Auralic Altair and large library management?

[pvanosta]

History: I briefly tried the Aries mini in my system (Synology NAS 1513+ with 5x 6TB).

I have approx. 8 TB of music in various file formats (a lot of flac, HD Flac and DSD), totaling about 210,000 tracks.

 

The Aries mini, controlled by an Ipad, kinda choked on a library that size. I have two options so far with my current setup:

Synology via Ethernet to Gigabit Switch, then ethernet to Oppo 105 (using Oppo media control app)=> no problems in playing any files up to DSD64.

or

Synology via USB to Oppo 105 USB in (using Roon). => problem here is the work is being done on the NAS and I experience dropouts.

 

My question: is there any indication that the Altair will fare better with this size library?

 

Ancillary question: The Altair is listed as a Roonready device. What does that mean in the real world?

Am I still running Roonserver on my NAS?

If so, will the Altair be able to play tracks from Roon via ethernet, or will I need to use a USB cable still?

 

Thanks for any insight you may offer.

[eintom]

The Altair is listed as a Roonready device. What does that mean in the real world?

Am I still running Roonserver on my NAS?

If so, will the Altair be able to play tracks from Roon via ethernet, or will I need to use a USB cable still?

 

Hi,

 

with roon, the Altair will be shown as a "roon endpoint". Means, you can choose it in roon as player like the aries.

I have a Syno 1813+ with the same hardware as your 1513. I use 4Gb Ram in it.

On the NAS runs the roonserver, i have no dropouts with the Auralic Aries as roon Player. My library is big too, so roon ist the best software for me for browsing it.

 

With the Altair you need no USB connection, just choose the (roon) library per WLAN or Ethernet.

[pvanosta]

Eintom, thank you. My 1513+ also has 4GB of RAM.

I was hoping the Altair would be able to connect to Roonserver on the NAS via Ethernet and not just USB, which you just confirmed (I'm going out on a limb and assume that Aries and Altair will offer the same connectivity as a Roon endpoint).

 

Gues I'll be placing my order for the Altair soon then!

[Cebolla]

Ancillary question: The Altair is listed as a Roonready device. What does that mean in the real world?

Am I still running Roonserver on my NAS?

If so, will the Altair be able to play tracks from Roon via ethernet, or will I need to use a USB cable still?.

with roon, the Altair will be shown as a "roon endpoint". Means, you can choose it in roon as player like the aries.

On a technical issue, I thought it best to point out that when a device such as the Altair or the Aries is being used as a Roon Endpoint, they perform no actual decoding and playing of music files. It is the Roon Server that is the music file player. What is being sent over the network is the resultant 'live' digital audio signal from the Roon Server (so not music files), ready to be passed to the DAC. Roon Endpoints are mere conduits of the digital audio signal to the DAC and are therefore not players of music files.

 

Contrast this to the when the Aries or the Altair are being used as UPnP or OpenHome renderers (aka audio file players or streamers), where the network is being used to stream music files from the UPnP media server. In this case, the Aries or the Altair as UPnP renderers are the devices that decode and play the music files. So production of the the digital audio signal for the DAC occours in the UPnP renderer (eg Aries or Altair), ie, receiver side of the network, not the UPnP media server sender side.

[angelo]

Dear sirs,

 

I've 24 tb nas (4 x 6 wd my cloud) managed by pc via jriver onto Young dsd dac.

 

Wondering to go streamer.... what do you think using altair + roon (managed into a synology)?

 

Sonic bliss...still ok?

 

Thanks

AS

[pvanosta]

Thanks Cebolla. I understand the difference. I am trying to get Roon to play without the dropouts I am having in my current setup. I have removed all other software from my Synology, freeing up the maximum CPU and RAM headroom. I want to remove the USB connection out of the equation as well, hence the Altair (instead of my current Oppo 105). If I still experience dropouts after that, I will look at a SonicTransport i5 to take over the numbercrunching for Roon, and just use the Synology for storage.

[Cebolla]

If one of the reason's for choosing the Altair is to take advantage of its internal connection to its DAC, so as you say, "remove the USB connection out of the equation", then by also choosing to use the Altair as a Roon Endpoint, aren't you then using the network infrastructure via RAAT (Roon Advanced Audio Technology) as a substitute for USB audio?

 

So, in effect, you'll be trusting that using Roon for music file playback and network connected the Altair (as a DAC) is 'better' than using Roon for music file playback and USB connected to the Altair (as a DAC).

[pvanosta]

You may be correct, but right now USB is not working for me (dropouts which increase as the resolution goes up). Once I replace the Oppo (usb) with the Altair (ethernet), indications from other users (using Roon on Synology 1813+ to auralic Aries) are that the dropouts may stop. If they don't, I will add the SonicTransport. Or I throw out Roon altogether and switch to Lightning.

[Cebolla]

Well, may be not throw out using Roon over network until you've tested it compared to using UPnP network file streaming with the Altair, such as with Auralic's Lightning Server. You do still have your original large library management question, don't forget.

 

Incidentally, with the Altair being a UPnP renderer, you are not restricted to using its built-in Lightning Server to manage your media library. You could instead use a UPnP media server running on the Synolgy NAS itself, such as the one (DiskStation?) already provided by Synology, or my recommendation - MinimServer.

 

Also, the large library problems you experienced with the Aries Mini, may not have been due to its internal Lightning Server, but perhaps the iPad Lightning DS (controller) app. The Lightning DS app does try to do clever things like cache the music file Album art & some filtering of the media library file data from the UPnP media servers it has access to, so not just a renderer file playback controller. You could try using a different UPnP control point app for the Auralic devices when playing music from UPnP media servers, such as the OpenHome supporting Linn Kazoo app (assuming the Aries & Altair still use OpenHome in Lightning Device mode).

[pvanosta]

Cebolla, as always thank you for your insights. You're the one who helped me figure out Minimserver on my Synology (along with BubbeUpnp etc). I did also briefly play with Linn Kazoo, Lumin app and one or two others on my Ipad. For some reason (no doubt a configuration setting somewhere that i could not find), none of these played full-rez. I watched the data stream via LAN coming from the NAS and the same track showed very different bandwidth between the OPPO Media Control app (full rez) and for instance the Linn app. All of this is before Roon.

 

Now Roon is so resource-hungry, I have just thrown all other apps off my Synology (among other reasons because they nearly all use ffmpeg which uses 20% of cpu cycles all the time). So My choices are to make Roon work (option 1 to Altair, option 2 roon to SonicTransport to Altair) or abandon Roon and go back to the old ways and find what works best among the other apps.

[eintom]

i can use LightningDS with my MinimServer running on Syno or take roon with the roon Server on the syno. A Plex Server runs also and some other services (backup, private cloud etc.). Gigabit Lan

No dropouts with roon or Lightning but for the good handling and infos i use roon mostly. LightningDS is also fine to use, the search is a bit faster than with roon (core) on my Nas.

 

With the new Firmware for my Aries (beta 4.XX), the aries sounds a bit different than with roon, more harsh sounding, a bit to bright for my system and taste. So i went bach to FW 3.3, this sounds the same as roon for me, very good.

 

I use a Aries with a Vega and Taurus Pre, but i can consider that the Altair is a good Dac and Preamp too, so it is even worth to try it with roon.

[Cebolla]

Cebolla, as always thank you for your insights. You're the one who helped me figure out Minimserver on my Synology (along with BubbeUpnp etc). I did also briefly play with Linn Kazoo, Lumin app and one or two others on my Ipad. For some reason (no doubt a configuration setting somewhere that i could not find), none of these played full-rez. I watched the data stream via LAN coming from the NAS and the same track showed very different bandwidth between the OPPO Media Control app (full rez) and for instance the Linn app. All of this is before Roon.

Ah yes, using the BubbleUPnP Server to provide OpenHome emulation and an issue with the Oppo 105 not being able to play the files properly (getting stuck after the first track) when using UPnP/DLNA streaming, but ok with playing them using network file sharing, if I remember correctly (did have to do a post search, though!).

 

I don't remember you mentioning the high res problem. It is possible to configure the BubbleUPnP Server's UPnP media server handling functions to transcode to lower res, though it would have to have been unintentional, as using the BubbleUPnP Server's UPnP media server handling functions has nothing to do with providing OpenHome emulation (to allow use of Linn Kazoo, etc).

[angelo]

but sirs, If I'll use my macmini i5 4gb to run Roon...is it ok with altair and my wd cloud in the same lan ring?