access to a LAN storage

[MarcB]

Hi, I'm using an Android phone and on my domestic LAN I have a file server with a lot of music. Is Poweramp able to access the file server directly?

TIA, Marc

[andrewilley]

Not easily. You could find an app to set up a symbolic copy of your NAS folder in your Android file system, which might work, but often that sort of method doesn't allow picking up tag data reliably.

The biggest problem is that Poweramp's Library expects that anything it had scanned should be permanently available, which of course won't be the case when you are away from home. So even if you turn the auto-remove missing files feature off, you'd still end up with a Library full of holes that won't play.

It is something that is being considered in some form for the future though.

Andre

[MarcB]

Thank you for your answer, would you suggest an app to play music from my NAS ?

 

[andrewilley]

As I said, it's not something that's supported and can be hit-or-miss. I don't use one myself, but I believe there are apps out there. Maybe someone could suggest one they've used successfully. I'm assuming your device is not rooted by the way, which makes it easier as more recent versions of Android don't support symbolic links in the general file system.

Andre

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, MarcB said:

Thank you for your answer, would you suggest an app to play music from my NAS ?

 

If your NAS is hosting a media server, then you could look at any Android media player that supports uPnP. Foobar is free and simple, and supports this. I'm sure there are others as well. But nothing that will fetch music files directly without the NAS having something to make these files available.

[ScarletNeko]

This is something I've been expecting like a kid looking at candy behind a glass wall, but while it doesn't show up, I've been trying to find some alternatives because even using hybrid lossy files, the lack of storage space is really crippling my phone.

You could try an icecast stream. Although unfortunately it is very limited quality wise (q10/500kbps vorbis is the upper limit) and works more like an internet radio, Poweramp deals with it very well, and you can use it with just the server (which is a service that runs in the background) and ffmpeg.

There is also a plugin for foobar2000 (the PC audio player) that can feed audio from itself to the server, and you can use foobar2000 controller to control it from your phone as well.

I know this sounds super janky, but it works better than one would expect. You have foobar2000 running on a PC sending audio to the server, which you connect to using Poweramp, and you can change the songs/navigate through the library with the foobar2000 controller. You can also always use ffmpeg and just stream the whole collection non stop like a true radio and ditch foobar, lol

I can deal with the jankyness and latency but the low bitrate kills me

[w3wilkes]

Have you looked at the open-source Logitech Media Server? I use it for my fixed platform at home (Poweramp is my to go player on my phone). It has a server piece that runs on either Windows or Mac or Linux or a Raspberry Pi. Any of these could use the files directly from your NAS (Some NAS boxes can also install this server). You will then need a receiver to connect to your stereo - a community project has designed a dedicated Pi receiver called PiCorPlayer that is comprised of about any flavor of Pi board with a Hifiberry DAC hat. You can have multiple players run from the server that can either play individually simultaneously or be synced. Your music is delivered bit perfect with full support for HiRes over your local LAN (either wifi and/or ethernet) from the server to the receiver(s) and then feeds the stereo. There's a few different control interfaces but the one called Material skin is very similar to Poweramp. For the audio file support it does it all - FLAC, OGG, MP3, ALAC, even WAV and CUE files are fully supported.

Again, for my phone Poweramp is the goto player. But I sure would like it to have a Queue only mode.