I’m self-hosting my music collection (synology NAS), and while I’ve liked Poweramp, it only reads local music files, which means I have to copy many GB of music to my phone, even if I’m not particularly listening to it.
The Synology DS Audio app actually does what I want: it caches music locally as you’re streaming it, but it reads directly from the NAS.
The only problem with DS Audio is that it sucks as an actual music player.
Are there any Android music players, preferably FOSS or at least privacy-friendly, that will read from the NAS and cache in an intelligent way but also works well as an actual music player?
I did try Symfonium, but couldn’t get it to work with Webdav or SMB, plus the dev comes off as a real asshole, so I’d rather not give them money.
So, paid app (if you want wireless sync) - Media Monkey.
The Android app can read network shares and network media servers (I forget exactly what it can read). But it works best if you run the server app - then you can stream the library or sync media, similar to iTunes.
The Android app is free for basic functionality ($5 for wireless sync), the desktop/server app is free ($30 to enable wireless sync and a few other features). It’s been worth it for me. Even the free versions work very well.