Is there a NAS solution that actually works reliably with iTunes? (sure seems not)

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Level 1

7 points

Is there a NAS solution that actually works reliably with iTunes? (sure seems not)

Hi,

My purchase of an Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive cloud edition (NAS) to use with iTunes started me on a long-distance journey around the globe in dozens of online forums - both on the Iomega side and on the Apple side - in a fruitless search to find out how to make this device - supposedly out-of-the-box compatible with iTunes - actually work. Score: 0-0-0 after days of research.

The problem is simple. The NAS has a built-in media server based on DAAP. This makes it visible as a shared music location in iTunes - and it does show up fine on the left side of the iTunes window. You click on the servername and it opens a list of the music on the NAS - groovey. Click on one of the tracks - doesn't play.

After lengthy searches, de-installs, re-installs, resets, I thought I found the answer when several forums showed this problem afflicts many different NAS solutions - not just mine, and the supposed problem was really iTunes version 10. By downgrading to iTunes 9, many people found it working. Some not. I'm one of the 'nots'.

I am a fairly savvy PC user, not a mac expert but I know about settings and protocols and can understand most of the really technical jabber on this topic in the forums. Many much smarter people than me have not found a solution - nor really identified the problem - iTunes, NAS, sun spots. Some speculate that iTunes 10 was deliberately sabotaged by Apple to not work with NAS. These issues are hitting Mac and PC users indiscriminately.

I am ready go NON-JOBS, rip out all iTunes/QT, return this NAS, smash my iPhone, and seek a completely GATES way to do portable and served music. Apple is supposed to be utopia for media lovers. Can someone rescue me from this terrible fate??

Is there any reliable NAS solution to serve music via iTunes? Or a fix for the one I have?

Phil

Here are my specs for anyone interested:

Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive (cloud edition)

iTunes 10.x

Windows XP SP3

Direct router connection to NAS and PCs

HP, iPhone OS 3.1.2

Posted on Jun 22, 2011 8:34 PM

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Answer 1

Jolly Giant

Level 7

25,464 points

Jun 23, 2011 2:24 AM in response to Niteowl01

i found that Synology products play nice with Macs. can't say much about how they work with winsloth machines.

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Answer 2

Jun 23, 2011 6:33 AM in response to Niteowl01

All the NAS devices I have seen including the ReadyNAS boxes I have, use the same basic software to act as an 'iTunes Server'. This being an open-source package called Firefly. Firefly itself is based on the even older mt-daapd software.

iTunes itself originally used the DAAP protocol to share music on a local network, and Firefly implements this same protocol, however iTunes uses a newer different protocol to share to an Apple TV or iPhone, or iPad.

As far as I am aware it is still possible to have iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC connect to Firefly and to be able to browse and play music via it. However you will not see Album artwork and will not be able to sync the Firefly provided music to your iPhone, iPod, or iPad, and as mentioned above you will also not be able to send it to an Apple TV.

A newer Linux based package for acting as an iTunes server has been developed which supposedly can act as a server to an Apple TV and also support the Apple Remote iOS application, this is called forked-daapd. Unfortunately, it has been developed in a way that makes it very hard to port to other systems and as a result has not been ported to run on any NAS server that I am aware of.

It would be a great service to the user community if someone could take the forked-daapd code and port it to one or more NAS devices (ideally ReadyNAS 😉). The main issue I believe is that forked-daapd has code dependencies for libraries which most/all NAS devices lack resulting in a lot more work.

The Firefly website appears to be down (possibly permenantly) and the Firefly code was not updated for a very long time. In case that site comes to life again the link was http://www.fireflymediaserver.org/. There is a working site for mt-daapd see http://sourceforge.net/projects/mt-daapd/ and the following are the sites for forked-daapd see http://blog.technologeek.org/category/hacks/forked-daapd and http://git.debian.org/?p=users/jblache/forked-daapd.git

For what it's worth, it is possible to have a Mac or PC login to a NAS acting as a file-server and then Tell iTunes (on your Mac or PC) to store the music on the NAS drive. However only a single Mac or PC can access the files at a time. With this approach you are merely treating the NAS as a glorified external hard disk and not an iTunes server.

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Answer 3

Niteowl01 Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 23, 2011 1:53 PM in response to John Lockwood

Hi,

I like the 'winsloth' term - funny.

John, thanks for your commentary. There is noting in the doco I have for the iomega device that indicates it uses firefly but I expect you're correct in that. Also, in my forum browsing I came across a lot of discussion around the forked-daapd topic - though I'm not familiar with this tech, it sounded like a couple of folks were successful in getting it to run - though I don't recall the platform.

Using the NAS purely as a disk drive to put the iTunes library on is my fall back strategy. As you mention this doesn't help me in terms of using it for multiple PCs. I have no idea if iTunes locks the library file when running or if more than one instance of iTunes could access the file at the same time, nor what the implications of that are. Plus others have tried this and commented that iTunes frequently 'forgets' the external drive and has to be re-pointed back there.

It doesn't sound promising for a more reasonable fix to this situation and I am amazed that hardware manufacturers are so blatently ignoring this issue and putting big iTunes logos on their boxes. If I didn't love my iPhone and have to use iTunes for sync, I'd likely look for a completely different music software.

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Answer 4

Oct 14, 2011 3:23 PM in response to Niteowl01

Hey, have you found your solution?

I had the same issue! My music collection alone is over 80gig not even scratching my movie collection! I can't understand why apple would think people would kepe it all on their home memory!

The solution I found (I'm running mb, lion (recently upgraded worked on L and SL!) and have a licie NAS! 1TB!

I just moved itunes library to there! simple drag and drop (after looking for hours) not just the folder though and then redirected itunes home folder to the destination on the NAS!

I cleaned out itunes then reimported from the nas location and all album art, track data etc was there, plays everything no problem and my phone syncs with whatever playlists i create straight from the NAS thorugh itunes!

Home sharing works, it is just like having a dedicated 1tb for itunes that is not located on your computer!

brilliant! I am running the latest versions of everything but it has worked on all older versions!

Hope this helps!

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