Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Spotify now available in the US!

That's fantastic news. Please can you tell me what the minimum bandwidth requirements are for this? Are your files stored as compressed or uncompressed? Is there much delay in selecting the track and it playing? Do you get much in the way of drop out?

Cheers
Tom

GMT all files uncompressed Apple Lossless.

No delays except when sometimes first starting up and the server has been asleep.

Unsure of min. bandwidths. General cable modem/DSL speeds on both ends and it will work; I would update my iTunes lib on my laptop and would stream from my NAS to my 2nd system across the country. There would be some drop-outs yes, but generally if I were doing something concurrently that was bandwidth intensive.

What I ended up doing was setting up a 2nd small inexpensive NAS at the 2nd location and doing back-ups for obvious reasons.

Hi Tom
Before you build your hopes up too high on this one and might be led astray.........you should be aware that

a) The MINIMUM Bandwidth you would need at your Home would be an UPLOAD Speed of about 1.3Mbps..........this would be a CONSTANT Requirement in Order to Stream Lossless to Remote Locations outside of your local home Network..........this would likely be in Addition to the Upload Bandwidth taken by your regular PC's as they Web Surf etc..........so, taken together, you would likely need a minimum Upload Speed of about 1.5 to 2Mbps...........as covered in the recent Thread on UK Broadband Speeds, the average UK Speeds achievable tend to be <1Mbps Uploads.......with <4Mbps Download Speeds.......these are the Real World measured......rather the ISP advertised speeds

b) The Synology NAS Devices use a Program called "Audio Station" to stream music........it will do so Losslessly with Home or Local Connections.........but it will use a process called Transcoding when transmitting across Port Forwarded Routers to Remote locations........hence any Lossless files will be Trancoded to LOSSY MP3 at about 192kbps from what I've been able to gather........lots of Threads on these issues over on the Synology Forum

c) As near as I can see, None of the NAS's offer the ability to Lossless Stream Music to Remote Locations.........not much of a surprise given that most of the US, UK and rest of the world struggle to achieve the 1.2Mbps Upload speeds necessary to Stream Lossless tracks

If you find a NAS or similar Device which provides for Lossless Streaming to Remote Locations, then let us know

Cheers

Tom
Further information on Real World Broadband speeds in the UK

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/06/30/who-are-the-real-broadband-conmen-the-isps-or-the-asa/

You BYPASS "audio station" by doing a direct mount either via IP or via DDNS. Unsure of UK speeds.

I was on cable on both ends.

I can't guarantee anything for you, but I believe Sooloos at one point gave the option of doing remote streaming too.

The point still remains: LOSSLESS served to thyself. (And you could even buy a portable [read: small] hd and travel with it after you do a NAS bu to it )

It has to be said at this stage.......

This is patently FALSE information

A Streaming App (likely Linux based) would have to sit on the NAS......and it would have to be capable of Lossless Streaming.........which none of the major NAS Manufacturers have provided to date

Likewise, the DS Audio Client app can only talk to the Audio Station Server app

I just hope no one is going buy a Snynology NAS purely on the basis of these erroneous posts

Synology obviously make good NAS equipment......but if anyone thinks they can can Stream Lossless Music files to Remote Locations, then they need to go thru the Snynology Forums, which has plenty of information on this topic

Apologies for butting in - but maybe we are getting confused with terminology ?

I can "mount" my NAS drive across the network and play lossless FLAC music from it - but I would not call this streaming - just accessing the files - still needs suitable upload bandwith from the broadband connection at home - maybe this is what @bmitchell does.

I could also run one of the many "streaming" apps on my NAS to do something similar, but agree that would transcode down to some lossy format to save bandwidth.

Again apols for butting in and stating the obvious if people had already got the point !

NJR you can "mount" remotely. I can't guarantee bandwidth speed tho

I know I can - this is what I do - and assumed you do - but I don't call this streaming

Nick

Hi NJR
Any contributions are always welcome

Agreed that Streaming is obviously a different process than File Transfer / Downloading / Copying........and for a number of different reasons

However, this difference was outlined a little earlier in the thread.......and Streaming using the Synology DS Audio app........or what was termed as a "quasi Spotify" for Streaming Lossless music.......was being put forward as being possible

As you say, File Copying or Transfer to a Remote Location is easily achieved......and for many years now

However, as you say, this is not quite the same as Streaming to Remote Locations (Mobile Devices or PC's etc.)

Cheers and thanks for contributing

Ronnie and B Mitchell

Thanks for your information.

For kicks, I uploaded a WAV file to google docs(pricing below) and then mounted google docs to my PC using Gladinet ( http://www.gladinet.com/index.htm ) so that my google docs folder was now my G drive. I then tried to play the file from the G drive (the logic being that the download speed would probably be the only consideration). Unfortunately the file downloaded first -so quite a long delay before playing. I will play with this a bit further (using Itunes and different mounting software).

B Mitchell - when you stream lossless, does it download the whole file first or does it start playing quite quickly (and of so what is the delay)?

Google Storage prices: (Make your own Spotify (or not)!)

� 20 GB - $5/yr
� 80 GB - $20/yr
� 200 GB - $50/yr
� 400 GB - $100/yr
� 1 TB - $256/yr
� 2 TB - $512/yr
� 4 TB - $1024/yr
� 8 TB - $2048/yr
� 16 TB - $4096/yr )

Cheers
Tom

Hi Tom
As you've seen demonstrated, that's the difference between File Downloading and Streaming

In the case of "File Download", your Local Media Player (iTunes, VLC, WMP etc.) will wait until the Full file is downloaded from the Network or Internet before beginning to play etc.........

Streaming would involve a "Server / Streamer" app at the Storage end........which would Stream or Serve or "break up" the larger file......

At the Remote end, a Client Streaming Player (e.g. Flash Player, HTML5 apps, Netflix app but NOT iTunes etc) which is able to play the Track, without having the full file available to it, would also be required

Hence, "Streaming" versus "File Download and then Play"