I thought I'd share my thoughts with the three software alternatives in the title of this post. Take this with a pinch of salt as this is by no means a comprehensive test, but only brief experimentation by someone new to streaming. Anyway, here goes:
Having acquired a new NAS (a QNAP TS-269L) I thought I'd see which of the media server softwares I'd prefer running on my NAS. The options available on QNAP are (to my knowledge) TwonkyMedia, MinimServer and Asset UPnP. Of these three, Twonky is already installed (as is QNAP's own DLNA sever that is still in Beta stage). MinimServer is easily available and installed from the QNAP control software's app store and it was up an running in a matter of minutes. Asset UPnP one has to download onto one's computer and then manually install on the NAS. A small additional step, but it's no biggie as it only takes an additional minute or so.
My music is in one folder, ripped to or downloaded in lossless FLAC (from16/44.1 to 24/192). I use XLD for ripping on a MacBook Pro and Tag for further tagging if needed. In terms of folder structures, in the music folder each artist has its own subfolder and each album as a separate subfolder under the respective artist. Each album folder has the cover art in it and stored as a file titled "folder.jpg". The NAS connects to the same switch as the NDX that is my digital source. N-Stream is naturally the NDX control point on my iPad Mini. When testing I had all four server softwares running on the NAS and I switched between them in N-Stream.
So how do I like them and which one did I end up using?
Firstly, I was not expecting any surprises from Twonky because I have used it before and one of the reasons for buying a new NAS was that I was unhappy with Twonky and how it keeps on missing some of the cover art, putting the wrong cover art on some albums and also sometimes being less than logical when displaying compilations. It also seems to be a little inconsistent in the order in which it displays the tracks within an album. To its defence, I do like the fact that it automatically refreshes and displays the newly added albums. Furthermore, Twonky seems to always be available with no downtime - sort of set and forget. Having said that, it was not particularly responsive and it did appear to get even slower if I was adding multiple new albums while also streaming at the same time.
MinimServer (MS) eliminated the cover art issues entirely, which is great. It also felt a little quicker in operation compared to the Twonky (less time to update the album art, less time to switch from e.g. Album view to the Artist view). The tracks also seem to be displayed in the correct order. What I also like is the feedback that I get from the log in the MinimWatch software that one can install on their computer. This helped me spot a couple of tagging errors. Having said that, MS does not seem to like the sleep mode of the QNAP as every time the NAS has been asleep, I need to manually restart MS. Not good. I guess I'll just disable the sleep mode from the NAS. The computer interfaces and GUI to MS are also not very user friendly and they are unintuitive - at least for someone that is not computer literate (i.e. me). So I will not be able to explore the further tweaking opportunities available to the MS due to the combination of my lack of competence in IT and the MinimServer/MinimWatch interface. Aside from the dropping out after the NAS' sleep mode MS appears to be stable.
Asset UPnP (AU) takes things one step further from MinimSever by keeping all of the positives it has over Twonky as well as addressing MS interface issues noted above. In other words, no album art issues, no issues with the order of the tracks and also an easy to understand and use interface for the settings. I have not tried if AU drops out after the NAS goes into sleep mode (as I disabled that after the MS experience). It appears to me that AU also has more features than either Twonky or MS (dynamic browsing, more ways to search for albums & tracks, wtc). I also found it handy to try and convert the FLAC's to WAV on the fly to see if it affects the sound quality. I guess that is also something that the MS is capable of, but due to its interface I could not figure out how to do it. On the downside for AU, the additional features of AU also mean that before you actually get to play any music or browse the albums you need to go through more steps / menus.
A quick note on QNAP's own media server. It is still a beta version, so I assume it will still be polished a bit. Nevertheless, I did not get it to play music despite the albums and tracks being visible in N-Stream. But while browsing with it, I experienced similar album art issues as with Twonky. It also appeared slow - in some cases even less responsive than Twonky. This all was enough for me (after having used MinimServer and Asset UPnP) to decide not to explore this software any further.
Conclusions:
QNAP's own software drops out first because it does not seem to do anything better than the other three and because I could not get to play any music with it. Twonky is out next because of the album art and track sequencing issues. But as it stands, I am undecided between MinimServer and Asset UPnP. They both have pros and cons as follows:
MinimServer
+ Quick and responsive
+ No issues with cover art or track sequencing
+ Easy and simple interface on N-Stream
- User unfriendly configuration interface
- Appears incompatible with the sleep mode of the NAS
- Lack of features compared to Asset UPnP? (or at least this is diguised by the interface)
Asset UPnP
+ No issues with cover art or track sequencing
+ Easy to configure / user friendly interface
+ Fully featured
- Appears a bit slower/less responsive than MinimServer
- Number of features available makes the N-Stream interface perhaps too complex
Pending further explorations on the sound quality (by converting to WAV on the fly), I have decided to keep both MinimServer as well as Asset UPnP running...
Posted on: 30 July 2014 by Teme
Originally Posted by Sloop John B:
Great post. I also have Twonky and asset running on an older qnap 412. Logitech media server also runs on it to serve music to my squeezeboxes. I have to keep twonky as it also pushes movies etc to my WD box. I like asset as I'm a dBpoweramp user but my main issue is the nas not having enough welly (RAM) to be a seamless experience.
How much RAM and CPU does the minim server use compared to asset?
SJB
Thanks. After your reply I checked the QNAP App Center and the Logitech Media Server (LMS) is also available there - so I installed it on the NAS as well. It is very quick to operate (quicker than any of the others it seems). There was some tweaking I needed to do to get it working (changing some of the port settings and also switcing on the UPnP mode - but only after first stopping the server running). So not a perfectly plug&play solution, but easy enough. I have not yet spent much time with it, but now that it is running it also appears fully featured. I also need to investigate the configuration interface in more detail as it does appear fairly easily understandable (perhaps not quite as easy as Asset UPnP for me).
In terms of CPU / RAM usage on the NAS I do not see any significant difference between the Asset and MinimServer. I have currently all four (Twonky, MS, Asset and LMS) running. My NAS has 1Gb of RAM and the usage is hovering at around 55% when streaming regardless of the server software I am using. CPU use is betwene 0,5-2,5% when streaming. Perhaps I am not checking in the right way?
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:
Interesting summary. It's worth pointing out the interface structure as shown by NStream is completely configurable with Asset.. So if it's too fully featured or 'involved' you can edit it down, or as I do actually add to it to provide further navigable NStream structures.
Thank you for pointing that out. Yes, I will need to dig deeper into the settings in Asset. And I have also thought that once one is familiar with the interface structure, perhaps one cannot live without the additional features 
The ability to customise to match one's own preferences is a great feature in itself.
Posted on: 06 August 2014 by AntonD
Just installed MinimServer today. Synology 213+
Absolutely marvellous.
Was using the native media server but my classical collection is growing and the native upnp server has limitations here.
By creating custom tags, I can now do something like Composer->Beethoven->Composition->Symphony No. 5->Conductor->Karajan->Orchestra->Philharmonia
And any other variation on the same theme.
For classical music lovers this is fantastic.
Also, it's very fast, album artwork displays immediately and my nas resources are at 10% processor and 20% ram. I still have the native media server running too.
With MinimWatch installed on the Mac, it's very configurable. Probably limitless the way you can configure tags to be indexed, how they are displayed, the order, etc...
What an amazing upnp server.
I cannot recommend it highly enough!
ATB, Anton
