I find it hard to believe something like this does not exist. After 1.5 days of trying I’m looking to the Roon community for help.
Totally un-Roon related I’m looking for a mobile playback solution. This is my ideal travel set up, I’ve got everything except the actual playback software figured out.
Android Phone
Campfire Audio wired headphones
4TB WiFi Hard Drive
2.5TBs of music loaded on above HDD
Something to play the music on that has some minimal Artist/Album/Genre/Song search, view queue play functionality For the networked HDD**
I’ve purchased USB Audio Pro Player (no trial version) based on it sounding like it would do what I wanted. I’ve played around for a couple of days with PowerAmp. I’ve used the software from Western Digital (manufacturer of WiFi HDD).
WD Software and USB Pro Player only let you do the most basic browsing of the actual folder structure like Root\Artist 1\Album 1\Track 1…Play, navigate back up repeat
Poweramp does not seem to be able to browse the WiFi network at all. Just local phone storage or mounted USB drive.
I have a long flight ahead. I want to put the WiFi drive in one location (overhead, seatback, etc.) and just use my headphones/Phone to manage the music.
I’ve tried mounting a 2TB USB stick with OnTheGo (OTG) cable to USBC port with disastrous results (not enough storage and disconnects from USB-C frequently). Pre-Covid I’ve always traveled with a sub-set of my music and always found a situation where I wanted something I did not have with me.
I really want to find a way to take all my music with me. I’ve got the phone talking to the WiFi device. I just need a decent player that will index/scan/categorize my music.
At this point I’d drop $2K on a dedicated Astell Kern device if they only had the storage.
I gotta believe this already exits. At the end of my rope. Any and all help greatly appreciated.
Now, out of curiosity, is your library such specific one that you can’t find the music anywhere on Tidal/Qobuz/Spotify/whatever? $2K will give you around 10 years of subscription in which time any given dedicated player will be obsolete by any standards.
Its not the money it my mentality. Squarely on my shoulders and I accept that. I simply don’t subscribe to music services paid or free (roon somewhat of an exception). I’ve got decades of my music. I want to live with and travel with mine. Tin foil hat I know, but I don’t have a Twitter/FB/Instagram/etc account. No Tidal/Spotify/Qobuz/iTunes/etc. I do my best to have a minimal on-line footprint. Ripping 1,000s of CDs and some Vinyl I can’t argue with the convenience, but I simply hate monthly bills.
I’d rather pay $10,000 dollars to solve this problem than subscribe to Tidal. No disrespect or hostility directed at you, I simply want what I want. Minus the battery power issue I’d be perfectly happy to camp in a cave for a month with zero outside connectivity and a self contained solution; versus a Spotify connection via cellular Internet or Airline public WiFi.
I’m not familiar at all with the wifi disk but i believe it should some how mont under an Android device and the to be seen as such by any application, so maybe that’s your real problem, to find an way (android app?) to proper work with that drive, than any music player should have no troubles playing from that drive.
Also, there are 1TB MicroSd cards available, in the worse case scenario and assuming that your android phone recognizes them you can just put all your music on 2 or whatever of these and just switch them if necessary. I have a 512GB one in my phone for the exact same purpose, but personally I never felt the need to have all my music with me, so just putting a part of my library there it’s enough for me.
I also believe this to be the problem and trying to crack that nut.
The few players that I’ve found that actually let you enter IP/Name and see the device don’t index/scan it like they do for local storage. Most players don’t provide the functionality to see external network so I need to figure out how to make the WiFi part look local to Android file system. There is a really slick app called CX File Explorer that does everything (and more) that I need for file browsing…and will play music files…but it does not have a sophisticated way to browse Artist/Album/Genre because it is a file browser not a music player.
The WiFi HDD is nothing more than taking a portable, battery powered WiFi hub, with USB in and attaching an external HDD. The nice thing is that it is all rolled into one device, no cables, no need for multiple chargers. Imagine you home WiFi router with UBS and external HDD mounted as networked storage. Mine happens to be Western Digital My Passport Wireless Pro, but there are several out there.
BTW, Cloud Player on the surface looks like a no-go their idea of music anywhere is Dropbox, Google Drive and One Drive. No way to “see” your own network…at least not obviously up front. I’m going to keep looking at it though. Thanks again!
I’m using that application with my local storage and nothing in the cloud, the cloud can be disabled/hidden/whatever. I don’t know if it can connect to your wifi setup the way you want though, that’s for you to try.
No I have not. I’ve spent a lot of my time trying to get a 2TB USB stick to work. In my searching a few days back I see to remember mention of Onkyo player…that does ring a bell. I’ll have to give it a look.
Most players will work with local storage or SD cards or need a UPnP server active. Does the WiFi drive run any kind of UPnP server at all? I use UAPP and dont folder browse. If you point it to the storage required it scans it and you browse like any upnp app, you can search to. So not sure why you just have folder view.
Edit. I see over the network it’s folders only. If it was local mounted storage via OTG then you could add it to the library like an SD card and browse properly. But if it’s WiFi only your out of much.
Perhaps Kodi might work well in this situation. It will work with samba has a reasonable interface once setup.
But what you need is a DAP and a large SD card. I love my little Hiby sounds great and don’t have to worry about WiFi and all that when on the go. Reminds me I need a larger card as filled it up. Only use WiFi for Roon at home and to add music to the card from my Nas which is nice and simple using qnaps file manager.
You’ll be lucky with that 1tb are common these days .I don’t take my entire collection mobile it’s just asking too much. Using e 250gb cSD card urrently and never been stuck for something to play. For timee with WiFi there is streaming or I can use Plex. Plex amp would be a good fit as you can sync locally or stream. But if you want it all you best using a laptop for playing and not a phone really.
Appreciate the input but I’m interested in what I want not what others think I should want or do. I realize it is a lot take mobile. I know I can’t listen to it all in a week or a year…but it is what I’m trying to do.
I already have the 4TB WiFi drive I don’t want a 2 atB SD “downgrade”. I’ve yet to see a device that takes larger than 2TB. I don’t want some sort of USB-C to USB hanging off my phone. I’ve already traveled that way once last week and it didn’t work out well for me. Laptop too big for airline travel. Surface with 4TB is not in the cards.
The correct Android player is all I need. The rest is in place already.
I think Kodi might be the only thing close to what you want then. You can add smb /zero conf mounts as a source and it will scan them as if local storage. You can customise views to. But it will take an age to add that much material. So would need doing well in advance.
All the rest really only work as a decent library app from local storage, SD cards or otg drives and UPnP servers or their own server. As soon as its network storage it’s folders only.
Have you thought about the Plex and PlexAmp combination.
Given that you will struggle to fit this much music onto a DAP or phone, you can have them on a server in the house and play them remotely and download or cache them.
It’s what I use to play music out of the house, my own as well as Tidal.
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Bill_Janssen
(Wigwam wool socks now on asymmetrical isolation feet!)
17
I use the Onkyo app, and it won’t do what you want.
The real question is, what do files on some other computer (your hard drive) look like to the phone? Android recently added a Files app, but the only non-internal storage it looks at is Google Drive, as far as I can see. You’d need a way to “mount” the hard drive’s file system on your phone, via SMB or NFS or some such. Without that, you need to resort to a device-to-device streaming protocol, like UPnP or the equivalent, where your hard drive would have to host a server component and your phone a client component. The Plex suggestion seems like a good one, but a simple UPnP server works, too.
I use a RAVpower Filehub, which if you plug a hard drive into it, will run its own DLNA server, and let you stream from the hard drive into whatever can receive that.
I live in the middle of nowhere with a spotty, at best, cellular only Internet connection. Plus my main goal is for long flights. Not really practical to server it up to myself given the speed and data caps. Another reason I don’t have any any streaming services.
Trying to be 100% self contained and portable. Down the road I’m looking to possibly add a Sonos Roam or two for off the grid camping. There are some pretty beefy battery supplies now. A friend of mine has two Roams, a battery that will last 4-5 days playing music off a WiFi Router and spinning 5TB USB hard drive…all that fits in a very small tackle box. I choose to put the router/Wifi/HDD into one package.
As of right now I have ~6000 albums and aprox 70,000 songs on the 4TB WiFi drive. The phone sees the WiFi like any other WiFi device. Neutron Player sees, indexes, and let me view all by Genre/Artist/Album but the interface is really painful. So there is at least one solution where I can do what I want to do. I’m really liking the look/feel of PowerAmp…so if I can get the drive mounted I think that will work. Flight is tomorrow so I’m going to probably have to use Neutron Player for the short term.
The WD WiFi drive also has a stripped down plex server on it. I need to explore it if time permits today. As always not enough time.
Thanks to all for the ideas to date. Keep them coming.
So that is basically half of what I have with the WiFi drive. When you add a HDD via USB you have what I have below. I was thinking that was the software I needed to “mount” the drive so it appeared like local storage on my phone…that is the part I’m fuzzy on.
People always like pix so here is what I have plus a phone.
