I just got Daphile up and running, and am happily listening to music stored on my Synology NAS as I write this entry.
I have an Intel NUC (5CPYH with 2.16GHz Celeron) that I bought a few years ago to use as an HTPC and to play with Linux Mint using my Samsung 40" 1080 LCD TV for video. However, Linux, even with the Windows-mimicking Mint front end, Linux didn't capture my long-term interest. So the NUC has been running Kodi (the LibreELEC stripped-down Linux version) for movies and music.
However, I don't like having my big TV on just to listen to music (via Kodi on the NUC, with S/PDIF optical out to an SMSL Sanskrit 6th DAC. Amp is a Topping PA3, and my small speakers are a pair of Paradigm Atom v6). So I starting looking at headless digital player solutions last summer, and liked what I read about Volumio, but could not get it to run on the NUC and output digital via USB or optical, so I set the idea aside.
Recently, I've been listening to internet radio via my NVIDIA Shield K1 tablet feeding its relatively low-fi analog output to the Topping amp. Even being tethered to a six foot stereo audio cable, I liked being able to use my tablet as a front end for music.
Last week I decided to revisit the headless digital concept again. In addition to apps for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, there are a fair number of dedicated, Linux-based digital audio players and library managers ranging from the commercial Roon and JRiver to the freebies like Daphile and Volumio. I spent many hours searching and reading reviews, and decided to try Daphile, which is a bit primitive - but automatically recognized my NUC's digital out as an option. It's a strange business model - based on the old Logitech Squeezeserver technology, but it works. (I owned and enjoyed a Squeezebox Classic and later a Touch back in the day.)
The only problem I had was connecting to my Synology NAS via NFS. Just as USB is preferred by most vs S/PDIF, NSF seems to work better than SMB/Samba - and Daphile uses an ancient Windows version of SMB called CIFS.
Once I figured out the correct NFS settings for my Synology share, and then the Daphile storage path configuration settings, everything worked like a charm.
Two things to be aware of:
1. Once you enter an NFS path in the Daphile Settings/Storage configuration section, you apparently cannot change or edit it until you delete it and reboot. Then you can enter a new path. If you don't reboot Daphile, it will keep reverting to the first NFS path you entered.
2. The correct syntax for the network path is : NFS://192.168.1.123:/Volume1/SharedFolder/SharedSubfolder
(Where the IP address is a static address you assigned to your NAS, and the Volume or disk number and folder names precisely match your own system. For me, the use of a "://" plus a ":/" in a single pathname was confusing)
All in all, it was an interesting challenge for this 77 y/o slowing down and rusty on the tech side former Novell network administrator, but the results were worth the frustration. Right now, I am listening to a FLAC version of the 25th Anniversary CD of Paul Simon's Graceland - and now it sounds great. I can control the playback with either my tablet, which normally sits on the kitchen table - or my laptop in my office space. But Daphile doesn't include a volume control in the digital domain - Now to look for an amplifier with a remote volume control that works around corners. (Bluetooth? WiFi?)
And I will continue to run LibreELEC/Kodi on the NUC - booting from a USB stick...