Methods for streaming your own lossless music library?

AsSiMiLaTeD

I'm looking for ways to stream my personal music library outside of my home, in full lossless quality. I've been using iTunes Match for years and it works well enough and now has enough space to store my entire music collection, but I'd like something that retains the original files and streams at full quality.

I'm apparently the one person on any audio site who isn't really into Tidal (there are too many of my frequented albums missing, I have no control over how my music is organized so getting to what I want isn't as intuitive, and I'm just old fashioned and like buying and owning my own music forever).

The two options I know of are setting up JRiver to access my files from outside of my network and a service for Vox called Loop. JRiver should just be some setup on my end and Loop is a paid service like iTunes Match. Loop is a much more expensive option than iTunes Match at $130 a year vs $24 for iTunes Match, but the trick with JRiver is that I may need a static IP to make it work and doubt I'll have one.

Has anyone tried either service, or have any other recommendations for getting access to my lossless library on the road?

ZLTFUL

Plex Server can be configured to serve up your music in compressed or lossless format.
But people tend to like JRiver more...personally not a fan of JRiver after watching it crash at 6 of the 8 theaters using it during the recent KC theater crawl.

Plex has a smaller learning curve and tends to be a bit more set it and forget it but is a solid platform IMHO.

EndersShadow

I use Plex for ease of use

msg

Danny, re: the dynamic/static IP issue, have you considered setting up on a dynamic dns service? Or do Plex and JRiver already handle the access without going third party?

AsSiMiLaTeD

I like JRiver just fine running on the Mac, hasn't crashed once on me in over a year now. I'll look in to Plex and the dynamic dns service.

ZLTFUL

Plex has the ability without going third party.

The only "work" I had to do on my end was the port forwarding on my routers and modem.

msg

Ryan, a question of example you might be able to answer...
If I were running Plex at home and wanted to play content on a remote computer, is this all streaming-only, or does/can it cache the content on the "client" machine, do you know?

EndersShadow

msg wrote: »

Ryan, a question of example you might be able to answer...
If I were running Plex at home and wanted to play content on a remote computer, is this all streaming-only, or does/can it cache the content on the "client" machine, do you know?

I'm fairly certain its streaming only and doesnt cache the content anywhere else. I've had it buffer a few times when streaming my music through my phone at work.

It also depends on what your streaming as well. Streaming uncompressed blu-rays will buffer a lot more unless you adjust the signal and lower the resolution (which you can do in the app on the Roku/Xbox, but forget how on your phone). Music rarely buffers, and normally it does only due to wireless signal dropouts or moving from wifi to LTE signals...

ZLTFUL

Your own content, you can download to anywhere you sign on. If it is someone else's content they share with you, you cannot.

Otherwise, it is a pretty basic stream.

GospelTruth

I use Plex. I bought the Plex Pass version to get the most out of the application. It's $120 now for a lifetime membership and it gives you more features that we wanted to utilize.

What's great about it is that it will stream whatever you want from your home server. I have Plex Server installed on a Synology NAS and I can stream my entire music or movie collection anywhere.

With Plex, you can control what you want as far as compression goes when you are not on your local home network. So if you don't want to stream original file sizes you can have them compressed. If you want to have the original file size, then set it up that way. I think compression is best used if you wan to play music over your phone with a limited data plan and aren't hooked up to wireless somewhere. I have unlimited data with our phone plan and so that's not an issue. It's nice to have our entire music collection available anywhere without having to keep a download on the actual phone.

With Plex Pass, you can also download movies and music to your local device if you so choose. It's nice when we travel to download movies from Plex to a Kindle or iPad if you aren't connected to wifi. We also take our Roku on the road when we travel and hook that up to hotel TVs to watch Netflix, but can also watch movies stored on our server back home. We find this great for the kids. It's way easier to download to the device than using something like iTunes.

I set up my own URL (which you can get for $10 a year) to make it easy to login to Plex from anywhere in the world. While I can watch movies on a computer from our Plex server, music can be a different story. It is not a Plex issue, but an issue with file formats and what will play in a browser. I have a lot of my music in FLAC format and browsers don't support that codec. I have searched for something so that I can play those files via a browser, but haven't looked hard enough yet to care. So that said, my FLAC music can't play through Plex on a browser here at work - MP3 files work though.

In summary, with Plex you can play your files anywhere and in original format with the browser of the caveat above. It's easy to use and great for organizing your media. Like you, I buy my own music and am not into paying for streaming services - but I do like to have all my music available.

We have gone with Plex and haven't looked back.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Two questions on Plex:

1 - How does it handle a DHCP address that can change?
2 - Is there an app or something that allows you to stream lossless files on a phone, and do you know if it supports apple lossless?

EndersShadow

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Your own content, you can download to anywhere you sign on. If it is someone else's content they share with you, you cannot.

Otherwise, it is a pretty basic stream.

I think thats only if you have the Paid Plex Pass... not if you have a free Plex account and pay the 4 bucks for the app on your device..... not 100% sure though

rooftop59

EndersShadow wrote: »

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Your own content, you can download to anywhere you sign on. If it is someone else's content they share with you, you cannot.

Otherwise, it is a pretty basic stream.

I think thats only if you have the Paid Plex Pass... not if you have a free Plex account and pay the 4 bucks for the app on your device..... not 100% sure though

The plex pass is only 5 per month, and I use the dvr feature for local channels. Works prrry well...

GospelTruth

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

Two questions on Plex:

1 - How does it handle a DHCP address that can change?
2 - Is there an app or something that allows you to stream lossless files on a phone, and do you know if it supports apple lossless?

Two address can change. One is the internal address of your Plex server on your home network. Second is the web address that your internet provider gives for your respective modem. In either case, Plex seems to handle this without issue if you use their application on say a phone. Don't ask me how, but it seems to know your servers IP address so that you can link to it from anywhere. When you sign up with Plex it somehow remembers your servers and knows how to get to them. Same thing goes when I use the Roku on trips at hotels. When I log in to Plex, it just knows where to go and remembers our home server location.

I still have a personal domain for our family. This allows me to set up Plex and other apps to be accessible via the web (browser) from anywhere. It's easier than remembering the IP address assigned by Charter. If Charter ever does change my IP address, it's easy to just update my domain to point to the new IP address. For $10 a year, it's a no brainer for me. We use name.com to get our own personal domain. Regardless if you use Plex or not, it's a nice way to get to say your NAS, router or other apps easily without having to remember an IP address. Takes a little setup on your router with port forwarding to get setup, but worth it. Helps me trouble shoot things as well from a distance when my wife is having trouble accessing something at home.

You can use the Plex app on your phone to access your movies and lossless music files. You can pay the $120 for a lifetime account or $5 per month. The paid membership gives you the apps for free. Otherwise, you have to pay for the apps on either iTunes or the Google store. I would say pay for a month to try it out if you have your doubts. I went for the lifetime as it is the same as paying for two years by the month.

Some Google searches show that people use it to play their Apple lossless files. The Plex site (https://www.plex.tv/features/) says it pretty much supports any format.

Give it a try and I think you'll be surprised how easy it is to work with and can play your music library from anywhere.

Michael

lightman1

I have a shartload of music on a badass server in Iowa. I access it through plex.


I want my hard drive brought to Texas, Ryan.