Media player for large amount of audio files?

corm500

Hi
I am looking for a media player that will handle a large amount of mp3 files. I have ripped my music collection on to a wd passport. There is almost 1tb of music and I want to be able to connect it to a player so that I can play the files through the tv. I need it to be able to display artwork and search the drive without grinding to a standstill. I have a wdtv but it is no good with this large an amount of files. I also have an Apple TV but you cannot connect a hard drive to it and I don't want to stream the content. Any ideas.
Thanks in advance.

richardw001

corm500 wrote: »

Hi
I am looking for a media player that will handle a large amount of mp3 files. I have ripped my music collection on to a wd passport. There is almost 1tb of music and I want to be able to connect it to a player so that I can play the files through the tv. I need it to be able to display artwork and search the drive without grinding to a standstill. I have a wdtv but it is no good with this large an amount of files. I also have an Apple TV but you cannot connect a hard drive to it and I don't want to stream the content. Any ideas.
Thanks in advance.

Once you don't mind doing a bit of setup - a raspberry pi is a good choice - about 60 Euros for case SD card etc - you can run xbmc and setup your whole music collection with covers etc if you YouTube it you can get a good idea

andy1249

Once you don't mind doing a bit of setup - a raspberry pi is a good choice - about 60 Euros for case SD card etc - you can run xbmc and setup your whole music collection with covers etc if you YouTube it you can get a good idea

Bad advice , a raspberry pi is an enthusiasts programming kit , the processor is incredibly weak and would be much slower than the WDTV in navigating a large collection of music with album art.

There are plenty of videos on youtube showing a pi's sluggish performance , but then it is cheap as chips and you get what you pay for , in this case your paying for large amount of work into the bargain.

These devices are getting hyped way beyond what they can practically do.

The OP obviously requires something like Squeezebox or Sonos or some other network audio streamer , the Pi wouldnt be up to it.

BostonB

Use an old PC. You'll get an early Core 2 Duo and something that can take a basic gfx card and it will play everything.

richardw001

andy1249 wrote: »

Bad advice , a raspberry pi is an enthusiasts programming kit , the processor is incredibly weak and would be much slower than the WDTV in navigating a large collection of music with album art.

There are plenty of videos on youtube showing a pi's sluggish performance , but then it is cheap as chips and you get what you pay for , in this case your paying for large amount of work into the bargain.

These devices are getting hyped way beyond what they can practically do.

The OP obviously requires something like Squeezebox or Sonos or some other network audio streamer , the Pi wouldnt be up to it.

I disagree completely on the pi having setup and used one

a) It runs xbmc and most video formats without problem and has no problem navigating > 4TB networked media library in my case - so its certainly up to audio files on a local usb.

b) Setup is fairly straight forward for someone with the ability to youtube and follow instructions.


WDTV, Sonos ,Squeeze boxes etc. - are plug and play - however they are extremely expensive for what they do - and not very adaptable.

In terms of processing power - not sure about the others - however taking a squeezebox touch has a ARM11 533 Mhz verus a pi which has an ARM11 700 Mhz processor. (Also the pii can be overclocked to much greater than that).


If the OP doesn't mind a little bit of work - setting up something and getting something much cooler in the sense of gadgets (and learning a little as well! )
I would still go with my original recommendation - 60 euros or so and some work and you have something that will do the trick.

Using an old PC is a good option as well once you don't mind the size of the thing - however it does offer other options if you want to setup a itunes server or suchlike.

listermint

An Old PC is your best option TBH, stick to the advice above.

Grab an old PC or old laptop and use that. Keep it simple.

PogMoThoin

I wouldn't call 1TB a large amount of media, a large amount of music, yes, but not media including video. I have about 8TB myself and counting....

BostonB

I would say grab an old PC or laptop and experiment with it. As you may have one lying around.

Easiest way to keep it quiet it stick it on another room and network it to your TV (assuming its a smart tv).

Then when you see how that works, then either modify the PC to make it quieter, or invest in something like Pi or similar.

andy1249

The OP has a WDTV Live .... specs are ...

The Sigma Designs SMP8655 SoC inside the WD TV Live features a 500 MHz CPU, a 333 MHz coprocessor, a 333 MHz DSP, 512 MB of DRAM, and 256 MB of NAND flash memory. Western Digital has tweaked the original Sigma SMP8600 Family design slightly by including 6 video Digital to Analog Converters (DACs)...

...

Way in excess of anything the Pi can do especially in terms of playing back video , which is its main purpose.

Even accessing via an external server ( Im my case a HP microserver running WHS 2011 ) navigating a large music database with the WDTV ( 3000 + properly tagged albums with cover art ) is painfully slow , to the point of being practically useless when trying to build a playlist on the fly for say a party or something.

The OP knows this of course , and wants something better , suggesting a Pi as something better is ridiculous !!

The Pi cannot better that performance in any way , Sure , it can do it , just slower than the WD , which can also do it .... but its not usable , boring people to death having them wait for a dog slow processor to catch up with a search request does not make for entertainment !

Squeezebox and Sonos have slower clock speeds on their processors , but as anyone who knows anything about computing will tell you thats a very small part of the story .... Squeezebox and Sonos do nothing else but manage music ... so performance in that respect is way in excess of anything the Pi can do as the resources are not divided up so much.

I have Touch and a Boom myself , Also a dedicated Marantz audio Streamer , all of them controllable by apps via android or the app store and all of them extremely fast and simple to use.

There is no way the Pi can compete with those in terms of navigating a music collection without annoying lag/buffering and freezing.

Squeezbox have folded now so I wouldnt recommend one of those units , Sonos units start at around the 200 mark.

Denon , Cambridge audio , Marantz , and at a slightly higher end Naim , all have units on the market that do an excellent job of navigating a large music database , and units from these manufactures start at around the 200 mark.

Alternatively there are plenty of small form factor PC's on the market today , such as the Zotac boxes , The Acer Revo's , Lenovo boxes , etc. that are not much bigger than the WDTV and will handle a large music collection with ease.
Again these start at around the 200/250 mark.

Sure a Pi is about 50 , but for the OP's needs , after buying the various bits and pieces needed and spending a few days and losing some hair setting it up ( never assume computing knowledge on the part of someone looking for advice ) it will quickly be realised that that 50 may as well have been thrown into a ditch !

richardw001

Okay - Andy - just to be clear - I'm not a pi fan boy - just speaking from my own experience - I use a revo as my main HTPC machine myself and a pi on another TV.
In my experience the Pii has been fine - does the same job as the revo - the only issue I have found is the sound on Mkv video can be a bit erratic (known software issue) - however with all music I have and most video I have had zero issues - I haven't seen this terrible lagging that you are on about. And this is without overclocking or doing anything fancy


The OP has a WD usb disk and an apple TV and doesn't want streaming etc
So I think that its an appropriate solution that can be enhanced down the line with little cost.

Personally as well I don't think the hardware on the Pi is low by any stretch of the imagination - 700 Mhz ARM CPU, Video Core IV GPU and 512 RAM - if you can't play a few audio files with that spec then you have problems

On other options - one thing just occurred to me the OP could use Itunes match and access their music (at least some of it) through the apple tv - might be the most idiot proof approach

That said I don't think the OP has posted anything since so this could be all irrelevant !

corm500

Just assuring everyone that I am taking on board all of the replies. I haven't contributed since the original post for one simple reason - tech is well out of my comfort zone. I am a typical end user who loves his gadgets but has no idea how they came into being
On the subject of the pi I think Andy may be correct in that it might be a bit on the tech side for a user like myself. I am simply looking for a plug and play device for a large amount of audio files without having to stream from a pc. iTunes Match would be perfect for me apart from its 25000 song limit. I have 4 times that amount.
I did think there would be a lot of devices out there specifically for my needs. It seems that most of them are geared towards streaming or playing movie files.

A2LUE42

What about an Artic PC. You get your media manager and a lot more. It does require a bit of effort to setup, but you get a fully functioning pc that is neat and low in power consumption. See the recent bargain alerts thread. I have a 2TB drive connected to mine with about 400GB of music on it. Have used the Windows 7 Media player and also media monkey to manage the files and prefer the media monkey.

richardw001

corm500 wrote: »

Just assuring everyone that I am taking on board all of the replies. I haven't contributed since the original post for one simple reason - tech is well out of my comfort zone. I am a typical end user who loves his gadgets but has no idea how they came into being
On the subject of the pi I think Andy may be correct in that it might be a bit on the tech side for a user like myself. I am simply looking for a plug and play device for a large amount of audio files without having to stream from a pc. iTunes Match would be perfect for me apart from its 25000 song limit. I have 4 times that amount.
I did think there would be a lot of devices out there specifically for my needs. It seems that most of them are geared towards streaming or playing movie files.

Two questions then for you

How much do you want to spend ?

Any preferences - do you like windows media or xbmc or itunes/apple in terms of music sorting.


The artic pc would would do the trick - and heres another option as well which looks pretty cool and is plug and playish

http://www.amazon.co.uk/G-Box-Midnight-Android-Box-Streaming/dp/B009BWC3J4/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&qid=1363948598&sr=8-30

with review

http://www.totalhtpc.com/g-box-midnight-android-review/

andy1249

if you can't play a few audio files with that spec then you have problems

This illustrates the point you consistently seem to miss .... its not playing a few audio files that's the problem , its indexing and quickly searching a huge music database .... which is a job that the Pi or most general purpose single box media players is not up too !

I have 3000 + albums and I know its not up to it , the OP has at least 10 times that amount .... he needs some processing muscle or something dedicated to the task , a toy like the Pi wont cut it.

richardw001

andy1249 wrote: »

This illustrates the point you consistently seem to miss .... its not playing a few audio files that's the problem , its indexing and quickly searching a huge music database .... which is a job that the Pi or most general purpose single box media players is not up too !

I have 3000 + albums and I know its not up to it , the OP has at least 10 times that amount .... he needs some processing muscle or something dedicated to the task , a toy like the Pi wont cut it.

Okay - I didn't realise that you own a pi as well and have tried using it for your albums ? All I can say speaking from my experiences is that I haven't found it sluggish accessing/indexing > 4TB of media. I run with a copy of my XBMC library data locally on it and with the media itself on a NAS accessing over lan. If it wasn't for the mkv issue on some files - I would be seriously considering swapping out my main HTPC as well for another one of these.
In any case this conversation trail is irrelevant to the OP as he wants something plug and play