Late to the party, but ripping CDs that you normally listen to over the streamer seems useless. Maybe special editions, but nowadays it is hard to find a special edition that is not available for streaming. 25 million titles on tap versus a bunch of CDs? The case seems open and shut.
Jan
Jan
I have older cd's than that that play perfect. Even after being covered in cement dust after I forgot to move them when the builders came to tear up the floor in the bathroom and kitchen. While my NAS ... it was always a struggle even to get it started. Each update would mean a complete reinstall and the last install stopped working after a couple months and refuses to connect. No problem putting a cd in the player. I just ripped one I recorded myself at least 15 years ago.
That is not the usual way such things statistically go but have it your way. We can not say or think anything of an apparently wrongly bought NAS of unknown brand and type and even questionable quality. It is normally their function to do the opposite. In this case two irregular things are added up (that have nothing to do with each other).
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I buy and rip new and used CDs - any material I stream more than a few times a week is a candidate for purchase, purchase and download from Bandcamp (the artist gets a significant amount of the overall payment and I generally add a couple of dollars extra.) I also occasionally purchase recordings from Qobuz and 2NL. In 20 years of doing this I haven't had any significant problems with any of the hardware I used. I will admit pretty much all of it except the UI is linux based.
I have tried to keep all of my physical CDs to comply with U.S. IP laws but almost never play them. A few disappeared long ago due to theft during a Halloween party we hosted, this along with about 25 of my oldest and most valuable LPs. I did not notice for a couple of weeks by which time it was too late. Did find out who the perpetrators were though.
I have tried to keep all of my physical CDs to comply with U.S. IP laws but almost never play them. A few disappeared long ago due to theft during a Halloween party we hosted, this along with about 25 of my oldest and most valuable LPs. I did not notice for a couple of weeks by which time it was too late. Did find out who the perpetrators were though.
This seemingly petty theft would meet an absurdly disproportion (non-violent) response from me.
Not now, but I had a nas from a well known maker over 10 years ago. At the start it was fast and functional. Each update got bigger and more complex and my Nas got slower and slower until it wasn't usable.
Of course their os ran just fine on their more modern models.
Not an issue now I think as CPU and memory are cheap. Also, 24tb discs....
For the record it is a QNAP TS453 Pro with 4x 2TD WD red in it. The QNAP software was a disaster, switched to OMV which at least managed to connect to the pc but never worked more than a couple of months at a time. Now it just refuses to connect. But I have backups.
I was pretty pissed off when I finally realized it. It was several years before I knew the full extent of it. I did replace a small % of the missing recordings, but some were irreplaceable. A record collector friend had previously offered me $500 for a very early British pressing of DOTM with the original gatefold posters, and there were others in a similar value range.
@StevenCrook: like you I also stepped in their ****. A few times even as the surprise comes after a certain amount of time. More attention for "features", "plugins" and other stuff you will never need when wanting to backup files. Similar to audio: 99% of attention goes to secondary/irrelevant items. Synology also disabled essential features and/or omitted functionality in firmware updates making the NAS unusable after a reboot. When I had that with one from a friend that needed a new disk I was truly pissed off. They look nice, have tons of features so .... avoid! There are more of such brands but the good thing is that nice ones exist. Usually the least advertised 🙂
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When I head down that route again it'll be a small form factor pc and an open source nas/os. 4x24tb HDD in mirrored raid configuration and another one for off-site backup.
WD EX2 Ultra is very cheap and always runs and runs...... Installed several of these for audio backup purposes, firmware is updated regularly even in 2025. No features, just a pretty fast backup NAS.
TrueNAS: https://www.truenas.com/
The community edition is free and full-featured. It's rock solid. I've been running that since 2019 when it was called FreeNAS. Any ol' PC will do. I chose an old "cheese grater" Mac Pro 4,1 because it has four drive bays for SATA drives, it's very quiet, and they pop up at my local eWaste recycler on occasion for not much money.
I have it set up to make automatic backups to an off-site backup service. If the power goes the UPS will keep it alive for a few minutes before shutting it down gracefully.
Tom
How do you organize the files? I.e. do you have a specific directory structure, naming convention, etc.?
Tom
I don't stream anything. Might be a prostate issue but I will be keeping my CDs handy, all removed from the cases and sitting in a pair of Sony carousel players ready to play at the push of a button. For those who decide to rip and store, I would suggest you keep your CDs anyway. Correct me if I am wrong, but your CDs (and vinyl records) will be the only storage method not affected by an EMP provided by the detonation of a nuclear weapon by some world nutcase.