of pictures. It's in a drawer at work and I bring it home once a month and update the backup. I'm sitting at about 4TB worth of backups that I don't want to lose so I have RAID plus a mirrored, USB backup off-site. RAID 1 (mirrored) isn't a bad way to go and 8TB should hold a ton of stuff. Honestly - I never log into the NAS ... just set it up and let it roll. I set it to sleep after an hour of inactivity and it fires up as soon as anyone tries to access it. Synology makes good products.
 
I've found many uses for my Synology NAS, including using it as a music server with the built-in Audio Station software. It sounds like you may want to do that as well. I stream lossless ripped CDs over wifi to several receivers, including an Apple Airport Express (latest version), a B&W Z2 airplay speaker, and a Google Chromecast Audio. In your case, either the Airport Express or Chromecast Audio options would enable you to stream music to your vintage audio equipment. I use both Apple devices and Android phones to control the music using Synology's DS Audio mobile app.

Both the Airport Express and the Chromecast Audio have a 3.5mm audio output that can operate either as analog out or digital out, depending on what cable you plug in. To connect to a vintage system with RCA input, use a 3.5mm to RCA cable. To connect to a DAC, use a mini toslink to toslink S/PDIF cable. Of course, you can always start with analog and add an external DAC later if you want.

The Apple Airplay vs Google Chromecast options each have their pluses and minuses. Synology's Audio Station can stream to "Multiple AirPlay Devices" as a single target, which makes it easy to stream to multiple Airport Expresses connected to different systems or change from one system to another. However, the Airport Express has been discontinued by Apple, has become harder to find, and I don't know of a modern replacement. I've also noticed slight stutters or blips in the playback when listening with headphones, but I haven't isolated what the problem is yet. It's possible you wouldn't experience this with an Airport Express hardwired to your network.

The Synology will also stream to Chromecast devices, but to stream to multiple Chromecasts you need to create a group first in the Google Home app, then select that group for output (I believe...I only have a single Chromecast Audio right now). The Synology software does not enable you to switch an active playing queue from one streaming target to another, so switching where the music is output is more cumbersome. I've also had intermittent problems with long tracks ending prematurely, especially after pausing/resuming. And sometimes the Chromecast needs to be restarted before it will start playing music. However, Chromecasts are inexpensive--$35, often on sale for $25.

The nice thing about the Synology is it seems to work with a lot of different configurations rather than being locked down to one ecosystem. I've also tried other music playing options, including creating an iTunes library on a laptop that uses music stored on the NAS. This works fine for Apple-only devices, but requires a computer running iTunes to work. I am curious to try using a Raspberry Pi as a streaming device, but not sure if that would work for multiroom setups. Lots of options out there...enjoy your new NAS!
 
thanx folks for the responses. As for the airport express, in fact a while back we picked up one of these just to start trying the streaming idea. It is hooked up to a Schiit dac then into the Marantz as a source. There have been a number of revelations as a result. First is that it seems that the only "player" that speaks to the airport is itunes. In the meantime I am either playing direct from windows laptop files or plugged into Seagate external for stored files. Very much liking the end result but still very limiting with only itunes as player. With all the file sorting and migrating files between the Dell and Seagate I blew up the itunes library I had because it kept giving me file location errors. Now basically it is one song at a time which is enjoyable enough but a bit of a nuisance. The hope is to have all stored files accessible from the NAS and play from iphone or Macbook as my Dell laptop is old and becoming more and more flukie.

I see many people speak of raspberry pi for their delivery but I wonder is there another device that I could use that isn't as limiting as the airport, or toy-like as the pi seems. And where does the Panasonic fit into all of this? That is probably a topic unto itself.

It seems like JRiver is the player of choice but seems no way to use the airport utility. I suspect this can all be sorted out but not sure which direction to go next!

Geoff
 
Yes, the Airport Express is somewhat restricted to the Apple ecosystem, but there's more than just iTunes. You can set the Airport Express as the audio output from your Macbook by clicking on the speaker icon in the macOS menu bar. Then any sound output from the Macbook will be sent to the Airport (audio will not sync with video). Same goes for your iPhones and iPads--most audio-related apps have an icon to change the output to an AirPlay device (often looks like a TV), or you can set it for the whole device from the quick settings screen (swipe up from the bottom of the screen, press the AirPlay button, select a player).

One thing I really like about Synology is it crosses ecosystems (Airplay, Chromecast, Sonos, DLNA), even if each behaves slightly differently.

As for iTunes libraries...it's annoying, but I've found rebuilding an iTunes library is not too bad as long as your audio files are all in one place. It may take a few hours unattended, but it beats trying to track down files that have moved for every file in your library.

ETA: rebuilding an iTunes library is largely unattended time.
 
Last edited:
so.....we have hooked up the NAS and started to dink around with it a bit. While it is presented as simple, and seems to be, it is still over my head as far as what to do with it.

I have begun migrating files to the NAS which is quite simple and have over half a TB on it at this point. The first thing I tried was to just play a song from the NAS using iTunes for now. It worked but was curious in that the controls of iTunes, specifically the volume and equalizer controls were inoperative. The next thing we tried was to start building a iTunes library using files from the NAS. I suppose a bit of dialog about my files is in order first, and it starts with Aerosmith folders as this was the first band name in the alphabetical scheme of folders. For example I have 4 different "versions" of the first Aerosmith album from different sources. All are hi-res but might be a friends vinyl rip files, or an SACD rip, digitized bootleg or whatever the original source. Typically these are identified in such a way with the parent folder to allow me to know where they came from. When I dumped the Aerosmith main folder with all sub folders (albums etc.) iTunes seems to have taken the files from the original location on the NAS and moved them (not copied them) to the library. It has also renamed albums to the generic Gracenote or whatever database it uses to then name the album and songs! This is a huge fail for what I am trying to achieve. I luckily still have the original files on the Seagate external and can rebuild the NAS files to what I want them to be named but it just helps paint the picture of my hate and frustration of iTunes over the years.

In the meantime I have loaded the Plex server on the NAS but haven't quite figured out how to draw the files from the NAS into it. I am also wondering will it strip and sterilize the albums like iTunes did? I also wonder about being able to play tunes with the Plex player through the Airport Express, my impression has been that anything other than iTunes doesn't see the Airport as where I want to send the files for playback! Beastwoo says it should be there but I just haven't seen it yet! I hold the name stupidhead for a reason.

Bottom line here is that I recognize there are a finite number of things I need to understand here, just having trouble sorting it all out.

Geoff
 
I have the same issue with different hi-res versions of same albums getting renamed in Plex library. Never found a solution yet. Plex only supports up to 24-96 if I recall correctly at this time.

I believe if all your audio is in the /Music shared folder on the NAS Plex should scan it and add your content to the Plex library automatically. If not open the plex app on the NAS, in drop list upper left select DISKSTATION in your case and hit the three dots under Music and click Edit

15408468732488305960586161853053.jpg

In Edit box click Add Folders, then select /Music folder. Then Save Changes, go back to the three dots and hit Scan Library Files. If all goes well you will see "scanning Music..." at the bottom of the screen.
 
is there another device that I could use that isn't as limiting as the airport, or toy-like as the pi seems.

There's nothing toy-like about the RPi. It is a very capable device, widely used as a product development platform.

Don't be fooled by the low cost.

You could, for instance, install something like Volumio, point it to your music on your NAS, and have it catalogue your collection, without it doing any of the stupid things iTunes has done to your music. You can control it from a web browser.

Add a DAC, and connect it to your hifi. I bought a PiFi DAC+ for £16 delivered.
 
Last edited:
Cant help with any of the bumps in the road implementing your NAS. Not an Apple user. That said I like their products overall. Just an old school PC nerd.

Synology makes great products IMO. And I personally doubt the NAS box with will be the source of any issues. That is, it not doing its job properly.

Im setting up a rig to do this also. Im using a dual Xeon workstation as the centerpiece. No where near as energy efficient but it can transcode video for plex like no ones business with its Xeons and a K5000 quadro.

Plex is great but yeah, folks need to watch out with how many programs they are using that try and do media ID management. Plex does this and with various levels of accuracy. Theres lots of Plug Ins which can be added to plex to do all sorts of things.

And Itunes will also try and do this. You may have accidentally created a cage match of programs trying to do media tagging of sorts. May have to disable that on one of em.

Im not an Itunes fan for a few reasons. But I totally understand its appeal to folks living within the apple ecosystem.

One BIG piece of advice Id say to you or anyone creating a LARGE LABORIOUS media library. Cloud Backup. Its super cheap these days. Google offers HUGE storage for little $. Reason being, say you spend however many months, years amassing that great HD music movie library and you get a power surge or any sort of household trauma. Thats allot of time spent building that great library that is now MIA.

Also to anyone maybe doing things my way with a traditional computer. I bought a few CeniRaid drive enclosures and built up a nice power supply using a meanwell 12amp power supply. IMO most drive enclosures simply cut corners too much with the supplied power brick. I also opted to use Stablebit DrivePool with its add on Scanner and a plug in for using an SSD as a cache drive. Just another way of doing things.

Good luck with it all
 
@stupidhead I'll try sharing a few things that have worked for me.

To stop iTunes from organizing your music files, under iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced Preferences, disable "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" and "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library". I keep all my audio files on my NAS and when I add new music, I tell iTunes using File -> Add to Library, and select the top-level music directory, which will rescan for new music. My iTunes library therefore just references files on my NAS, but iTunes itself has no files under its control. Also, you can create a new library or switch libraries by holding the option key when you launch iTunes. I did this when I first set up my NAS (created a new library, disabled iTunes organization, then added all files to the library from the top level).

I haven't used Plex on my Synology NAS yet, so I don't know how it works as a player. I have used Synology's Audio Station and its associated DS Audio mobile app for control, and it's OK if a little confusing. I set up Audio Station on the NAS to access the same folder that my iTunes library references. So, both music programs are referencing the same files, but I don't think they are modifying the metadata unless I tell them to. Audio Station keeps an eye on the music folder, so music added to the folder is automatically scanned and playable. In DS Audio (the mobile app), you need to select a player before selecting any music because each player has its own separate playing queue. On iOS, there's a little icon that looks like a TV to the left of the volume control, and that lets you select the player. When you select an AirPlay device as a player, the DS Audio app acts as a remote control only, so music is sent from your NAS directly to the AirPlay device.

Other iOS audio programs (e.g. Podcasts, Amazon Music, etc) may run audio through your iOS device, but you can send this audio to an AirPlay device (Apple). For example, in the Podcasts app, there's an icon that looks like a TV to the right of the volume control when a podcast is playing--this lets you select an AirPlay device for output. If the application you're using doesn't have such an icon, you can send all audio from your iOS device by accessing the Control Center (usually swipe up from the bottom of the screen, Apple), then selecting the AirPlay icon.
 
Just wanted to mention that there is an app called Airfoil that will let you send any audio signal from your computer (PC and Mac) to an Airplay receiver, Bluetooth receiver, and/or Chromecast receiver. You aren't locked down to iTunes if you use this app. At one time, I used J River and Airfoil to send audio to my Airport Express devices around the house. I could even use Alexa to tell it what to play from any room in the house. I don't use this method anymore since I was too lazy to setup the ports necessary on a new router and I would rather use my HomePod (Airplay 2) with Apple Music.

I have also used Plex and it also has an Alexa plug in, but I found it to be less reliable than J River.

As for the Synology, if you are running a computer 24/7, I think it is better to use music software and just access the files on the NAS. However, their DS Audio app is okay. I had problems with Plex trancoding on my old NAS, so I let the Mac Mini run it instead.

I tried to go with an all NAS setup a couple times, but some of my software just works better running from a computer..while giving me more options.
 
:lurk:

Will be watching this thread closely.

Santa Amazon is bring me a Synology DS218j and two 4 TB WD Red drives. I currently have an almost-filled 4 TB My Book with another My Book as a mirrored backup. All I'll be using the NAS for is to store music, mostly FLAC concert files, so no album art, so song titles in the file names, no use for Grace Notes or most full-service media software. I currently use Audacious which is a tiny little player that suits my needs. My plan is to wirelessly stream (Synology RT1900ac router) to a laptop connected to my DAC on my main vintage system, as well as to stream remotely and operate as an FTP site. I'm all PC as well.
 
I'm looking at upgrading my NAS to a 4-bay, and then using the 2-bay as my backup (as opposed to the separate network drives I'm using now). Anything really important is backed up to a cloud storage account. I like my Synology but am going with a QNAP next time since it has more computing power, meaning I can run a few more server processes on it and not worry about memory and CPU usage like I do now.

For my needs, I skip everything proprietary. It is too limiting for me to be walled off in one ecosphere--it really limits the options on what can be done with my data. All files are stored very simply as FLAC (or DSF for DSD-based files). They are in a hierarchy where I can easily drill down through the directories to get to my music. Basically, \\NAS\volume1\media\music\C\The Cramps\Psychedelic Jungle\01 - Green Fuz.flac ...and so on. I let software create its own libraries (JRiver, maybe Roon one of these days, plus a couple others that I tried briefly and deleted). All ripping is done with dBpoweramp, and tag tweaking with MP3Tag. SACDs are ripped on an Oppo 105.

For video content, I run Serviio, which appears as a DLNA server on my network. It does its own indexing, but I prefer to use it by folders (again, because I can get to my content much faster).

I have two 4TB enterprise-grade hard drives in my Synology. Pricey, but they are more reliable long term.
 
I'm looking at upgrading my NAS to a 4-bay, and then using the 2-bay as my backup (as opposed to the separate network drives I'm using now). ... All ripping is done with dBpoweramp, and tag tweaking with MP3Tag. (Bold and italics per KDAC) SACDs are ripped on an Oppo 105.

For video content, I run Serviio, which appears as a DLNA server on my network. It does its own indexing, but I prefer to use it by folders (again, because I can get to my content much faster).

I have two 4TB enterprise-grade hard drives in my Synology. Pricey, but they are more reliable long term.

:rockon: Love it. There's nothing like keeping a process simple and efficient. I've been using dBpoweramp since the early 2000s and can vouch to the fact that it simply gets the job done. Tagging is done via TagScanner, files are transferred to my network share, and the volume is (reasonably) turned up.

In regard to your drives, are they mirrored or "striped?" That's a hefty quantity of data to recover in the event of less than favorable circumstances.
 
\\NAS\volume1\media\music\C\The Cramps\Psychedelic Jungle\01 - Green Fuz.flac

The alpha subdirectory splitting seems a little unnecessary; the media managers I use allow alpha indexing, either with a simple A-Z GUI selector, or keystroke selection (as does File Manager).

But each to their own; if it works for you, that's fine.
 
Hello all.

As usual thanx for the input and sorry for laying low. We have been toying around more and more and have some updates to report.

Initially as reported I started trying to use iTunes with the Synology and was turned off (yet again) to iTunes due to the commandeering it seems to want to do and organizing, tagging, renaming etc. that seems to be associated. I have yet to try the beastwoo recommendation but it sounds like it would overcome these concerns and I truly appreciate the post. I think I would still hate iTunes in the end. Too much baggage.

Then I tried the Plex thing and started experiencing basically the same thing where it wants to organize, name, tag etc. the way it wants to. This as stated earlier is unacceptable in my eyes and thankfully only experimented with both "players" and only had minimal recreation to do. This experience discouraged me greatly and I was unable to find any real tutorials or forum (Synology) that were very much if any help.

Then the Holidays came along and life things sort of distracted us from any real focus on this. In the meantime Diane has been scanning and cataloging old photos from family photo albums. She is a genealogy hound as a hobby and envision the Synology server for this mass of data too. This kicked us back into researching and working with the NAS. As suggested earlier the Synology has it's own music (and photo) programs. Using the DSaudio program ap on iphone allowed us to listen to tunes while travelling! We road tripped to Jersey a few weeks ago to see touch feel a shelf/sideboard/storage unit which we did purchase and bring home. This piece will be our command central for all things audio visual and like so many things was identified by Diane when not really looking. It is perfect. I will post pics when that is all in place and is part of the big picture of our vision for our audio/video system. We drove in our Tacoma some 700 miles round trip and successfully listened to our music from home without any glitches at all! We have Bluetooth enabled stereo in truck and once synced up the stereo controls for volume and tone settings all worked fine but no navigation of library from there only forward/reverse controls for "playlist" playing. iPhone DSaudio program used for initiating what "playlist" or whatever was playing. This was very gratifying and a lot of fun also. Remember the iPhone library that is internal memory of phone is NOT hi-res. Now we can play our hi-res files in the vehicles!

I am in the process of sorting out the various albums/shows etc. that I have loaded into the NAS so far. This includes associating artwork and source info and even some song naming instead of disc1track3 kind of ID. Generally speaking cleaning it all up so it is navigable for others (Diane) not just me! I have a pile more to add but have been absorbed in library presentation for now. I have not even tried the Airport for home system yet but figure that will be relatively straight forward. Looking at the RT2600AC router from Synology to replace the Airport I think, baby steps.

Geoff

p.s. we are able to navigate to photos easily as well when out of the house by the way. while this is all very exciting it occurs to us that we have barely scratched the surface of the capabilities of this technology.
 
Late to the party, but I recently purchased a 718+ as well. My story is a bit different in that I'm making a transition from using a Win7 server to a MacMini in advance of Microsoft sunsetting support in January. Initially, I planned to get a 2 TB SSD and be done with it. The new Minis, however, use high speed but expensive PCIe SSD cards so I opted for only 256 GB and the NAS. I had a couple of spare 2 TB drives and installed them running RAID 1.

I use Logitech Media Server software (LMS) and transitioning it to the NAS was very easy since it supports that as one of its "packages". It is used for both music and video and seems to provide the movie directory faster. And it has stayed up since I purchased it 25 days ago. Nice thing about Linux vs Win based operating systems. :)
 
I'm late as well. I'm running a mess of eBay parts and 8x 8TB WD "Red" hard drives in a SnapRAID + MergerFS setup with two parity drives. This gives me 48TB of usable space. On that space, I have movies in both 4k and 1080p, various TV show series, and all of my music in FLAC. I put Red in quotes because while they are legitimate Red drives, they came by way of shucking the WD Easystore USB drives available at Best Buy. Best Buy often has them on sale for under $150, $100 cheaper than a WD Red 8TB in retail packaging.

Here's the price breakdown:
$110 Dell T1700 workstation w/ E3 1240 V3 and 16GB ECC unregistered DDR3 (bought it for the CPU and RAM, those alone would've run me $250 at the time.)
$20 Dell Perc H310 HBA
$30 Supermicro X10-SLH-F
$1000 8x 8TB WD Easystore
$10 64GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit for the OS
$55 Nvidia Quadro P400 for Plex transcoding

Total of $1225

I'm running Open Media Vault for the OS. Most of my services (Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, PiHole, Logitech Media Server) all run in Docker containers with the exception of Plex. Docker currently has no way to let containers talk directly to hardware, and I need the Quadro to transcode as many family members have access to my Plex library.
 
Back
Top Bottom