getmusicbee.com
Support => Questions => Topic started by: Mr. Trev on May 16, 2014, 02:58:31 AM
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Hey all. So I just got a NAS (WD MyCloud) and would like some advice on the best way to set it up for MB usage. I got it set to use a static ip, mapped a network drive letter, chased down most of the biggest latency probs.
So far it seems to be working well - or a least much better than when I first set it up (can actually stream hi-res files wirelessly without many hiccups), but one big problem I have right now is that it takes forever to search for new files. Granted my library is closing in on 1 TB, but even doing updates when I was streaming off a portable drive was never even remotely this slow. Is this just the unfortunate nature of wifi, or something else - thinking back even trying to update the lib with a ethernet cable was pretty slow too.
Got the latest version of MB - 2.4x. Running Win 7x64.
BTW still can't get the date added feature to work properly in auto playlist ???
Cheers
edit - for example...I just added 1 album (6 tracks) about an hour ago, and they still haven't showed up in my inbox (without even playing music at the same time).
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In the last two weeks I've purchased a QNAP NAS and a wireless router and will be trying to get everything talking together this weekend. My library is also approaching 1TB, rapidly growing as I re-rip everything to FLAC.
I'll let you know how I go.
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When I first got started I couldn't even play 320kbps mp3s without it skipping and popping. Was thinking it was a big waste of time and money. Took a bit of google work to get things sorted out (starting with the fact I needed to get an "optional" windows update just to get the nas to appear in my device manager). Didn't quite realize that file transfers were going to be this slow over wifi (plus my laptop only has usb2 so even that limits a wired connection.
Now, unless I'm doing some really heavy net use, or editing tags in MB, I can even play 24/192 over wifi with little probs. Just need to figure why library updates are soooo slow
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So after doing nothing more than shutting down and rebooting my laptop my library can't seem to find ~100gb of files that were there last night.
Here's a pic of my library setting if that'll help:
(http://i.imgur.com/wQDlJPg.jpg)
My NAS is also mapped to T:. Would it be better to use that for the monitored folder?. Would I just be better off using a portable install off my NAS?
Right now even a wired connection take forever to scan, and even with Foobar I have to delete and re-add the drive from my library each time I reboot, so maybe it's something with the network config (I'm pretty clueless about those things)
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Anybody have any suggestions? Hate to seem impatient, but right now it's taking longer to search for new music than it would take to actually listen to it, and I'm starting to think I might just say screw it and exchange the thing for a big USB drive and go back to using a portable install (that's what I was doing before and it was fine - way faster- , just starting to run out of space)
Only got a few days left to decide though so any input will help.
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Not sure, but could that have something to do with this report?
http://www.zdnet.com/western-digital-users-are-fed-up-with-my-cloud-failures-7000028154/
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@ Mr. Trev
check out here (http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/storage/western-digital-my-cloud-2tb.aspx) and here (http://letstalk-tech.com/wd-cloud-2tb-review/).
evidently, the WD MyCloud has great streaming speeds, but file transfer over wi-fi is fairly slow.
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Thanks for the help.
@redwing....I'm not trying to do any remote access so that's not the problem (seemed to be the base problem in the link you posted)
@Beelliever...Yup the steaming speeds are pretty good. I can listen to 24/192 over wifi without any hiccups (most of the time), and I realize that wifi transfers are slow. My biggest complaint right now though is getting musicbee to update any new music I upload. Did a couple of albums today, went out for a walk, came home after about 1 hr. and it still hadn't found any new files. Using my portable usb hd, I can do this in 10 min. max.
I just tried changing the monitored folders to the mapped drive instead of the network shares. A full library update (wired however) seemed to go a bit quicker.
I have until the end of the week to exchange, so I'll see if it works any better. In the mean time keep sending in suggestions, they are appreciated
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Got mine hooked up on the weekend and while I've noticed a few annoyances, I'd have to blame them on the slow wi-fi transfer speed than anything MB is doing.
Some FLAC files start stuttering if I try to do playback and volume analysis at the same time. Increasing the buffer size seems to have helped.
Volume analysis takes a lot longer than it used to.
I'm rebuilding my library one album at a time, so haven't had a problem with the time MB takes to find new tracks. I imagine if I was importing all 60,000 tracks at one time I'd have less success.
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When I did rebuild my lib. I just said the heck with it and plugged in the cat5. Took about ~1hr to do the entire +-25k tracks I have. I just don't want to have it take 1hr each time I want to add a single album. I wouldn't think just scanning for new tracks over wifi wouldn't really be all that taxing, but what do I know ;)
From what I can remember, with continuously monitor active, when I copied files to the chosen folders then they would pretty much instantly pop into my inbox if musicbee was running at the time. Shouldn't it still be reasonably quick using wifi under the same circumstancees?
Also is there any harm in just manually drag-n-dropping the files into my inbox after I copy them into the folder? I did try just now, and it did seem to work (esp. since after 45min musicbee still hadn't found the files itself).
Really would like to get this thing working smoother. it's really nice not having to pack around a hd when I want to listen to music on my laptop (I do have a pretty sketchy relationship with gravity, and almost dropped my hd on many occasions).
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Increasing the buffer size seems to have helped.
do you get any stutter with the large buffer and not doing anything else?
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I just don't want to have it take 1hr each time I want to add a single album. I wouldn't think just scanning for new tracks over wifi wouldn't really be all that taxing, but what do I know ;)
Sorry, I didn't realise that's what you meant. Finding a single new album and adding it to the Inbox still shouldn't take any time at all, so I think there's definitely a problem there somewhere.
Also is there any harm in just manually drag-n-dropping the files into my inbox after I copy them into the folder? I did try just now, and it did seem to work (esp. since after 45min musicbee still hadn't found the files itself).
Nope. It's just a different way of adding tracks to the Inbox - once it's in there everything else will work the same as if MB had found it automatically.
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@ Mr. Trev
the only other things that I can think of:
- try disabling windows defender real time scan (if used).
- go to control panel, then to "services" and make sure that the following 4 settings are set to "Automatic" and that they are started:
1. DHCP Client
2. NET TCP Port Sharing Service
3. SSDP Discovery
4. UPnP Device Host
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So, I disabled defender (anyway to uninstall completely), turned on net tcp (the rest were already running), and copied over another album.
By the time the copy & verify (I use teracopy) was finished, the files were waiting i my inbox ;D. That's how it should be.
I'll add some more later, to make sure it wasn't just a fluke.
Thanks all!
I'm also thinking about turning on the auto-organise. What sort of can of worms am I opening there? (does it make copies of the existing file, or just move the current ones - do the originals remain in place? How long can I expect it to take (I shouldn't do this over wifi right)? From what I remember, doing this with itunes, I ended up with 2 copies of all my music (originals - which I later deleted, and the organised folder)
<edit> Well, it seems that if I have musicbee running before/while I copy the files over, they appear in my inbox almost immediately. But if I copy the files first, and then launch mb later and let it find them on its own, it take a strangely long time. Oh so close.
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Auto-organise just moves your files (and associated non-media files if the option's ticked) to a folder and filename hierachy as specified by your template. No copies are made. The size of your library (and probably the complexity of your template) affects the time, but it really shouldn't take too long as it's just moving files from one part of a hard-drive to another. Max 1 hour I'd guess (no experience of using the feature here by the way!)?
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A further update....
It seems that one of the things that has been causing some problems is that when the NAS goes into sleep mode, MB won't always wake it up when I launch. Of course this makes MB think my library is missing, which means I have to relaunch and completely rescan all over again (which takes forever, still not sure why). As long as the NAS is active before I launch MB things will run smoothly - again except for the slow scan for new files (I still need to manually drag n drop files in my inbox)
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A further update....
It seems that one of the things that has been causing some problems is that when the NAS goes into sleep mode, MB won't always wake it up when I launch. Of course this makes MB think my library is missing, which means I have to relaunch and completely rescan all over again (which takes forever, still not sure why). As long as the NAS is active before I launch MB things will run smoothly - again except for the slow scan for new files (I still need to manually drag n drop files in my inbox)
Perhaps you could write a batch file script that wakes up the NAS and then after a delay launches MusicBee.
It's not a perfect solution but it might help.
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there is a windows API call MB could use to test the power state - i will try something for the weekend but i wont be able to test it myself so will need someone to do that
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I have a Synology 112j and one reason for getting this device over WD was that WD had various speed issues. On the other hand, WD is cheaper; mine was Eur 230 incl HD over a year ago.
I have the MB library on my notebook and only the files on my NAS. I have zero speed issues when playing tracks, only rescanning the library, big renaming tasks or syncing a device (plugged to my Notebook through usb) is slow.
However, I have posted issues here http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=12505.msg75833#msg75833 and here http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=10925.msg66449#msg66449.
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@ Steven... I could give it a try if it's not too complicated (I'm pretty clueless when it comes to the inner workings of PCs).
I went with the WD because it's more or less idiot-proof to set up. Just don't have the patience to learn all the stuff needed for a "proper" NAS setup. Plus I only have 1 PC to access it so I really don't need any extravagant functionality. In hindsight I probably would've been better off just getting another external HD. My streaming speed has been awesome on the other hand, can even stream hi-res files over wi-fi without dropouts. I guess that slows scans/updates are just going to be the nature of the beast. Most of the time I will do my file transfers to the NAS before I even launch MB so that ensures the it will be active, and often MB will wake it up before it decides the files are missing (takes a while though).
I'm thinking maybe I could just disable sleep mode entirely, but not if it means the HD will end up spinning 24/7. I still have to look into that further.
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i had a look at detecting when a disc is suspended. I can get it working for a local physical disc/ or a USB drive but cant seem to get it working with a network share so unfortunately it doesnt look like i can automate a solution.
However i dont think you need to rescan your files. If MB detects the drive is not ready then as you will have seen it will mark the files are not accessible. If you untick "check for updated files" and "remove dead links" in the library preferences then MB wont do this check on startup (i expect it would also be quite slow to do this check over your network connection).
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I had a look at my prefs, and I did have "check for updated files" deselected, but "remove dead links" was selected. I have them both turned off now, and will see how it goes. The other day after MB couldn't find the files, and I relaunched I ended up looking at the splash screen for ~45 min. before I could use the program. I assume this is because MB is rescanning?