How can I do this? Musicbee -> NAS -> DAC

[Hammerhead]

I've been struggling to find a library and play list management solution that will support a PC/Android control point so that I can stream FLAC files from my NAS to a Raspberry Pi3 HiFiBerry DAC.

The equipment is:
Qnap NAS
HiFiBerry DAC
PC/Android phone
Analog audio system (Krell preamp)

Kindly note that I do NOT want to transcode here, that would defeat the purpose of having a (modestly) high-end system.

There are a number of software options for the DAC such as Volumio, MoOde, Kodi and so on, that I can install on the Pi to support its use as a renderer.  Unfortunately neither MediaMonkey or Musicbee are supported directly on the Pi as a client, so I'm screwed in that department.

Basically I'm just trying to get the bits from point 'a' to point 'b' using something to manage my library that will reside on the NAS and enable me to create play lists and control the system from my listening position.  So far, my attempt with MediaMonkey has been more or less a train wreck, but Musicbee looks as though it's come a long way since I saw it last.

Any help here would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Phaedrus]

As a former Media Monkey user; stay away from Media Monkey. It may have it's positive points, but Music Bee is a far superior product.

Unfortunately I can't give much advice on how to do this, only how not to.

[Hammerhead]

Well, knowing what NOT to do can often be solid grounds for where to start.  Do tell!

[vincent kars]

The answer is UPnP/DLNA

There are good control points for Android like BubbleUPnP or UPnPlay

QNAP has its media sharing, it is DLNA by TwonkyMedia if my memory serves me well


MusicBee: Preferences > Plugins: enable UPnP

Success!

[Hammerhead]

Yes, actually I have Emby server on my NAS to manage my movie collection, so that could theoretically work for music, too.

Right now, my DAC is set up with MoOde player pointing directly to a separate public folder for music outside the Emby server directory.

I was hoping to use Musicbee on Android as my control point so that I could also have access to, and manage, my play lists.  I've tried various MPD remotes, which all don't display album art in the library.  The closest thing is Kore/Yatse, for Kodi which presents album thumbnails in a library view, however it's anemic as a play list manager.

[Phaedrus]

So far my best solution has been Remote desktop from a Windows tablet to the media server which is plugged into everything running the Media Player. It would require some extra configuration if I want to control it remotely, but then I've never run into a situation where I wanted to play music at home when I was not there.

Other than that, I got nothing other than; "not Media Monkey."

[Hammerhead]

There is one option that I haven't experimented with.

My NAS supports virtual machines.  I already have a Windows 7 configuration set up.  I'm going to try installing Musicbee on the VM and leave the DB on the NAS shared drive (along with the rest of the FLAC files), to see if that works out.

Stay tuned.