Lumin U2 Mini

Hello everyone. Longtime listener, first-time caller here. I appreciate the wealth of knowledge.

I could use some thoughts/guidance on an NAS for my U2 Mini. (I'm in the market for a second U2 Mini I like it so much.) I searched previous posts but did not find recent guidance for my questions. This post from 2017 is the most-recent I found:

wklie said:
Although there's Lumin L1 for ease of use, power users may opt for a powerful NAS for use with Lumin.

Here's the latest recommendations for choosing NAS:

1. Must be able to install and run MinimServer
http://minimserver.com/installing.html

2. Either Synology or QNAP

3. Must use Intel CPU, not anything else

4. Comes with or upgradeable to 2GB RAM or preferably more (certain NAS models come with less AND does not have RAM sockets for user-installable upgrades - avoid those)
Click to expand...

My questions:

Is the Intel CPU still required or strongly encouraged? That seems outdated.

Would I be crazy to get a one-bay QNAP or Synology unit that has 2GB of RAM but does not allow for adding RAM? QNAP has one that is very reasonably priced and gets strong reviews for what it is. My theory is that I would like to have an NAS dedicated to music use, and I'd have another (4-bay?) NAS with RAID capacity to backup those files as well as maintain my non-use files. I'm self-employed and want to keep my audiophile life 100% separate from my non-audiophile life. And it seems I don't need a ton of firepower to fuel the U2 Mini, such that a one-bay NAS from a good manufacturer like QNAP or Synology would be fine. But of course I might be wrong, and that's where you come in.

I guess an L1 remains an option, though budget-wise it's a stretch. But if Lumin users say it's made a big difference with respect to sound quality, ease of use, or both, I could be swayed to stretch the budget.

Thanks.
 
I've been using a QNAP TS-131 with a 4TB Seagate surveillance grade HDD for years. It's been great, it just keeps going. But I don't have much content on it. If I had a large collection of content I'd want a 2 bay NAS with RAID for peace of mind.
 
brodricj said:
I've been using a QNAP TS-131 with a 4TB Seagate surveillance grade HDD for years. It's been great, it just keeps going. But I don't have much content on it. If I had a large collection of content I'd want a 2 bay NAS with RAID for peace of mind.
Click to expand...

Thanks. That's one of two or three units I was looking at. Very helpful.

As for having RAID on an NAS dedicated solely to music ... I buy music maybe once a month, but usually several albums at a time, so I've been backing up my music to numerous and various drives (four at last count) once a month for years. I was thinking that having another larger NAS with RAID would actually give me double backups for my music files because they'd be on the "music NAS" and also on the "bigger NAS." Unlike my work files, I'm not adding to my music files daily so I don't see a need for immediate/daily backups. But maybe I'm missing something.
 
With a two disk RAID configuration you don't need to bother yourself with backups. If a disk goes kaput just replace it with another one and the file system will rebuild itself automatically from the parity data. My surveillance grade HDD has been spinning continuously for many years without issue. And I don't have a backup copy of any of its data.
 
Check out fanless x86 NAS for running MinimServer software, see if it serves your needs.

If you have to get an ARM NAS for some reason, please check it against MinimServer compatibility first.

2GB RAM is ok for a small library. If your library grows, you need more RAM.
 
brodricj said:
With a two disk RAID configuration you don't need to bother yourself with backups. If a disk goes kaput just replace it with another one and the file system will rebuild itself automatically from the parity data. My surveillance grade HDD has been spinning continuously for many years without issue. And I don't have a backup copy of any of its data.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but this is not a wise approach. NAS devices fail for reasons addition to hard drive failures. RAID is not a backup! Anyone with a music collection on a NAS should have a backup unless they don't care if they have lost all their music.
 
dminches said:
Sorry, but this is not a wise approach. NAS devices fail for reasons addition to hard drive failures. RAID is not a backup! Anyone with a music collection on a NAS should have a backup unless they don't care if they have lost all their music.
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Hi - not knocking your statement but I have a legit question for you (I used to work in data storage).

Knowing there are different kinds of RAID, and knowing that some employ multiple disks in one enclosure making full auto duplicates of all data in real time (same exact data, two different HD's, one enclosure) so short of it being stolen you have a back up copy, how is RAID not an option?

Again, not trying to argue, it's a legitimate question.
 
These are low probability scenarios, but not impossible: power surge killing more than one drive, or even fire. Enterprise-level data backup planning always involves off site backup. Consumers may just use a cloud service.

Now that people begin to use SSD for RAID, having more than one drive fail in the same period is more likely than mechanical drives. There are actually reports of this.
 
MichaelsMinute said:
Hi - not knocking your statement but I have a legit question for you (I used to work in data storage).

Knowing there are different kinds of RAID, and knowing that some employ multiple disks in one enclosure making full auto duplicates of all data in real time (same exact data, two different HD's, one enclosure) so short of it being stolen you have a back up copy, how is RAID not an option?

Again, not trying to argue, it's a legitimate question.
Click to expand...

RAID (with redundancy) is great to protect against a single drive failure. I have 4 NAS boxes and love them. However, I had one Synology volume crash and it was unrecoverable. If I didn't have a backup I would have lost all my data.
 
wklie said:
These are low probability scenarios, but not impossible: power surge killing more than one drive, or even fire. Enterprise-level data backup planning always involves off site backup. Consumers may just use a cloud service.

Now that people begin to use SSD for RAID, having more than one drive fail in the same period is more likely than mechanical drives. There are actually reports of this.
Click to expand...

Hi Peter - all true. We employed multiple off site backups throughout the US to account for weather disasters as well. I just meant that for a *reasonable* home set up of music and not nuclear secrets, RAID can certainly be a step in the right direction.

I actually keep multiple hard drives of my files in multiple safes. But it is never as up to date as the RAID drive for obvious reasons.
 
wklie said:
These are low probability scenarios, but not impossible: power surge killing more than one drive, or even fire. Enterprise-level data backup planning always involves off site backup. Consumers may just use a cloud service.
Click to expand...

Agree with Peter and dminches

RAID is a great fault tolerant feature, but it’s not a substitute for storing a backup offsite.
 
Peter and others ... thanks a lot for your replies and guidance.

In the last 24 hours, I've set out to learn some basics about computers, since I had no idea was x86 was. :) I was good with computers in 8th grade, but that was in 1980, the early era of Apple IIe computers, and, um, a lot has changed since then. [My dad, born in 1930, was a computer programmer and worked on massive mainframes in languages such as COBOL and FORTRAN and with memory-storage schemes such as punchcards and huge magnetic tape reels. I got into it for a while, but took a different path because, well, that's what kids do.]

Anyway, after doing some reading and watching YouTube videos, I tried an experiment and would be interested in thoughts.

At present, I am using a 2015 MacBook Air (4GB RAM) with MinimServer installed to run my music library off of an external 2TB USB drive. I've adjusted the settings so the computer does not go into sleep mode. It seems to be working just fine with my U2 Mini. This MacBook Air is a spare to a spare. In other words, it was two laptop computers ago. It was sitting there doing nothing, so I thought I'd put it into service.

Any downside to doing this, at least for now? As I understand it, using a Mac as a streamer is not a good idea because the sound quality is sub-par (I can attest to that), but here I am using it as a server, right? So there should be no effect on sound quality? My music library is only 900 gigabytes, so it fits fine on a 2TB USB drive. [I have my music library backed up on two other USB drives and two very old Western Digital external hard drives. It's safe, unless there's a fire. I need a NAS to replace the Western Digital drives.]

I tried getting this to work on a Mac Mini with an M1 chip, but I can't get MinimServer to open even after reading the instructions for installing Java on an M1 Mac, etc. I assume this is because there's no Intel inside?

This got me thinking though ... would it be worth getting a cheap, old Mac Mini (with Intel and at least 4GB RAM) off eBay for $100 be a good move if I pair it with a 2TB USB drive containing my music library? That's cheaper than getting a NAS with at least 2GB RAM dedicated to music. I have a closet in my home office where my laser printer sits alongside the old Western Digital drives, all wired to ethernet, so that's where the old MacBook Air is set up and where an old Mac Mini could go.

OK, back to the jazz I was listening to. :)
 
If you have a wired network connection from the MacBook Air, or your MacBook WiFi connection is really stable and you don't have any streaming issue with it, then that's ok.

For MinimServer on M1, please follow this to download the appropriate version of Java:

Installing MinimWatch 2 on Mac

If that still does not work and you really want it running on M1, please ask in MinimServer forum. I believe this is a solved issue and it really should work after some installation / configuration work.

I stated x86 instead of ARM only because I thought you were interested to buy an ARM NAS. ARM in consumer grade NAS is a different thing from M1 - these are different ARM chips at the two different ends of performance spectrum. One is (I believe) low performance budget lower power processor below x86, while your M1 actually exceeds the performance in Celeron x86 NAS.

With your library size you probably don't need to worry about RAM at this point.
 
wklie said:
If you have a wired network connection from the MacBook Air, or your MacBook WiFi connection is really stable and you don't have any streaming issue with it, then that's ok.

For MinimServer on M1, please follow this to download the appropriate version of Java:

Installing MinimWatch 2 on Mac

If that still does not work and you really want it running on M1, please ask in MinimServer forum. I believe this is a solved issue and it really should work after some installation / configuration work.

I stated x86 instead of ARM only because I thought you were interested to buy an ARM NAS. ARM in consumer grade NAS is a different thing from M1 - these are different ARM chips at the two different ends of performance spectrum. One is (I believe) low performance budget lower power processor below x86, while your M1 actually exceeds the performance in Celeron x86 NAS.

With your library size you probably don't need to worry about RAM at this point.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much for the guidance! I have a wired connection and it works very well in our 114-year-old house, thanks to the latest MoCA technology. (We renovated in 2010 and installed coax instead of ethernet, right before ethernet became a thing). Anything that can be hard-wired is hard-wired via ethernet/coax/MoCA.

I'll keep troubleshooting the M1 and see where it leads. I do need an NAS eventually for work reasons more than audio reasons, but it would be nice to assign music-server responsibilities to the M1 Mac Mini if possible.
 
SteveInMinn said:
Any downside to doing this, at least for now? As I understand it, using a Mac as a streamer is not a good idea because the sound quality is sub-par (I can attest to that), but here I am using it as a server, right? So there should be no effect on sound quality?
Click to expand...

People have learned that everything matters when it comes to digital audio. The only question is, "how much?"

NAS is not noiseless so what you have put together could be just as good. The only way to find out is to try other options and compare.
 
dminches said:
People have learned that everything matters when it comes to digital audio. The only question is, "how much?"
Click to expand...

VERY true. I just did a test last night between mass-market ethernet switches and to my surprise noticed a difference.
 
Emil said:
Mini 2 arrived yesterday!
Setup was a breeze. Hardest part was remembering my Tidal and Qobuz passwords.
No issues using my android tablet. Worked flawlessly.
Any way to change the background from white to dark?
Click to expand...

Hi Emil,
How do you find the U2 Mini compare to your Bluesound node? Does it sound better & how is the Lumin app compare to BluOS?

Thanks.
 
MichaelsMinute said:
VERY true. I just did a test last night between mass-market ethernet switches and to my surprise noticed a difference.
Click to expand...

Hi Michael,
Just curious why you were surprised there would be a difference. All switches reflect different design embodiments, and thus have different functionality and response to "noise factors". The switch is performing, at the highest level of abstraction, a transfer function, y=f(x). That transfer function is susceptible in it's "quality of output" to noise factors. Noise factors are anything and everything that impact or affect the mean, the median, or the variance (variance, S.D., or IQR) of the "response", and these metrics can impact the response individually, all togther, or more importantly, they can interact to create "failure modes" (a failure mode is anything that can go wrong) that may not occur from a single individual noise factor acting indepedently on a single key function. A simple example of an interaction folks can get their head around is Time*Temperature. When baking a cookie, a simple chemical transfer function, is it the interaction of time X temperature that results in a properly baked cookie, NOT Temp or Time alone. Well, not only can control factors that drive the response interact, but noise factors can interact as well.

In the real world, there are no perfect transfer functions. All functionality is impacted by noise or variance factors. Even in a circuit with 0V gain, there would be "shot noise" in the circuit, for example.

"Digital domain" devices e.g. routers and switches, network bridges, FMCs, optical transceiver, streamers, and digital cables, are susceptible to noise factors e.g. low- and high-source impedance leakage current, threshold jittter, deterministic jitter, phase noise and common-mode noise. Even the isolation transformers in the RJ45 jacks can contribute to the passage of leakage current, or if properly designed, as they were in EtherREGEN (which has 12 isolation transformers/port) can have an audible impact. Even how the cores for the isolation transformers in each jack are wound has an audible impact. This doesn't matter when sending a Word doc to a printer for printing a hard copy, but because our brains are so exquisitely sensitive to factors like timing and phase noise when listening to music "reproduced" as imperfect analog square wave voltages, all the factors listed above, and I'm sure others I haven't, have an audible impact. And with el-cheapo, consumer-grade switches using crap switch-mode power supplies, crap clocks, crap RJ45 jacks, crap isolation transformers, crap winding of the isolation transformers, crap isolation from vibration (digital clocks are extremely sensitive to the impact of vibration of their crystal oscillators), and crap wiring into crap cable replete with common-mode noise, it would logical to assume a lot of audio quality variability between Ethernet switch manufacturers.

Here's a much simpler way to get very high quality music from a source into a preamp section: put a well-mastered and pressed LP onto a Rega turntable.
 
Excited as ordered the U2 mini from my dealer, do the Lumin play cds by attaching a cd rom to it?
I know hifi rose does..

Thanks.
 
blackspider777 said:
Excited as ordered the U2 mini from my dealer, do the Lumin play cds by attaching a cd rom to it?
I know hifi rose does..

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Congrats on your new Lumin U2 Mini! It does not support a CD ROM drive, but since it will be feeding an external DAC you can instead connect a CD transport (or player with digital output) to another input of the DAC.
 
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