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"To me, music means much more than what it sounds. QNAP TVS-882 and HS-251+ has made the music deeply touch my soul."
- Digital streaming enthusiast John
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"To me, music means much more than what it sounds. QNAP TVS-882 and HS-251+ has made the music deeply touch my soul."
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Digital streaming enthusiast John
John (also known as "Wind Follower") is a digital streaming enthusiast in Taiwan. To pursue the most ideal sound in music, he has been studying digital music streaming for years, and has continued to share his experience and related knowledge with music fans around the world.
John majored in linguistics, and in his thesis, he explored the field of sound perception. From his student years, he has been passionate about classical music. Because he is very particular about sound quality, he has become very familiar with audio equipment. Six years ago, due to the drastic increase of his music collection, John decided to digitize his CD collection for storage and backup, which prompted him to explore computer signal sources connection and construction. Out of passion for music and sound quality, he founded the Xfuncat Facebook group, which has around 1000 fans.
The music database management software Roon has become a hot topic among audio enthusiasts and music enthusiasts in recent years. Roon's collection management, multi-room music streaming and playback capabilities are also John's favorites.
Roon's software architecture can be divided into three parts: "Roon Core", "Roon Control" and "Roon Output". Roon Core is the core of Roon's operation. It is Roon's music sharing server (Server). It is mainly used to install Roon and Roon Server networking devices, such as computers and NAS, to store music files. Roon Control is a device that controls music streaming. Roon Output is a music player that streams Roon Core to share music, such as on a computer, AppleTV or NAS.
According to John's experience, when building a Roon digital music streaming solution, three basic hardware requirements must be met: First, the server for installing the Roon Core must be above Intel® Core™ i3 (or equivalent). To get pure and meticulous sound quality, it is also best to store the Roon system and music files to different volumes on the device. Second, Roon plays streaming music through the Internet, the server must be able to stream to mobile devices. Third, Roon Output, as a streaming player for Roon Core shared music files, must be sufficiently compatible with Roon-related Apps.
In the past, John used computers as the primary hardware device for music access and streaming. This solution was inefficient and it was unintuitive for operation, storage and streaming tasks. With the rapid increase of digital music files, John used to store files on a Direct-attached Storage (DAS), but this solution can only store music files and has no lossless music format (WAV / DSD file) file player function. So when the computer and storage device are streamed, there can be noise and delay due to processing inefficiency. Therefore, a file management system that integrates storage, multimedia streaming and easy operation becomes the focus of John's choice of server.
As a professional music enthusiast, John also collects a lot of high-quality Super Audio CDs (SACD). When losslessly converted to DSD files, an SACD can take up to 4.7 GB. As the years passed, the number of files has increased massively. In addition, there are not many storage devices that can play DSD files on the market, so the storage and streaming cannot be done in one go. Therefore, finding a storage space that can provide stable, large-capacity and compatible music formats became his primary goal.
John uses a variety of hardware to play music to get the best sound quality. General storage hardware or audio output hardware does not provide sufficient expansion. To meet the needs of high-speed network, multi-USB connection, SSD and M.2 SSD support and other requirements, it is necessary to constantly purchase external devices, which is very troublesome. Therefore, flexibility of storage device expansion became one of his major considerations in storage equipment purchase.
Taking into account the above-mentioned storage and music streaming needs, John chose a QNAP TVS-882 and HS-251+ as his music file storage solution. The TVS-882 uses the latest Intel® 6th generation 14nm multi-core processor and provides PCIe Gen.3 high-speed expansion for supporting the installation of 10GbE/40GbE network cards, PCIe NVMe SSD, a graphics card, and/or a USB 3.1 expansion card. Storage space can also be flexibly expanded to meet future requirements. The HS-251+ features a fanless design with a quad-core Intel® Celeron® 2.0 GHz processor for quiet operation. In addition to high-performance, the beautiful exterior design allows it to seamlessly merge with other audiovisual devices in a home theater arrangement.
Taking into account his storage and music streaming requirements, John chose a QNAP TVS-882 as the Roon Core server and HS-251+ as the Roon Output device to create the best music streaming space. The QNAP TVS-882 has two built-in SSD slots and six SATA HDD slots. Its Roon Core system is installed on two SSDs to ensure consistent high-performance for Roon. The six SATA HDDs provide a large storage space to meet John's music file storage needs.
The QNAP HS-251+ is fanless, providing minimal noise output and making it ideal for a Roon Output streaming device. The HS-251+ is equipped with a quad-core Intel® Celeron® 2.0 GHz processor. In addition to high-performance, it is also a quiet home NAS designed for multimedia entertainment.
In addition to managing and playing lossless music files through Roon Server, the latest version of QNAP Music Station also supports DSD file playback. Music Station is a brilliant solution for organizing and categorizing music based on their genre, artists, and other categories. Coupled with its excellent music streaming, John finds it very comfortable to use.
The QNAP TVS-882 features SSD caching to assist in optimizing system performance. Qtier technology can also be used to optimize storage utilization by automatically moving frequently-accessed files to fast SSDs, and infrequently-accessed files to high-capacity hard drives. The QNAP TVS-882 provides two PCIe Gen.3 high-speed expansion slots for increased future file transfer and streaming performance. By installing a 10GbE network adapter or USB 3.1 extension card, John can interface with other DAC devices for video streaming, and enjoy the ultimate listening and visual experience with QNAP HD Station.
John is very satisfied with the digital music streaming and storage backup solution provided by Roon with his QNAP TVS-882 and HS-251+. The pure and detailed sound output allows him to enjoy moving music in a soulful manner. He also hopes that through the Xfuncat Facebook community, in addition to sharing audio equipment and experience, more and more music lovers can enjoy the benefits of music file management and playback functions brought by QNAP NAS.
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