Help Me Find a Touch Screen Interface to my music collection.

March 10, 2012 7:27 PM

I am looking for a touch screen interface to my music collection. Ideally I would like a touch screen/tablet, preferably an Android device, that can act as a front end to my music collection that is located Unbuntu. Ideally I would like to see all my albums as album art and all you would need to do is touch an album to play it.

I'd also like of course to show albums by genre, artist, etc. The touch scree/tablet would plug directly into my stereo system and wirelessly connect to the PC. I sort of have this at the moment with my Squuezebox and Squeezebox Radio, but the interface is too 'clunky' for me and has an extremely low 'wife acceptance factor'. Access to Internet radio would be a nice to have. As I say being able to access an Ubuntu server is a strongly preferred, but the key requirement is a touch screen interface. Albumplayer seems to have the right interface, but it requires Windows and I can't work out what sort of screen it requires. I have mostly FLAC files, but also an assortment of other filetypes such as .mp3, .wmv, .aac, etc I am not an audiophile as such, so high-end playback is not essential. Any help, pointers much appreciated.

posted by vac2003 to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (8 answers total)

I think the Plex server (available for ubuntu) and the corresponding IOS apps would be worth looking at- should handle this, and more.
posted by jenkinsEar at 9:15 PM on March 10, 2012

Best answer: Deja vu from my recent post The chumby client has a nicely done front end interface to the Subsonic music server (which i believe can run on Ubuntu..). High wife acceptance factor in my house.
posted by edman at 10:06 PM on March 10, 2012

Best answer: I live by Subsonic on my Android phone. Definitely check it out. It can run on Ubuntu and is very easy to browse/sort your music with.
posted by kendrak at 11:08 PM on March 10, 2012

If you already have a Squeezebox setup going, there are several Android apps which will act as a graphical remote control for it.
posted by markr at 11:54 PM on March 10, 2012

Best answer: I also came here to mention Subsonic. You'd install it on your server, and then clients can access via a web browser (or via a subsonic app on android or iphone). Bonus is that this setup would make your music accessible anywhere, as well.
posted by inigo2 at 7:10 AM on March 11, 2012

Also look into mpd. It's a server that sits on a Linux machine that actually plays the music, and various clients can browse the library and tell it what to play. There's a great iOS app client for controlling it, and I'd be surprised if there wasn't a good one for Android.
posted by zsazsa at 9:29 AM on March 11, 2012

Response by poster: Thank you for all the answers. Subsonic looks really worth checking out and seems to tick all the boxes. I did try some of the Squeezebox apps a wee while ago but found them hard to use on a HTC Desire. Tablet might be a different story though.

zsazsa I did see some Android mpd apps so I will take a look at those too.
posted by vac2003 at 12:53 PM on March 11, 2012

Response by poster: Have tried Subsonic and it is marvellous. Perfect!
posted by vac2003 at 12:49 AM on March 12, 2012