UPnP Server help please

It should work, but looking around the web people have experienced issues. Presumably you have them in apple lossless for itunes?

Most of my CD's were ripped a few years ago before I had really heard of Flac and as I had Mac stuff etc lossless seemed the right way to do it .Haven't used XLD for ages , may try converting an album to Flac to see . 

Seems odd as Twonky works fine .

Which qnap nas have you got? It may be possible for you to install Asset UPnP on it, which is the best UPnP server software available (aside from the UnitiServe of course!)

A very easy way to decide if the issues is with plex on the qnap is to stick a PLEX server  on your mac, point it at some of that lossless and see where you get.

It is a TS219P+

Asset does not seem to be an option , only Twonky , Plex and Minimserver .

Minimserver seemed too technical , I liked the ease of use of Plex .

Just converted an album to Flac and it played perfectly ! Bugger .

Asset should go on that, you have to install it manually. Type 'Asset upnp qnap' into google and it should appear as the first result. It guides you through the installation.

You can also set it to transcode to WAV which will sound a little better.

Thank you , I will give it a bash .

As much as I like the Asset UPnP Server - I think it's the best of the few I've tried - I've had to disable it due to RAM usage.

I see that the QNAP TS219P+ has 0.5GB RAM - the same as my 419PII model - and it can't handle a large collection of music.  Or, rather, it runs out of RAM if you're trying to modify tags, etc. whilst playing music.

I'm now thinking that my next upgrade will be a NAS with at least 2GB RAM.

Mitch

The TS-269 could be a good upgrade for you. I don't know if you can hot-swap drives between enclosures and still keep the data though...

Sorry for the delayed reply , been busy tearing my hair out !!

I must admit the Ram of the NAS never even crossed my mind . Interesting .

Since my last post I noticed that even though I had 2 x 3Tb WD Red drives installed my total capacity was only 655Gb I must have had it set to some high Raid setting  , that plus with the faff of trying to install Plex I have decided to start again !

I now have a folder on my iMac with my music in Apple Lossless as well as another folder with the same music but in Flac .

A third small folder with my HiRes downloads from Qobuz ( also backed up on Dropbox ) 

Last night I took great pleasure in reformatting my NAS !! 

Time for a bit of NAS shopping I think .

Is it a fact then?

I have to say that I prefer MinimServer.  It has a much greater flexibility than Asset or any of the others and is rock solid.

I do not think it is too technical, I spent more time faffing around with Twonky than Minim and although you have to install it on QNAP you do have a much greater level of support with this product.

MinimServer is running on my Synology nas, and it seems to work pretty well.  It doesn't seem to see ALL of my album art, and I wonder if merely having the art named folder.jpg in the folder is enough.  Because my UnitiServe sees all the album art.  It seems happy transcoding flac to wav for me.

I use a couple of buffalo linkstation 410's, one holds my library, the other is back up/24/96 files.

They come with itunes server installed and work well as long as you keep the art work size down to below 500 x 500.

This set up works well for me as I use itunes to catalogue all my media.

They also do the duo linkstations that take two drives and again they're fast and reliable as well as handy with the built in itunes server & DNLA.

I don't get any drop outs at all when playing music, even when editing tags etc at the same time and of course the laptop doesn't have to be on for me to listen to music or listen to my collection of old radio shows.

I run Minim on QNAP412 and have no trouble seeing the album art.  For ripped music I simply place a file names folder.jpg (as you also do) and it see it.

Have you tried putting this problem up on the minim forum?  You will find that the author of MinimServer will happily help you.  Possiby what the magicaxeman is saying is the reason but that would surely mean you would see some but not others.

btw where do you get your album art from?  I use Amazon but if you are scanning them in then they could easily be too large.

Every day is a learning day !

I didn't use Minimserver on the Qnap because it looked a bit complicated . Also reading their website guides was also a bit daunting .

Anyway , just decided to install it on my iMac ( still not sure what I was doing ) , pointed it at my Apple lossless file and off it went . Looked at the log file and lots of warnings and errors which looked like Greek to me . Not promising . 

Anyway , just looked on my Naim app on the iPad and all my music is there and playing perfectly on the Unity Qute2 . A few album art missing and the odd album it can't see due naming issues but I can fix that with Metadatics .

Now I see what you were all talking about .

Good fun !

AS332...I have a Qnap NAS, and I used Twonky for nearly 3 years. Then one day whilst trawling through the Qnap apps, I came accross PLEX and Minim. I could not work out how to set up Minim in the slightest, and if that label's me as thick, then so be it. However, when I loaded PLEX it was so easy!! It has found 99.9% of the artwork and other metadata. And...it displays and plays my music as per the original track listings, not alphabetically like Twonky.

When I opened the browser on my iMac it didplayed PLEX beautifully, but would not play any files. (WAV, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF) I then downloaded the Computer version of PLEX, and it plays ALL files flawlessly. It is important to remember, there are two versions of PLEX. Computer & NAS, which appear to work slightly different.

I will continue to play with MinimServer.  It's a 'backup' right now to my uServe, but Ive been having home network issues lately and sometimes go to the nas/MinimServer to make sure it's not the uServe that is the issue. It's not (it seems to be my Time Capsule, which I will discuss on a new thread).

I copy and past the album art from online sources, including Amazon.  But some might be too big if there is a limit!

I managed to install Minim on my Synology nas.  I followed the online guide rather literally.  Had to install a Java 'thing' . .  then Minim . . . but it did all install and run as intended.  Since then there was a Java thing update that I installed and did not break Minim   I know it sounds a bit complicated but it's doable and you learn in the process.

Thanks Meerkat ,

The issue I had with Plex ( could be my NAS ) was that although it looked good , I could not get my entire library to work on the Naim app . It was constantly trying to load albums etc . I tried loading my library 10% at a time in to Plex but the same thing happened three quarters of the way through .   

Irrelevant of what model Qnap we are both using, the software running the NAS is the same. (4.1.2)

I updated the Qnap software yesterday, to 4.1.2. There also an update to PLEX from 0.9.9.14 to 0.9.11.7.8. Try these before you give up hope with PLEX. I did the update to PLEX (NAS app) manually, as the app still shows the previous software version.

It really should work, ask garyi!

Good luck

The problem is these qnaps and synologies are basically the lowest quality spec of computer you can buy, I bet an iPhone 6 has more processing power.

I run plex from a 'real' server and its like lightening and I have no issues with it. I did have a qnap for a couple of years, its alright for back up, but its weaker than an orange juice and lemonade.

I run a QNAP 412 with 4 x 2TB hot swap hard disks which gives me 4TB in RAID 0+1.  Erm where did you get your iPad with that much disk space, RAID 0+1, hot swappable hard disks?

The 412 uses a dual core 1.8GHz Intel Atom, more than a match for the little piddler in my iPad.

Mind you unlike the iPhone it can't make calls.

The reason these boxes don't use the latest Intel i7 or whatever, is that they are designed to use very little power.  You also have to remember that they don't have to host a GUI, just serve files and run upnp servers or database servers.

If I check the processor usage when I am using my NAIM UnitiLite there is always plenty of gas available.  In fact I always have a MySQL database server (+ other bits and bobs) running too.

I run MinimServer on it and I also have no issues with it.  I have tried Plex but I find MinimServer is much more flexible.  Its ability for tailoring the decision tree is streets ahead of any of the others and this is brilliant for classical fans.

Perhaps you should host a upnp server on your iPad, see how that compares to a QNAP or Synology.

Yeah I must admit Bart I forgot about the Java installation because I had installed it before I installed MinimServer for some work I was doing, I just needed to upgraded it.

I think MinimServer is reasonably simple and as I have said before it is really very well supported.  The software author (or other users) will do his utmost to help you fix any issues.  The key to it is not to fiddle with it too much at the beginning.  But you could try to put some extra tabs in - now that is fun when you see them appear on the NAIM app on your tablet.  I have created a number of extra tabs, for example, I have one called Main Genre which contain:  Classical, Rock, Folk, Jazz, Pop or AudioBooks.  This allows me to "section" my collection.  You can then take it from there.

ps sitting listening to Soft Machine Third - I had forgotten what a great album it is.

I use Minim on my Synology and it's rock solid. It's fiddly to set up and not the most friendly, but it works perfectly and transcodes to WAV. Since I put in a (cheap) switch, it has been flawless. I have no idea which chip is in the NAS or how it compares to a phone, but it has more than enough as it's quick and trouble-free. It's also quiet. I haven't compared many other options (eg Asset) but this combo is very good and cheaper than many. 

My point exactly.  Why use server hardware that has a lot more power than you need?  No point at all.

NAS boxes are small and low power and do the job - what more is there?