Hi folks, this is my first post, so my apologies in advance in case I cross the forum rules or something. No intentions are made 
OK, who has listened to UK radio lately? Is it pants or what as a music listening avenue? Plenty of waffle and ads and same playlists day-in day-out, to almost make you think that some artists had only ever recorded one or two songs! (some folks like talk radio...that's, good for you, your lucky).
So, the plan was for a device to play my music library, in a shuffled fashion, left on all day. It can randomly play tracks from ones that I absolutely love to ones I think ain't bad, I won't get anything I don't like and won't get waffle.
The device must also be able to support multiple large playlists, so that I can organise music a little more into categories and moods, so that it'd be like a particular style radio station, again without breaks, ads or waffle.
Power consumption is also a concern, as too much power draw means I may as well use a desktop PC!
External storage: USB Drive or SD card, will stretch to MicroSD.
File support: MP3, WMA, but also FLAC would be nice.
Playlists: Multiple 10+ playlists, each with capacity 1000+. Easier format the better (.m3u etc).
Gapless playback: In case I want to play an album through.
Screen: Reasonable size to see a few playlists and select tracks, 7" should be sufficient.
Screen saver: power down screen when not in direct use (playing, no user interactivity) saves power.
Speakers: Not needed, I have active powered speakers [JBL Duet, very good surprisingly]
Power consumption: <10watts ideally.
I looked at a Squeezebox for this purpose, but it's playlists are limited to only 100 songs, and is a bit flakey on the tethered storage side.
I immediately then jumped to Laptop, notebook, and those are too powerful and power hungry for the purpose - although will support the awesome Foobar2000 on Win OS.
So I am down to Tablets with enough grunt to run software and support playlist size, but I assume low enough on resources to make it viable to run long term.
The Blackberry PlayBook is out - no external storage, but be connected to PC for 'syncing', and copying.
Also the ASUS/Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindel Fire are out for the same reason.
I am looking at:
Samsung Galaxy Tab2 7.0
Samsung Galaxy Tab2 10.1 *(A bit pricey)
Acer Iconia A200
How do these devices fair for reading large amounts of music (<32GB, 1000+ songs) from SD/USB flash based storage?
How is the music software on the Android OS's 4.xxx (I assume all are IceCreamSandwich - sound yummy in the summer??), can it handle my task, or should I be looking for alternative software?
If I should be looking for alternative software, what would fit my needs? Foobar2000 is top of the crop (pure sound, low resource, super customisable), but is out because it's Windows only I think.
Thanks for any thoughts and comments on this. I was hoping to get something less 'fully featured' and cheaper, but it looks like I need the horsepowert o do what I need to, however simple it really seems.
Cheers.
*************************************************************************************************
Problem solved, we bought a netbook.
Got an Acer Aspire One D270 new for a really good price. I've stuffed Foobar2000 on it's Windows 7 Starter OS, and added a few Foobar2000 components to make all the playlist jiggery pokery work well.
It's great that little Intel Atom n2600 chip. Still some issues with youtube and other flash based video, but AVCHD played perfectly from the HDD/SDHC.
Oh yes, power consumption is between 5-8 watts, mostly at 5 watts playing music, and only peaked for a second to 10watts on boot up.
So yeah, plenty of grunt and plenty of efficiency. Adding those JBL speakers over long term music playing is a static 11.5watts (screen off) total, or 13.5watts with WiFi and screen on (internet radio).
OK, who has listened to UK radio lately? Is it pants or what as a music listening avenue? Plenty of waffle and ads and same playlists day-in day-out, to almost make you think that some artists had only ever recorded one or two songs! (some folks like talk radio...that's, good for you, your lucky).
So, the plan was for a device to play my music library, in a shuffled fashion, left on all day. It can randomly play tracks from ones that I absolutely love to ones I think ain't bad, I won't get anything I don't like and won't get waffle.
The device must also be able to support multiple large playlists, so that I can organise music a little more into categories and moods, so that it'd be like a particular style radio station, again without breaks, ads or waffle.
Power consumption is also a concern, as too much power draw means I may as well use a desktop PC!
External storage: USB Drive or SD card, will stretch to MicroSD.
File support: MP3, WMA, but also FLAC would be nice.
Playlists: Multiple 10+ playlists, each with capacity 1000+. Easier format the better (.m3u etc).
Gapless playback: In case I want to play an album through.
Screen: Reasonable size to see a few playlists and select tracks, 7" should be sufficient.
Screen saver: power down screen when not in direct use (playing, no user interactivity) saves power.
Speakers: Not needed, I have active powered speakers [JBL Duet, very good surprisingly]
Power consumption: <10watts ideally.
I looked at a Squeezebox for this purpose, but it's playlists are limited to only 100 songs, and is a bit flakey on the tethered storage side.
I immediately then jumped to Laptop, notebook, and those are too powerful and power hungry for the purpose - although will support the awesome Foobar2000 on Win OS.
So I am down to Tablets with enough grunt to run software and support playlist size, but I assume low enough on resources to make it viable to run long term.
The Blackberry PlayBook is out - no external storage, but be connected to PC for 'syncing', and copying.
Also the ASUS/Google Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindel Fire are out for the same reason.
I am looking at:
Samsung Galaxy Tab2 7.0
Samsung Galaxy Tab2 10.1 *(A bit pricey)
Acer Iconia A200
How do these devices fair for reading large amounts of music (<32GB, 1000+ songs) from SD/USB flash based storage?
How is the music software on the Android OS's 4.xxx (I assume all are IceCreamSandwich - sound yummy in the summer??), can it handle my task, or should I be looking for alternative software?
If I should be looking for alternative software, what would fit my needs? Foobar2000 is top of the crop (pure sound, low resource, super customisable), but is out because it's Windows only I think.
Thanks for any thoughts and comments on this. I was hoping to get something less 'fully featured' and cheaper, but it looks like I need the horsepowert o do what I need to, however simple it really seems.
Cheers.
*************************************************************************************************
Problem solved, we bought a netbook.
Got an Acer Aspire One D270 new for a really good price. I've stuffed Foobar2000 on it's Windows 7 Starter OS, and added a few Foobar2000 components to make all the playlist jiggery pokery work well.
It's great that little Intel Atom n2600 chip. Still some issues with youtube and other flash based video, but AVCHD played perfectly from the HDD/SDHC.
Oh yes, power consumption is between 5-8 watts, mostly at 5 watts playing music, and only peaked for a second to 10watts on boot up.
So yeah, plenty of grunt and plenty of efficiency. Adding those JBL speakers over long term music playing is a static 11.5watts (screen off) total, or 13.5watts with WiFi and screen on (internet radio).
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