stephengrenfell
pfm Member
The MDAC2 media player (streamer) works with ANY device from internal memory, USB connected CD drive, USB Flash drive, SSD drive, NAS or network device, other devices on the local network, Internet sites etc.
From the users perspective, the operation of the streamer UI is basically the same irrespective of where the files are stored - which brings up some interesting "problems" with searching, should we just search local drives or a more global search and include searching Spotify and other steaming service music Libraries?
Basically we have made the Search engine mode sensitive, so if you search from the home screen it will search globally, but if your on your NAS it will only search the local NAS drive.
In my experiences of various player software;
Directly connected storage devices (HDD, memory card, etc) are generally scanned automatically by the player SW. In other words adding an album will be found automatically.
Storage devices accessible via the LAN (NAS, other computers, etc..) the user manually selects to add any folders to their library - and there is usually a chose to manual scan for updates/changes or automatically scan for updates/changes to the selected folder(s).
As for streaming services this is a different ball game as thier API needs to be incorperated into the player SW. And each time the user connects to the streaming service the player SW needs to update from their library as any changes since the user's last session are unknown.
Presenting everything as the same irrespective of source (i.e. as one huge library) can be a pain. Audirvana for example can access various streaming services, and it presents each streaming service as another music library (in addition to the users own music library), but the playlists and listening history are also kept separate. Roon has a different approach and presents everything together, but has much superior browsing capabilities. I like Roon a lot but it can be a pain when I want to browse just my own music and not streamed music and the two can't be separated (at least not that I know of).