DS audio (iOS)
Version 5.17

DS audio allows you to stream music stored on your DiskStation with an iPhone/iPad wherever an Internet connection is available. Better yet, with the offline mode you can listen to songs stored in the device’s local memory when no network connection is available. You can browse music by albums, artists, folders or genres, create your own playlists or share them with your friends, and even rate your music! And if you have dedicated stereo speakers at home, DS audio can also become a remote control to stream music to them.

Before You Start

Before using DS audio, make sure you have DSM and Audio Station installed on your Synology NAS. Basic configurations must be managed from a computer with access to Audio Station, such as enabling Personal Library.

Note: Once your iPhone running iOS 13 is paired with an Apple Watch running watchOS 5 or later, you can install DS audio on your Apple Watch. To control DS audio from your Apple Watch, please go to Apple Watch > DS audio on your iPhone, and enable Show app on Apple Watch.

Login and Logout

DS audio allows you to log in to Audio Station securely and effortlessly. You can protect your connection via SSL/TLS connections and verify the server certificate installed on your Synology server. What's more, logging in to Synology's suite of mobile apps is made a lot easier with the single sign-on mechanism. This only requires you to log in once and then you will be automatically signed in to the other apps without being prompted to enter user credentials.

To log in to Audio Station with DS audio:

Do either of the following:
- Enter the following information on the login page:
  - Address or QuickConnect ID of the Synology server: this can be either the internal or external IP address, DDNS hostname, or Synology QuickConnect ID. Make sure you have enabled QuickConnect at Control Panel > QuickConnect in DSM before logging in with QuickConnect ID.
  - Your user account and password.
Tap the arrow button next to the Address or QuickConnect ID field to select previous login credentials from the list of your login history or find Synology servers in your local network. A set of credentials can be removed by swiping them leftwards.
If you want to secure your connection, do the following:
- Turn on HTTPS if you want your connection to be SSL/TLS-encrypted. Before doing so, make sure the HTTPS service is activated at Control Panel > Network > DSM Settings on your Synology server.
- Enable Verify certificate by tapping the on the bottom left of the screen. Under Login Settings you can validate the SSL certificate installed on your Synology server. This verification works if the installed certificate is trusted (you will need to purchase from a third party issuer).

Troubleshooting:

If you fail to log in, do the following:

Log in to DSM as admin (or a user belonging to the administrators group), and go to Control Panel > Privileges to check whether the user account has permissions to use Audio Station.
Check if Audio Station is using a customized port. For example, if the port is 9920, you may need to add the port to the IP address/DDNS hostname as in “fun.syno.com:9920”.

To use one-time password:

When 2-step verification is enabled for your account or enforced by the admin on DSM (6.0 and above), you will need to log in to this Synology mobile application with your user credentials and the 6-digit code retrieved from Synology Secure SignIn or other authenticator applications for safe access.

Note:

When 2-step verification is enabled on DSM (6.0 and above), your mobile device can be remembered for convenient and safe login:

To have your device remembered, select Trust this device on the login page. Your device will be remembered for 30 days; if you log in again within its validity period, your device will be remembered for another 30 days.
To stop trusting the device, go to DSM > Options > Account > Account Activity > Trusted Devices and click Untrust other devices.

To simplify logging in:

IP addresses (or QuickConnect ID/hostnames) and user accounts are shared between the login histories of the different Synology mobile apps. To avoid entering user credentials multiple times, tap the on the bottom left of the screen. Under Login Settings you can enable Remember IP address and account. Disable the option if you do not want to share credentials among apps.

Alternatively, you can enable Remember me on the login page to remember the password of your user account. You will always be automatically logged in until you log out of the app. Note that enabling this option will only save the password for DS audio but will not share it with other Synology apps.

Note:

To launch the Remember me option, please enable Remember IP address and account first.

To log out of DS audio:

Simply tap and then tap Logout.

Navigating

Below is a general introduction to DS audio:

Check your login information, configure playback settings, read related documents, send us your comments or suggestions if you have any to make, and log out of DS audio.
Browse and play songs downloaded to your iOS device for offline playback.
Browse and play the pinned songs or playlists from My Pins. Alternatively, switch to the Recommended Genre tab for the songs categorized according to their genres.
Browse and play songs stored in your Synology NAS.
Quickly access songs organized into personal and group playlists, or play songs by the four default categories.
Listen to Internet radios provided by SHOUTCast(TM) or to the ones added by yourself.
Search music by entering keywords in the search field. When you are logged in, the search tool applies to all the music on Audio Station; when you are logged out, it applies to downloaded songs only.
View the download status of songs downloaded for offline playback.

Browse Music

With DS audio, you can stream music directly from your Synology NAS (Library) or songs downloaded to your iOS device (Downloaded Songs).

To view music from Home:

When you launch and log into DS audio, you will first see Home where you can easily play the pinned music collections from My Pins, or enjoy the playlists automatically generated in Recommended Genre.

My Pins:
- You can pin the music collections you frequently play from Library and Playlists. Tap or next to a music category to pin or unpin a music category to My Pins.
- You can reorder or unpin a music category by tapping from My Pins.
- You can rename your pins by tapping from My Pins.

Recommended Genre: You can browse and play your music by selected genres.

Note:

These features are supported on Audio Station version 6.0.0 and above.
You can pin albums, artists, composers, genres, playlists, as well as Recently Added and Random100 to My Pins.
You cannot rename, add or remove the default Recommended Genre, which is categorized according to the song information. To ensure that your songs are categorized into the correct genres, please edit the song information from Audio Station. Editing of the song information is allowed only on Audio Station.

To view music by category:

When you launch and log into DS audio, you can access music in your Synology NAS Library and download them for offline playback.

You can browse music By Album, By Artist, By Composer, and By Genre, and browse All songs in these two sources. Tap to go to the desired category.
You can view your playlists by tapping Library and Downloaded Songs in the menu.

To view your personal music:

Activate Personal Library on your Synology NAS (at Audio Station > Settings > Personal Library), and you can view your personal music stored in your homes directory (homes > username > music).
Then you can go to Settings to choose your Library source in DS audio: All music, Shared music or Personal music.

To view Internet radio stations:

You can find and listen to Radio configured on your Audio Station (online mode only), including SHOUTCast(TM) and any station added by Audio Station users (under User defined and My favorite).

To view music by ratings:

Rate your songs in either way below to help you manage and sort them easily:

Tap next to your songs and tap Rate to assign stars (1 to 5) to them.
Rate songs by tapping the grey stars at the bottom when you are playing a song.

From the menu, go to Playlists > Top ratings to find playlists of songs sorted from No rating to 5 stars.

Play music

To add/delete songs to the playing queue, or download:

With DS audio, you can manage a single song by tapping next to it, or manage multiple songs in the batch mode by tapping to do the following tasks. To perform some tasks, you may have to tap Select from the menu.

Play: Find playback-related options below:
- Play: Play songs immediately by replacing all songs in your playing queue.
- Add to Queue: Append songs to the end of playing queue.
- Add next to Current: Append songs next to the current playing queue and play them after currently played song.
Add to Playlist: Save songs to an existing playlist.
Download (online mode only): Download the songs to your DS audio for offline playback. Songs selected for download will appear in Download Queue, and you can monitor their download progress here.
Note:
- The songs being downloaded allow only playback but no other operations.
Delete (offline mode only): Remove the selected song(s) from Downloaded Songs.

To manage the playing queue:

Tap to browse the Now playing queue.
To add individual songs to the queue, tap Play > Add to Queue or Add next to Current.
To replace the queue with an entire song list, simply tap any song in the target list.
To reorder songs in the queue, go to the Now playing queue and tap . Hold a song by pressing to drag and drop it at the desired position.

To set a sleep timer:

Set a sleep timer by tapping when you are playing a song.
Specify the time lapse (up to 120 minutes), and the playback will automatically stop upon reaching the limit.

To maintain playlists:

You can manage Audio Station playlists with DS audio in the online mode in four ways:

To add a song to a playlist, tap next to it. To add multiple songs to a playlist, tap and select the targets.
You can save the search result as a new playlist, or simply add it to an existing playlist.
On your Now playing page, tap to remove/reorder songs in the Now playing queue. To save selected songs as a new playlist, tap . Turn on Group Playlist if you want to share the playlist with other DSM users.
To download playlists for playback, go to Playlists to find the target and tap for download.

To share songs publicly:

To share individual songs to the public, tap , select Share, and turn on Public sharing.
To share multiple songs as a Shared Playlist, tap and select the target songs. Tap at the bottom to create a new playlist, and turn on Public sharing.
To get a sharing link of a shared playlist, tap and select Edit. Enable Public sharing and tap Save to get the sharing link. Alternatively, tap Share to share it via AirDrop, Message, Mail, or DS note.
To share a personal playlist with the public, tap and select Edit to enable Public sharing.
To set a duration time for the sharing link, enable Validity period and specify the time lapse of the link.

Note:

Only DSM users with the Public Sharing privilege (at Settings > Privileges in Audio Station) can share links to their songs.

To stream music to external players:

You can stream Audio Station music to USB, Bluetooth, AirPlay, Chromecast, DLNA or UPnP players with DS audio.

A pop-up notification will request you to Select a player within your local area network when you log in. The default player is your mobile device. If you wish to switch to another player, you can either go to Settings and select Player, or simply tap on the Now playing bar/page. Note that a Chromecast will be detected only if it is in the same local network with the iOS device, but not the Synology NAS.

You can also pair multiple AirPlay devices so more than one device will play your music at once. You can do this by tapping and then selecting Multiple AirPlay devices and then choosing your devices.

DS audio is AirPlay-compliant, so you might also find the AirPlay sign in the Now playing bar/page if you have an AirPlay device in the same network as your iOS device. Tap it to choose your AirPlay renderer.

Note:

Only DSM users with the USB/DLNA Renderer privilege (at Settings > Privileges in Audio Station) can stream music to USB/DLNA devices.

Other DS audio settings

Tap to enter Settings for information (e.g., your login credentials and documents for DS audio) and to manage the settings below:

Downloaded Songs:

You can manage automatically and manually downloaded songs on your mobile device.

Automatic: When a song is played online, DS audio automatically downloads it for offline playback. You can control its amount of storage for use. To ban auto-downloads and clear songs in the Downloaded Songs library, select No cache. Note that this will also clear Recently Played and Most Often Played playlists.
Manual: This allows removing all manually downloaded songs and playlists.

Note:

The storage limit on automatically downloaded songs will not apply to manually downloaded songs and playlists.

Settings:

You can configure the basic display and playback-related settings of DS audio:

Viewing Mode: Choose to view your music by List Mode, Thumbnail Mode (by album cover), or DS audio Default smart view.
Library source: Select All music, Shared music, or Personal music as the music source.
Shake to Next: Turn it on to play the next song by shaking your iOS device.
Remote player controller: Disable this option to reduce power consumption of your iOS device in the remote mode if you do not need to modify external player volume via its hardware buttons.

File Conversion:

You can configure the conversion settings and playback quality to suit your needs.

Convert: Configure Audio Station to convert music files to either format below. For more information about supported formats, please visit Synology's website.
- WAV: It occupies less system resources and has better sound quality, but its file size is larger and bandwidth-consuming.
- MP3: It occupies more system resources and has less impressive sound quality, but its file size is smaller and bandwidth-saving.
  Note: If your Synology NAS does not support certain audio formats, they may not be converted to MP3.
Playback quality: Choose a playback quality to suit the current network connection: Auto, High (for best quality), Medium and Low (for smoother streaming). Auto will offer the best compromise depending on the network capabilities for Apple Lossless format (ALAC).
Note: This option is only available on select models. For detailed information about supported models, please visit Synology's website.
Always convert: Allow your Synology NAS to convert music files of specific formats (ALAC and AIFF) if they are not fully supported for playback.

CarPlay:

With DS audio, you can connect your mobile device to CarPlay and play high-quality music from Synology NAS using the CarPlay dashboard. To play music through CarPlay, please follow the steps below:

Sign in to DS audio.
Connect your mobile device to CarPlay. Once connected, DS audio will appear on the CarPlay dashboard.
Tap DS audio to start playing music from your Synology NAS.

Note:

CarPlay is only supported when the following requirements are met:

Audio Station 6.0.0 and above
DS audio 5.16.0 and above
CarPlay-compatible car or car stereo

For more information on how to set up CarPlay, please visit Apple’s official website.

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