HiWire

The Soft Boys – Underwater Moonlight

Happy Birthday!

Yes, I think the AMD demographic tends to go for hot-rod builds, but I had 2 motherboards, 2 video cards, and a TV tuner card fail in my 20-year experience with AMD (all ASUS) as well as multiple chip failures in MacBook Pros, so I'll avoid them in personal systems from now on. I did think about going with a different OEM (like Gigabyte), but I think the overall experience would be about the same. Speaking of Gigabyte:

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Bayou Country P.S. YouTube recommended Curb Your Enthusiasm's "Tickle Me Anus" after I listened to CCR's "Lookin' Out My Back Door"... Et tu, UToob? 🙈

I've had bad luck with AMD. A couple AMD-based motherboards and video cards have failed (all running at stock clock speeds), and none with Intel/Nvidia so far.

Congrats! I recommend using the Btrfs file system since Synology's newest features require it: https://www.synology.com/en-ca/dsm/Btrfs

Yes, and now I want a Vibanet! And he's so good at playing. Going to watch more of his videos.

How to play funk clav (he got the funk):

Leo Moracchioli – Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! St. Vincent – Pay Your Way in Pain Bowie via Beck The Choral Scholars of University College Dublin – Courting is a Pleasure

St. Vincent – These Days

Happy Birthday!

Donzig – Bad Mother

My takeaway is that they sound muffled and the vocals are not great and they sound like the 800S... his impressions made me look up his equipment on the YouTube video because I was curious what kind of source and headphone amp he was using, i.e., "What, no chorus of angels?"

The NAS never sleeps. If you can run web services on the box, the PC/Mac doesn't need to be an intermediary (Synology has a ton of apps – I usually start by looking at Synology's before going to the third-party lists). I think you can set up the Synology Download Station app to manage the torrents (documentation here): https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DownloadStation/download_setup

In practice (on Mac or Windows), you'll probably be auto-mounting the Synology folders via SMB when you boot up, so the rtorrent or qbittorrent clients might see them as regular volumes like your computer's drives.

Yes, link aggregation is good, but don't mistake it for turning two Gigabit ports into 250 MB/s transfer speed. Each port still operates at its own full speed, but link aggregation allows multiple clients to access the device at faster speeds (e.g., two computers can access the Synology at a full 125 MB/s each rather than 60MB/s over a shared link, theoretically). With a single client, you're still limited to the speed of the port.

If you see a need for that kind of performance – you could upgrade to two SATA SSDs in the trays if you were trying to improve the 220+ performance, but it would be expensive at current prices (and I'd only bother setting them up as RAID 1 – no need for striping with SSD speeds). With the various RAID sets, you need to migrate the data (i.e., copy it out) before reforming the RAID, which is a bit time consuming, whereas with Synology SHR you can add new disks without rebuilding the array. RAID 10 is theoretically fastest but it does waste a lot of disk space. Using an SSD cache makes the RAID type less relevant in general use, but the RAID type matters more if you're using an all-hard disk setup. I'd definitely recommend upgrading the RAM. Synology's DiskStation operating system is quite economical, but the more you do with a DiskStation, the more memory you'll want. The DS218 would be all right – the limiting factor is the single Gigabit Ethernet connection. At best, it will be able to move at about 125 MB/s (some modern hard drives can transfer about 250 MB/s). It all depends on your needs and plans to scale up.

Happy Birthday!

I don't know about the rtorrent or qbittorrent tracker question either, but the DiskStation you choose depends on your use case. The DS220+ has 2 bays and the DS420+ has 4 bays (and they use the same processor), for example, but the DS420+ also has 2 M.2 slots for NVMe SSD cache drives. Using a cache drive makes a huge difference in the performance of the box. In Synology boxes, you can use a minimum one SSD as a read cache or two SSDs as a read/write cache. From a home use perspective, the read cache is more important so you don't have to buy two SSDs. You don't have to set up a cache drive right away – you can always add one later. You can also expand the RAM on each box to 6GB (they have one slot for upgrading with 2GB on the board already). The DS220+ can run as JBOD (just a bunch of disks), RAID 0, and RAID 1. The DS420+ can run as JBOD, and RAID 0/1/5/6/10. Synology has a proprietary RAID version called SHR (SHR-1 and SHR-2) that allows you to dynamically build a RAID set with different drive sizes. Each RAID type describes the number of allowable drive failures (SHR-1 can tolerate one drive failure and SHR-2 can tolerate two drive failures in their arrays). I've heard that SHR-2 is a form of RAID 6. You need a minimum of one drive for SHR-1 (you can add more later) and four drives for SHR-2. You can use their RAID Calculator here to figure out how much storage to set up: https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator The higher-end DiskStation boxes include features like more powerful CPUs and higher RAM capacities, eSATA ports and 10 Gbit Ethernet ports, along with redundant power supplies, PCIe slots, and more disk bays.

This is a random one: Messer Chups – Magneto

Happy Birthday!

Kate Bush – The Dreaming I must be in the right mood... really enjoying the album this time. I think the other listens have been while I've been working, which doesn't help with such an intense array of sounds and ideas. Public Image Ltd – Metal Box

Happy Birthday!

Living in America – The Sounds

I missed their low-end prices (from the 90s), so I ended up getting the HD 599 SE... it's no HD 600, but it's much more versatile with portable devices. It's great for a $100 headphone, but not so much at $200+. Their prices went into the stratosphere like everyone else's, but I think they lost the message regarding the low and mid ranges of the market. It's possible that Apple destroyed this area by including free EarPods with most of their devices and now I see "cool" people wearing the AirPods instead of the ubiquitous over-ear DJ-style headphones or earbuds that were more common years ago.