Melco – copy speed – glacier-like slow / Your experience?

[Lorenz]

Hi everyone,

love my Melco (N1ZH60/2)– even better now with the implementation of MinimServer (still at 3.9x – awaiting EX upgrade from the mothership).

One thing that drives me nuts: copy speed. It is glacier-like slow :-(.

I have a super fast Ethernet-only network. Copying the very same 500GB of Music takes approximately 10x (that's TEN-TIMES) the hours compared to the same copy procedure towards other destinations.

I have teste this from two different Macs (2017 MacBook Pro, 2019 Mac mini) – towards the Mac mini, a Roon Nucleus, a Synology DS-718 and a Qnap HS-251. All will take around 2 hours to receive 500GB. Also have an Naim Unit Core which takes double the time (which ist still acceptable).

The Melco will use around 24 hours for that 500GB chunk – super annoying.

Any idea what goes wrong? Any insight appreciated? Also any copy speeds from you guys for comparison/reference more than welcome...

Best, Lorenz

PS I talked to Melco on this issue before: answer was sort of we focus only on sound quality not on speed. Can't believe that this is THE answer to my problem...

[simoncn]

There are a couple of possible reasons for this.

1) Tthe Ethernet port on the Melco might be running at 100 Mb/s instead of 1 Gb/s. You can check this by looking at the colour of the Ethernet port LED on the back of the Melco (red = 100 MB/s, green = 1 Gb/s).

2) The Melco has a very slow single-core CPU. The other devices that you mentioned have much faster multicore CPUs.

Do you need to copy 500 GB very often? If you are updating the Melco from a master copy somewhere else, it should be possible to copy only what has changed.

[Lorenz]

Hi Simon,

thanks for your input.

1) LED is green = 1 Gb/s – so that's not the issue.

2) With the introduction of Songkong running on the Melco itself I was able to "benchmark" the performance of the Melco against my MacBook Pro for the very first time. Well, the Melco ist glacier-slow with regards to analysing those 500GB. Did not take any measurements but it will be in the range of 1:10 in favour of the Mac.

This observation is part of my answer to your question...

I keep my Master Files in three folder on my Mac (a: DSF b: FLAC c: AAC (legacy files from the iTunes era) – I do curate these files carefully on the mac – manually. Tag them, ensure that they all have artwork etc – the usual stuff. I do then synchronize these files (via Chronosync) to the corresponding Mac mini, my NAS devices (Synology & QNAP) or my audio devices (Melco or Naim Uniti Core).

Usually I synchronise towards the Mac mini as my MacBook is my business device I carry around most of the time. The Mac mini functions as data hub and syncs to the other devices. I guess this procedure is not too uncommon :-).

With regards to SongKong – still trying to like it. At the moment I don't: too much automatism and not enough control. My approach performance wise is to do all the meta data work on my Mac an then transfer/sync "super-clean" to the other devices...

Best,

Lorenz

[simoncn]

All of this makes sense. The only part I don't understand is why the sync from Mac mini to Melco is copying 500 GB of data. It should be possible to do an "intelligent sync" where only additions and changes are copied.

[Peter@57m]

I borrowed a Roon Server and was trying to copy several hundred GB to it but it was running horribly slowly. I asked the dealer who said it should be quick. Couldn’t figure out what was going wrong.

Eventually tried using a different Cat cable - suddenly it was quick.

Appears the previous Ethernet cable was faulty, it worked but obviously only just. Never come across this before, Ethernet cables either worked or didn’t.

So if you haven’t done so already - try a different cable.

[simoncn]

Just a thought and something to watch when taking a cable from the cable box: Cat 5 is limited to 100 Mb/s. Cat 5e can do 1 Gb/s. The 'e' is very important. (I speak from personal experience.)

Also, if one of the wires inside a Cat 5e cable (4 wires) is broken, it might downgrade to Cat 5 (2 wires).

[Lorenz]

Hi Peter & Simon.

Cable is Melco's very own CAT7 cable – C1AE 1m length. Should be a perfect match. Anyhow: Have another one, brand new from the shop, will install tomorrow for another spin.

Went to the movies today and did two tests meanwhile – 35GB from my Mac mini towards a Synology DS718+ and the same 35GB from the same machine to my Melco.

MELCO_35GB_56MIN
SYNOLOGY_35_05MIN

1:10 ratio – NOT GOOD :-(.

With regards to 500GB of files to copy: NONONO – I don't do this every time. Not even often. This is my complete library. Which I only copy in full if I install new hardware like disks. Or if I do some major changes to the meta data and want to have "clean" files as a complete set. Other than that, Chronosync only copies a fraction of the data – either new audio files or ones that have changed...

Best, Lorenz

[Lorenz]

Cables swapped last thing in the evening.

"Old" Melco cable replaced by brand new cable (both same type Melco C1AE-CAT7) – very much the same result. LEDs at Melco and hub indicating 1 Gb/s. and

Still Glacier-like slow.

57 Minutes for 35GB

[simoncn]

I tried copying a few files from my laptop using Windows Explorer to my Melco N1A and QNAP HS-251+ using a wired Ethernet connection. For the Melco, the copy speed was 21 MB/s. For the QNAP, the speed was 51 MB/s. So there is a significant difference (as expected) but not the 10x difference you are seeing.

Edit: The N1A that I used for this test has SSDs. On another N1A with HDDs, the copy speed is about 14 MB/s.

[paultaylor]

(24-02-2020 17:27)Lorenz Wrote:  With regards to SongKong – still trying to like it. At the moment I don't: too much automatism and not enough control. My approach performance wise is to do all the meta data work on my Mac an then transfer/sync "super-clean" to the other devices...

Hi Peter
The main concept behind SongKong is do automate everything because we all dont have time to manually edit everything, but I try to provide enough control so that you can automate it to get the results you want.

If you have some specific concerns/ideas/problems please come and post on the https://community.jthink.net/ forums so I can either resolve your problems now or consider changes in the future.

Paul