iMac or NAS and unitiQute

A lot of issues in your simple question

General consensus has been that Playback on a Mac is not as reliable as some of the other UPnP options on Windows and Nas'es.  But you will find people who run Playback and say that it's fine for them.

You mentioned iTunes.  iTunes libraries and UPnP server libraries are, I believe, hard to make compatible.  iTunes likes the library organized in a certain way, and UPnP servers also like the libraries to be organized in a certain way . . . but a different way.  If you are thinking about a true UPnP server to serve to your Qute, you might well ignore iTunes.

IMHO Synology makes a fine nas.  Others are quite happy with Qnap, but my only experience is with Synology.  Their music server works quite well serving music to my NDS.  But if you are trying to mix iTunes server and UPnP server "stuff" . . . I'm not sure you'll ever be satisfied.  

Getting a NAS will allow you to free up your iMac from serving duties. Unfortunately as Bart points out, most UPnP servers running on NAS drives won't serve an iTunes managed library correctly. If you want to continue using iTunes to manage your library then either continue what you are doing at present with the IMac or buy a used 1st generation Mac Mini and run it headless. This is how I do it and Playback works faultlessly for me. 

James

Thanks for your aid.

So if I understand correctly, it could be better to reorganize my music with another media app. It could be gainful to rank on a "different way" many years of music. Well... I don't know, I have to think about that... Especially as Playback looks to work well up to now (for information : Eye connect didn't work well when the iTunes library was on an external drive). But I'm beginning to discover the gap problem between UPnP and iTunes so I have every thing to learn.  Do you have any suggestion to replace iTunes by a reliable app ?

Do you think it's a better way to use a NAS (I thought to use a Synology DS213+) , or it's a good solution to let my iMac serve the music ?

I hope you will continue to help me in my thinking.

Hi

If you decide to look for a decent program to run your music you may like to wait a while for J River MC18 to be released for the Mac. Its said to be almost ready for beta release but, of course, this will almost certainly mean that it is a little rough around the edges to begin with for a while but if Playlists are important to you then you will be in for a treat. There are several built in system generated Playlists to get you started to which you can add your own that you can construct using virtually any criteria you wish from the Tags in your files. It’s like having a radio station that only plays your music but without the inane crap from a DJ.

If you think this may be of interest do a search for ‘J River Interact Forum’ and select the 1^st category ‘Media Centre 18’ then scroll down to ‘Mac OSX Progress Report’ as this is where its release will first be notified.

Hope you may find this useful and welcome to the forum.

Peter

I've used a Synology NAS for almost two years now.  I use a Mac to access the Synology -- no problems at all.

I use the Synology UPnP server to stream to my NDS.  Works well.

My home network is all Mac and Apple (Time Capsule is my primary router, wifi network shared to an Airport Extreme).  All of my home computers are Mac's except when I bring home my ThinkPad from work.

Synology is fully compatible.  The primary way to interface with it is web-based anyway.  And my Synology nas always shows up in Finder.  I never have any problem logging into it.

Thank you all for your enlightening interventions.  I think I can make a choice now.