Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming Populating a QNAP for Sooloos

Question for you professionals--

I have a new QNAP NAS that I've set up for Sooloos. I am intending to populate off another NAS where the music is stored (not a Sooloos, just a NAS with all music files stored).

So, I'm assuming I need to use the Sooloos "Import" to get all of the albums into the QNAP and be able to be read by the Median system? The reason I ask is that it's a rather large collection, and a file copy would certainly be easier, but my sense is it wouldn't be in the correct Sooloos format.

Related question-- would anything change if I was ultimately going to use Roon? Will it read the Sooloos formatted QNAP without issue?

Thanks for any help.

Hi

Roon will read native FLAC files so you can just point it to where your files are, Sooloos as you say requires an import, up to you but I would cut out the middle man and go straight to Roon, there is a free trial so you could try before you buy.

Sell the MD600 as you do not need it even if you stay with Sooloos as the QNAPcan be store and core, it may be suitable as Roon core depending on the cpu spec?

Just my personal view, YMMV

Russ

Thanks Russ very much. Yes, ultimately want to use the QNAP as the core, use Roon, and as you say do away with the MD600. No need for both. I guess not importing thru Sooloos, then one is committed to use Roon, which is ok.

I guess I'm just trying to make sure that after I'm done putting all of the files on the QNAP to use as a core with Roon, and I do that in their native format (WAV, FLAC, whatever), that there's nothing else I need to do to work other than pointing Roon to the QNAP Sooloos partition/folder that I've already created per their instructions. Roon reads and I believe re-indexes the files. Then I think I recall playing around with Roon and setting the endpoint (in my case it's the 818v3 ID41 card).

Thanks again all. I always have to go thru the learning curve setting this new stuff up!

Jay

Jay

If you want to use Sooloos then in the short term use the MD600 as Store and Core. If I understand you have all your files stored natively on either a disk or the QNAP? If so then assuming you want to try Sooloos then just use Control:Mac or Control:PC to import them to the MD600, if you also want to be able to try running Roon just leave them where they are and setup a Roon server (PC with Roon on it) and add the storage location to Roon which is easier than it sounds and does not modify your files, try the Roon Labs community for guidance, just Google it.

Cheers

Russ

I run Roon with an 818v3 and two MS600's and it is rock solid, personally I find it better than Sooloos.

I now have my QNAP core setup, and using with Roon. Really enjoying the enhanced features of Roon, such as the "radio" feature and all of the artist info, etc.

Thanks to all for the tips and providing the files (I think Roon now has them on their website, at least the QNAP core package). Anyway, one thing for others so that perhaps you can benefit from my learning curve:

Initially I had Roon on my laptop. As I listened, I was getting a lot of clicks pops and dropouts. Disabled everything I could software wise on the QNAP. Still noisy.

Then I decided I would try an old Mac Mini to run Roon, and use the laptop and iPads as remotes. Also moved the Mac Mini and connected to the same switch as the QNAP, and via ethernet connection, not wireless. Voila! Rock solid, and much better audio quality. Significant reduction in noise floor, and of course the obvious, no dropouts and extraneous network noise.

Going to tweak further, but amazing how much network architecture affects sound. I feel like I'm at least equal if not exceeding the Sooloos + MD600 setup previous to putting the QNAP in.

I believe you can also run Roon on the QNAP directly now, so that may also be another option. I've not tried it yet but may do soon as I find loading new music via Sooloos a real pain.

If you could drop FLAC files into a folder and Roon picks them up automatically that would be ideal, much like Naim does.

How can anything be easier than loading music to Sooloos?
I run Control:Mac, choose "import CD" or "import files" from the import tab then wait a few minutes and it's loaded. Sure you can make it more complicated by using another program but I have never found a need to do so.

Agreed.

Sooloos is simple, as I am!

Hector

Simple until an MD600 decides to 'sort of fail' and complicate matters

Ouch!

Indeed, enough to move me to a QNAP for storage and then to Roon.

Sure for one CD it is fine. Drag and drop etc. Double check that the result is as expected.

Now try and do 100 or 1000 or 10,000 CD. It did it twice with Sooloos and it was about 8-10 days of massive effort and dozens of Control:PC crashes and restarts.

Double CD's would get mangled, CD2 would over-write CD1, albums get wrongly ID'd.
Weird bugs still exist when importing double disc sets using the exact format that Sooloos native exports such sets.

I point Roon at the very same native files and it reads in about 30,000 albums in about 6 hours. I get 95% fully matched album ID's. The 5% missing are either because my files are weird or the album just isn't in the database (which would be true for Sooloos too as they share the same database but not the ID logic).

Just sharing to kind of answer the question even if it was likely rhetorical.