Using Synology Audio Station as control point for MinimServer

[magister]

I normally control MinimServer with the eLyric control point on my iPad. This weekend I forgot to bring my iPad, so I wanted to control my music from a laptop that is on the same network as my Synology NAS and PSA Perfect Wave DAC/Bridge.

I have Foobar2000 on the laptop, but couldn't get it to work. So I decided to try using Synology's Audio Station, which I had installed but never used. (Later I did have success with Foobar, but find it a bit more awkward than Audio Station.) One can use Audio Station as a server, but it will also work as a control point for MinimServer with the following steps. I list them here in case anyone else wants or needs to use Audio Station as a control point; it took me a while to find step #2, which is essential.

The following assumes that your Synology NAS is on and connected to the network, with MinimServer already installed, and that any external renderers you want to use (e.g., my Perfect Wave DAC) are turned on and connected also. See the attached screenshot.

1. Use a web browser to log in to your Diskstation, then start Audio Station. (Install it from the Package Center if not already done.)
2. Choose Settings/Privileges and check the boxes to give yourself (or any other users with accounts) the ability to access the UPnP renderer, UPnP browser, and to manage playlists, and to change tags if you wish. Until this is done you can't access the next two items.
3. In the panel at the left, click on Media Server. You will be presented with a list of all the servers available; in my case, these were the laptop itself and MinimServer. Doubleclick on MinimServer and you should see the same tags that you see in eLyric, Kinsky, or another control point when running MinimServer.
4. On the Audio Station menu bar, you will see in the center (rightmost of four items) a dropdown list where you can pick whatever renderer you want from those available; choices on my system were the laptop's sound card and my Perfect Wave DAC, which was automatically recognized.
5. Now use MinimServer's tags to browse music as usual, and add it to the queue (right-click).
6. On my laptop, at first the arrows to control playback, found at the bottom of the screen, were not visible and the Audio Station window refused to resize. I finally maximized Audio Station, then restored it to non-maximized size -- I'm sure there's a term for that but I don't know what it is -- and then everything was visible.

David

[advr]

Nice!!

[winxi]

Hi David,

many thanks for this detailed explanation! The Synology Audio Station is indeed a nice browser-based control point.

[uk75]

... or you could have downloaded & installed Linn's Kinsky. A matter of 2 minutes, and a very nice desktop-based control point. Just my .02

[magister]

Interesting . . . I have experimented with the Kinsky control point for my iPad but never thought to look for a PC-based version. I knew I had two things already installed, Foobar and Audio Station, so I first thought of trying them. The Kinsky iPad app has some nice features such as the circular volume and time remaining indicators. But the "rooms" thing seems odd if you have only one room (I know, it's just terminology, but still); more important, I find white text on a black background harder to read than the opposite, if the desktop app has the same look as the iPad app.

[uk75]

(10-04-2013 01:36)magister Wrote:  I find white text on a black background harder to read than the opposite, if the desktop app has the same look as the iPad app.

It looks almost exactly the same. But Kinsky is skinnable. Unfortunately, I do not know of any skins...

For the iPad, you could just reverse the ipad's screen so it displays black text on a white background (toggle can be set on the home button, triple tap it to switch back for a non-inverted view)

[magister]

Thanks -- I didn't know about inverting the colors!

[simoncn]

(09-04-2013 13:01)uk75 Wrote:  ... or you could have downloaded & installed Linn's Kinsky. A matter of 2 minutes, and a very nice desktop-based control point. Just my .02

I've used Kinsky on Windows, Mac, iPod and Android (I don't have an iPad), and I think the Windows version is the best. I particularly like the ability to get detailed information about a track by doing right-click > Details. As far as I know, this feature is available only in the Windows version.