location of minimserver on network

[DavidZ]

I am currently using minimserver, running on my Synology NAS, feeding a Zuma Windows 8 computer, which has JPlay streamer as the renderer. I use Bubbleupnp. There has been an issue with occasional (like once a listening session) brief bursts of white noise (less than a second).

This configuration was suggested to me by Adrian at Sonore -- there's no way to run a server on their Rendu renderer. As a matter of troubleshooting, Josef at JPLay suggested running minimserver on the Zuma, along with the JPLay streamer, as a trial.

This raises a couple of questions. a) I assume minimserver, running on the Zuma, can operate with files residing on the NAS. I'd be surprised if not, but I ask here just to confirm.

And b) is there any optimal/desirable configuration? Is minimserver and the renderer better in terms of sound quality and/or playback functionality on the same or different computers on the network? As I mentioned, with the Rendu (which I plan on auditioning in a few weeks), there is no choice but to separate the 2. But with JPlaystreamer running on a Windows 8 machine there is a choice.

Any thoughts? Thanks. -- David

[DavidHB]

(08-05-2015 20:50)DavidZ Wrote:  I assume minimserver, running on the Zuma, can operate with files residing on the NAS. I'd be surprised if not, but I ask here just to confirm.

It is possible, but Simon, the author of MinimServer, advises very strongly against it. The reason is that the network file access protocol (SMB) imposes a very considerable overhead in this configuration, and performance would be impaired. In other words, MinimServer should be installed on the device on which the music files it accesses actually reside. There is of course no problem in using storage connected to the device by USB; this is what is done when MinimServer is run on devices such as the Raspberry Pi.

(08-05-2015 20:50)DavidZ Wrote:  Is minimserver and the renderer better in terms of sound quality and/or playback functionality on the same or different computers on the network? As I mentioned, with the Rendu (which I plan on auditioning in a few weeks), there is no choice but to separate the 2. But with JPlaystreamer running on a Windows 8 machine there is a choice.

MinimServer can function with Control Points and renderers anywhere on the same local network. I doubt that you would find that sound quality is an issue in either of your alternative configurations (assuming that the network itself is functioning correctly). There is a great deal of discussion and debate about the way networking devices and connectors might or might not have an effect on sound quality, so I am not saying that you could never notice a difference in sound quality between the two configurations, but I guess that it is more likely that you would not hear any difference.

If you run MinimServer and the rendering software on the same device, they will still relate to each other as if they were on the network. There is no particular reason to run a system in this way rather than playing the music files locally, except to test out a streaming system you are developing, perhaps before you buy a player/renderer. This is what I did with my own system, and it had the advantage that, once the player was delivered, it could be connected to the pre-existing network system with the minimum of fuss.

I guess that, if you do buy the Rendu, you will want to run MinimServer on your NAS, possibly with an alternate installation on your computer as well. (There can be more than one instance of MinimServer running on the same network, but not, with odd exceptions I won't go into, on the same device.) My recommendation would be to get this arrangement working from the outset.

David

[DavidZ]

(09-05-2015 00:14)DavidHB Wrote:  

(08-05-2015 20:50)DavidZ Wrote:  I assume minimserver, running on the Zuma, can operate with files residing on the NAS. I'd be surprised if not, but I ask here just to confirm.

It is possible, but Simon, the author of MinimServer, advises very strongly against it. The reason is that the network file access protocol (SMB) imposes a very considerable overhead in this configuration, and performance would be impaired. In other words, MinimServer should be installed on the device on which the music files it accesses actually reside. There is of course no problem in using storage connected to the device by USB; this is what is done when MinimServer is run on devices such as the Raspberry Pi.

(08-05-2015 20:50)DavidZ Wrote:  Is minimserver and the renderer better in terms of sound quality and/or playback functionality on the same or different computers on the network? As I mentioned, with the Rendu (which I plan on auditioning in a few weeks), there is no choice but to separate the 2. But with JPlaystreamer running on a Windows 8 machine there is a choice.

MinimServer can function with Control Points and renderers anywhere on the same local network. I doubt that you would find that sound quality is an issue in either of your alternative configurations (assuming that the network itself is functioning correctly). There is a great deal of discussion and debate about the way networking devices and connectors might or might not have an effect on sound quality, so I am not saying that you could never notice a difference in sound quality between the two configurations, but I guess that it is more likely that you would not hear any difference.

If you run MinimServer and the rendering software on the same device, they will still relate to each other as if they were on the network. There is no particular reason to run a system in this way rather than playing the music files locally, except to test out a streaming system you are developing, perhaps before you buy a player/renderer. This is what I did with my own system, and it had the advantage that, once the player was delivered, it could be connected to the pre-existing network system with the minimum of fuss.

I guess that, if you do buy the Rendu, you will want to run MinimServer on your NAS, possibly with an alternate installation on your computer as well. (There can be more than one instance of MinimServer running on the same network, but not, with odd exceptions I won't go into, on the same device.) My recommendation would be to get this arrangement working from the outset.

David

David- thanks for your thoughts - very helpful. A couple of observations from my experience. prior to this arrangement, for more than a year, I used jriver on the zuma as server and renderer, with my files on the synology nas. Playback was 100% smooth. Of course, I don't know how sound quality might have been affected.

Also, on a related note, Mark Jenkins (of Antipodes) has suggested mounting the Nas drive. My impression is that this is a way to have the OS view it as an external drive and avoid the SMB issue you mentioned. Make sense? - David.

[DavidHB]

(09-05-2015 16:35)DavidZ Wrote:  I used jriver on the zuma as server and renderer, with my files on the synology nas. Playback was 100% smooth. Of course, I don't know how sound quality might have been affected.

I doubt that SQ would have been affected if streaming was smooth, but, as you say, this is difficult to prove. On the main point, all servers are not the same; if they were, I wouldn't be using MinimServer. I cannot of course say whether there would be performance degradation on your particular system. All I can do is refer you to Simon's clear and specific advice, which must have some logic behind it. Also, from the way Simon has written and documented MinimServer and from his posts on the forum, I would expect that he made a number of tests before coming up with his advice.

It is a pity that Simon is away at present, and therefore not posting a s frequently as usual. Only he can give detailed reasons for his advice. My own guess FWIW is that, because MinimServer works with multiple indexes 'on the fly', it generates a lot of file access, and this is what prompts his advice. But, as I say, that's only a guess.

(09-05-2015 16:35)DavidZ Wrote:  Also, on a related note, Mark Jenkins (of Antipodes) has suggested mounting the Nas drive. My impression is that this is a way to have the OS view it as an external drive and avoid the SMB issue you mentioned. Make sense?

I presume that the suggestion is that the network share from the NAS should be mounted as a drive in the PC. This is a common, if now rather antiquated, technique, and is valuable where software applications cannot recognise SMB addresses. But AFAIK SMB is still used as the network file system protocol, and there is no alternative to using it in Windows. SMB has been progressively updated with different releases of Windows, and I dare say that implementations on different NASs (typically through SAMBA, which implements SMB on Unix-like systems, and so allows them to share files with Windows) also vary. So we are dealing with a range of possible configurations. But some (and usually more than one) form of SMB will be a factor common to all of them.

David

[DavidZ]

Thanks David! Building a high end audio system on a home network (which doesn't reAlly appear to have been designed for such a purpose) is a ceaseless learning experience. - David

[simoncn]

(09-05-2015 17:55)DavidHB Wrote:  It is a pity that Simon is away at present, and therefore not posting a s frequently as usual. Only he can give detailed reasons for his advice. My own guess FWIW is that, because MinimServer works with multiple indexes 'on the fly', it generates a lot of file access, and this is what prompts his advice. But, as I say, that's only a guess.

The SMB performance overhead relates to scanning or rescanning the library. When browsing the library or playing music, the overhead from using SMB will be minimal and there should be no effect on sound quality or smooth streaming.

Quote:I presume that the suggestion is that the network share from the NAS should be mounted as a drive in the PC. This is a common, if now rather antiquated, technique, and is valuable where software applications cannot recognise SMB addresses. But AFAIK SMB is still used as the network file system protocol, and there is no alternative to using it in Windows.

This is correct and you will get slow scanning performance if you are ruinning MinimServer on Windows with the library on a mounted network share from a NAS.

[DavidZ]

(10-05-2015 19:11)simoncn Wrote:  

(09-05-2015 17:55)DavidHB Wrote:  It is a pity that Simon is away at present, and therefore not posting a s frequently as usual. Only he can give detailed reasons for his advice. My own guess FWIW is that, because MinimServer works with multiple indexes 'on the fly', it generates a lot of file access, and this is what prompts his advice. But, as I say, that's only a guess.

The SMB performance overhead relates to scanning or rescanning the library. When browsing the library or playing music, the overhead from using SMB will be minimal and there should be no effect on sound quality or smooth streaming.

Quote:I presume that the suggestion is that the network share from the NAS should be mounted as a drive in the PC. This is a common, if now rather antiquated, technique, and is valuable where software applications cannot recognise SMB addresses. But AFAIK SMB is still used as the network file system protocol, and there is no alternative to using it in Windows.

This is correct and you will get slow scanning performance if you are ruinning MinimServer on Windows with the library on a mounted network share from a NAS.

Simon -- Thanks so much for your explanation. Very helpful -- David

[n3mmr]

If you can use NFS v4 as the sharing mechanism, overhead is much less than with SMB, particularly with UNIX-like OS-es. This is because NFS gets cached heavily on the UNIX NFS client side.

[DavidHB]

(11-05-2015 09:27)n3mmr Wrote:  If you can use NFS v4 as the sharing mechanism, overhead is much less than with SMB, particularly with UNIX-like OS-es. This is because NFS gets cached heavily on the UNIX NFS client side.

I'd guess that relying on such an option is a non-starter for multi-platform software such as MinimServer; one will always have to deal with the base case in Windows/UNIX networking arrangements, which is SMB/SAMBA.

David

[DavidHB]

(10-05-2015 19:11)simoncn Wrote:  The SMB performance overhead relates to scanning or rescanning the library. When browsing the library or playing music, the overhead from using SMB will be minimal and there should be no effect on sound quality or smooth streaming.

Thank you for this clarification. When I think of the number of times I need to scan my library, the overhead would certainly be an issue for me.

David