Thaddeus Smith Posted December 29, 2010 Share Posted December 29, 2010 I have over 120GB's (and growing) of music and it has always frustrated me that can't just dump it all onto an iPod/iPhone. As a result, I've had to keep it on my laptop or listen to pandora to get good music while driving/at work/out and about. I recently picked up a NAS and dumped all my music onto it for safety, but soon realized it's a PITA to maintain two sets of music. Oh, and I also have an older dell mini 10 connected for the sole purpose of streaming media to my PS3. So the stars were aligned and I started searching for options to have a) a single source of media, and a means for accessing that whether i'm at home or on the go. So the search began - I have twonky media serving up my content to the ps3, not free - but it works great and is easy to configure. I stumbled upon Audiogalaxy when reading a recent post on lifehacker.com. Apparently it used to be some sort of music service in another life, but was shut down in the wake of a post-napster world. It now serves as a means for streaming audio .. a little app runs in the background on your machine (in my case the dell mini) and catalogues your music to their website. It does NOT upload your music, it merely scans your sources, catalogues, and presents that information either via the web or dedicated iphone/ipad/android apps. On mobile devices, the application is very similar to pandora's ..easy to navigate and usuable over both 3G and wifi. Very little lag and the music plays almost immediately; it has a very good buffer-to-play ratio, even on 3G. It's not perfect, in that it downsamples the music in realtime (obviously) ..but that's a mild tradeoff for accessing all of my music, literally wherever I am. Just thought i'd pass this along in case any of you other music hoarders are in a similar situation: http://www.audiogalaxy.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldmako Posted December 30, 2010 Share Posted December 30, 2010 It sounds interesting, but I am a bit wary of things on the net which sound too good to be true. Is it safe?? Just how much of your personal info is out there in space? Here is a link to an article which praises it but adds the safety caveat. This article is old and hopefully they have since addressed the issue. I'll keep on looking to see if I can find newer info. Till then, I'll continue to drag my 80 gig iPod around and stream Pandora from my phone and laptop. http://www.zeropaid.com/news/99/what_do_the_stars_say_about_audiogalaxy/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted December 30, 2010 Author Share Posted December 30, 2010 I don't disagree ..that article, however, refers to Audiogalaxy when it was an actual music sharing service/app/whatever. These days it's nothing more than a streaming service of your own music to yourself on your devices. No music is copied or 'shared' in a manner that would make you a target of our friends, the RIAA. You're not broadcasting to the world, and you're not transferring files in a manner like kazaa/bittorrent/etc (which, you only get in trouble if you share -upload music to someone else- ..strictly downloading or 'leeching' has never been a case brought against someone) As far as information required ..it asks for your name and e-mail address. You can tie in your facebook account if you would like, but it's entirely optional. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted December 31, 2010 Share Posted December 31, 2010 That is interesting. If you want a music server that you can run on your own network and access via web page try http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp . You can control user access and stream uncompressed files. It works really well. If you make it accessable via your external network you can access it from anywhere including an iphone app. Runs on multiple operating systems. http://www.subsonic.org/pages/download.jsp Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted December 31, 2010 Author Share Posted December 31, 2010 very cool, especially because it takes out the 3rd party. I'll give it a shot and report back.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 k ..so I spent the weekend with it. setup was easy enough, though the available options were dramatically more and daunting if you're not at all used to this type of software. yes, there's an iphone app, but you have to pay for it. no, there isn't a native ipad app. performance over 3G sucked ..constantly choppy and buffering. wifi was ok, but that limits the range of portability. playing through the web interface was ok as well. had I come across this app first, I probably would be pleased as punch and spent more time figuring out the performance quirkls. audiogalaxy is still easier to set up (though it did take much longer to scan my library) and provides exceptional buffering/playing performance over wifi, 3g, web interface. and there's a native iphone AND ipad app, both free, so that I can access my library regardless of the device. so audiogalaxy is still the top in my book ..give it a shot if you're not obsessively paranoid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 k ..so I spent the weekend with it. setup was easy enough, though the available options were dramatically more and daunting if you're not at all used to this type of software. yes, there's an iphone app, but you have to pay for it. no, there isn't a native ipad app. performance over 3G sucked ..constantly choppy and buffering. wifi was ok, but that limits the range of portability. playing through the web interface was ok as well. had I come across this app first, I probably would be pleased as punch and spent more time figuring out the performance quirkls. audiogalaxy is still easier to set up (though it did take much longer to scan my library) and provides exceptional buffering/playing performance over wifi, 3g, web interface. and there's a native iphone AND ipad app, both free, so that I can access my library regardless of the device. so audiogalaxy is still the top in my book ..give it a shot if you're not obsessively paranoid. The performance is very odd as I haven't had any trouble. You may want to increase the amount of memory available. Now if your trying to squeeze too much data down a small data pipe you could have issues although I haven't had that sort of trouble yet and not even a hiccup. You can scale down the stream so it doesn't take up so much bandwidth. The free apps are cool with audiogalaxy. I didn't know the subsonic wasn't free. My friend told me it worked but I didn't know he bought it. I've been streaming a friends radio show on a server I host on a 6mb T1 line and it works great. What I like about subsonic is the fact that you don't have to register with a third party or give any information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 so you're using (presumably) dedicated server hardware over a T1 line ..vs. my dell mini 10 netbook with an intel atom proc and 1gb of memory over a standard cable connection of about 2mbps (generous) upload. the performance difference is pretty self explanatory. It may very well be possible to tweak the system for better performance, but the luster of hacking shit together to get my desired end result has long since disappeared. i just want stuff to work out of the box, even if it means I give my email address and name to a 3rd party (there's more information already publicly available than what they are asking for). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 so you're using (presumably) dedicated server hardware over a T1 line ..vs. my dell mini 10 netbook with an intel atom proc and 1gb of memory over a standard cable connection of about 2mbps (generous) upload. the performance difference is pretty self explanatory. It may very well be possible to tweak the system for better performance, but the luster of hacking *** together to get my desired end result has long since disappeared. i just want stuff to work out of the box, even if it means I give my email address and name to a 3rd party (there's more information already publicly available than what they are asking for). Well yes but I tested it over my crappy home connection first. I know what you mean. There is alot to be said for default install working right off the bat. : ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 werd ..and now people have two options to consider. a month ago, I didn't know about either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onlyme Posted January 4, 2011 Share Posted January 4, 2011 You could in theory put everything you have now on the latest iPod Classic 160gb. That is what I have, and it currently has 100gb worth of music and Top Gear episodes on it. Actual stroage capacity is 148.Xgb, so with your current 120gb, that would leave ~28gb free for future additions. http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/ -Kelly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thaddeus Smith Posted January 4, 2011 Author Share Posted January 4, 2011 yes, but then im left with managing two libraries. and can only listen to my music through the ipod. and what happens when that ipod takes a shit? (it will) how will my wife access the music at the same time? and i don't want to carry around yet another device. as it stands now, I have my music fully protected in a raid array, singlularly managed and accessible (with a few pieces of software) on my ps3, both iphones, all computers, and ipad. virtually anywhere. pretty damn cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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