How can I play listless, flac music files (saved on portable hard drive) on my Nexus 10?

[Claire Metters]

I have tons of music on a portable hard drive that I'd like to use through my Nexus 10 (my laptop has died), however not sure how to go about doing this given that music is saved as listless, flac files. My first thought was to use the media centre software Jriver, but there doesn't seem to be much info on how well it works on the nexus, if at all. Is anyone currently using their Nexus 10 in this way and if so, what set up/media centre software is being used? Answers in laymans terms please! Just to be clear, I want my Nexus to be the source for music (using files on portable hard drive), played through portable speakers using the headphone socket, whilst using my mobile phone as the remote through a gizmo type app. My next question is if so, is there a way that I can then use my nexus 10 as the source (using the same portable hard drive/media centre software set up as before) through my main stereo amp? I have a cracking stereo set up (well as cracking as my budget will allow!) and wondering if there was a way that I could listen to the same music using the stereo. Appreciate that this last question maybe for the techies on a more hi-fi based forum.

Thanks

 

[zcs72]

Try bubbleupnp. You can find the devs thread on XDA. Very useful and flexible software. With the server software on your PC you can stream all your saved media over your mobile networkas well

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[JasW]

I have tons of music on a portable hard drive that I'd like to use through my Nexus 10 (my laptop has died), however not sure how to go about doing this given that music is saved as listless, flac files. My first thought was to use the media centre software Jriver, but there doesn't seem to be much info on how well it works on the nexus, if at all. Is anyone currently using their Nexus 10 in this way and if so, what set up/media centre software is being used? Answers in laymans terms please! Just to be clear, I want my Nexus to be the source for music (using files on portable hard drive), played through portable speakers using the headphone socket, whilst using my mobile phone as the remote through a gizmo type app. My next question is if so, is there a way that I can then use my nexus 10 as the source (using the same portable hard drive/media centre software set up as before) through my main stereo amp? I have a cracking stereo set up (well as cracking as my budget will allow!) and wondering if there was a way that I could listen to the same music using the stereo. Appreciate that this last question maybe for the techies on a more hi-fi based forum.

Thanks

Why don't you use Google Play Music? You'd have to find/borrow a working PC to get your music uploaded, but once you do, you're good to go. The good thing about Google Play Music is that your storage space is not strictly limited by a particular number of gigabytes, but rather the number of songs -- 20,000. (Each song is limited to 300 MB in size, though, but even with FLAC files, I can't see that being a problem.) Google Music does transcode FLAC files that you upload to 320kbps mp3 files, but that's certainly acceptable to me.

 

[Claire Metters]

@zcs72 - I don't have a working PC, as my laptop died. Thank as for replying though
@JasW - It took a ridiculous amount of time to move just a handful of music across when my laptop was alive. I suspect I'd lose the will to live if I tried to move 1TB across. Plus I don't anyone who would be willing to let me at their PC for such a long time! It's a good back though. Thanks.

 

[JasW]

Well, you can still use your Nexus 10 to play the music. If you get an OTG adapter ($5 or so) and install the $3 Nexus Media Importer app, you can connect your hard drive to your N10. That will allow you to use your N10 to play the FLAC files through your stereo.

Unfortunately, there is no way right now (at least that I know of) to upload music to Google Play directly from your N10, or any other Android device -- you need a PC, because Google Music Manager, the app that uploads music files to Google Music, is only a desktop app.

 

[Devlyn16]

RE playing to your stereo you should investigate soemthing like this: Amazon.com: Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter for Bluetooth Audio Devices (980-000540): Electronics

 

[Craig King]

So just trying to get a understanding of what you are tryign to do.

Is your first thought more of a proof of concept for the portable speakers, and then is your reciever your goal. Or are you really wanting both options going forward. I can see a whole bunch of potential paths depending on what you have and really what your final goal is.

Does your reciever have HDMI in? Or for that matter what inputs do you have on your reciever?

 

[PlanetPluto7]

Using Media House on both my n7 and n10. It goes through the player of your choice. For me that is Folder Player for music and act1 or Bestvideo Player for videos. Don't use any flac so I don't know about those.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

[JasW]

So just trying to get a understanding of what you are tryign to do.

I think all she is trying to do is play the 1 TB of music she has stored on her portable hard drive on the N10, ideally through her stereo. Without a PC to either act as server or upload the music to Google Play, I believe her options are limited to hooking the hard drive up directly to the N10 with an OTG adapter. Then she can either run a cable from her headphone jack on the N10 to the receiver on her stereo or buy a Bluetooth gateway and plug it into the stereo.

 

[Craig King]

I think all she is trying to do is play the 1 TB of music she has stored on her portable hard drive on the N10, ideally through her stereo.

Yea I got that. The thing is it may help us to understand more about the hardware she has to provide the best solution. For example if she has HDMI on the audio reciever she could just use that as her intput into the reciever, instead of a Headphone jack or Bluetooth.

Another thing to think about is that if she took the time to encoder her content in a lossless format like FLAC I doubt she wants to compress it and deal with the loose of quailty with bluetooth.

Another point to be made is that if she is going to have to buy a Bluetooth gateway she may be taken care of better with a 50$ streamer or mini-PC that can play back the flac directly from the USB hard drive. Both of which would provide HDMI connection to her reciever with zero loss of quality. These would also allow her to wireless send content from her nexus device to those devices via DLNA.

I am just trying to get the bigger picture so that whatever suggestions we make gets as close as possible to her expectations.

 

[PlanetPluto7]

Can you put the hard drive on your home router? Most routers have usb plugs for this. The drive is then shared by everything on your home network.

@zcs72 - I don't have a working PC, as my laptop died. Thank as for replying though
@JasW - It took a ridiculous amount of time to move just a handful of music across when my laptop was alive. I suspect I'd lose the will to live if I tried to move 1TB across. Plus I don't anyone who would be willing to let me at their PC for such a long time! It's a good back though. Thanks.

 

[Craig King]

I am not sure I would say most do, but allot of the higher end ones do now. Pretty much any router $100 + will have a DLNA option built into them. Plus at that point it will be a 1gbps network which will help with the complaint about transferring the files. It will still take a few hours but not days then.

The catch then will be if they recognize FLAC for streaming. That is going to be the real catch. There is a decent chance it will need to be transcoded into something that isn't lossless like MP3

 

[Jerry Hildenbrand]

Buy this for $25 Amazon.com: Media Sharing Device: Electronics

Install Linux on it Arch Linux ARM • View forum - Pogoplug v1/v2/v4, DockStar, GoFlex

Plug your hard drive into it and stream your music using Samba on the Pogoplug and ES3 File explorer on your tablet, or root the tablet and mount the samba share on boot in the /sdcard folder.

This is exactly what I do with a 3TB collection of FLAC files at home.

 

[JasW]

That may be pushing the layperson angle she mentioned. But it does come in pink.

 

[Claire Metters]

So just trying to get a understanding of what you are tryign to do.

Is your first thought more of a proof of concept for the portable speakers, and then is your reciever your goal. Or are you really wanting both options going forward. I can see a whole bunch of potential paths depending on what you have and really what your final goal is.

Does your reciever have HDMI in? Or for that matter what inputs do you have on your reciever?

Apologies for taking a while to get back to you. That's exactly what I'm hoping for. Unfortunately, my receiver doesn't have an HDMI in. It's an old school amp. My intention is to upgrade at some point, as one of the channels has blown. But this is further down the line. I only mentioned as its something I'd like to consider at a later date. That said, I have been looking into streamers and there are some good deals on these and amps at the moment.... For immediate use, i would just use portable speakers through the headphone jack. I've bought an OTG adapter, but yet to receive it so no idea if it'll work!

Thanks for all the replies. Think I'll look at another music player though. Google music, the low res pictures are really starting to annoy me. I've wasted too much time uploading, re-loading, changing settings (based on advice here, there and everywhere!).

@PlanetPluto7 - No DLNA option on router (boy my technology sucks at times!) and was always led to believe that there would be difficulties converting the files. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I quite often am!

@JerryHildenbrand. Thanks for the links, I'll have a look. Unfortunately the rest of your post just read like blah, blah, blah to me! Sorry, I'm such a girl!!! For this very reason, I've been reluctant to mess with the rooting of the n10. Plus doesn't this invalidate any guarantee? It would be just my luck to need it if I messed with the rooting!

 

[JasW]

Good luck! Don't forget the Nexus Media Importer app, or the OTG adapter won't work. You can install that now, and then when you plug your portable hard drive into the OTG adapter, the app will automatically run.

 

[PlanetPluto7]

Apologies for taking a while to get back to you. That's exactly what I'm hoping for. Unfortunately, my receiver doesn't have an HDMI in. It's an old school amp. My intention is to upgrade at some point, as one of the channels has blown. But this is further down the line. I only mentioned as its something I'd like to consider at a later date. That said, I have been looking into streamers and there are some good deals on these and amps at the moment.... For immediate use, i would just use portable speakers through the headphone jack. I've bought an OTG adapter, but yet to receive it so no idea if it'll work!

Thanks for all the replies. Think I'll look at another music player though. Google music, the low res pictures are really starting to annoy me. I've wasted too much time uploading, re-loading, changing settings (based on advice here, there and everywhere!).

@PlanetPluto7 - No DLNA option on router (boy my technology sucks at times!) and was always led to believe that there would be difficulties converting the files. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I quite often am!

@JerryHildenbrand. Thanks for the links, I'll have a look. Unfortunately the rest of your post just read like blah, blah, blah to me! Sorry, I'm such a girl!!! For this very reason, I've been reluctant to mess with the rooting of the n10. Plus doesn't this invalidate any guarantee? It would be just my luck to need it if I messed with the rooting!

I have several video converters on a pc that work well. Alice video coverter works best. You can dump a lot of files into in and come back later. A really fast pc helps a lot though.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

 

[PlanetPluto7]

Sorry. That was "Alive Video Converter".

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

 

[Craig King]

You are certainly right that you could simply hook the drive to the tab with a OTG cable, and then hook a aux cable into the headphone jack. That will work. Like JasW said though, make sure you get the nexus media importer software. I think that is the most common messup on these kinds of plans

A thought though. If your TV is nearby the stero you could try the Sony Media Player SMP-N200 | Network Media Players | Features | SMPN200B.CEK | SMPN200 | Sony for $50. It is actually a pretty nifty device for getting content to the TV. It has a USB port so you should be able to just attach your drive directly to it. It has HDMI and Composit video so it should work with almost any TV. It has Analog Audio, and optical out for audio to get it to your reciever.

Lastly it has built in wifi so you should be able to push content right to it from another device if you like. I also think DLNA would let you select content from it and tell it to play on that device, so then you could sit back on the couch with your nexus 10 and tell it to play a song on the media player locally. Almost like a remote.

Only potential catch would be the FLAC audio codec

 

[Craig King]

Well that didn't last long, the SMP-200 I Mentioned above doesn't do FLAC audio files