Standalone NAS for CD Rips?

Apologies if this has already been covered, my use case is explained below.

I currently run a system with Sonos Connect and Turntables into an integrated. I’m happy with the selection of music on Amazon, Qobuz, and Spotify, but what’s I’m missing is the ability to play my collection of live CDs that are unavailable on streaming services.

What I’m looking for is an affordable (<$500) solution to rip and replay CDs over Sonos Connect or Bluesound node.

Ideally the solution would incorporate network storage and a CD drive. That way I can rip my live CDs and get them out of the house. I’d like to play them over my Sonos app (or Bluesound in the near future) without having to run a dedicated PC/Mac.

Is anyone aware of such a solution?

 

I use a WD My Cloud for my downloaded music library (via iTunes) which syncs well with Sonos. Other similar NAS drives from Synology or Buffalo should work well also.

 

none of the standard NAS options have cd drives built in or support ripping with a usb cd drive, though.
if you want the NAS to be the CD ripping device you're going to be looking at smaller volume products like the ripping NAS from ripcaster.
having CD ripping capabilities in a NAS isn't a super common configuration.

 

$0 - $40 used small form factor PC like a Dell Optiplex 745,755,760,780 USFF, plus $99 6TB drive.

It's as much a "dedicated PC" as any other NAS appliance, but you hide it in your basement anyway, and it is far less likely to poop out and lose all your data.



Then install XigmaNAS on a USB stick and use the whole drive for storing 10000 CDs. Or with a CPU that supports VT-x, install VMWare ESXi on the USB, and run several different servers using the same box.

 

Basing that on what, exactly?

NAS is RAID-based. If you use mirroring, if a drive (or even multiple ones, depending on configuration) dies, you don't lose anything.

 

The controller boards fail too often on the portable hard drive network-appliance-type NAS (let alone that the drive temperature is not controlled, which shortens its life). Often the data format on the internal drive makes the data unreadable when it is removed and placed in another enclosure or into a PC ("this disk is not formatted"...) - that is if it even has a standard SATA connector.

With a PC-based NAS hardware failure, pop the drive and USB boot into another computer and you are back.

NAS is not RAID unless you take effort to make it so. 99% of the "HDDCloud" appliances proffered to rubes have a single drive.

With XigmaNAS (formerly NAS4Free), you can employ ZFS RAIDZ, which is a true checksummed journaling filesystem and will not lose "write hole" data even with crashes or power outages nor allow silent data corruption. If having daily file system snapshots (so you can get the contents before ransomware encrypted your NAS) wasn't enough, then set up automatic RSYNC between machines.

 

Keep Calm & Run FreeNAS!!!

 

I'm going to state the $500 is going to be tight. But it depends on your needs. I set up one last year. RAID 8TB, so two drives. It was under $500 but I had buy WD My Cloud EX2 for about $150, then 2x 8 TB drives. To keep the price down, I waited for a sale at Best Buy for the WD - Easystore 8TB External USB 3.0 Hard Drive. I bought 2 of them for about $125 a piece. You have to take apart the Easystore Drive and insert them into the My Cloud. I saved about $150 doing this. If you just buy WD Red HDDs, they are about $200 for an 8TB one. So you're over budget immediately. I picked the My Cloud because it can easily be configured as a personal cloud server.

 

Have you considered swapping your Bluesound Node for a Bluesound Vault? You could sell your Node and buy a used Vault 2 on ebay.

To my eyes, the Vault 2 is a Node 2 with an added built-in NAS drive and CD drive for ripping (but not CD playback).

You can copy files to it and copy files from it. It will also happily back itself up to something like a 'My Passport' portable hard drive.

You'd need to ensure that there's an Ethernet network socket available to plug the Vault into, since it doesn't do wi fi. (I used a Powerline solution for this.)

It does do Bluetooth, however, so it can talk to your mobile phone. It also offers all of the services that the Node does, e.g. internet radio, USB connectivity, digital and analogue outputs etc.

Also, you can control it using the same BluOS app as your Node.

If your Sonos is able to access a NAS drive, then it would also be able to access music on the Vault 2 since the Vault's NAS drive has a full Windows-style file structure that can be seen on the network from PCs etc.

As a result, I can play music that's on my Vault 2 from my PC or laptop. I can also, therefore, copy files from the Vault to my PC or to memory sticks or whatever.

A handy feature of the Vault is that it'll also rip to FLAC and MP3 at the same time if configured to do so. I didn't realise this until I'd already ripped most of my CDs, so I create MP3s separately for my car by using FLACsquisher.

Worthy of consideration?

 

Before buying a NAS, have a good look at your router
Mine (Asus RT-AC66U) has the option to attach an external USB drive.
I can access it using file sharing but also using DLNA.
It simply acts like a NAS

For ripping I recommend an external optical drive and a PC.
Combine this with good ripping software e.g. dBpoweramp.

 

I must confess that I use my Windows laptop and dBpoweramp for ripping CDs when my Vault rips them incorrectly.

And I use MP3tag for amending bad metadata. (This is a whole topic of its own in these days of ripping and the variable quality of available metadata.)

Everything ends up on the Vault, however.

 

Be thankful that you rarely get metadata from record companies - their efforts are far worse than any of the efforts pulled in when you use dBpoweramp.
You might be able to point the Vault at a different metadata database.

 

I believe that Bluesound have their own chosen metadata sources, and there's no option that I'm aware of to change that.

Sadly, the Bluesound sources are also the worst of all. Either that or their algorithms aren't as good as they ought to be. dBpoweramp does better.