Use with Synology 415play and Sonos?

[Latefordinner]

Hi. I have installed MinimServer on my Synology 415play. All I want to do is use the Synology to feed music to my Sonos system to overcome Sonos's 65,000-track limit. Is it possible to use MinimServer to automatically feed the music to my Sonos system and overcome the limit?

Also, how do I point Sonos to MinimServer? I know how to point Sonos to the Synology itself, but I have no idea how to get it to find MinimServer.

Thanks.

[simoncn]

(28-08-2015 08:54)Latefordinner Wrote:  Hi. I have installed MinimServer on my Synology 415play. All I want to do is use the Synology to feed music to my Sonos system to overcome Sonos's 65,000-track limit. Is it possible to use MinimServer to automatically feed the music to my Sonos system and overcome the limit?

Also, how do I point Sonos to MinimServer? I know how to point Sonos to the Synology itself, but I have no idea how to get it to find MinimServer.

Thanks.

The Sonos control software isn't compatible with standard UPnP servers, so you can't "point Sonos to MinimServer". However, a Sonos player can function as a standard UPnP renderer, so you can "point MinimServer to Sonos" by using a standard UPnP control point (for example, BubbleUPnP) to select a Sonos player as the renderer.

[Latefordinner]

(29-08-2015 10:32)simoncn Wrote:  

(28-08-2015 08:54)Latefordinner Wrote:  Hi. I have installed MinimServer on my Synology 415play. All I want to do is use the Synology to feed music to my Sonos system to overcome Sonos's 65,000-track limit. Is it possible to use MinimServer to automatically feed the music to my Sonos system and overcome the limit?

Also, how do I point Sonos to MinimServer? I know how to point Sonos to the Synology itself, but I have no idea how to get it to find MinimServer.

Thanks.

The Sonos control software isn't compatible with standard UPnP servers, so you can't "point Sonos to MinimServer". However, a Sonos player can function as a standard UPnP renderer, so you can "point MinimServer to Sonos" by using a standard UPnP control point (for example, BubbleUPnP) to select a Sonos player as the renderer.

Thank you for responding. I am afraid I am not well versed in this stuff. When you say a Sonos play can function as a standard UPnP rendered so that I can point MinimServer to Sonos, what does that mean in practice? I have MinimServer installed on a Synology 415play NAS, so would that mean that I would log in to the Synology through a network computer and issue commands to MinimServer to play things that Sonos controls?

My goal--and I don't know whether this is possible--is to use Sonos's control software (residing on an iPhone, iPads, and computers) to play music stored on the Synology. The problem is that Sonos can't index more than 65,000 tracks, though Sonos tells me that, if I found a true UPnP server, the UPnP server could push the music to the Sonos and overcome the 65,000-track limit.

For example, Sonos says that using a Windows computer to run Media Player would accomplish that goal but that I would have to have the computer running anytime I wanted to play music. I was hoping that I could perform that function from a NAS (the Synology) so that I don't have to run a computer 24 hours a day (and rely on a program that Microsoft has already retired through Windows 10).

Thanks again for your help.

[simoncn]

(29-08-2015 15:50)Latefordinner Wrote:  Thank you for responding. I am afraid I am not well versed in this stuff. When you say a Sonos play can function as a standard UPnP rendered so that I can point MinimServer to Sonos, what does that mean in practice? I have MinimServer installed on a Synology 415play NAS, so would that mean that I would log in to the Synology through a network computer and issue commands to MinimServer to play things that Sonos controls?

My goal--and I don't know whether this is possible--is to use Sonos's control software (residing on an iPhone, iPads, and computers) to play music stored on the Synology. The problem is that Sonos can't index more than 65,000 tracks, though Sonos tells me that, if I found a true UPnP server, the UPnP server could push the music to the Sonos and overcome the 65,000-track limit.

For example, Sonos says that using a Windows computer to run Media Player would accomplish that goal but that I would have to have the computer running anytime I wanted to play music. I was hoping that I could perform that function from a NAS (the Synology) so that I don't have to run a computer 24 hours a day (and rely on a program that Microsoft has already retired through Windows 10).

Thanks again for your help.

The Sonos idea of a "true" UPnP server doesn't match the UPnP specifications or the industry standards for what this means. It seems that the Sonos control app is doing something nonstandard that is specific to Windows Media Player. Unfortiunately, Sonos doesn't provide any documentation saying what nonstandard protocol they are using. If I could discover the secret, it might be possible for me to add support for this to MinimServer but so far my attempts to do this have not been successful.

Because of this Sonos UPnP issue, it is not possible to use the Sonos control software to play music served from a Synology NAS by MinimServer. The only way to do this would be to use a UPnP control point app instead of the Sonos control app.

BubbleUPnP is an excellent UPnP control point that runs on Android devices. There are other UPnP control point apps that run on iPhone and/or iPad. These apps work with MinimServer and Sonos and would do what you need but for various reasons they aren't as good as BubbleUPnP. The iPhone/iPad apps that I have tried are 8player, Audionet IMM, mconnect, MediaConnect, AirAV, iMediaShare and PlugPlayer.

[simoncn]

For completeness, I should also mention that the Synology DS Audio app for iOS and Android can play audio files from a Synology NAS to a Sonos UPnP renderer. In this case, the audio files are found by reading the Synology NAS file system directly and there is no UPnP server involved.

[Latefordinner]

(29-08-2015 21:21)simoncn Wrote:  For completeness, I should also mention that the Synology DS Audio app for iOS and Android can play audio files from a Synology NAS to a Sonos UPnP renderer. In this case, the audio files are found by reading the Synology NAS file system directly and there is no UPnP server involved.

Thanks. I think I have it set up that way, but I think that setup is what is bumping up against the track limit. It doesn't find all my music.

[simoncn]

(29-08-2015 21:43)Latefordinner Wrote:  Thanks. I think I have it set up that way, but I think that setup is what is bumping up against the track limit. It doesn't find all my music.

Can you try using MinimServer and one of the iOS control points I mentioned in this post?