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Please evaluate my server for audio use

klettermann

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I've just recently found this forum and already found it very useful. For years I've been running an enterprise server for video. Here's what it is:
  • Server is an HP DL385 G7: 2x Opteron 6174 (2.2Gb, 24 cores) running Win10 "pro workstation"
  • 128Gb RAM,
  • HD's comprise 2 volumes: The OS runs on 15k SAS drives (raid 10). Media resides on 4x 5Tb SATA drives, raid 10, so 10Tb total.
  • Yes, it's somewhat noisy. But it sits in my nice cool laundry room and can't be heard. And I just run it as needed, not the usual 24/7.
It's on a hardwired LAN and runs a Plex server that feeds a couple 4k TV's and HT setup. The server is pretty snappy, as you might expect, and can stream 1080p material to all the TV's without any trouble. So that's the hardware. The audio collection is about 850Gb and 4000 albums more or less. It's a big, mixed bag of content. Some albums are incomplete, tagging is OK but not great, but there is a lot of stuff. It's mostly FLAC files but some AAC and MP3's too.

Anyway, I recently (and possibly stupidly) got a Lumin U1 mini. It seems to do a pretty good job of accessing the content. I'm now planning to rip a lot of my CD's that aren't available on Qobuz etc. Then the server would be the source for this content. So the question is..... Is this a reasonable setup for audio use? I've been spooked on other forums by all the hand-waving about power supply noise, gotta have a mega-bucks dedicated computer, blah blah blah. so what's the verdict? Thanks and cheers,
 

NiagaraPete

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Yes. There is no noise over a network. Those folks have been eating too many brownies.
 

JeffS7444

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I've just recently found this forum and already found it very useful. For years I've been running an enterprise server for video. Here's what it is:
  • Server is an HP DL385 G7: 2x Opteron 6174 (2.2Gb, 24 cores) running Win10 "pro workstation"
  • 128Gb RAM,
  • HD's comprise 2 volumes: The OS runs on 15k SAS drives (raid 10). Media resides on 4x 5Tb SATA drives, raid 10, so 10Tb total.
  • Yes, it's somewhat noisy. But it sits in my nice cool laundry room and can't be heard. And I just run it as needed, not the usual 24/7.
It's on a hardwired LAN and runs a Plex server that feeds a couple 4k TV's and HT setup. The server is pretty snappy, as you might expect, and can stream 1080p material to all the TV's without any trouble. So that's the hardware. The audio collection is about 850Gb and 4000 albums more or less. It's a big, mixed bag of content. Some albums are incomplete, tagging is OK but not great, but there is a lot of stuff. It's mostly FLAC files but some AAC and MP3's too.

Anyway, I recently (and possibly stupidly) got a Lumin U1 mini. It seems to do a pretty good job of accessing the content. I'm now planning to rip a lot of my CD's that aren't available on Qobuz etc. Then the server would be the source for this content. So the question is..... Is this a reasonable setup for audio use? I've been spooked on other forums by all the hand-waving about power supply noise, gotta have a mega-bucks dedicated computer, blah blah blah. so what's the verdict? Thanks and cheers,
Ooh, a repurposed relic, cool! But "reasonable", not so much: You're still thinking wayyy higher-end than it needs to be. Not sure about the video side of things, but for audio use, a 2-4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 works great.
 

Berwhale

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Not sure about the video side of things

I have a Dell T20 of only slightly newer vintage that can transcode four 1080p streams simultaneously. The T20 only has a 4 core Xeon in it. If you avoid transcoding (by ensuring that all your clients can utilise DirectPlay or DirectStream), then all of your content should play quite happily from an ARM based NAS (or Pi based NAS if that's your thing).

My T20 is 7 years old now, so i'm considering replacing it with something more modern in a nice quiet case. I priced something up based on an i3 which will be sufficient for my needs (I might add more RAM, but spend more than I need?)...

1646417087269.png
 
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fieldcar

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I've been spooked on other forums by all the hand-waving about power supply noise, gotta have a mega-bucks dedicated computer, blah blah blah.
This sort of stuff gets me angry. How the heck could someone think a server capable of server ~100-120MB/s would have trouble with a 40MB FLAC file is FAR beyond me. If we didn't have the ability to reliably send and receive data, transmitting software over networks and the internet would be impossible. Even with severe packet loss from failing network hardware, you'll eventually a perfect 1:1 copy of the exact file you intended to serve to your network. On top of that, playback software and streaming devices usually buffer an entire song to it's internal RAM, and that can happen in a fraction of a second (or a matter of seconds if streaming over the internet).

The only time I ever get streaming issues of any kind is when my phone acts like a host for audio with BubbleUPnP. I get occasional dropouts and pauses. The software works by rendering music on the phone, and then re-broadcasting that into a new PCM stream over your network using a variety of streaming protocols all in real-time. It's probably just the battery optimization throttling the app on my phone. It's cool, but kind of clunky.

As @Berwhale said, as long as you aren't transcoding the server to death, and having too many random reads on the spinning disks, you should be perfectly fine.
 
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klettermann

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Thanks folks, music to my ears!

To be clear, it's a relic, but it's a good relic. I suspect that it's way overspec'd for video too. I have no idea if it's transcoding or not, but I never tried to circumvent it, so it probably is. And it still works great. I appreciate that you guys are suggesting simpler alternatives, but I see no reason to replace it. After all, I already have it, and it works. I only run it a few hours per day anyway so the usual disadvantage of a power-hog server isn't issue (it auto shuts down at midnight unless I intervene). It originally came from my business when the business upgraded so I've got a spare chassis on the self and boxes of drives, RAID cards, etc. But like I said, other forums that must remain nameless have filled me with FUD, to borrow the crypto phrase. Hence the question.

As an aside, if such stuff is really just fine for audio, or overkill in fact, I'm surprised more people don't go the server route as long as it can be put in a closet. Easy to service, extremely high build quality, endless redundancies, great error/failure recovery, etc. And except for the 5Tb HD's it's damn CHEAP! Cheers,
 

threni

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Ooh, a repurposed relic, cool! But "reasonable", not so much: You're still thinking wayyy higher-end than it needs to be. Not sure about the video side of things, but for audio use, a 2-4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 works great.
I'm playing FLACs to a usb-attached DAC, and streaming 1080p video over a network, from a 1gb ram raspberry pi from about 10 years ago. I think much of your ram will be wasted.
 

JeffS7444

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I'm playing FLACs to a usb-attached DAC, and streaming 1080p video over a network, from a 1gb ram raspberry pi from about 10 years ago. I think much of your ram will be wasted.
Gotta love ASR and one up- err, downmanship :p Let's see if someone can do it with the original Raspberry Pi Zero: Once upon a time, those were given away free with magazines!
 

threni

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Gotta love ASR and one up- err, downmanship :p Let's see if someone can do it with the original Raspberry Pi Zero: Once upon a time, those were given away free with magazines!
Oh, I do the DAC part already (well, with the Pi Zero W variant, anyway - I wanted a portable, after all!): https://moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=32&pid=35606#pid35606

I've upgraded it since then - I use the US version of the Apple dongle now for moar volumes, and removed some of the lego. I just haven't used that particular box to try and stream video!
 
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_thelaughingman

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I've just recently found this forum and already found it very useful. For years I've been running an enterprise server for video. Here's what it is:
  • Server is an HP DL385 G7: 2x Opteron 6174 (2.2Gb, 24 cores) running Win10 "pro workstation"
  • 128Gb RAM,
  • HD's comprise 2 volumes: The OS runs on 15k SAS drives (raid 10). Media resides on 4x 5Tb SATA drives, raid 10, so 10Tb total.
  • Yes, it's somewhat noisy. But it sits in my nice cool laundry room and can't be heard. And I just run it as needed, not the usual 24/7.
It's on a hardwired LAN and runs a Plex server that feeds a couple 4k TV's and HT setup. The server is pretty snappy, as you might expect, and can stream 1080p material to all the TV's without any trouble. So that's the hardware. The audio collection is about 850Gb and 4000 albums more or less. It's a big, mixed bag of content. Some albums are incomplete, tagging is OK but not great, but there is a lot of stuff. It's mostly FLAC files but some AAC and MP3's too.

Anyway, I recently (and possibly stupidly) got a Lumin U1 mini. It seems to do a pretty good job of accessing the content. I'm now planning to rip a lot of my CD's that aren't available on Qobuz etc. Then the server would be the source for this content. So the question is..... Is this a reasonable setup for audio use? I've been spooked on other forums by all the hand-waving about power supply noise, gotta have a mega-bucks dedicated computer, blah blah blah. so what's the verdict? Thanks and cheers,
I think it's a great setup with tons of ram to boot. You're probably not going to utilize all 128 GB of that ram, but it's a good buffer to have when you do scale up by running multiple streams of video on that server. The specs are overkill of streaming audio off the server, but you'll be able to utilize it with no needs to upgrade anytime soon.
 

JeffS7444

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Oh, I do the DAC part already (well, with the Pi Zero W variant, anyway - I wanted a portable, after all!): https://moodeaudio.org/forum/showthread.php?tid=32&pid=35606#pid35606

I've upgraded it since then - I use the US version of the Apple dongle now for moar volumes, and removed some of the lego. I just haven't used that particular box to try and stream video!
Since you got the Windows Pro license, you might be able to amuse yourself by virtualizing your media server under HyperV, and then you could turn the remaining 98% of the hardware power to ... who knows?
 
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Berwhale

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As an aside, if such stuff is really just fine for audio, or overkill in fact, I'm surprised more people don't go the server route as long as it can be put in a closet. Easy to service, extremely high build quality, endless redundancies, great error/failure recovery, etc. And except for the 5Tb HD's it's damn CHEAP!

Enterprise servers are bulky, noisy, power hungry and overkill for the vast majority of people and technologies like RAID are not appropriate (RAID is not a backup!) or cost effective for home use.
 

FrantzM

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Hi

Welcome and I hope this won't be construed as bursting your bubble..
You don't need that big a server for such small tasks as serving audio... or video for that matter. a 4 K stream requires about 25 Mb/s something most Intel Celeron-based PC can do without a hiccup.
Much is said in many fora and these deter the budding audiophiles. For Audio a Raspberry Pi is all you need.. For video perhaps something bigger but certainly not this brutally powerful and energy consuming server... QNAP , Synology and other NAS can run Plex with no fuss and low energy consumption... Price as low as $200 for the NAS alone (no HDD)..
I can understand you are re-purposing the server but ... It is a waste..
Sorry ... I don't mean to sound and be harsh but it is .. really a waste of resources...
Again, Welcome. Stay here, perhaps the best forum for audiophiles.
Peace
 
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klettermann

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Wow! I can't recall getting recommendations to downgrade anything, ever, in any realm (auto, audio, video, travel accomodations, etc etc etc) or on any forum. Still, many interesting and illuminating comments:
  • "Waste of resources" - I assume this refers to energy use. Certainly a legitimate concern, and for a spell it was certainly the case. I was mining a minor cryptocurrency with 2 DL385's and 4 DL585's. The 585's are massive electrical space heaters disguised as computers. When my $600 power bill arrived I shut it all down. To be sure, the DL385 is more wasteful than a Pi. But it uses vastly less juice than my hot tub and I can't parse it out of my electrical bill. And it's only a few hours at a time a few times a week. So I really can't get too excited about its carbon footprint.
  • "Overkill" - Well, apart from power use, so what? Bulk and noise don't factor into my situation, though I can see how they'd be an issue for many. OTOH, I can see how others would be drawn to the sledgehammer-to-kill-a-fly aspect of it. To me such stuff has a kind of perverse appeal.
  • "Virtualization" - Yeah, I've thought of that, just can't find a good enough reason to bother. For a long time I was running VMware for no good reason at all. I dropped it when moving from Server 2012 to Win10.
  • "XS RAM" - sure, but again, who cares? It was all free. And I sleep better at night knowing that it's more than enough. ;)
  • "Transcoding" - Thanks! I'm not sure I've ever even looked at the Plex Server when anything was playing. I'll take a peek tonight.
What I can say is that I'm now through with the "subjective" audio forums as sources of real information. I'm not an engineer but I am a scientist (chemistry & materials science). I also know full well that just because a difference can't be measured doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, at least not in the realm of chemistry. Limits of detection are constantly changing. We can see things now that we simply could not 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. But... attributing audible improvements in a power cable to wire drawing speed and grain structure with no coherent theory of why this should be, much less any data, is a form of fanciful religion. I doubt that many here would disagree. Rant over. Thanks much!
c
c
 

BlackTalon

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Building/ construction materials?
 

NiagaraPete

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The only thing I'd change is your OS. Go linux.
 
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