DSM-G600, DNS-3xx and NSA-220 Hack Forum

Might be able to add a little insight.  Hopefully I'm not lying too blatantly. 

There's sort of an implied reliance on iTunes here, that isn't really there.  One of the benefits of using a NAS, is that its on the network, so you don't need iTunes on one of the PCs (I'm assuming they're PC because of the G:\ reference) to share it.  Simply open WinAmp, MediaPlayer, foobar200, etc. and play the files directly from the G:\ drive.

If all of your music files are in mp3, then you really don't need iTunes in the mix at all, unless you really love it (I don't).

If you really want to use iTunes as a music client:
- Put all of your files on the NAS-323.
- Configure mt-daapd/Firefly to point to the root of the directory where the files are
- allow it to scan the directories (you configure the scan interval)

and it will serve the files in largely the same way iTunes would.  I suspect you'll lose album covers, etc.

I'll try to answer the individual questions:

1) If you're committed to doing things the way you're doing them ... not much to gain.  If you think you could live with the NAS-233 being your server (rather than your son's PC), no one need to be the library "dictator".  Anyone can add music, tag it, modify it, etc.; each from their own PC.  If you're still missing iTunes at that point, you can each have your own iTunes library locally, pointing to the common share.

2) The way you're sharing it ... if you're a client of your son's PC, the music is read-only to you.

3) Ah yes.  DRM limitations.  They do (of course) exist.  Anything you've bought from iTunes is tied to the machine you bought them on (AFAIK).  Really, the only way to access them is the way you're doing it.  There is something out there called PlayFair and a few other hacks, and I think the Firefly folks have made some attempts at integrating it with their server, but Apple doesn't license any of that stuff, so I think its an uphill (and possibly illegal?) battle.
You can read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay

4) In my experience no.  However, its worth noting that the first thing I did with my NAS-323 was upgrade from mt-daapd to Firefly (using a guide on this site).  With the newer version, it polls based on a configurable time period, so at most, you'd have to wait that amount of time before you see your newly added files.  Mines configured for 5 minutes.  I can't honest say if that's a feature on the "factory" version of mt-daapd.

Hopefully that's some help.

Check out QTFairuse:  http://hymn-project.org/forums/index.php

works with the new iTunes 7.2 and will strip all the DRM off of your entire library in no time at all.

I did this using the 7.1 version of iTunes and it removed the DRM off of my 5000+ songs while I was eating dinner :-)   and... just for safekeeping it will backup the song version with the original Apple DRM for you in the folder of your choice.

enjoy!
t3k

Last edited by t3k (2007-06-06 01:45:45)