Replacing iPod Classic with a NAS

[Big Grumpy]

Hi

I have a Cyrus Streamline 2 and normally I use my 160Gb iPod Classic to listen to my music via it's USB socket. I then use the n-remote to kind of remote control the iPod. I'm in the habit of having a playlist per artist and I have lots of them! The n-remote allows me to view music by playlist fine. When I tinkered with a USB stick every album in an artist's folder was listed in its own folder rather than in one nice long playlist simply sorted by album.

I'm looking to replace the Classic as the music source seeing as it will die one day and they're no longer made. I'm told that attaching a NAS drive to the Cyrus Streamline would be my best bet but I'm at a loss as to what features the NAS should have for my needs. Can I connect one to the Cyrus directly via USB or will everything have to go over the LAN?

Also, does anyone know if it is possible to retain the iPod-like Playlist format of browsing music where all an artist's albums are in one long sorted list rather than individual folders? That's all I want to do - I won't be needing or using any features to let me listen to my music wherever I am or to create my own cloud for movies and other data. Well not right now at any rate.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Wuss]

Looks like your Cyrus will accept a usb drive plugged into the rear of it but IMHO I don't think that's the way you should go. Thinking about a NAS I would suggest QNAP which needs to be networked to your Cyrus. I've had one for a couple of years now and it works well and has a good selection of Apps. I use one of the included Apps "Twonky Server" to organise my music and present it to the Pioneer N50 streamer I have. It has an iTunes server built in if you need to stay Apple.

To control everything I have a Nexus 7 tablet running an App called BubbleUPNP. The app sees the streamer and the Twonky server on my home network. Albums are listed alphabetically or by Artist, or Artist/Album. Basically whatever you require. You can create playlists etc. It all works really well and is not too difficult to setup.

The advantages of using a network connection to your streamer is you will also get access to Internet radio (if you like that sort of thing).

HTH

 

[chebby]

In your position i'd invest in an iPad Mini 128GB* (if that's enough storage) or wait a little while for the next generation iPod Touch to see if there will be a 128GB version.

Keeps all your settings, playlists, artwork etc. intact by staying with an Apple device.

*Actually I recently did just that.