Synology Media Server - Folder cover

Hey everyone,

I juste received my brand new ND5 XS2 yesterday and tried to set it up.
It works perfecly expect that I have no art cover for the folders (by cover I mean the album cover itself). It’s quiet anoying because album covers help me browsing my music library efficiently.
I expected to have those covers because Audio Station shows me those covers when I list all the folders…but nothing in the naim app. Nothing either when browsing by album… it is only when I ask the app to list all the songs that I can see the album covers.

My folder structure is rather simple : NAS -> Folder (“artist name - album name -”) -> .flac + cover.jpg

I woud like to have that “.cover” showing when I browse by folder just as Audio Station does.

Songs have the “.cover” included in their metadata because I see the cover when actually playing a song but nothing for the folders…

If someone ever faced this issue :slight_smile: Thank you.

Welcome to the Naim forum Maxoumax6, you will find a lot of help to get you going in the world of Naim

Synology’s ‘Media Server’ included in the Synology Package Center is basic DLNA/UPnP software & does not show album art until you open the album, up to that point it only shows a ‘Folder’ icon.

Included in the Synology Package Center is Minimserver, this shows all the album art throughout browsing. Its a much better UPnP package, it requires some basic IT knowledge to install, it needs to have the Java package installed & also MinimWatch software to enable the GUI (web page)

Best for me is “Asset UPnP” (from Illustrate, dBpoweramp) has the full artwork display on the Naim app. Its is 100% my preferred media server, its so much easier to install with just the one software package compared to Minimserver. Its has an easy access configuration web page & the browsing tree paths it can be fine tuned to whatever you want. It has a free basic trail version for you try before buy & if you do decide to buy it, then its a one time for life licence that costs £23 / €26

Thank you very much Mike ! I just looked at Asset UPnP before your answer and it seems great indeed.

Thanks again for the solution!! :slight_smile:

In fact, you can display album cover with the integrated UPNP app.
You just need to activate it : launch the multimedia app, look at the option.
Moreover, you can choose the filenames to look as album art cover.

No need of minimserver to Asset UPNP to do this (even if Asset UPNP is by far better)

“Multimedia App” refers to Naim app? I didn’t see anything relative to album cover display.

It is not in the Naim app but inside the Synology OS.

You need to make 2 configurations:

  • first : in the indexing configuration, declare where are your music files and start the indexation. It is located in the main configuration panel
  • second : in the multimedia application, declare how you want the UPNP menu look, names for album art cover (folder.jpg or cover.jpg for example). You can declare several names, separator is “;”.

The multimedia application name is exactly “Media server” and is located in the top left menu on the main page (not in main panel).

Look here, it is well described : Clic here —Media Server / Synology—

It works well, consume low amount of CPU and RAM, and is compatible with nogap playing.

Hope this help (feel free to revert back to me if needed) and excuse my english language but I am a frog eater :stuck_out_tongue:

This is the normal & correct way to format Synology ‘Media Server’ I used it for a number of years, I don’t know of another way to set it up…
Unfortunately it does not show the album art until you actually open the album, its only folder view. With Minim & Asset you have the art all the way thru the browsing paths, I typically browse by the art only through all of Album, Album/Artist & Artist.
Also it will only play gapless if its not transcoding, when transcoding is set it will not only not join the gap, but it makes an unpleasant noise as well. The other thing with transcoding is it plays 24-bit files as 16-bit
Comparing my DS214 running Asset UPnP & Synology’s Media Server, there is very little difference in CPU & RAM load, typically 1-6% & 20-28%, all depending on 16, 24-bit, PCM or DSD & sample rate.

A problem I have run into with Synology NAS is that the AIF format albums I bought and downloaded from Qobuz will not play from the NAS. Artwork is displayed ok and the track listings for each album appear. Just refuses to play the tunes!! The same music files play okay if loaded onto a USB memory stick and plugged into the naim player.

Do any kind souls out there in naim land know of a simple way to enable AIF music files to play direct from the NAS?

Peter

Have you tried transcoding them to FLAC or WAV?

I’ve had issues with some AIFF someone gave me, & agree with Chris, try transcoding, but I just converted to WAV & that fixed it, FLAC should work just as well.
2nd is Qobuz, I’ve had more problems with them over metadata than any other vendor, in fact it’s only them I’ve had trouble with. You can go back to your Qobuz account & download another copy, this time try FLAC, they seem to get that right most times.

Chris/ Mike,

Thanks for your replies - I suspected that it would be possible to do both but was hoping there may be a simpler solution - during my subscription I bought and downloaded over 100 albums, several of which are collections with multiple albums included. Could be a rather long process downloading them over again but clearly this is an option with Qobuz as I can log back on and download the albums in a different format. Another suggestion someone provided was to buy something like a melco to use as music server with the synology as back up device. Apparently melco reads aiff files. Rather a costly solution though!

Peter

So does all of Synology’s hard & software, Minimserver & Asset via the Naim app & all on my NDX.
Like I said yesterday, I’ve found something wrong with the AIFF file format I was given & also some from Qobuz, not with the hardware.

Mike

Sorry - I didn’t fully appreciate what you were saying. The odd thing is that when I stick a random album on a memory stick they play fine. Similarly my portable sony hi-res player has played the albums without any problems. On top of this I checked with my local dealer and they advised that I needed to change from aiff format when using a NAS drive.

I am very ignorant of all things digital - do you think that there could be something slightly wrong with the AIFF files re synology but which would still allow them to be played via usb stick and portable player? I have no idea how sensitive these things are.

Peter

I have a Synology DS718+ and my music library of approx 400 albums, all as AIFF. I have had no problems at all.

I doubt very much its a Synology hardware issue, AIFF has played OK on my Synology, also see @kend’s post above & many others in the past where AIFF plays OK.
It might possibly be something in whatever your Synology UPnP media server you have (please tell me what it is) as that might have an option to enable/disable some codec types.

In my own case where I had issues with AIFF files, they were files that someone gave me & I believe they originated from iTunes. I used dBpoweramp to convert them to WAV, this is another uncompressed codec & they then played OK.
BTW all my music is in WAV (or DSD)

If you don’t have the know-how to convert codec & edit metadata etc, I would just go back to your Qobuz account & get one or two of the albums in FLAC & see how they play, you can download a previous purchase from Qobuz multiple times (for free) Then we can go from there

Not Synology, but I found MinimServer did not play all my AIFFs. I tracked this down to metadata issues. I used XLD to convert to FLAC and then back to AIFF and everything was fine. I also found converting from AIFF to AIFF did the trick.

I think the problem was with odd character’s in song titles such us an accented letter or quotation marks.

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You don’t need to download them again, just convert the format of the existing files. Try it with a single album, and you’ll soon find out if it solves your problem.

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I’m wondering if I would be better off to bite the proverbial bullet and get another box, such as melco or innuos. Other comments received have suggested these would provide a significant sound quality improvement over the synology nas. This route may utilise the aiff files issue, but from my experience thus far with digital music, no doubt there will be new challenges presented…

Peter

That sounds like a very expensive way to resolve a file compatibility problem that can almost certainly be fixed with no cost.
If a different server might improve sound quality, that’s another question altogether. Careful home demo required, I think.

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Couldn’t agree more. Patience required on my part for 2020!!

Peter