Android Music Player? 6
I must be stupid. At least that is how I felt trying to play local music on my Nexus4.
I listen to books-on-tape all the time … walking, in the car, road trips … I’m listening to a book almost always. At home, my stereos have links to a CD collection that took me 6 months to rip doing 2-10 CDs a day. The CDs are safely stored in a box somewhere, but the ripped files are on the network and I copy over Best of to portable devices as desired.
So the player I use for books will play music, but not a shuffled genre. It only works at the album level, which can be a hassle for longer listening periods. OTOH, the bookmark support is fantastic.
Listen?
Searching for a solution that doesn’t need any network connection to work, ‘cause that’s how I roll, located the Google Play Music. Started it and it showed some artist who I’ve never heard and played a song I don’t know. Huh? I was in airplane mode, so not network. Upon further research, seems that file had been cached for me … though I’d never run Listen before in my life.
Looking through the app menus, I was unable to get it to find the 4GB of music on the phone. It wanted to stream music, but only from Google. Gee – that is worthless. The music I want to hear is on the SD card inside the device.
Why is it that almost all of google’s apps, I want to delete, but can’t? Using a file browser, it is possible to have Play-Music play a local file. I was unable to get a directory to play or shuffle. I must be stupid.
Whatever happened to the Don’t be evil moto at google?
Seeking
So, I’m looking for a new android music player. On my Linux machines, I use Clementine and find it very nice, enough features, but not too bloated. Anything like that for Android – free is better, but I can afford $2 for an app.
- Local playback by artist, genre, album or song
- Network streamed playback using HTTP, SMB, NFS …
- Playlist support … using pre-existing .m3u files. No other playlist format needed/wanted.
- Ordered and shuffle play. Point it at the “all_rock.m3u” playlist, then shuffle and play.
- Minimal app permissions. Why does every app ask to read the identity of my phone and contacts? Srsly?
Don’t let me down! Recommendations?
- Music Folder Player Free seems interesting. Trying it now.
In the GMusic settings, there are options for “Cache during playback”, “Automatically cache”, and “Clear Cache”. Might have been what you were looking for.
Also, if you tap “My Library” in the top left you can choose “On device”.
And it plays on-sdcard music, with shuffling by-category.
Not sure about your other requirements, though.
I only use Poweramp, which I bought on a Google Play sales. Maybe you can catch it with discount again in the next weeks.
Thanks for the ideas.
I was able to find the “On device” … talk about hidden.
Installed the PowerAMP trial and the Music Folder Player Free. Both are interesting … the paid PowerAmp is $5+ and the paid MFP is $1.30-ish. Seems that being popular impacts the pricing. It isn’t about the price, $5 isn’t much, but I’d like to support a smaller author, it their stuff works for me.
you should check out the synology NAS devices for home use…..they have built-in applications…one of them being “DSAudio”; which is paired with an android app that is available in the market for free….
It’s soooo awesome. It allows you to stream the music on the device across the internet from your home network (requires port forwarding) and it also allows you to cache the music on your device for offline listening.
*one last really really cool thing is that you can mount windows/linux shares to your synology device and when you stream music, it will also include that music in your available library (in case you didn’t want to transfer your music to you synology deivce)
*one more thing….synology Nas requires you to purchase internal 2.5 or 3.5 hard drive….synology device is just the case…in case you buy one, take it home and find out you still need to purchase a hard drive.
write me back if you get this and you have any questions….I figured I’d share since you put time and effort into your posts (which the adito one helped me out). Thank you.
Thanks AJ.
I’ve seen Synology for years and have been watching Thecus too.
Friends have ReadyNAS+ and Drobo devices, but complain about both.
I’m relatively happy with my home-built storage, but it is more hands on than average people would like.
More NAS information at Small Net builder if anyone here is in the market.
Not really android related, but every few years I need more storage. After AJ’s comment about Synology, started looking around at home-built NAS options. I like to know what is in my storage.
Found an 8-bay device that uses dual eSATA 6Gig connections with an included RocketRAID 642 card for $330. No HDDs included and this is just the JBOD, RAID 0/1/5 stuff. Seems that model RR642 is better supported on Linux than Windows from the reviews, but the driver is not included in the kernel for RAID. Don’t know about JBOD support. They are claiming 600MB/sec throughput. Not sure I believe this number, but even 1/3rd of that would be impressive for a home user with terrible VM bloat. Here’s the NewEgg link.
So, if you are looking at storage, this device will connect to most Linux servers that have a free PCIexpress 4x slot and provide some impressive numbers. More CPU and RAM is always better, but people are deploying $50 Pentium Duo CPUs or even Atom CPUs for NAS at home. Over at the FreeNAS forums, they are recommending a Supermicro X9SCL or newer model motherboard since it has support for any socket 1150 CPU, lots-o-RAM, lots-o-PCIe expansion, lots-o-built-in-SATA, dual GigE NICs built-in and an IPMI remote control facility. Looking at cheaper MBs those forum posters note the need to add on SATA, another NIC so the cost difference is less.
So, if I wanted to build this NAS server (including iSCSI and any F/LOSS software), here’s my Server BoM:
Then add the TowerRAID TR8M6G and FreeNAS if the case can’t hold all the HDDs needed OR if hardware RAID is desired. Avoiding FakeRAID is important to me. I’d rather have Linux software RAID.
Anyway – just thought I’d add some ideas here.
Lastly, nobody should forget that RAID is not any substitute for backups. There are many issues that RAID doesn’t address at all where backups work magic. The opposite is NOT true – RAID is for high availability and performance only.
Update: A friend who works with all levels of storage commented to me on my BoM above. He liked the SuperMicro MB, but disliked the external enclosure because the PSUs included are
He was also less than thrilled with the RocketRAID card – owns the RR622 and said the driver support sucks, at least on Windows. I’d read that Linux support was better, but required building the module for every kernel. That is a hassle. Now this guy does UNIX, Linux, and Windows. I trust his judgment implicitly, so I’ll NOT get the Sans array. I’d also say that he has build DAS, NAS and owned ReadyNAS+ devices at home. He’s been running ZFS for a few years, but is NOT married to it.So, been researching ways to add storage to my LAN. The guys over at addonics.com have a few interesting internal AND external enclosures. I have an external enclosure from them today that has been running for 6+ yrs straight. It supports SATA-I, so perhaps updating the electronics to SATA-6G would be useful. Addonics stuff is very modular.