Accessing a large music collection on remote HDD without a computer

[paddyb]

My friend has the following:

An iPad mini
A Bose SoundLink Mini Bluetooth Speaker
Over 300gb Music in Apple Lossless / AAC format on a portable hard drive

But, importantly, no longer has a computer / laptop of any kind.

So i'm looking for a way that she can stream music to the iPad from an external device to the iPad and then play via bluetooth to the Bose.

To further complicate things, she using her landlords Wi-Fi and doesn't have access to the router. So anything that needs an ethernet port, such as a media router, network drive or NAS won't really work, or will cost a fortune with a Wi-Fi dongle.

I'm hoping something like a Buffalo MiniStation Air Wireless Hard Drive might work?

She can put her music on this and hopefully the iPad will be able to see it there? I think iTunes may have a problem with this, but hope there will be a third part app that can play the music over Wi-Fi?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[AQ_OC]

Something like this will work, but the HD needs to have a USB HD.

http://www.amazon.com/RAVPower®-Wir...89289139&sr=8-3&keywords=wifi+hard+drive+ipad

It is not clear that she can play to a bluetooth speaker while streaming over wifi. The wifi and bluetooth frequenices are very close so it may not work. Advise keep the option of using headphones open.

 

[paddyb]

Thanks for your reply.

This sounds promising. If the Bluetooth issue doesn't hamper things, then if i understand it correctly this will work even without Wi-Fi and she just needs to plug a portable HDD into the USB socket. Not being an iPad or iPhone users, I'm not clear if this would work directly with iTunes (i.e the music and library info would be on the HDD and iTunes would stream it from there to the iPad)? If not, is there a 3rd party app that can achieve this, preferably one that can read an iTunes library file so that all the artwork, cataloging that she did manually will remain intact?

 

[Tudor]

You should take a look at a Synology NAS, they do have a WiFi option, and lots of apps for iOS. Depends how much you want to pay! I have a hardwired one and an Apple TV, I can playback on the Apple TV directly from the NAS after stating up on a web browser. Also I can access my NAS from anywhere in the world, NAS is located in the UK and currently playing music from it in the Canary Islands!

 

[twerppoet]

Wi-fi and Bluetooth speakers should not interfere with each other. I've used a portable bluetooth speaker to listen to streaming content many a time; both from my iPhone and iPad.

Hold in mind that streaming audio via bluetooth makes that lossless file format and high quality speakers overkill; but it shouldn't hurt anything.

 

[AQ_OC]

Thanks for your reply. This sounds promising. If the Bluetooth issue doesn't hamper things, then if i understand it correctly this will work even without Wi-Fi and she just needs to plug a portable HDD into the USB socket. Not being an iPad or iPhone users, I'm not clear if this would work directly with iTunes (i.e the music and library info would be on the HDD and iTunes would stream it from there to the iPad)? If not, is there a 3rd party app that can achieve this, preferably one that can read an iTunes library file so that all the artwork, cataloging that she did manually will remain intact?

I don't own the product, but usually there is an app that you get free (via the App Store) that works with the device. The app comes from the device maker to be used with the device. (There is a video review on amazon that gives a hint of this.) You can use that as a player. I'm not sure what you mean by iTunes, but I don't think the iOS Music app will see this device. It only plays music on the iPad, or music from iTunes Radio, or streaming music via iTunes Match. There may be other apps that can see any drives plugged into the wifi device, but I can't be sure with testing. For example, goodreader can see several of my wifi drives via various merhods. It can play music, movies and view picture. But I don't know if GoodReader can work with this device.

There are other such devices on the market, so I'd suggest doing some more research and not just settling on this device, yet. I don't like to recommend something I have not used myself.

I don't use computers for my iPads often, but there are times when having a real computer is helpful, but it is less and less so these days.

 

[paddyb]

Thanks for your responses.

Still liking the RAV Power. I haven't found anything similar for the price, other devices seem to only work with SD card and flash drives. Would welcome any suggestions though.

Bose do mention that interference with Wi-fi could occur, but is minimised by keeping the player and device close together (and I guess the drive further away). As Bose mention Spotify as one of the uses and she has already used it in her flat with Wi-fi running without difficulty, I think this shouldn't be a big problem.

A Synology NAS was my first thought, but I think its too expensive a solution to this problem and she won't want to spend that much. Might get one of these for myself at some point though.

I'm still not sure on what app she can use to play the music with this combination. I've downloaded their AirStor app on my Android, but this is more of a file manager than a media player. Most of the comments from Amazon etc seem to be from people either using it for photo's or video. I'm sure AirStor will be ok for this use, but will probably be a bit clunky for a large music collection. Any idea of other iPad apps it will work with?