DS audio DS Audio doesn't play anymore on iPhone

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DS audio DS Audio doesn't play anymore on iPhone

13
1
NAS
DS920+
Operating system
  1. macOS
Mobile operating system
  1. iOS
Hi,

I'm a long time Synology, Audio Station and DS Audio user. Since a couple of weeks, my DS Audio app doesn't play songs anymore. When I select my Apple TV or an uPnP/DLNA renderer, it does play fine. But when I set it to play via my phones speaker or in the car via Bluetooth on the car stereo, it doesn't play. Whenever I select a playlist, all songs are added to the queue. Then DS Audio tries to play each song, but it doesn't succeed and skips to the next, until it reaches the end of the queue. When I first manually download a song and then play it from the "downloaded songs" list, it does play.

Does anyone have the same problem? How do I resolve this and prevent it from happening again? Any help would be highly appreciated!

Bart
 
Solution
After a lot of emails back and forth, Synology support was able to supply me with a work around. The problem is apparently caused by some security-compatibility thing with iOS. There are two possible work arounds:
  • Set the TLS/SSL profile level for the whole Diskstation to "Old backward compatibility"
  • Disable SSL for the DS audio app.

I chose the latter. Combined with a user that has only access to DS audio and the music folder, this should be fairly safe. Synology support says their product development has put this item on the list to be solved. So in the longer term, it should be able to stop using those work arounds.

I hope this is helpful for people experiencing the same problem.
I have tried playing tracks on my iPhone XR iOS 16.1.1 using all the latest Synology versions for: DSM 7.1; Audio Station; DS audio; Advanced Media Extension.

I can play back tracks having selected the iPhone as the player. The track files I tried are AAC (320 kbps / 16-bit / 44.1 kHz) and ALAC (24-bit / 96 kHz). Also, ALAC using CUE sheet works. And I search and found some 256 kbps MP3, which worked.

I did look and found that tracks played whether they were downloaded to the phone or not.
 
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I have tried playing tracks on my iPhone XR iOS 16.1.1 using all the latest Synology versions for: DSM 7.1; Audio Station; DS audio; Advanced Media Extension.

I can play back tracks having selected the iPhone as the player. The track files I tried are AAC (320 kbps / 16-bit / 44.1 kHz) and ALAC (24-bit / 96 kHz). Also, ALAC using CUE sheet works. And I search and found some 256 kbps MP3, which worked.

I did look and found that tracks played whether they were downloaded to the phone or not.
Thanks for testing that. Some additional info:

  • I tried on two different iPhones: XS and SE. XS has the latest iOS 16, the SE is stuck on an older iOS version.
  • I tried different files, with different encodings. Not a single file played.
 
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I have only experienced this when there’s a poor signal. It tried to play the track, couldn’t, and then skipped to the next. If the signal is poor try lowering the playback quality in the app.
I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with a poor signal. I'm testing on my local WiFi network and I have good reception throughout my house and also high connection speed. That said, I tried setting the playback quality low, it didn't make any difference.
 
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Yes, DSAudio has all the permissions. It worked well until a couple of weeks ago. As far as I know, I did not change anything. I suspect that it has something to do with transcoding on the server side, since it doesn't work on that other iPhone either. But that's of course just an assumption.
 
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You haven’t said anything about the versions of software running on the NAS. That’s DSM, Audio Station, and Advanced Media Extension.

I’m out of ideas too. My preference has been to use Plexamp on iPhone. Though this doesn’t behave as DLNA/UPnP remote control for directing streams between server and renderer. For that I have HEOS app to remote control my Denon amps and speaker along with music source of DSM’s Media Server.

The thing that Audio Station supports that others do not, IIRC, is play back of single audio files with tracks defined in a CUE file. Useful for concerts and run-on tracks but I find my other methods don’t seem to have detectable breaks. The sources that do have noticeable breaks are cloud services, Tidal in my case, and is one reason I still buy CDs.
 
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Another thing AudioStation can do that I’ve not found a replacement for, stream internet radio. For example SomaFM.

Last couple of things I can think of left to do is delete the app and re-download, ensure Convert in the settings is set to mp3, playback quality is auto and always convert the two formats. This will then match my settings, which currently works.

Sorry I cannot be of any more help.
 
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Thanks for testing that. Some additional info:

  • I tried on two different iPhones: XS and SE. XS has the latest iOS 16, the SE is stuck on an older iOS version.
  • I tried different files, with different encodings. Not a single file played.

I have an iPhone XS and I have no issues playing ds audio on the iPhone.
 
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You haven’t said anything about the versions of software running on the NAS. That’s DSM, Audio Station, and Advanced Media Extension.

I’m out of ideas too. My preference has been to use Plexamp on iPhone. Though this doesn’t behave as DLNA/UPnP remote control for directing streams between server and renderer. For that I have HEOS app to remote control my Denon amps and speaker along with music source of DSM’s Media Server.

The thing that Audio Station supports that others do not, IIRC, is play back of single audio files with tracks defined in a CUE file. Useful for concerts and run-on tracks but I find my other methods don’t seem to have detectable breaks. The sources that do have noticeable breaks are cloud services, Tidal in my case, and is one reason I still buy CDs.
Versions:
  • DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 1
  • Audio Station: 7.0.2-5305
  • Advanced Media Extensions: 3.0.1-2004

What's your setup with PlexAmp? I assume that means you're running a Plex server on the NAS. Are you able to stream when you're outside your house? How is that set up?
 
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Versions:
  • DSM 7.1.1-42962 Update 1
  • Audio Station: 7.0.2-5305
  • Advanced Media Extensions: 3.0.1-2004
OK, yes that's the same as me.

What's your setup with PlexAmp? I assume that means you're running a Plex server on the NAS. Are you able to stream when you're outside your house? How is that set up?
Running Plex Media Server on my NAS and have allowed remote access to it from the Internet. I've configured a non-standard port on the Internet and added that in the Plex server config. (so plex.tv knows how to connect), it's a small thing to avoid having the default port open available for scanning.

Plexamp mobile app is a small paid extra if you don't have Plex Pass but I find I use if more than other player apps.

You can try installing Plex on the NAS and just give read-only (the instructions say read+write but you don't need write unless you want Plex to be able to delete files) access to the same shared folders that you use for DSM media packages. You setup libraries for similar media types and add folders.
 
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Last couple of things I can think of left to do is delete the app and re-download, ensure Convert in the settings is set to mp3, playback quality is auto and always convert the two formats. This will then match my settings, which currently works.
Deleting and re-installing DS Audio didn't help either.
-- post merged: --

On the server side, Audio Station has an option to download logs. I've done that, but it turns out those logs are in some binary format. Does anyone know how to read them? Maybe I can find some clue about what's going wrong in there...
-- post merged: --

Ah, found it by trial and error: the log is GZipped.
 
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I couldn't find much useful information in that log file. I've created a ticket with Synology Support. I hope they can help me. Will follow up here if they have a solution.
 
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Another thing AudioStation can do that I’ve not found a replacement for, stream internet radio. For example SomaFM.
You are probably right there too. I have added AAC stream URLs for BBC radio so that I can guarantee using the lower bitrates on talk channels, useful when there's a long sports event and it's only on DAB (which my car doesn't have) and their Sounds app doesn't have such a setting because it knows best. Haven't used it for a while since they seemed to stop doing commentary of the Tour De France.


I couldn't find much useful information in that log file. I've created a ticket with Synology Support. I hope they can help me. Will follow up here if they have a solution.
Hopefully they can find a fix.
 
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Hi,

I'm a long time Synology, Audio Station and DS Audio user. Since a couple of weeks, my DS Audio app doesn't play songs anymore. When I select my Apple TV or an uPnP/DLNA renderer, it does play fine. But when I set it to play via my phones speaker or in the car via Bluetooth on the car stereo, it doesn't play. Whenever I select a playlist, all songs are added to the queue. Then DS Audio tries to play each song, but it doesn't succeed and skips to the next, until it reaches the end of the queue. When I first manually download a song and then play it from the "downloaded songs" list, it does play.

Does anyone have the same problem? How do I resolve this and prevent it from happening again? Any help would be highly appreciated!

Bart
Hi Bart
I‘ve just set up my new DS220+ with the Audio Station, Media Server and iTunes Server running (and installed the Media Extention Pack too). Same behavior of the DS Audio app here. Can stream to other devices but the music won‘t play on the iPhone itself.
Hopefully you‘ll get a solution from support!
Greez, Marc
 
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