Peter's system

[PeterS]

There is no such thing as a rescan. The rescan from the app takes a few seconds but such a rescan doesn't see additions and deletions from the NAS. To get additions and deletions processed you need to do a full 6 hour scan.

Frankly, I'm hoping I'm doing something wrong or that Aurender will come yo my rescue.

[PeterS]

I've upgraded my system; got rid of the MacMini and now have the first Aurender N100 in my country (says the dealer).

The sound is a vast improvement over the MacMini, like desribed in the thread under Streaming -> "Aurender X100 with Devialet": a much fuller sound that draws you into the music.
Reading the music from the NAS and storing it on its internal SSD works flawlessy.

No more hiccups, no MacMini asking me to enter my password for iCloud which I don't use and don't know how to get rid of. Closing down the app while music is playing and re-opening it later does not result in a hiccup in the music which happened with the MacMini.

The N100 is still a new product: there is no manual. The X100 manual helps though.
Scanning the NAS for the metadata and the cover art requires an external program which I run on my MacMini. The scanning takes about 6 hours for 1 TB of music. It needs to be run everytime I upload new music or delete music from the NAS (none of the scanner options in the app seem to be able to do this).

Some of the functions in the app seem to be designed for a system that has internal disks. The N100 has no internal disk and these functions have no effect. Examples: update database for newly added or deleted files and the buttons "Pop", "Classical" etc at the top of the app. These buttons take the name of folders on the internal HDs, but there is no internal HD.

I hope Aurender fixes this in a software update soon.

Having said all this, once the music plays it is beautiful

I've been looking at the N100 as a possible upgrade to my Mac mini too. Thanks for sharing your first impressions. Does a rescan also take 6 hours?

No, it doesn't. Only the differences are analyses, but that stil takes 25 minutes.

[Eddye]

I have the Aurender N100 on audition now, and I've found the scanning process to be very fast. Scanning took only 5 minutes for 400 albums on my Synology NAS.

[PeterS]

I have the Aurender N100 on audition now, and I've found the scanning process to be very fast. Scanning took only 5 minutes for 400 albums on my Synology NAS.

Hi Eddye, what is your setup that you use for scanning? Dedicated, wired PC, of laptop?

[Eddye]

AMM is on my Macbook Pro which is connected to my network via wifi. The music files are on my Synology NAS. In AMM I selected the Aurender and the Samba share and clicked scan. A few minutes later the process is done.

[PeterS]

I have my MacMini wired up now, but it still takes about half an hour to scan. I see that the CPU load during scanning is 10% and the rate at which data is received is about 20 kB/s. That is pretty slow! The hard disk seems to work hard. Perhaps it is a setting that is wrong. I could use some guidance here.

Thanks

[Eddye]

Is your 1TB USB disk a USB2.0 or 3.0 disk?
USB2.0 disks are pretty slow. Consider upgrading to 3.0 or a NAS.

[PeterS]

Is your 1TB USB disk a USB2.0 or 3.0 disk?
USB2.0 disks are pretty slow. Consider upgrading to 3.0 or a NAS.

I have a Synology NAS. The entire system is Ethernet connected, no wifi.

[PeterS]

Eric at Aurender helped to a new useful trick. He removed the tracks that were stored on the SSD for testing purposes. Now, the buttons on the 2nd row of the app no longer follow the folder structure on the SSD (which I could not access anyway) but the folder structure on the NAS.

The trick is the following:
Each time I add a new album to my NAS, I put brackets around the folder with the artist name. The first 5 of them now show up on the buttons on the 2nd row. These buttons remind me which new music I stored on my NAS. I take care of having only 5 folders with brackets.

All my folders in my music folder on my NAS have artist names. Inside each artist folder are the albums of that artist. I find it difficult to structure the folders differently. For example, folders at the top level named 'classical', 'pop', 'jazz', etc. I have a lot of music that is performed by a contemporary group, but is based on classical music. ELP for example have got a lot of music like that. I don't think it makes sense to store ELP under classical music.

Just as a reminder to you, reader, the Aurender N100 is a great, worth-every-penny, improvement over a MacMini.

[PeterS]

The Dutch Aurender distributor, MoreMusic, build in a hard-disk into my N100, which makes it a N100H, I guess, although the display still says it is a N100. When I copy music to the HD then it gets scanned immediately and is available for play immediately. This is much more convenient than doing a scan of the NAS from my MacMini.

The only disadvantage is that I hear the HD spinning, fairly quietly, but I still hear it. When I lift a corner of the N100, it gets more silent. I'll experiment a bit with isolation between N100 and rack.