Effect of NAS cpu performance on MinimServer

[DavidL]

I have been running MinimServer on a Synology DS 412+ for 4 years without any problems. Over this time my music library has more than doubled in size and there is now a noticeable delay (~5 sec) when I select 'albums' for a genre with many albums (my Classical-Modern has 5000) using the BubbleUPnP controller.

In another thread I wondered whether the processing power of the control device was sufficient for the task. Simon suggested using alphagrouping to speed up the process but I have not yet followed this up as the browsing would become disjointed if I wished to compile a playlist containing, for example, Bach and Teleman.

So, looking again at the overall process - music file on NAS to hitting the play button on the controller - I wondered how important is the processing power of the cpu running MinimServer. In the situation described above I assume the control point sends a request to MinimServer running on the NAS, and MinimServer does the necessary searching in the music library and sends the results to the control point.

The DS412+ cpu has never had any problems streaming any of my music files but recently I've started streaming my home video files and NAS cpu limitations have become apparent. 720p video streams OK but not 1080p. Looking at the current Synology NAS range the DS918+ has an Intel cpu that is 4x faster than that in the DS412+, and also has 4x the RAM storage. I'm not intending to upgrade my NAS in the immediate future but the hard discs have been running for 4 years and won't go on forever!

Would this increased cpu performance have a corresponding effect in reducing the delay times I'm having now with MinimServer?
Has anyone upgraded their NAS and found gains in the performance of MinimServer?

[simoncn]

(14-12-2017 12:51)DavidL Wrote:  In another thread I wondered whether the processing power of the control device was sufficient for the task. Simon suggested using alphagrouping to speed up the process but I have not yet followed this up as the browsing would become disjointed if I wished to compile a playlist containing, for example, Bach and Teleman.

I don't understand this. You can set alphaGrouping so that it only groups the top-level list of 5000 albums and no other lists. How would this make a difference to compiling a playlist?

To answer your main question, a faster NAS makes everything running on it go faster, including MinimServer.

[DavidL]

Thanks for the quick response Simon

"I don't understand this. You can set alphaGrouping so that it only groups the top-level list of 5000 albums and no other lists. How would this make a difference to compiling a playlist?"

Currently to compile a playlist in 'Classical-Modern' I browse all this genre and enqueue the albums (works) I want. As I understand it to do so with alphaGrouping I would need to browse each relevant alphaGroup to choose the work for the playlist. OK getting the alphaGroups to load would be very much faster but there would be additional time required to switch between alphaGroups. In addition (which I did not mention) I often browse my current (large, full-alphabet) genres and rediscover music I'd not played for a long time or even forgotten I had - an approach that is best not constrained alphabetically.

"To answer your main question, a faster NAS makes everything running on it go faster, including MinimServer."

OK, thanks - I guessed that was probably the case. I'll choose my next NAS on that basis, when it becomes necessary.

[DavidL]

Just been experimenting with alphaGroup set to 'albums'. Not only is it fast to load albums with a genre split alphabetically but also the time to load albums with a chosen letter is very short. Most of the time is occupied with selecting an album and queueing or playing. The only disadvantage is that if I wish to see all albums in a genre there are 2 more stages: 'Show All' followed by 'View All', the resulting search takes as long as without alphaGroup set (obviously).

[lyapounov]

I switched from DS415play to DS716+II.

It is much better when rescaning (I have 4300 albums) for sure. Now, is it much better for stream.conversion this I don't know. What I see is that CPU is always at 10% and I have put 8G of memory,; but 2 was probably sufficient. I likke to feel there is room