spacey


Bub that is the only one I could find and they say the wattage
isn't what they say.
It is the only unit I've found though.

Now that I think about it, you may be better off going with a car stereo, reason is ... most of those will allow you to skip through your files on the USB drive. This Pyle is bare bones. Stick it in and it plays it from beginning to end.

Some of the new WiFi routers for your home have a USB port in the back of them, I have a Netgear and it's got one. You can plug in any USB drive to it, thumb, or USB-Hard Drive, and share the files over your home WiFi network. Doing that would allow you to take a laptop out to your shop, and connect wirelessly to your router. You'd be able to view/listen to any file, audio, video, pic.

I'm in the process of ripping my DVD collection on to an HDD and I hooked it up to the USB port on my wireless router. I'm much more inclined to watch the movies I own when all I have to do is click a file rather than go thumbing through my hundreds of DVD's. I can even access to them through my Playstation and watch them on my TV. I have a very cheap Sony Blu-Ray player that lets me access it too. This stuff is getting very inexpensive. Don't know how long it will last, but it's certainly cheap.

As for the laptop idea, it's a good one. As long as you don't have any expectations other than listening to MP3's, any laptop made in the last 10 ~ 12 years will do.

They have them at pawn shops for a $100 bucks or less all the time.

I realized I may have come across as poo pooing the idea. If so I apologize. I actually had this same question quite a few years ago when I was working with consumer electronics and the general answer was that they don't really make units like what you are describing because with mp3 players and portable PCs there isn't much need, and more importantly consumer demand, for such devices. Back then I didn't really like that answer because I wanted a set up just like what you are describing but in retrospect it does make sense. It's kind of redundant to have yet another computing device in ones arsenal when so many other options already exist with more versatility and functionality for very little cost. An mp3 player is pretty much a glorified mass storage device as it is. Cheers.

spacey


Drew have you tried to plug a stick in that has nothing but .wav files on it?

I haven't tried it because I've only actually had the unit for a few months. And I have an 80GB iPod Classic with like my entire music collection on it (which it works quite well with), so I haven't really had a need to try a thumb drive out yet. 

But the .pdf manual shows a picture of a thumb drive with instructions and says it supports USB mass storage FAT16 or FAT32 for PCM WAV, MP-3, WMA, MPEG-4 AAC up to 48kHz (but it says it doesn't support USB HDD's, and also says some features might not be compatible depending on the device/manufacturer). 

I can easily try it out with a thumb drive later if you want me to. 

I can say, having tried thumb drive playback on my TV and other devices, that sometimes the UI's can be a bit clunky for this sort of thing if you're trying to do anything more complicated than just plug something in and hit play.

No. Not at all Beepster...I asked for input and appreciate yours very much.

I was on the line that with a USB stick working then an external hard drive would too.
Not wanting a full blown system in the shop is another factor.
The only MP3 I've messed with is when I was posting in the songs forum...and only reason
I would.

Man Bub....my router, a DLink has a USB port. So I could get an external hard-drive, load
it with .wav files, plug it into the router and access them?
So that unit we've found would work too? Plug an external hard drive in USB loaded with
.wav files only and good to go?

Drew I was thinking it would be cool just to have a stick with
a groups catalog on it so it would be simple plug and play while
in my shop...nothing fancy. Hours of jams and I don't have to mess
with it while I'm busy.

That little Pyle unit is probably just what I'm wanting even if the power
rating is off. Most of the people seem very pleased with it.

Ah... actually I meant to bring that up but figured you probably already knew. Many so called "mp3" players these days actually can handle .wav files. They just take up more room on the device but generally those portable players have more storage space than even the high capacity USB sticks. Cheers, dude. You and I seem to think alike. Somewhat abstract and object oriented. It's why I like you. 

spacey

Man Bub....my router, a DLink has a USB port. So I could get an external hard-drive, load
it with .wav files, plug it into the router and access them?

You'll have to check on that. Sometimes the USB port is there for doing updates and it's not really a USB port like we have on our computers that we can access. Sometimes on routers it's just there for firmware updates.

I have a new Netgear router. The USB port on it was one of the selling features. It's designed to be a file server based off that USB port.

So that unit we've found would work too? Plug an external hard drive in USB loaded with
.wav files only and good to go?

Sometimes on the less expensive units, there is a folder size limit and a hard drive/thumb drive size limit. For example, if you put all of CCR's CD's in one folder and that folder size ended up being 2GB, and the USB port can only see up to 1.5GB, it won't play all the files. And in some cases, you have to put all the files on the drive without a folder.

I downloaded the manual and it did not say there was a USB size limit or how the file structure has to be ...

You can skip through songs when using the USB port on it, that's nice.

I am pretty certain you cannot connect a USB hard drive to the router and access files from it.  you need a "network storage" drive for that to work - which means it would have a circuit card in it which would make it a configurable IP device.  a standard USB hard drive will not do that.

Yeah, there's a variety of media servers, network drives that support media streaming protocols and whatnot, but I've found all of them have serious shortcomings that are dealbreakers for me (file types in my library that don't stream or play, need for a TV to operate the UI, no support for playlists, etc.).

I haven't found anything that works as well as the iPod together with my Yamaha, which works and does everything I need it to, though the UI is more complicated than it needs to be. Luckily I can deal with that.