Playing music from an android device through my stereo, recommendations please!

September 24, 2011 5:30 AM

I just hooked my android phone up to my hifi. The default music player is ok but I feel I may be missing out on something. Streaming apps seem flakey. I would like recommendations on playing/managing/enjoying music through my android device.

I would mainly like to be able to enjoy my mp3 library but I would also like recommendations for sites that can stream a whole load of music while I chill out. My favourite is the Jazz radio station on Last.fm but I have to pay to listen to Last.fm on my android phone (i'd rather not pay!) I currently have that setup with an old laptop but the phone would be far handier!

I'd also like a player that would allow me to tinker with the audio levels, it sounds a bit muddy at the moment.

posted by aqueousdan to computers & internet (7 answers total)

MortPlayer and TuneIn
posted by Leon at 6:13 AM on September 24, 2011

Pretty much all the music player apps use the Android default library for browsing the music, so they tend to not be that much different. I really like Player Pro, though. And you can download the DSP pack and tinker to your heart's content.

If you have a large library that doesn't all fit on your phone's SD card, you can stream it from your computer via something like Audiogalaxy or Subsonic or from the cloud via Google Music.

TuneIn is a great suggestion for streaming music. You should be able to add basically any stream. Pandora also, obviously.

And if you search for Tune in Radio on the market, you'll see that app, plus a zillion others that do basically the same thing. Pick the one you like.
posted by selfnoise at 6:46 AM on September 24, 2011

Thirding TuneIn. I use TuneIn when I have the Droid tablet plugged into my downstairs stereo. My Fios Actiontec (802.11g) router is upstairs. The stream chokes a bit when I first choose a station but it's smooth sailing from there on in, even with my tablet's lame WiFi antenna.

You said that streaming wasn't going so well. if you aren't using TuneIn, give it a try. If you are, maybe your router or its antenna can be moved somehow. It might also be the station you're listening to - some choke more than others.

The sound quality is pretty decent for MP3. You might want to look into storing and streaming a lossless format like flac from your computer, as selfnoise suggested. I'm running Ubuntu and set up a samba share recently; haven't yet got the tablet to connect to the share but that may happen soon. (Android 3.1 apparently handles flac.)
posted by Currer Belfry at 7:50 AM on September 24, 2011

If you're not already using lossless files, start doing that. And if it's possible to use a line-out connection (I'm no Android expert), do that too.
posted by box at 9:04 AM on September 24, 2011

Seconding Subsonic. If you have your own server.
posted by Akeem at 11:02 AM on September 24, 2011

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I have the stereo plugged into the headphone socket of the phone. The hifi isnt that great so i'm not sure i'd benefit from lossless files, especially as I only have a 1gig memory card in there.

Tunein is amazing, i'm listening to BBC Radio 2 on it as I type this. Fantastic.

I went for Playerpro in the end, seems to work great!
posted by aqueousdan at 2:41 AM on September 25, 2011

I use Remote for iTunes to stream from my computer to my stereo. Works great.
posted by dobbs at 4:51 PM on October 5, 2011