Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Sooloos and IPad

Im interested in the Sooloos system and interested in understanding the minimum Sooloos hardware required. If I planned to buy an iPad for an interface with Sooloos and also planned to use a RAID external drive, would the only Sooloos hardware required be the Ensemble or would I need additional Sooloos hardware?

I am pretty certain you just need the ensemble if using iPad.

The minimum Sooloos component which would run with an iPad is the Ensemble.
It can run on its own and wouldn't need any other Sooloos component.
Ripping to the ensemble could be achieved with a PC or MAC running Control:PC or Control MAC software.
The Ensemble cannot access the external Raid storage directly to increase its internal storage. However the RAID would be a good idea to back up the Ensemble data as it doesn't have internal Mirrored drives like the TwinStore.
The heart of the Sooloos system is a component which can run a system 'core' these are Control:10, an Ensemble or a Source One, but not a TwinStore or an ID40 card.
So Ensemble works on its own, or a TwinStore and Control:10 works as a system, or a TwinStore and Source One would work also.
Rick

Thanks for the very helpful information. I guess what was new news to me is a Raid drive couldn't be accessed directly by an Ensemble. Would appreciate any info on roughly how many CDs an ensemble can hold for direct access. I have something on the order of 10,000 CDs. Are multiple TwinStores the only answer for direct access to a library of this size?

I have seen a completely full TwinStore running two 1TB drives with just over 2300 albums on it. Meridian only suggest running up to 1TB drives as a maximum size so as to ensure utmost in the reliability from the system. However the TwinStores will accept and run 2TB drives, although these aren't available direct from Meridian.
So your solution for maximum reliability would be five TwinStores, each loaded with two 1TB drives, giving you storage for 11,500 CDs.
However 2TB drives are becoming increasingly reliable and I think you would be fine with 3 TwinStores loaded with 2TB drives giving you 13,800CD storage.
I would still recommend getting 6TB of raid storage to back up to, even though the TwinStores are Mirroring their drives!
We are just about to run our TwinStore up with 2TB drives over the next week or so. I'll report back once I have some news on operation and reliability etc.
The reason for the storage having to be in Sooloos land rather than attached storage is that it ensures speed, reliability and performance of the system as a whole as all components are 'known entities' to the Sooloos.
Ensembles weren't upgradable pre 2.1 firmware, but I understand that they are now, although I haven't any experience of adding additional storage to one myself. However unless you require the additional outputs that Ensembles would give you then TwinStores are cheaper, and have the drive mirroring, which the Ensemble doesn't.
Rick

This is why Meridian should embrace standardized NFS storage from the larger storage manufacturers. It's crazy to buy all these small RAID1 arrays in the year of 2010!

On that note I think that you can add several TwinStores if you have one ensemble. Otherwise the concept would be kind of weird if it's not modular

If you are looking into 2TB drives I would recommend the Hitachi ones they have high reliability and good RAID compatible firmware.

Many thanks for the helpful info. Can you clarify if I run Sooloos with just multiple TwinStores or I need Ensemble or some other Sooloos Hardware to run multiple TwinStores?

Cheers

The TwinStore doesn't contain a system 'core' so a Sooloos component which runs the core is required to make the system function. An Ensemble, a Source One, or I think most appropriately a Control:10 all can run the Core.
The Control:10 gives you a CD ripper, a digital audio output and of course the most flexible Control of the system.
So your system would be Control:10, and multiple TwinStores. This assumes your system will accept a digital audio input, otherwise a Source one, or some kind of DAC would be required.

Hey all,

I got my Sooloos set up and running with 2 TB enterprise grade Western Digital drives and it seems to be working quite well after two weeks. I will be setting up a NAS in the next week or so, just in case, though.

Quick question for those who have installed 2.1: Any problems with Rhapsody? When I entered my information into my Control:10, it went into an endless loop of restarts. Manually shutting down the Control and TwinStore had no effect and the loop continued. I was only able to get out of it by removing the rhapsody account using ControlPC. After I did that, the Control booted up as normal. Incidentally, in this process, I found that I could control and play all content (including rhapsody content) from Control:PC (even outputted through the endlessly resetting Control:10).

I gave my local dealer my Rhapsody login info to test on their Sooloos and they had the same problem.

As for Radiotime, it plays for about a minute before dropping off.

Was this just a buggy update or is there something that I am missing?

Question answered: Apparently it is a bad update.

My dealer says that Meridian will be patching it in the next couple of days. For all of those with the same rhapsody reset-loop problem, you can reset it by disabling the rhapsody account in controlmac or controlpc. The control will then reboot normally.