Thinking of buying a QNAP TS-109? READ THIS FIRST!

[gbruzzo]

with the TS109 is its unwillingness to go to sleep. (I shut down all services, but it still does not want to go to sleep). I wonder whether this might put the drive under undue stress, and reduce its life expectancy (passive cooling). Qnap themselves do not seem to give a specific answer ("Do this and this, and your TS109 WILL go to sleep as expected...").

Oh well, we shall see. (Ian_F: any clues? I know of several other threads in this forum where the issue is analyzed in detail, but no answer seems to be forthcoming).

In any case thank you very much for your detailed measurements.

Regards,

Giacomo

[Ian_F]

with the TS109 is its unwillingness to go to sleep. (I shut down all services, but it still does not want to go to sleep). I wonder whether this might put the drive under undue stress, and reduce its life expectancy (passive cooling). Qnap themselves do not seem to give a specific answer ("Do this and this, and your TS109 WILL go to sleep as expected...").

Oh well, we shall see. (Ian_F: any clues? I know of several other threads in this forum where the issue is analyzed in detail, but no answer seems to be forthcoming).

In any case thank you very much for your detailed measurements.

Regards,

Giacomo

Are you running the latest firmware, Version 1.1.1 build 0831T? This has supposedly fixed some sort of sleep issue that existed previously.
I've read that Western Digital drives do not always go to sleep properly, do you have one of those?
Have you got your sleep interval set to 5 minutes?
What happens if you reboot your QNAP, does it help?
And what about unplugging the network cable from the unit?

As I said in that post mine sleeps without issue. Since writing that post I have played around a lot with the settings and it still sleeps fine.

For info, on the QNAP forums QNAP themselves state that if slimserver is installed it will NOT go to sleep. This is clearly not entirely accurate. When I get a chance I'll sign up to that forum and join the debate.

[Ian_F]

Thanks, I did read the whole thing and it is becomming tempting to get a TS-109. I wonder if you have time to try a few more things, which don't work well on my TS-101, which I hope is due to lack of CPU hourse power.

Using Random Song Mix, with 2 Squeezeboxes synchronised (when the music is in FLAC format). Usually one Squeezebox hesitates, presumably during the random selection of the next track, and so synchronisation is lost.

Using one Squeezebox with Random Song Mix. If I skip forward one or more songs, I will usually get a pause in playback, as slimserver is presumably selecting more random songs, and so the TS-101 presumably can not send enough data to keep the Squeezebox buffer from running out (again happens when playing FLAC).

I have Slimserver configured to play aacPlus internet streams. However things get rather temprimental if I try to play it on 2 Squeezeboxes at once.

I wonder if you could try any of these things, just to see whether the increased CPU hoursepower of the TS-109 fixes the issues.

Also How dificult was it to install Slimserver from scratch on the TS-109.

Thanks.

Richard.

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the suggestions of things to try out, I'd not thought of those.

OK, test 1 "Using Random Song Mix, with 2 Squeezeboxes synchronised".
The TS101 did struggle with this as per your observations but the TS-109 had no problems at all.

Test 2 "Using one Squeezebox with Random Song Mix. If I skip forward one or more songs, I will usually get a pause in playback".
Same results, TS101 paused, TS-109 carried on just fine.

Impressed? That's not all....whilst I was carrying out the above tests on the TS-109 I was also running 3 torrent downloads PLUS streaming a TV programme to my PS3 all at the same time!!! Now, THAT'S impressive!!

Re aacPlus internet streams. I'm afraid I'm at a loss with this one, can you give me some pointers as to how I can try it out?

Slimserver is dead simple to install. Much more straight forward than on the TS101. No unRARing, just copy two files into the Public folder, telnet onto the box and type one command and you're there. Got to take my hat off to Paul @ Progressive for making it SO simple. The TS101 was not a nightmare by any means but I've read a few posts from people who struggled on the unRARing part. You've gotta go some to not be able to manage the TS109 install
And, as has been said in posts above, you can buy it pre-installed if you so wish.

[Ian_F]

I think the review was so good that it probably spells the death knell for us poor 101 owners, as any appeals for an SS update will be met with 'buy a 109'! Which I shall probably do anyway although SS on my mac mini is working out ok for the time being.

I'd hope that slimserver development for the TS101 does not get left by the wayside although I can appreciate that in the commercial world we live in it would not be unrealistic for that to happen.

That said, the CPU and memory are the limiting factor here. I always say that if you can stick with version 6.3.1 then do so since later versions are quite a strain on resources. Now, if version 7 came in two flavours, "full featured" and "lite - especially for modest NAS devices" then that would be a different matter. I must confess I've not been following version 7 developments so humble apologies if that's already the case?

With regards firmware for the QNAP I note that QNAP have just released a new version so clearly they have not abandoned it just yet. I would be very disappointed if they did however since they would leave a lot of TS-101/201 owners disillusioned. I'd wager that a fair chunk of their TS-101/201 sales were to squeezebox owners and leaving them all high and dry would not help future NAS sales. Granted there's always new customers coming along but there would be plenty of 101 owners who'd step forward and remind them what might happen to their shiny new device once the next version comes out

Just my opinions of course

EDIT: Doh! Apologies Fifer & wahmaster, I see you've already discussed this. Perhaps I should read the WHOLE thread before I start replying to posts at the top

[Ian_F]

Is there any performance difference between the 109 and 109pro when running SS? What does the pro offer over the standard 109 with and does this have any effect wrt SS operation?

The reason for asking is that the 109 is a wee bit cheaper and I would only be using it for SS anyway.

They're the same in terms of CPU and memory. The only difference being the Pro has NFS and Windows AD Service. There is a comparison chart here: http://www.qnap.com/images/products/...son_TS109.html

[Ian_F]

Ian
What setting did you use, & why? What advantage does this give?
This is some thing I have always left as the default of "Diabled" even though I do have a gigabit D-link Switch.

I'm afraid there was nothing scientific, I enabled jumbo frames simply because the computer I was using had a gigabit ethernet card and everything was going through a gigabit switch

I'll try out a few different settings over the next day or so and report back cos I'm curious too now

[Jerryacg]

For info, on the QNAP forums QNAP themselves state that if slimserver is installed it will NOT go to sleep. This is clearly not entirely accurate. When I get a chance I'll sign up to that forum and join the debate. [/QUOTE]

Can you add a direction to the qnap statement referred to above? Qnap UK clearly advertise the 109pro with Slimserver installed on their 'official' UK website along with the sleep feature. I can't see where they refer to this key feature of their product being conditional.

[Ian_F]

Can you add a direction to the qnap statement referred to above? Qnap UK clearly advertise the 109pro with Slimserver installed on their 'official' UK website along with the sleep feature. I can't see where they refer to this key feature of their product being conditional.

Good point Jerry, I should have included a link before. Perhaps I've misread the situation?

See the bottom post page 1: here

and top post here

[RichardEvans]

Re aacPlus internet streams. I'm afraid I'm at a loss with this one, can you give me some pointers as to how I can try it out?

A few additions to a few configuration files, as described in
http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?AACplus
and my TS-101 was able to receive internet radio stations using 64k aac+. (Strangely though it doesn't seem to work with 48k aac+ streams). I'm sure you are clued up enough to know how to edit the configuraton files.

I then just used copy and paste to enter the URL into the radio tune in on the Slimserver web interface. One of my favourate streams is
http://www.radiojackie.com:5873/
Another good one is Groovesalad as mention in the wiki page (it is actually 64k not 48k).

I would think that with the increased processing power, the TS-109 would have no trouble running aac+ synchronised on both Squeezeboxes. My TS-101 sometimes manages it with a strugle.

I think that fixing the Random mix problems + general improved performance is probably enough for me. I'm starting to lean strongly towards the idea od geting a TS-109. Will have to wait a little longer though, just to make sure I have enough money left over after buying my new car

Richard.

[Dante Cubit]

Hi there.

I've had a squeezebox for about a year and I must say that it is fantastic. I've been using a very old laptop running slimserver with a USB hard disk plugged in. This is inefficient, a little noisy and frankly a bit of a pain (it is a testament to how good squeezeboxes are that I have endured it). I have about 200 gig of mp3's (2000 albums) and it is quite sluggish.

I'm looking at the TS 109 (which sounds ideal) and just wondered how difficult it would be for a total novice to setup. I have a mac and am unfamiliar with linux. It is really just a case of copying the files to the device (via USB I assume) and then using telnet to execute the commands as written in the progressive advice? Is it unreasonable to expect to by able to near-instantaneously scroll through artists/albums?

Thanks for any input.