Has anyone any experience of this? I’m trying the Evermusic app reading FLAC files on a memory stick through an OTG adapter. The app can see the files. I’ve managed to get files to play occasionally but for the most part they just don’t play.
Are other apps better? Do I need a specific type of memory stick?
I use a card and an Apple dongle. Works fine with the several apps I have (not Apple’s Music app). Is that an option?
Note - my iPhone has a USB—C connector. I think I tried it with a Lightning connector, and it worked, but I’m not sure.
Edit - I found a Lightning dongle in my ever-increasing collection of Apple jewelry, which means I must have at least tried it.
What apps do you use?
I have FlacBox and nPlayer. I don’t think FlacBox can access files loaded into the Apple Music app, but nPlayer can. Until yesterday, I didn’t think nPlayer had an equalizer until I stumbled onto it. (I also have Onkyo’s HF Player - one of the oldest, and the first one I got - but I don’t think that can access files in external storage.)
One further comment. I access my music via my folder structure, which was designed to reflect the way I search/select music. I have not always had success indexing a music library (on a 512 Gig card).
I tried playing some FLAC files and I was surprised it worked. I played an individual file by double clicking on it from the Files app so this provides native support for playing FLAC on an iPhone. I played CD quality and hi-res 24-Bit/96 kHz. I then installed the VLC media player app and this also worked. I used a SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive for the stick because it has a USB C connector.
Just noted another issue with nPlayer. When playing music loaded via iTunes → Apple Music App, it sorts the tracks on an album (or by an artist) alphabetically (i.e. it ignores the Track No. Field). That would be a deal breaker for me if I didn’t have the Onkyo app (and the Apple Music App, itself, to play albums in order.
Of course, files in folders are ordered by file name and, by default, would play in that order. However, I used a feature of JRiver to insert the Disc. No. and Track No. (padded as necessary) at the beginning of each file name, thus assuring they will play in the proper order.
As a quick update, I just couldn’t get Evermusic to work in the car so I’ve now ditched that. I’m currently trying Music Streamer. This scanned and recognised the 25k tracks on my USB stick, taking only 10 minutes or so on the initial scan.
I’ve got it working in the car via Apple CarPlay, and it seems generally successful. I say generally becasue some interactions from the car stop it in its tracks. If I click into the screen to display the track details, then back to the main screen (in the car) it will go wrong on the next track - CarPlay momentarily disconnects but when it reconnects, the app on the phone ‘hangs’ and needs killing and re-starting. Tell Google to navigate somewhere, or stop navigating (again, to the car) and playback stops, but that at least restarts with a click on the play button.
Overall its more successful and pretty much does what I need it to. No need to buy a separate Blue tooth player (Fiio M21 + 2TB microSD card is £600-700), and no need to trade-up to a larger capacity iPhone.
Why don’t you use Spotify, Tidal, or Qobuz on your IPhone to play lossless? I have a new IPhone 17 and CarPlay works great with Spotify, which I currently use.
I don’t see the need to upload Flac files on the phone. I use Spotify at home, (streamer), in the truck (CarPlay), and at work (AirPods pro).
To me, physical files are a thing of the past.
I have a little converter to transfer files from my phone to a USB stick. Just used it the other day to load an update for my streamer from the Lumin software engineer. Worked flawlessly, from my Email onto a USB stick. Phones are so good now, I see no need for a Laptop or desktop.
This guy
Just downloaded Music Streamer. Hoping it does everything I want, and I can delete the others.
Edit - just tried it and am very impressed. Indexed over 35,000 tracks very quickly. I can use my standard search method genre → artist → album. It has an equalizer (which I will play with). My only quibble is when you use the equalizer and the keyboard is displayed, there’s no simple way to hide it again. Fortunately, the tip of the “Done” button is visible, so I can close it.
I didn’t check to see if it could access the files used in iOS Music app. I may have to keep my Onkyo app to do that (and at the same time, let me use an equalizer).
Streaming works for some, but not everyone. As noted in my prior post, I have 35,000 tracks - a significant portion, but by no means all of my music library* - on a card which I can attach to the USB-C slot on my iPhone 15. As I noted in my prior post, I can quickly search through this collection to find the music I want. That would be a painful process with a streaming service, especially for classical, where there is no consistency in metadata - is the Artist the composer, orchestra, conductor, or soloist?
I have a subscription to Qobuz, which I use daily (and from which I purchase music as a Sublime member). But it would never work as a main source for me.
* Stored lossy, as music stored on or attached to my phone is unlikely to be a source in critical listening situations.
There are probably lots of car owners who simply don’t have this issue.
My wife’s car, for example, rips any CD inserted to an internal store and it’s dead easy to attach any USB storage device and transfer files over. She has a sizeable library on board.
Once in storage browsing by artist or whatever is all built in. Simples.
If there’s something missing then she can AirPlay from a streaming service.
Umm - that’s not my point. I have 35,000 tracks that I am interested in listening to. Spotify (or Qobuz) has tens of millions of tracks that I don’t have any interest in.
That’s not to say that Qobuz doesn’t have a substantial number that I don’t own but might interest me; that’s why I have it. But 95% of the time what I want to listen to is on my server and/or my phone and is much easier to find than on a streaming service. If, say, I know I want some Renaissance music, but I’m not sure what, I can search my Renaissance genre albums and scroll through until I find the album that fills the bill. If I want some Sinatra, I can go to my curated Sinatra collection and pick which album, without being presented with 100s of others. And by the way - with Sinatra (and other artists) I would often be listening to an audiophile mastering (MFSL in the case of Sinatra), which the services won’t have.
Good for you, have fun.
I couldn’t care less either way, but wouldn’t creating/duplicating your own library on one of the streaming services provide the same experience? If you want Sinatra, go to your library, select albums, search Sinatra, and you only receive the results of the albums you’ve added. If you want a specific genre, you select the genre within your library and you only see what you’ve added. That’s the point of your own library.
Think of all the playlists I would have to - in effect - recreate. And I would need a playlist for Sinatra, another for Ella Fitzgerald, another for the Great American Songbook, which would include Sinatra, Fitzgerald and others. Or a Beethoven list and a von Karajan list, which again would overlap. And, perhaps there’s a feature I don’t know about, but I would end up with a massive collection of playlists without the hierarchic structure on which I rely to find music.
And, in particular for classical music, which makes up more than half of my collection, there are quite a few recordings that are not available for streaming.
I mean, I’ve done the work - I’ve been ripping and tagging discs for close to 20 years. And I still wouldn’t get my MFSL Sinatra, my SHM Rolling Stones, or my AP Blue Note masterings.
Edit - in addition the library search you propose would only work for artists. Suppose I know I want to hear some chamber music by Beethoven or some small group jazz?
I’m with JEG. I just want to play a random selection of my music in the car. I do use Tidal and Radio Paradise in the car, but (in the case of Tidal) this is only to play specific playlists, albums or artists. I’m not sure how I could replicate the random selection from my music. I couldn’t be bothered to create a playlist of 25k tracks even if this was technically possible.
The reason for this ‘quest’ of playing from a bluetooth player (iPhone or something more dedicated to music) is that our current main car, a Volvo EX30, doesn’t permit apps to read from drives plugged into the USB port. Our previous Volvo, an XC40, did allow this, and the Audio Wagon app was perfect. Bluetooth/Car Play seems to be the only option under the current restriction.
There are many reasons for preferring local files to online streaming, indeed when travelling it may be the only reliable way.
I just don’t understand the obsession that there is a certain song I must hear AGAIN, while at some obscure place I may be located. How many times do I need to hear a bootleg Stones album I may have on a thumb drive…while hiking in the Amazon rain forest?
As I said in my first response to you, “[s]treaming works for some, but not everyone.” I don’t begrudge you the way you enjoy music; I see no reason why you should begrudge me the way I enjoy it. 
