Best way to add my audio library to my Home Theater?

[FyreF13nd]

So I have a nice home theater setup with a Onkyo TX-NR7100 at the center of it all.

 

I also have ~300GB of music that I've ripped from my large CD collection.

 

Is there a device that I can throw a hard drive into to plug into my receiver? What's the easiest way to get this large music collection easily to my receiver?

[Dedayog]

27 minutes ago, FyreF13nd said:

So I have a nice home theater setup with a Onkyo TX-NR7100 at the center of it all.

 

I also have ~300GB of music that I've ripped from my large CD collection.

 

Is there a device that I can throw a hard drive into to plug into my receiver? What's the easiest way to get this large music collection easily to my receiver?

What are you looking to accomplish?  You want to play the songs on the AVR, but how do you want an interface to look?

 

Laptop is the most obvious way, or attached your AVR to your NAS/Server.   Maybe a mega storage MP3 player setup?

 

I run audio out to my HT from my server, access by remote.  

 

Your AVR may be able to take an external drive, but not sure how you'd access the files properly.

[GuiltySpark_]

If you have a media server running on the PC where these are stored (plex/jellyfin, etc..), you can likely use the phone app to then just cast them to the receiver. Any modern receiver should support that these days. I know the Denon at my parents place shows up as a cast target. 

[FyreF13nd]

Yeah its looking like a NAS would be the way to go.

 

I do have an old PC laying around....

[cmndr]

46 minutes ago, FyreF13nd said:

Yeah its looking like a NAS would be the way to go.

 

I do have an old PC laying around....

One warning - old PCs run the risk of consuming A LOT of power. It's not as much of an issue with laptops but if you have something from like 2010... it can consume $100 of electricity a year if you leave it running 24 hours a day. 

 

[dalekphalm]

There do exist dedicated "Digital Media Player" boxes designed for a Home Theatre stack - but they're a bit pricey for what they are. The easiest solution would be to connect a PC of some kind to the AVR and play the music from the PC, but as others have noted, there's a lot of ways to accomplish the task.

 

I would store the music files centrally - on a NAS or Server somewhere, and then access them over a network share, so you don't have to worry about keeping the files in sync on a local HDD.

 

Plex has a music function, and that can tie in with their PlexAmp player. That's an option - though if you're not already a Plex user, this is likely overkill.

[DaGeek247]

Since it's just music you can go a lot cheaper and smaller than a computer or even a laptop. There are devices made specifically for playing music available right now like this one i found. pop a cheap 512gb sd card in it (keep your music backed up elsewhere too) and you're good to go.

Audio people are willing to spend a crapton of money for their stuff, you can almost certainly spend more for a better brand or maybe even better quality, but the basic idea is the same. a small cell-phone sized device will do a great job of playing all your stuff for you.

Edited July 16, 2023 by DaGeek247
accidentally a word

[saintlouisbagels]

If we're talking about mp3 files, I would honestly find the cheapest 512GB iPad and use it as a media player.

If we're talking FLAC, you could try to find the FiiO M6 on a re-seller website like eBay. I'm not really a big a fan of it though - it takes forever to update the library every time I add new music (250GB FLAC collection here).