First of all, does this discussion better fit this board, or the Non Video Game / Animu Music Forum? I mean, we're talking about software for music, but not really music per se? My head hurts.

Anyways, enough of hijacking this (Thread 126974) topic. Let's carry on here.

Streaming your whole local library (even a flac one) without having to put it all into your phone's storage is possible nowadays (what a time to be alive). Here we can discuss what are the better setups to achieve that. This is all without resorting to cloud storage, btw. It's all your own storage.

For the un-initiated, this takes getting two parts to work: the broadcasting side (that's probably your computer), and the streaming side (likely your phone). So you need software in your computer to send the music, and an app in your phone that can stream it.

There's also extra steps if you want to be able to stream your library from OUTSIDE your local network. This involves data plans and a lot more bandwidth, so it won't be the focus of this topic. But it's possible if that's what you're going for, for the record.

And now here are the best options as discussed (so far) in this topic:

Broadcasting software
Lossless:
Universal Media Server

Lossy:

????:
Subsonic
Airsonic

Streaming apps
1. foobar2000 (cons: The game Pong looks better)
2. VLC (cons: No seamless playback)

Other options
This hard drive has its own WiFi signal, ideal to carry around with you and save on those data charges.
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Ok, discuss away.




---------- Post added at 03:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:43 PM ----------

So I can't reserve posts? Darn it.

You can reserve posts I think after a 45-minute period between each.

You can reserve posts I think after a 45-minute period between each.
Thanks, good to know. For now, I'll make use of the chance you've given me, weheheh.


---------- Post added at 03:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:43 PM ----------

We haven't talked about what broadcasting software is the best, but I personally use Universal Media Server and I haven't encountered any problems. (My router can't handle HQ videos through it, but that's besides the point.) Music streams spot-on for me with it, and it gets frequent updates too. I also like the overall energy of the team. They seem like they really want to push their software forward.

But honestly, I don't know any alternatives lol. So I can't really say it's the best. What do you guys use?
Edit: Oh yeah, somebody mentioned Subsonic? How is that one?


Then on the streaming side, there MUST be something better than foobar2000 for streaming. Anybody's got any ideas?

Been considering getting some server to stream stuff since iTunes on mobile (heck, and on desktop) is some of the worst software I've ever had the displeasure of using. Tried getting Subsonic/Madsonic set up, but had quite a few troubles getting port forwarding to work (wasn't even detecting over local). Plex worked, but sucks for music. Any other alternatives...?

https://airsonic.github.io/ | https://github.com/airsonic/airsonic

I had too many troubles with Plex. And I think it always transcodes its audio? Could be wrong though.

Airsonic looks good. You could try that, AND Universal Media Player. If you can later tell us how that goes that would be great too.

I don't like to rely on the internet for my library. I have it on two computers, an external harddrive and cloud backup just in case. That way I can always pull any files I need via usb sans internet,AND i'm covered in the event of a fire. My backup service will send me a hard drive with my files on them

Edit: Oh yeah, somebody mentioned Subsonic? How is that one?
Then on the streaming side, there MUST be something better than foobar2000 for streaming. Anybody's got any ideas?

I'm really into all this stuff, so I'll try to explain my current set up :)

I was the one who gave Subsonic a mention in the lossless thread. I'm an IT guy, so it's hard for me to gauge how difficult others might find the setup... but I've tried a whole lot of media streamers, and I haven't found a better one than this (for music). I run the Linux server, but the Windows one is probably easier. Just needs one basic port forward in your router. It's completely music focused (I think it has video support now but I ignore that), and works great "out of the box", but also has some really advanced options to use your own transcoder if you're willing to delve in and learn. By default it transcodes anything on your server to MP3 with FFMPEG (and afaik ffmpeg uses lame for its mp3 encoding).

Foobar2000 is the best Windows player by far, but it's still crappy on Android. I don't think there's any one best solution for everything. I play locally stored FLAC music on my Android phone with Poweramp (great interface and format support, can even play single image flac files with an embedded cue sheet, which I'm a fan of) and USB Audio Player Pro, which has unparalleled audio quality, but you need an external DAC to really take advantage of it, so most people are better off with Poweramp.

So yeah, I use Foobar2000 on desktop, and a combo of 3 apps on mobile. Oh, and I don't use the official Subsonic Android app, but a third party one called DSub, because it gets a lot more love from the author than the official one. There's always lots of updates, bug fixes, features added, etc.

So my verdict on the best player is situational:
Poweramp = best for music stored on the device
USB Audio Player Pro = best for audiophiles that own a USB DAC
Subsonic = best for transcoding/streaming to mobile devices

I use Plex. Lossless streaming to iOS/Sonos and syncing for offline consumption.

I just realized that I didn't mention anywhere on the first topic if we were talking about lossless or lossy local libraries. That's one parameter that we should have brought out sooner. I'll add this flag to the list in the first post later (lossless; lossy only).

I'm almost sure Plex isn't lossless, so that won't do in my case for my flac collection. If your library is already lossy, then I guess that would work wonders, alright.

On the other hand, UMS does lossless and has no need for port forwarding at all, so I guess that one wins in out of the box performance alone. However, I wanna try out Air and Subsonic one of these days, and see how the grass looks on the other side myself. As long as they do lossless, I might find something I like.

If anyone else feels like experimenting, the more feedback we end up sharing the better.

You are wrong about Plex not being lossless. It depends on the client that it's streaming to. For my Sonos devices, it is lossless. And with iOS 11 supporting FLAC, it will also stream in lossless to those devices.