UnitiLite with N-Stream and Synology DS114

Posted by: Alex Mayer on 26 December 2013

Merry Christmas to you all,

 

since Christmas eve on I am trying to setup my new UnitiLite together with N-Stream and a Synology DS114. I spent hours on this forum and several others but I still have the following questions:

  1. I am coming from a full Apple environment with iTunes as my music library. What is the best way to migrate the library from my Mac to the NAS? Just copy the folders or better run the complete library on the NAS?
  2. I tried the Synology Media Server and the MinimServer as the UPNP server. To both N-Stream only connects in "UPNP Compatibility Mode" that obviously has some limitations (no playlists). Is that a limitation of these UPNP servers? If yes, is there a recommendation for a better UPNP server for a Sinology NAS (Logitech Media Server,….)?
  3. With both UPNP servers, I only get a few of the album covers displayed. What is the trick to get all cover arts synched?
  4. My wife and I have separate music libraries on our Macs. As I understand, one UPNP server can only manage one library. Can I run multiple UPNP servers (and how…..) that run the separate music libraries and can they be selected by N-Stream? 

I am sure these questions have already been answered but I am really missing a crisp best practice guide for my scenario - which I believe is a pretty common one.

 

Thanks in advance, regards

 

Alex

Posted on: 26 December 2013 by Sorren

Hi Alex

 

I don't pretend to be able to answer all of your questions, I'm not an apple user and so don't usen-stream but I might be able to help with some of your questions.

 

I use a Synology NAS and it's built in Upnp server. If you were to create 2 directories in the 'Music' directory on the box, one for you and one for your wife you could then copy in your music to one and hers to the other. That gets the music on the box and ready to go.

 

Next step. Connect to the box using a web browser to see it's desktop. For me it's http://server-name:5000/webman/index.cgi. At the top left of the screen is an icon with 4 squares and a triangle. Select this and you get a dropdown containing among other things an Icon for 'Media Server'. Select this and you should get a window including a drop down for 'DMA menu style'. Select custom1 then hit the custiomize button. Here you can create options for 'Album Artist/Album', etc. The interesting bit for you is that when you create a new/edit an existing option that there is a section to allow you to specify the directory on which that option will work. You can create/select one set of options for your directory and one for hers. You can give them whatever names you like so they should be easy to tell apart. If you leave the directory setting as the default then the server will display entries for both your and your wife's collections together.

 

It sounds complicated when written down but just give it a go and it's actually quite simple. Sorry I can't help with your other issues but I hope this helps.

Posted on: 26 December 2013 by Foxman50
Originally Posted by Alex Mayer:

Merry Christmas to you all,

 

since Christmas eve on I am trying to setup my new UnitiLite together with N-Stream and a Synology DS114. I spent hours on this forum and several others but I still have the following questions:

  1. I am coming from a full Apple environment with iTunes as my music library. What is the best way to migrate the library from my Mac to the NAS? Just copy the folders or better run the complete library on the NAS?

I would copy the directories to your NAS 

 

1.   I tried the Synology Media Server and the MinimServer as the UPNP server. To both N-Stream only connects in "UPNP Compatibility Mode" that obviously has some limitations (no playlists). Is that a limitation of these UPNP servers? If yes, is there a recommendation for a better UPNP server for a Sinology NAS (Logitech Media Server,….)?

 

I use a Synology 212j and this works fine, so i would imagine the 114 should be fine also.

  1. With both UPNP servers, I only get a few of the album covers displayed. What is the trick to get all cover arts synched?

sometimes it takes a while for the images to show, but check you have the image labelled as "folder.jpg" in the directory with your music files.

  1. My wife and I have separate music libraries on our Macs. As I understand, one UPNP server can only manage one library. Can I run multiple UPNP servers (and how…..) that run the separate music libraries and can they be selected by N-Stream? 

Why not use "Media Server" for one of you then set a new directory and use this with "Minimserver" for the other. This way it would be very simple to switch between them. They seem to run fine together on my 212j

 

I am sure these questions have already been answered but I am really missing a crisp best practice guide for my scenario - which I believe is a pretty common one.

 

Thanks in advance, regards

 

Alex