Synology set up for Mac

[Timinla]

I am setting up a Synology NAS to store music files. It will be accessed by my Mac Mini. Any suggestions on set up? I'll be using itunes and probably Jriver and Roon.

[DavidL]

I bought a Synology NAS because the consensus here and elsewhere was that it is easy to set up. I found this to be true: I just followed the "Getting Started" instructions in the User's Guide for the basic creation of users, shared folders etc.

 

Access from a Mac is very simple - just use the web address of the NAS on your local network. The Synology 'desktop' for control is easy to use.

 

The main decision you need to make is what software to use to serve your music. I found the easiest way to set up my music library which had been in iTunes on my Mac was to move / copy the whole lot (i.e. the 'iTunes' folder and all its contents) to the NAS. I chose not to use iTunes for playback because of its known limitations in this role, but I have continued to use it for adding music to the library and curating the library, for which iTunes is excellent.

 

I chose to install MinimServer on the NAS (which I pointed to the 'Music' folder under the iTunes folder) and use BubbleUPnP on an Android tablet to control playback. Before that I tried JRiver installed on the Mac, controlled by JRemote on a tablet but for me this was too much of hassle - there were too many options available in JRiver and insufficient guidance available for setup. You may find the effort to get it running as you wish worthwhile, but I opted for the simpler option of MinimServer / BubbleUPnP which does not require the Mac computer to be running except when modifying the library.

 

One word of warning: metadata! No problems or at least very few if your library is mainly popular / folk / jazz, however 'commercial' metadata for classical music is a mess so be prepared to setup your own 'standard' for storing works, composers, artists, album artists. As your library grows investment of time in this will be increasingly valuable if you want to access your music easily. Software such as JRiver and Roon have excellent GUIs but if you are not careful they can play havoc with metadata if you let them organise your music library.