Question about streaming your own music

[HiFiRebel]

Streamers connect on your network and pull the music directly from a local NAS or online service. Then they send it to whatever they're connected to, which could be a DAC, AMP, or some like this one you noted can send via Bluetooth to a phone, tablet, etc. But they're local devices. I've never seen one that will do what you're asking... to push music to a remote on-to-go location. The QNAP is such a device, though. When I'm traveling, I stream entire movies from Plex, providing WiFi or cellular coverage is good on my phone/tablet.

Thank you! That explains why I couldn't find any info on streamers sending music over internet. I'm very surprised. Am I the only person out there that would use it in such a way? This makes them more like a glorified audio player, than a streamer. A true streamer should be more like a music server. One that can receive music from the internet, but also send music via internet to different devices (just like NAS can).

Anyway, yes, it looks like I'm stuck with my old NAS (unless I upgrade it). I will be installing Plex this weekend to see if that solves my issues. If not, I guess I need to see what other options do I have.

Thank you so much for explaining it in plain words. I have never used an streamer and simply wasn't sure what are they capable of.

That sounds indeed like streaming from a slow server...


I stand corrected, my humble A54 does, so I expected this flagship to do the same. You might ponder a dongle (USB adapter) but it will block the USB-C.
Maybe a cloud storage?

That's the current trend in mobile phone world. They take away functionality and charge more for it. First the audio jack, then MicroSD card... but I shouldn't complain too much. S23 Ultra is still a great device.

I would bet money on slow comms in between. An old server is plenty fast enough for a single audio stream.

That's very possible. Is there a way to test that theory to be sure?

 

[msing539]

I think the best option for you is actually a dual micro sd DAP... bring a chunk of your library and play it back locally. No buffering, no reliance on cellular data.

But since you already have the QNAP, doesn't cost anything to install and try Plex.

 

[HiFiRebel]

I think the best option for you is actually a dual micro sd DAP... bring a chunk of your library and play it back locally. No buffering, no reliance on cellular data.

But since you already have the QNAP, doesn't cost anything to install and try Plex.

DAP would mean that I just wasted £200 on Technics wireless earbuds.

I have a Sandisk oldschool mp3/flac player that I was using up until now. The only reason why I got into the subject of changing my on-the-go system of listening to music is that the in-ear wired headphones I was using with the player gave up the ghost (one side no longer emits sound). As the player is like 10 years old and can't hold all of my music collection. Plus I can never be bothered to connect it to my computer and swap music over. It means I have been listening to the same albums / mixes for years while on the go. I have much more music on my NAS and my PC, but I'm lazy and could never be bothered swapping music on the player. So when the headphones died, that gave me an option to look for other ways to listening to music on the go.

So I invested in a pair of good wireless buds to connect to my phone when I noticed I could stream music directly from my NAS. I should have waited to see how well that worked, but I couldn't really test the system until I got some bluetooth headphones to connect my phone to. Only when I got the wireless buds and went out, I could test the whole stream-from-my-NAS system.

If I now buy a new player, that would mean buying a new set of earbuds, since the one I bought are bluetooth only. They work great with a smartphone though.

What that also means is carrying another device in my pocket while I'm at the gym or cycling. Another device I need to remember to charge. Another device I need to connect from time to time to upload any new music to, etc. I was quite happy to leave my old player at home and only carry my phone + small box with ear buds in it.

Music on my PC is automatically being backed up to my NAS. So I don't need to copy anything manually. It means my NAS has access to all of my music collection.

So this new system of streaming from my NAS to my phone while I'm on the go, is much more convenient. No need to remember to copy new music over, have access to all of my music, carrying one less device around, etc etc. I'm lazy, so convenience is important

I will try the Plex to see if that improves things. Hopefully I can try it out without having to subscribe to anything.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

That's very possible. Is there a way to test that theory to be sure?

You could first test from another PC in your house over ethernet to see if it drops out when playing music from the server. Then try a phone or tablet over wifi and check that.

You can ping from the phone to your server IP over wifi and then over cellular. And I would also check the latency via wifi and cellular. Some online sites offer those tests and other tests for jitter etc. but you should try a couple to make sure you get consistent results.

 

[HiFiRebel]

One more thing I forgot to mention. Is that this new stream-from-NAS system allows me to have access to all of my music in my car. My car has dual SD card slot. I have two SD cards installed, but again, I can't load all of my music to them. So I've been listening to the same tracks over and over again (I have listening to radio and adverts). I drive a lot and spend a lot of hours in my car. I'm too lazy to manually eject SD cards, take them home, swap music, etc. So I'm sick of all the music I have in my car already, but can't be bother to swap it (yes, it's great to be me ). So this new system allows me to have access to all of my music in my car too. Win win really... if only it worked better.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

I think the best option for you is actually a dual micro sd DAP... bring a chunk of your library and play it back locally. No buffering, no reliance on cellular data.

But since you already have the QNAP, doesn't cost anything to install and try Plex.

I just bought another DAP for a plane trip. For about 500 bucks you get a device with 2 micro SD card ports that support 2T cards (which I think are not even out yet). It's hard to justify not going the route you suggested until you need to stream more than 4T of your collection while you're on the road.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

One more thing I forgot to mention. Is that this new stream-from-NAS system allows me to have access to all of my music in my car. My car has dual SD card slot. I have two SD cards installed, but again, I can't load all of my music to them. So I've been listening to the same tracks over and over again (I have listening to radio and adverts). I drive a lot and spend a lot of hours in my car. I'm too lazy to manually eject SD cards, take them home, swap music, etc. So I'm sick of all the music I have in my car already, but can't be bother to swap it (yes, it's great to be me ). So this new system allows me to have access to all of my music in my car too. Win win really... if only it worked better.

Usually these systems also provide for some external source as input to the car system. If so, the DAP that my Homie @msing539 suggested would cover all the bases.

Even if not, why can't you get all your music on 2 cards? Is there a size limit on the cards used with the car system?

 

[HiFiRebel]

You could first test from another PC in your house over ethernet to see if it drops out when playig music from the server. Then try a phone or tablet over wifi and check that.

You can ping from the phone to your server IP over wifi and then over cellular. And I would also check the latency via wifi and cellular. Some online sites offer those tests and other tests for jitter etc. but you should try a couple to make sure you get consistent results.

Thank you! My internet connection is very good. Fast and stable with low ping, so I know this side of things is good. My wifi is also good at home. I have tested the QNAP app (Qmusic) functionality over wifi and cellular. I have described that above. It still takes a few seconds from when I click on a folder to actually see it's content. Same on wifi and cellular.

I have not tried pinging my NAS from my phone, that's a good idea. I'm not sure how to do that, but I will look into it this weekend.

 

[HiFiRebel]

Usually these systems also provide for some external source as input to the car system. If so, the DAP that my Homie @msing539 suggested would cover all the bases.

Even if not, why can't you get all your music on 2 cards? Is there a size limit on the cards used with the car system?

Yes, there is size limit. I can't remember from the top of my head at the moment, but with two SD cards of maximum storage allowed, I can only get maybe less than half of all the music I have.

Yes, connecting new player to my car would probably work. I'm not sure how though. I have never tried it. With my phone I just use Android Auto. That gives me access to QNAP music app.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Thank you! My internet connection is very good. Fast and stable with low ping, so I know this side of things is good. My wifi is also good at home. I have tested the QNAP app (Qmusic) functionality over wifi and cellular. I have described that above. It still takes a few seconds from when I click on a folder to actually see it's content. Same on wifi and cellular.

I have not tried pinging my NAS from my phone, that's a good idea. I'm not sure how to do that, but I will look into it this weekend.

Just thinking out loud...ramble on, sing my song, etc.

Do I understand correctly that you're using CIFS/Samba/Windows File Sharing from QNAP and navigating folders? Yes, Samba can be slow for that... but, when it gets to the song I don't expect any delays serving it. And I don't expect dropouts but there could be several reasons why they could happen. One important thing to check is if it knows it's serving music, does it transcode on the fly? This is definitely bad if it happens.

Really, Samba is not designed for streaming music. A dedicated server is usually much better, since it preindexes your file structure when the server starts (and in some cases, also periodically or even based on a change trigger from the filesystem).

I serve both minidlna and Samba on my home network (due to security considerations I firewall it from the outside world) and getting to the right folder is not as fast as I would like, partly due to the server, but I think also partly due to the client(s). minidlna is a better idea for music (and video I guess but I don't hardly watch anything) but I need Samba for SACD ISO rips and DSD, since minidlna doesn't serve every possible file type, unlike Samba.

And it bears mentioning, if not repeating, as long as you're chewing up cellular bandwidth you might consider a streaming service. I have almost 2T of music on my LAN but I still subscribe to 3 music streaming services for various reasons. I know they're probably a lot more expensive elsewhere but my total cost for Tidal Hifi Plus, Deezer Hifi, and scamazon HD is about 25 euros a month.

 

[HiFiRebel]

Just thinking out loud...ramble on, sing my song, etc.

Do I understand correctly that you're using CIFS/Samba/Windows File Sharing from QNAP and navigating folders? Yes, Samba can be slow for that... but, when it gets to the song I don't expect any delays serving it. And I don't expect dropouts but there could be several reasons why they could happen. One important thing to check is if it knows it's serving music, does it transcode on the fly? This is definitely bad if it happens.

Really, Samba is not designed for streaming music. A dedicated server is usually much better, since it preindexes your file structure when the server starts (and in some cases, also periodically or even based on a change trigger from the filesystem).

I serve both minidlna and Samba on my home network (due to security considerations I firewall it from the outside world) and getting to the right folder is not as fast as I would like, partly due to the server, but I think also partly due to the client(s). minidlna is a better idea for music (and video I guess but I don't hardly watch anything) but I need Samba for SACD ISO rips and DSD, since minidlna doesn't serve every possible file type, unlike Samba.

And it bears mentioning, if not repeating, as long as you're chewing up cellular bandwidth you might consider a streaming service. I have almost 2T of music on my LAN but I still subscribe to 3 music streaming services for various reasons. I know they're probably a lot more expensive elsewhere but my total cost for Tidal Hifi Plus, Deezer Hifi, and scamazon HD is about 25 euros a month.

I'm sorry, but my lack of knowledge is preventing me from understanding completely.

I'm not sure what system do I use for navigating folders. I do that inside the Qmusic app. It has a side tab called folders and when I click on it I can browse my NAS music folders. As per screenshot:

I browse by folders, because not all of my files are tagged properly, so when I sort by artist or album I get a mess. Since all of my files are sorted via genres and artist and albums on my NAS in folders, I prefer that way of browsing the music files.

There are definitely delays when it comes to serving music. The time depends, but from the time I click on a music file I want to listen to to the time I can actually hear it in my headphones, it can be from 10 seconds to 30 or 40 seconds. Then when a music track finished and it jumps to the next track in the album, it can be from 5 seconds to 20-30 seconds.

Is transcoding on the fly a bad thing? Because I have it enabled in my settings. If I recall correctly it was off, but I thought this could be useful (without really understanding what it does) and I enabled it. Yes, I am dumb.

Should I disable it?

When I log into the NAS through their Qmusic app when I'm away from home and therefore not on my local network. I do this via their service called myQNAPcloud. I'm not logging in directly to the NAS via internet address, but I use that service to log in into it. Therefore I never thought about potential risks. I had to create an account and set password with that service and use those credentials to log in to the NAS. I have an SSL certificate installed on the NAS, so I log in via https. I always thought that if they provide a service that allows me to log in into my NAS remotely, they have made it secure.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Thanks, this helps understanding the situation. Yes, definitely turn off transcoding. What it does is compromise the quality of your stream in order to save bandwidth. And that takes CPU and can be fairly intensive, and can definitely contribute to latency.

Userid / Password have long been considered unsafe. https protects the data stream in transit, it does not secure the login. I would never allow access to my LAN via credentials. Attackers have scripts that will eventually figure out whatever you use for credentials and then be able to compromise your system.

 

[HiFiRebel]

Thanks, this helps understanding the situation. Yes, definitely turn off transcoding. What it does is compromise the quality of your stream in order to save bandwidth. And that takes CPU and can be fairly intensive, and can definitely contribute to latency.

Userid / Password have long been considered unsafe. https protects the data stream in transit, it does not secure the login. I would never allow access to my LAN via credentials. Attackers have scripts that will eventually figure out whatever you use for credentials and then be able to compromise your system.

Thank you! I will disable the transcoding and test if that improves things tomorrow at the gym.

So how else can I stream music from my NAS securely? If using their service with login and password is not secure, how do I do it in a secure way? Someone earlier mentioned VPN in the context of security. I pay for good VPN, but I don't use it on my NAS. Should I start using it? That would mean extra latency though. The VPN I use is fast and only takes away a bit of overall speed, but the ping goes up considerably when connected. Wouldn't that make streaming even slower?

 

[msing539]

Thank you! I will disable the transcoding and test if that improves things tomorrow at the gym.

So how else can I stream music from my NAS securely? If using their service with login and password is not secure, how do I do it in a secure way? Someone earlier mentioned VPN in the context of security. I pay for good VPN, but I don't use it on my NAS. Should I start using it? That would mean extra latency though. The VPN I use is fast and only takes away a bit of overall speed, but the ping goes up considerably when connected. Wouldn't that make streaming even slower?

Your QNAP might have a security advisor app or something similar. Running it will let you know problem areas, like the admin account, enabled guest account, default ports, outdated apps, etc. I changed and disabled all that default stuff on my Synology and router. Now I only use my VPN for... stuff.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Thank you! I will disable the transcoding and test if that improves things tomorrow at the gym.

Cool, will be interested to hear what you find out

So how else can I stream music from my NAS securely? If using their service with login and password is not secure, how do I do it in a secure way?

Ok, first of all, the security of the admin access and the streaming are most likely two separate issues.

I'm pretty intolerant of setups that lack security/privacy, I have a related day-job. I don't know of anything I would trust except for an SSH tunnel with at least 4K RSA keys (I don't trust elliptic curve ciphers and I can't spell them either ) blah blah blah because of this I use some flavor of UNIX for any server duties.

For Windows, I think it's pretty hard to secure anything unless you like hurting yourself, a (good) VPN is about all you can do. It should not add significant latency if you host your own VPN. What adds latency is if you use a 3rd party VPN since that's another n number of hops on to the way to the VPN and back for both the client (app) and server.

Someone earlier mentioned VPN in the context of security. I pay for good VPN, but I don't use it on my NAS. Should I start using it? That would mean extra latency though. The VPN I use is fast and only takes away a bit of overall speed, but the ping goes up considerably when connected. Wouldn't that make streaming even slower?

You can host your own VPN on Windows. I have used the built-in client, I am not aware if there is a server option that comes with Windows. But something like OpenVPN should be available and you should be able to set up a client using the built in VPN support on a modern phone.

This is not my area, so I would recommend making friends with the network guy(s) at your work unless you're a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker with no "IT Dept." Those guys have to know a lot about not getting the company boxes compromised. Some of it is done with expensive hardware but they should understand enough to figure out how to do it in a home setup.