Media player?

[Farmer Giles]

I nearly forgot about building this media jukebox, it has been no trouble whatsoever.

It plays Internet radio, it can do Spotify, I mount our network drive so we can play all our ripped music playlists, you can mount USB so can stick your phone into it if you wish, I don't but its easy enough to do. It has both wired Ethernet and wifi, I use wired. I used a raspberry pi2, but the 3 has bluetooth built in if you need that. I can get an adapter but don't need it currently.

Also shows our photo and video collection off the network drive, and its in the kitchen so the missus can get recipes up while she's listening to the radio.

The only thing I plan to do is to change the micro-USB cables for USB-C instead of using adapters and add a couple more slots for phones as the two daughters are getting to be of that age, when I get around to it.....

 

[DTR]

Thanks for the all the ideas, they've given me something to think about........ once I've fathomed out what you lot are on about....... (homer)

 

[DTR]

Epilogue.....

A few months on and I've made my peace with the USB stick. I've gotten used to the minute or so it takes to load up when I switch the amp on. It turns out I can control the surround amp via an app so I don't need the TV on to control it. I've also been "casting" a lot more than I expected, mostly using Tune In.

I've also bought a Google Chromecast Audio for the "dumb" NAD amp next door. It's great for casting, and that has got me thinking about network drives.... time for another thread.....

 

[ColeyS1]

How are you casting to the chromecast audio? I bought one last week and had it connected to the hifi which in turn has speakers in each room. I thought it was fairly limited as im under the impression it will only play music from my phone if it's been uploaded or bought from Google play. I was hoping I could stream anything on my phone to the speakers, but I don't think it'll be that easy. I've downloaded a new YouTube app that'll hopefully allow me to stream the audio from that- haven't tried it yet though.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

 

[DTR]

How are you casting to the chromecast audio? I bought one last week and had it connected to the hifi which in turn has speakers in each room. I thought it was fairly limited as im under the impression it will only play music from my phone if it's been uploaded or bought from Google play. I was hoping I could stream anything on my phone to the speakers, but I don't think it'll be that easy. I've downloaded a new YouTube app that'll hopefully allow me to stream the audio from that- haven't tried it yet though.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

I've been using TuneIn, BBC iPlayer Radio and Google Play Music, but apparently there are lots of other apps that are supported. Google's website is rather lacking in telling you which apps though, merely showing you their respective icons, not what they actually do. TuneIn and BBC iPlayer are just for radio stations.

Google Play on the other hand allows you to upload your music collection to their servers and stream it from there. The music isn't stored on your phone, but you use your phone to control it. Once you've told the Chromecast what to play it carries on by itself. If you pay a subscription you also get access to whatever music Google make available (40,000,000 songs apparently). This is similar to Spotify and probably countless others. I'm not sure if you can cast audio from YouTube; I couldn't make it work but I haven't really played around with it.

If you want to stream content that's stored on your phone, I'm certain there's an app that will do it. I just can't tell you which one :? Hopefully one of the more technologically savvy forumites can chime in on that one. I'm toying with the idea of putting all mu music on a network drive and using something like MusicStreamer to cast it to the Chromecast. At some point I'm going to make a new thread about that

 

[ColeyS1]

Thanks for that, I'll take a look on the website and see if I can find any more apps. When I have friends over we share playing music through a fairly good Bluetooth speaker. Connecting via WiFi to the hifi would be better though.

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[stuartpaul]

I'm about to address the 'what do I do with all these CD's' question now that I don't actually have a 'proper' CD player! Virtually everything through IPod and Bose speaker docks or the Echo.

I simply can't face just binning them (well, charity shop!) but the boss wants the space.

I also can't understand the resurgence in vinyl, - didn't we get rid of those for the better sound of CD's? Oh how I miss the rumble, hiss, scratches etc. of vinyl. Not to mention having to tiptoe across the wooden floor for fear of making the arm bounce! And the massive fixings needed to hold the shelves up as they were so heavy!

I'm sure someone will educate me of the superiority of vinyl but I can't see it (apart from the artwork of course!).