Support for "external Devices"

[DXTR66]

Hi!

I am not sure, maybe there is already a way to do what I am looking for...but if so, I didn't manage to find it ...

I am desperatly searching for a tool to manage my music collection and came across subsonic. It nearly does everything I was looking for. Finally I can store my music externally (NAS) and access it from my Phone, Tablet, Browser, etc....

The only thing I am missing...I am not able to feed my old "fat" 20 Gig iPod nor an SD Card for example. I am also not very fond of the idea of using a separate program (eg Media Monkey) for just this task. Especially because I want to fill the device with playlists I manage in subsonic. Also, even though I am an IT geek...i am not very interested in syncing the playlists between Media Monkey etc.

Now I get that supporting an external device like an SD card is not something the subsonic 'webapp' can do very nicely...but still, if exporting a playlist would be implemented a bit nicer, it could cover my needs. Currenlty from what I see, I can only download a playlist as zip file, containing just the music files. I think a big improvement would be, if I could export the list as files + an m3u file. Redundancy would not matter anymore. It would be even greater, i could tell subsonic where the files will be stored & where the m3u file should be written...

Nevertheless...I am aware that this feature would be better placed in a "native fatclient", which would also be able to manage the devices better (like media monkey does). Maybe developers from some of the clients are reading here as well & may have an opinion... .

[GJ51]

My suggestion to you would be to become a bit more familiar with Subsonic before you decide what to do about the issues you've raised here.

My daughter has a 120GB iPod and an Android phone. She uses them in tottaly different ways and is shifting away from the iPod as a daily use device and using it more as a storage device for when she's going to be in a rare moment where she may not get a connection with her cell signal.

She uses iTines to Sync her iPod and maintains her own library on her laptop to do that. She just copies anything she wants off our central music library to her laptop and then Syncs with the iPod. This makes sense as she doesn't want all of the music in the central library and it wouldn't all fit on the iPod anyway.

On the other hand, I use an Android phone with 40 Gb of storage available. By setting the cahce size to 10 GB and setting the preload to unlimited, I always have enough music in the cahe to play even when I'm in an area where there's no cell signal and I can't connect to the server.

Everyone's circumstances are unique, but if you review the settings available in the mobile apps and become more comfortable with Subsonic overall, I think you'll find the best mathods that work for your particular environment.

HTH - Please ask if you have something more specific that I haven't addressed.

EDIT: Also read viewtopic.php?f=2&p=46932#p46932

[DXTR66]

I agree that there are many ways of using subsonic - and I get the way your daughter uses it - makes total sense to me - but, it relies also on the fact that she is just interested in "some" music, not in an particular playlist. And that - correct me if I am wrong - is the main difference here.

I could also just download the music etc. I need to an sdcard & use it in my car. But that is not what I want to achieve, I would like to sync (!) some playlists I put together. Granted - I could download the whole playlist as zip file and put it on the sdcard. But if anything, that is only half the deal. After downloading, I only have a bunch of files, w/o any playlist (=no order) - or the playlist points to a wrong location (as soon as I use the sdcard anywhere else).

As already pointed out in my first comment - I totally get that the server is the wrong place to implement this feature. It belongs to a client. But I am really amazed by the fact, that I am the only one missing the feature of "syncing/managing external devices" (...at least it seems that way).

I can also shed some light why I would like such a feature:
On one hand my wife & I, we have 5 iPods...and only one is able to take advantage of subsonic - the iPod touch (thanks to the app available in the Appstore). In addition, I am not fond of storing my music redundant...why should I manage my library on an PC w/ iTunes and Subsonic? Makes total sense for different individuals (like you & your daughter), but unfortunately not in my case . Last but not least, I like having a few playlists on an sdcard, mainly for my car...