Your Network Player can play content from many different physical sources such as a PC, Mac or NAS drive. The below best practice guide will explain how to set up your Network Player for use with your server, computer and NAS drive.
Important Note: It is important to remember that depending on the server, NAS or computer you're using, these best practice steps will vary in relevance and importance. We would recommend that you consult the third party setup/user guide for your particular products when configuring for use with our network players.
1. Connect your Network Player to your network. If possible, a direct Ethernet cable connection is preferred as this provides the most robust connection. However, if this is not possible a Wi-Fi connection should work equally well.
2. Configure your Network Player to operate in 'Network Standby Mode' - this will enable streaming apps (such as the StreamMagic app) to wake the unit up from standby meaning you won't need to physically power the unit on.
3. Install the StreamMagic app on your chosen control devices (smartphone, tablet, etc.). Remember to enable network permissions where required.
4. The StreamMagic app should see your Network Player and allow you to select a variety of services and input sources.
5. Your music files may be stored on multiple devices in your network, but it makes sense to keep them all in the same place where possible. If you can, place your music files in a single music folder, preferably on a NAS which also has the UPnP music server installed.
If you don’t have time to do this right away, they can still be accessed from wherever they are currently, but it means the configuration of the music server will take a little longer to complete, and locating files may slow the system down if said files are located on a different physical location to the installed music server. So we would where possible suggest keeping music in one folder location.
6. Activate and configure your UPnP/DLNA music server. If you have a NAS in your network, it may already have a UPnP or DLNA compliant server installed. Enable this it if it isn’t already active, and tell it where your music files are located. This is where having them all in the same place comes in handy – if the files are spread out, you must provide each location to the server so it knows where to find them.
Please note that Media Sharing may also need to be enabled on your NAS/computer before the content can be shared with other devices in the network. You may need to specify what types of media the server must look for or process (for example, if you have a UPnP media server that recognises video and still images as well as music, you can tell it to ignore these) this will speed up the indexing process and mean that other media types are excluded from the presented choices in your control application.
Depending on your UPnP/DLNA server, any device used for interaction (phone, tablet etc.) will also need to be enabled within the server's UPnP/DLNA settings.
Important Note: For more information on how to configure your NAS and server, please consult the setup and user guides for your chosen devices and software.
7. Where possible check the SSDP on your NAS or media server and minimise the interval so that other UPnP devices find the server as quickly as possible.
8. It's vitally important to ensure your router is configured to allow the UPnP service. If it isn’t, none of the UPnP devices will be able to see each other and communicate.
Note: How you do this depends on the make and model of your router, so we recommend you consult the setup/user guide for your particular model.
9. Having followed the above steps, your system should now have UPnP enabled and active on all devices, your music server is configured and should have indexed your music files.
The StreamMagic app should now see your locally stored digital music and display it in the server section of the 'Library' tab. From here, you can browse your collection and add songs to the StreamMagic play queue.