What a surprise! These things are all more complicated than they first appear. I'll start by saying that I am now quite convinced that there is more going on on the feed side of the DS systems than just 1s and 0s. I don't know what is going on, but it is something.
My evaluation of the WD MyBook World Edition II 2TB NAS continued with a couple of interesting twists. I had wanted for some time to compare a good NAS to my PowerMac Pro as a server. My Pro has one of the Seagate ES2 1TB drives with all the music on it so it is one of the highly recommended drives. So I took home the WD unit and did a comparison. I connected the WD into the same Air Port Extreme wireless router/switch and went out front to listen. First I compared the Majik DS to my LP12 for Debbie and the LP12 obviously crushed the DS. Then I asked if she wanted to hear the difference between the NAS and the Pro. We were playing Jimi Hendrix ":blues" so I used "Born Under a Bad Sign" which starts with a deep and powerful bass line. I played it first from the Mac Pro and then from the WD. As soon as I heard the WD I thought: Wow, that's a big difference. I turned to Debbie and before I could say anything she said: "Wow, that was a BIG difference". The bass from the WD had so much more texture than what came off the Pro it was amazing. While it was still well short of the LP12 it was more reminiscent of that sound and certainly more musical. I did a few more comparisons and the WD was always quite a bit more musical.
Later on in the evening I decided to do some more comparisons. Starting out I was having the same results then it occurred to me that there might be a problem with my methodology. When I went to hook up the WD I needed another RJ45 cable so I opened up a new one I had nearby. When I went back to check on the cabling I found that I had used one of the APC cables I had ordered from the UK that sommerfee had recommended as being particularly good sounding. What was on the Mac Pro? Why, some generic cable I had laying around. So I decided I should even the playing field and I opened another APC cable and hooked it up to the Mac Pro. Wow, most of the difference between the two servers was now gone. Now the WD still is more musical than the Mac Pro but the differences are small - similar to the differences between the WD and the ReadyNAS at work. It was a little easier to follow the music with more nuance to the playing and a bit better flow. But the big surprise was that it was the APC cable that made the really big improvement in musical quality. I have to say that the APC cable made easily 80% of the improvement in the earlier comparison. So, yes, the cable can make a big improvement in the musical quality of the DS player, even when it is only one of two cables between the server and the DS and the other is a generic, off the roll cable.
With this knowledge in hand I went back to the store and hooked the WD back in. I double checked the cables there and found the one going to the ReadyNAS NV+ was different. So I changed it so that they both had the same cable and did the comparison again. In this case the results were the same: both the NAS units were quite close but the WD was a bit more tuneful with a better flow and rhythm to it. So apparently the original two cables are pretty close in performance. I should also mention that I did make sure in both this comparison and the one at home using the two APC cables I did make sure they were going the same direction, although I didn't yet compare directions to find the best one.
So my conclusions from this are that the WD is indeed a small but noticeable amount more musical than the ReadyNAS NV+ with 500GB Barracuda drives or my Mac Pro with a 1TB Seagate ES.2 drive. And that the APC cable makes a bigger improvement over the generic cable I had connected up than WD did over either of the other servers. Which makes me wonder about all the other things that can make a difference in the feed side of a DS system.
It would be interesting if those who have done a fair amount of comparison would rank the relative musical importance of the various parts of the system. Which parts give the biggest performance boost when optimized and which have a lesser effect? Certainly my few tests show that the cable made a bigger difference than the NAS. Is this typical or unique to the items I compared? I'd like to see if there is a general consensus on this. Meanwhile I do feel the WD is a very good, basic, inexpensive NAS for those who simply want to drop one in their system and have what they need already built in (RAID 1, Twonky). It does the job and is quite musical doing it.
A better NAS than Readynas NV+
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I had a couple of other important comments on the WD MyBook World Edition II NAS units that I wanted to pass on. I decided to put them in a separate post so they wouldn't be lost to those who decided to forgo the pleasure of reading my last tome!
Before recommending the WD unit I wanted to find a bit more about them so I did some research on the web. It turned out that a fair bit of research was necessary as WD isn't particularly forthcoming about what hardware is inside their boxes. None of their specs mentioned processor type or speed or the amount of RAM. And while the reviews were mostly positive, rating the newer II type units as one of the faster 2 drive units they had tested, most of them made no mention of the internals either beyond the drives used.
But after a fair bit of research I found a couple of reviewers who dug a little deeper and came up with some answers. It appears that the processor is a 500MHz ARM and it has 128MB RAM. This isn't a lot of horsepower and the RAM is not upgradeable so it is what it is. I haven't worked with enough NAS units to know if this a limiting factor for UPnP streaming but I have read comments in various forums that some NAS units are quite slow in re-indexing or loading large numbers of files so this might be a concern for those with really large libraries of music. In addition one reviewer mentioned that, while the drives are replaceable, the MyBook will not recognize any drive other than a WD Green drive so experimenting with Seagate or SSD units is likely not going to work.
Taking this information into account I think it is back to what I said initially: the WD is not really the drive for those who want to experiment with different drives and other upgrades. It is best for those seeking a simple, inexpensive and musical NAS that they won't have to mess with in order to get it up and running.
Doing this research I also found out that WD has a 4 drive NAS but it doesn't look to be that great a unit. For one thing it does not have hot-swappable drives even when run in RAID 5 mode. Also it wasn't all that fast a unit. All said the ReadyNAS units appear much more capable for similar capacity and price. Speaking of ReadyNAS, has anybody tried any of the newer Plus or Pro versions? As the NV+ seems to be discontinued it would be good to know if the replacements measure up to their predecessor.
Before recommending the WD unit I wanted to find a bit more about them so I did some research on the web. It turned out that a fair bit of research was necessary as WD isn't particularly forthcoming about what hardware is inside their boxes. None of their specs mentioned processor type or speed or the amount of RAM. And while the reviews were mostly positive, rating the newer II type units as one of the faster 2 drive units they had tested, most of them made no mention of the internals either beyond the drives used.
But after a fair bit of research I found a couple of reviewers who dug a little deeper and came up with some answers. It appears that the processor is a 500MHz ARM and it has 128MB RAM. This isn't a lot of horsepower and the RAM is not upgradeable so it is what it is. I haven't worked with enough NAS units to know if this a limiting factor for UPnP streaming but I have read comments in various forums that some NAS units are quite slow in re-indexing or loading large numbers of files so this might be a concern for those with really large libraries of music. In addition one reviewer mentioned that, while the drives are replaceable, the MyBook will not recognize any drive other than a WD Green drive so experimenting with Seagate or SSD units is likely not going to work.
Taking this information into account I think it is back to what I said initially: the WD is not really the drive for those who want to experiment with different drives and other upgrades. It is best for those seeking a simple, inexpensive and musical NAS that they won't have to mess with in order to get it up and running.
Doing this research I also found out that WD has a 4 drive NAS but it doesn't look to be that great a unit. For one thing it does not have hot-swappable drives even when run in RAID 5 mode. Also it wasn't all that fast a unit. All said the ReadyNAS units appear much more capable for similar capacity and price. Speaking of ReadyNAS, has anybody tried any of the newer Plus or Pro versions? As the NV+ seems to be discontinued it would be good to know if the replacements measure up to their predecessor.
Great work Thomas! Glad you are experimenting with the "digital surce" for the DS players. As you have discovered there are significant differences on the digital side of things.
Personally I just changed from the Netgear FS108 switch to the Netgear GS105 (#2 on Axel's list) and it was very worthwile and good value for the $80 i paid.
Based on the report from Christian I'm personally very tempted by this stealth NAS upgrade! (For us Duo owners.)
Christian on this forum has just bought the Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 Plus (the one with dualcore processor). He says it´s clearly better than the old Duo, despite having uppgraded the Duo with fan/memory and keeping the Ultra 2 Plus standard. A worthwile upgrade. He also compared with Mr. Simonssons (At Tonläget HiFi in Gothenburg) favourite NAS, the Qnap TS-259 Pro+. (Correct?) The result was that both these NAS servers where about equal, when placed on the same surface. (The Yggdrasil 1.1 NAS/Switch table.)ThomasOK wrote:Speaking of ReadyNAS, has anybody tried any of the newer Plus or Pro versions? As the NV+ seems to be discontinued it would be good to know if the replacements measure up to their predecessor.
Personally I just changed from the Netgear FS108 switch to the Netgear GS105 (#2 on Axel's list) and it was very worthwile and good value for the $80 i paid.
Based on the report from Christian I'm personally very tempted by this stealth NAS upgrade! (For us Duo owners.)
We trust our ears, Irri. When you use the Tune Method, it becomes easy to tell things apart.
Whenever I have the possibility, I compare blind (settings, circuits, cables etc) by simply not paying attention to which is which. If there's more than two contestants, I mark them with numbers or coloured tape and then listen and take notes. Red is better than green is better than blue. When I've listened enough to feel certain, I check which contestant each colour belongs to. The only reason I do it blind is that for me, it becomes a little bit easier. I just stop thinking about which is which.
When I don't have the option to compare blind, I quite often come to unexpected conclusions. Such as "this ought to be better, but for some reason it isn't". Contrary to the placebo effect. Everyone I know who uses the Tune Method will tell you the same thing: You can't make a clear performance difference go away with opposite expectations.
Whenever I have the possibility, I compare blind (settings, circuits, cables etc) by simply not paying attention to which is which. If there's more than two contestants, I mark them with numbers or coloured tape and then listen and take notes. Red is better than green is better than blue. When I've listened enough to feel certain, I check which contestant each colour belongs to. The only reason I do it blind is that for me, it becomes a little bit easier. I just stop thinking about which is which.
When I don't have the option to compare blind, I quite often come to unexpected conclusions. Such as "this ought to be better, but for some reason it isn't". Contrary to the placebo effect. Everyone I know who uses the Tune Method will tell you the same thing: You can't make a clear performance difference go away with opposite expectations.