Building a DIY Music Server

[JackJohnson316]

On 2/8/2023 at 12:28 PM, Dev said:

AFAIK from several discussions with Larry that hdplex is coming up with a full height chassis. Timeline is not yet known.

Thanks for the heads up. It looks like this is the route I will be going. The full height HDPlex PC chassis hopefully will be ready before the Taiko products are released to the public. Larry was very kind to reply to my email quickly as well. The new HDPlex case can support 4 full height pcie cards...if nothing changes. Usually most pcie cards, like Jcat, Pink Faun, etc., also provide both full sized brackets and low profile brackets. So hopefully I can still use those cards on a full height pc chassis if need be. 

[drjimwillie]

Happy Valentine’s Day, music lovers!

I hope you remember to buy flowers for your system and show it some love.

 

I am building the extreme clone with the sage motherboard. I have a question about the ASUS Hyper M.2 PCIE 3.0 card. Is the card we should use the “V2”?  Has it always been the V2? (I saw this card on the ASUS site for $54)
 

Which M.2 storage should we use? I saw on the extreme thread that the 2TB drive is the sweet spot, because they get much more expensive as they get larger.  does anyone have a suggestion on the best place to buy the M.2 cards?

I’d do not have even close to 1TB of music files, but I do plan to PGGB files in the future. I plan to install one 2TB drive now and others later. Is this incremental installation of drives going to cause me problems? To get one continuous library will I need to erase the first drive when I install the second one?  I don’t know much about this stuff, and I am trying to plan for the future, wondering if it would be an advantage to buy two drives now?

 

Thank you 

DJW

[Johnseye]

55 minutes ago, drjimwillie said:

Happy Valentine’s Day, music lovers!

I hope you remember to buy flowers for your system and show it some love.

 

I am building the extreme clone with the sage motherboard. I have a question about the ASUS Hyper M.2 PCIE 3.0 card. Is the card we should use the “V2”?  Has it always been the V2? (I saw this card on the ASUS site for $54)
 

Which M.2 storage should we use? I saw on the extreme thread that the 2TB drive is the sweet spot, because they get much more expensive as they get larger.  does anyone have a suggestion on the best place to buy the M.2 cards?

I’d do not have even close to 1TB of music files, but I do plan to PGGB files in the future. I plan to install one 2TB drive now and others later. Is this incremental installation of drives going to cause me problems? To get one continuous library will I need to erase the first drive when I install the second one?  I don’t know much about this stuff, and I am trying to plan for the future, wondering if it would be an advantage to buy two drives now?

 

Thank you 

DJW

 

Here you go

 

Asus HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 CARD Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 Card (PCIe 4.0/3.0)

 

Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 2TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 3D2, QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW020T8X1

[Exocer]

1 hour ago, Johnseye said:

 

Here you go

 

Asus HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 CARD Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 Card (PCIe 4.0/3.0)

 

Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 2TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 3D2, QLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEKNW020T8X1

And if you cannot locate the 660p, the 670p will work as well (this is what I use now).

[baconbrain]

6 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

 I plan to install one 2TB drive now and others later. Is this incremental installation of drives going to cause me problems? To get one continuous library will I need to erase the first drive when I install the second one?  I don’t know much about this stuff, and I am trying to plan for the future, wondering if it would be an advantage to buy two drives now?

 

No, the incremental installation is not a problem at all. You just need to be aware of the proper placement order of the M.2s when populating the Hyper X Card. 

 

This KB Article is quite useful: https://www.asus.com/de/support/FAQ/1037507

[Johnseye]

1 hour ago, baconbrain said:

 

No, the incremental installation is not a problem at all. You just need to be aware of the proper placement order of the M.2s when populating the Hyper X Card. 

 

This KB Article is quite useful: https://www.asus.com/de/support/FAQ/1037507

 

There are some RAID options to consider if going that route. You can create an array out of these drives. 

 

[di-fi]

1 hour ago, baconbrain said:

 

No, the incremental installation is not a problem at all. You just need to be aware of the proper placement order of the M.2s when populating the Hyper X Card. 

 

This KB Article is quite useful: https://www.asus.com/de/support/FAQ/1037507

Thanks!

ENGLISH version: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1037507

[di-fi]

5 hours ago, Exocer said:

And if you cannot locate the 660p, the 670p will work as well (this is what I use now).

Can it be any Intel NVMe 2TB , or was 660P recommended (somewhere)? and 670P?

[baconbrain]

1 hour ago, di-fi said:

Can it be any Intel NVMe 2TB , or was 660P recommended (somewhere)? and 670P?

Thanks for posting the English version, I copied the German one by mistake.

 

I am not sure if there was a particular reason for recommending the Intel SSD but the Hyper X card will recognize just about any M.2

 

Perhaps one thing to consider is the operating temperature of the M.2 given that some of them get pretty hot and normally one does not want to have the Hyper X cooling fan running in a passively cooled music server.

[Exocer]

1 hour ago, di-fi said:

Can it be any Intel NVMe 2TB , or was 660P recommended (somewhere)? and 670P?

The 660P became a hot topic for music local storage due to its use in the Taiko SGM extreme IIRC. The 670P is what I decided to use because the 660P became a bit more difficult to find at one point, and in some cases ended up costing more than the newer 670P. 

 

I think many NVME's will work with the HyperX card as @baconbrain stated.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

20 hours ago, di-fi said:

Can it be any Intel NVMe 2TB , or was 660P recommended (somewhere)? and 670P?

My music server is a AMD Linux server that @lmitche built, I use a Sabrent Rocket 8TB NVME drive along with on Intel 660P 2TB drives in the Hyper M2 card with the fan off, and one more Intel 660P 2TB M2 on the MB (for a total of 12TB storage) and another 32GB Optane boot drive. All of them work well together. 

[di-fi]

20 hours ago, baconbrain said:

a particular reason for recommending the Intel SSD

sorry I was not clear, I meant a reason other than compatibility, for example sound quality (I tried many).

 

 

20 hours ago, baconbrain said:

operating temperature of the M.2 given that some of them get pretty hot

it probably has been mentioned before besides someone here who covered his SSD with heatpipes but to increase heat dissipation you could install individual M.2 SSD heatsinks, quite efficient. The 'double sided' type that does not fall off when mounted vertically. And omit installing the Hyper X Card cover for increased airflow. Maybe in this way the cooling fan will not have to come on.

[baconbrain]

43 minutes ago, di-fi said:

sorry I was not clear, I meant a reason other than compatibility, for example sound quality (I tried many).

 

 

it probably has been mentioned before besides someone here who covered his SSD with heatpipes but to increase heat dissipation you could install individual M.2 SSD heatsinks, quite efficient. The 'double sided' type that does not fall off when mounted vertically. And omit installing the Hyper X Card cover for increased airflow. Maybe in this way the cooling fan will not have to come on.

 

Interesting idea! Actually I have been pretty happy with the cooling ability of the Hyper X Heatsink even without the fan. My Crucial P3’s and PNY M.2’s run between 40 - 45 degrees celcius but the Mushkin Tempest M.2’s were running between 60 - 70 degrees celcius when idle! I had two of them installed in one of the Hyper X cards and one directly on the MB (per pic below). Ended up removing all three of those space heaters and replacing with the Crucials. ;)

 

 

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, Zaphod Beeblebrox said:

My music server is a AMD Linux server that @lmitche built, I use a Sabrent Rocket 8TB NVME drive along with on Intel 660P 2TB drives in the Hyper M2 card with the fan off, and one more Intel 660P 2TB M2 on the MB (for a total of 12TB storage) and another 32GB Optane boot drive. All of them work well together. 

It's the static SLC cache, power consumption and controller that impact SQ. Sabrent, and Intel drives have large SLC caches in front of the TLC or QLC layers. SK Hynix P31 Gold is another model that sounds great as it is designed to sip power for use in laptops.

[di-fi]

3 hours ago, lmitche said:

SK Hynix P31 Gold

• Anandtech & Tomshardware (Aug/Sept 2021):
• Pioneering thermal efficiency – allowing the Gold P31 2TB to run extremely cool while being primed for performance
• hynix is using their in-house Cepheus controller, a very energy efficient PCIe 3.0 x4 controller
• I/O rates of 1200 MTps while consuming just 1.2V. This is an important aspect to note because it is roughly double that of what most current-gen NAND runs up to, and in conjunction with the 4-channel controller, both help the Gold P31 deliver some incredible power efficiency.  

[di-fi]

part two,

nice find @lmitche!

 

 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sk-hynix-gold-p31-m2-nvme-ssd-review/4

[di-fi]

Good news for Intel 660p owners regarding low power consumption:

 

Intel 660P (1TB) vs. SK Hynix P31 Gold (2TB)

50GB Copy - Average Power Consumption: 2.31 vs. 2.28 Watts (equal)

Idle power consumption also seems equal with ASPM/LPM enabled. (If you know how to/can set that up). ASPM/LPM disabled doubles Intel 660p's power consumption.

 

Note: I assume the more power consumed the more heat produced. I ignore other factors in this comparison.

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-660p-qlc-nvme,5719-2.html

[baconbrain]

On 2/14/2023 at 11:30 PM, Johnseye said:

 

There are some RAID options to consider if going that route. You can create an array out of these drives. 

 

 

While on the topic of storage, I thought adding Taiko Audio's comment regarding their recommended Raid Configuration for the Extreme Server might be helpful:

 

The Extreme uses Microsoft Storage Spaces to create a drive pool in which you can add drives to dynamically expand a single storage volume. Storage Spaces supports placing drives in RAID, we do however not recommend this. RAID 1 (mirror), is sonically transparent but means you will store all your DATA twice on local server storage. RAID 5 is less wasteful as it only requires 1 parity (redundant) drive for your whole drive array. However RAID 5 is sonically very harmful reducing the local file playback quality to regular SSD level.

Therefor we recommend to always keep multiple copies of your music library, for example internally stored on the SGM and on a NAS or external drives.

The SGM can be accessed over the network to execute remote backups.

[Johnseye]

2 hours ago, baconbrain said:

 

While on the topic of storage, I thought adding Taiko Audio's comment regarding their recommended Raid Configuration for the Extreme Server might be helpful:

 

The Extreme uses Microsoft Storage Spaces to create a drive pool in which you can add drives to dynamically expand a single storage volume. Storage Spaces supports placing drives in RAID, we do however not recommend this. RAID 1 (mirror), is sonically transparent but means you will store all your DATA twice on local server storage. RAID 5 is less wasteful as it only requires 1 parity (redundant) drive for your whole drive array. However RAID 5 is sonically very harmful reducing the local file playback quality to regular SSD level.

Therefor we recommend to always keep multiple copies of your music library, for example internally stored on the SGM and on a NAS or external drives.

The SGM can be accessed over the network to execute remote backups.

 

This is very helpful. So they found RAID 5 to degrade SQ.  Most NAS environments use RAID 5, 6 or 10.  I wonder what their thoughts are on NAS RAID vs within the server.  My NAS is RAID 10 and I would be hard pressed to change it because of performance and ease of redundancy.  I also use it to store movies and everything else I want to keep or share within my house.

 

My server's Asus Hyper X card is not RAIDed, just separate drives but that was only because I'm using Euphony and don't believe there's an easy way to RAID it.  Now I won't even consider it.

[MarcelNL]

The answer I expect when I extrapolate less CPU/system acitivity; A NAS running RAID over 1 used as source for streaming files will also sound less good than a NAS running lower RAID modes. 

[baconbrain]

31 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

My server's Asus Hyper X card is not RAIDed, just separate drives but that was only because I'm using Euphony and don't believe there's an easy way to RAID it.  Now I won't even consider it.

 

I struggled with the decision to format each M.2 drive as ExFat ensuring Euphony compatibility, versus the recommended Windows Storage Space setup, and decided for the later as I didn’t want to spread my library across 10 seperate drives. Not sure if I will stick with it as I do like Euphony alot …

[Johnseye]

7 minutes ago, baconbrain said:

 

I struggled with the decision to format each M.2 drive as ExFat ensuring Euphony compatibility, versus the recommended Windows Storage Space setup, and decided for the later as I didn’t want to spread my library across 10 seperate drives. Not sure if I will stick with it as I do like Euphony alot …

 

Yes, I like Euphony a lot as well.  Originally I installed WIndows LTSC, Process Lasso and tweaked it with Nenon's guidance.  I listened for a week or two then installed Euphony v3, prior to the recent upgrade. Both environments ran HQPlayer with and without an NAA.  Windows sounded flat by comparison. Euphony had better PRAT, a bigger soundstage and better clarity.  That said, Euphony isn't without its issues.  They haven't updated HQP Embedded in a year and I question whether they ever will as they've been promoting a competitor. v4 has been changing with each release and is still kinda buggy but I am running v4 now.  

[Dev]

2 hours ago, baconbrain said:

 

I struggled with the decision to format each M.2 drive as ExFat ensuring Euphony compatibility, versus the recommended Windows Storage Space setup, and decided for the later as I didn’t want to spread my library across 10 seperate drives. Not sure if I will stick with it as I do like Euphony alot …

 

Linux has a very well executed software raid support. Similar to Windows storage space, you can configure jbod raid using lvm where you are being presented a single virtual drive with many physical drives underneath. Another excellent implementation is FreeBSD’s ZFS. There is a Linux port for it as well, openzfs. I have no idea if they are as transparent as accessing physical drives in terms of audio quality but these software implementations are very good.
 

The biggest problem for Euphony users will be to have them integrated in Euphony - they are already struggling to keep up with the basics and their beta release seems to vary quiet a bit in sound quality as I read from their thread here.

 

Their will also be an impact of SQ on which playback software you use. For Stylus, I don’t much impact between physical vs logical drives. For Roon users (like me), the impact can be substantial. From what I gather from different experiments with Roon 1.8, is that it constantly accesses the storage media, even if all processing are turned off. So my guess is logical volumes/drives might give a better SQ. This is just a hunch as I will not be able to experiment with Euphony due to lack of tools support. Maybe I will try AudioLinux at some point but being a heavy Roon user and for these reason I have moved my Roon storage from multiple m.2 drives locally in the sever to a DIY NAS where I have a single large 3.5” drive which gets backed up in another Raid 5 based ZFS pool.

[baconbrain]

1 hour ago, Dev said:

Their will also be an impact of SQ on which playback software you use. For Stylus, I don’t much impact between physical vs logical drives. For Roon users (like me), the impact can be substantial. From what I gather from different experiments with Roon 1.8, is that it constantly accesses the storage media, even if all processing are turned off. So my guess is logical volumes/drives might give a better SQ. This is just a hunch as I will not be able to experiment with Euphony due to lack of tools support. Maybe I will try AudioLinux at some point but being a heavy Roon user and for these reason I have moved my Roon storage from multiple m.2 drives locally in the sever to a DIY NAS where I have a single large 3.5” drive which gets backed up in another Raid 5 based ZFS pool.

 

Interesting observation…

 

I moved my library from a NAS to the current local setup because I felt that Roon Performance suffered through network incurred latency, etc.. Perhaps it was just related specifically to my network, or library size, but I do feel the performance has now improved significantly with the files stored locally.

[Dev]

I should have mentioned that there is a finer line and trade-off from moving storage from local to NAS. It all depends on how the network is optimized. Anything you can do to optimize the network has an amazing effect on the SQ. When I moved the local storage ( 2 x 2Tb Intel 660p) to NAS I had Roon 1.8 running at the time. I have not tried recently with Roon 2.0 to see if anything has changed in this regards.