Stereo question

[Art Hovey]

I have a lot of tuba music (and other music) stored in MP3 format, and I have some thumb drives.

I would like to find an MP3 player with a USB port so I can plug in a thumb drive, and a line-level output jack so I can plug it into my home stereo.

Is such a device currently available?

What would it be called?

(This forum has never failed to answer my questions; some tubist always seems to know the answer.)

[Mattuba]

This looks like it would fit your needs perfectly:
http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/D ... YTYAiBVg.0

It apparently doesn't come with the required adapter, so unless you have a spare 12VDC-150mA adapter laying around, you'd need to order this:
http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/82-3950

Hope that helps!

[Art Hovey]

Thanks!

[Dan Schultz]

I've wondered by ALL home stereo units don't have this option. I had a 'cheapo' Kenwood receiver/cd player put in my Blazer last year that has a USB port on the front of it that plays .mp3 files. I seldom use the CD player but always have a thumb drive plugged in.

[ghmerrill]

Just as another possible approach, I'll tell you what we did when facing a similar decision ...

I really don't LISTEN to music as much as I play/practice, but my wife listens to a lot. We junked our ancient stereo system a couple of years ago, and or son gave us a nice set of powered speakers, but we weren't clear on exactly what to do in terms of a "player". Like you, we were looking for something we could plug a thumb drive into, but weren't happy with anything we could think of.

About that time we were fishing in a local river (stick with me here ... ) and my wife managed to dunk her iPhone in the water because she had it in her waders pocket but not in a plastic bag. This resulted in us getting new phones (due for that anyway), and having my perfectly good iPhone left over. My son said "Why don't you just use that with the speakers?" And so we did.

My wife copied all the music she wanted (and wants) to the phone. The speaker set plugs directly into it with the usual mini phono plug, and that was it. Works great. Supports all the playing capabilities we need with a nice interface and takes up almost no room.

So if you have a spare or old smart phone lying around, it's something to think about. If you've got speakers or a stereo amp you can plug in with a phono plug, it's a fairly neat solution.

[swillafew]

Home music equipment often has SD card slots, USB inputs, wireless network functions etc. If you don't want to replace anything else, I think the phone idea is good or an old laptop connected to your stereo might be good too.

[bort]

My wife copied all the music she wanted (and wants) to the phone. The speaker set plugs directly into it with the usual mini phono plug, and that was it. Works great. Supports all the playing capabilities we need with a nice interface and takes up almost no room.

And as long as you have WiFi, you you can still use all of the streaming music apps like like Amazon Cloud Player, TuneIn Radio, iHeart Radio, and anything else you might want.

A slightly more expensive option, if your stereo is connected to your TV, then get a Roku box. In addition to all of the streaming video and audio capabilities, there is a USB port and you can play all of your MP3s from there. I've used my Roku for all my music needs for over a year, works great!

[mbell]

I have a Roku and it is great for streaming. It is OK for playing MP3 files but is fairly limited in support of other formats. The various Western Digital media players should support a wide variety of file formats both audio and video and some of their models have built in hard drives. They will also do streaming.

As others have mentioned, you can probably find an old iPhone or iPod Touch that is otherwise unwanted but will play music just fine.

If you want to go high end, I've heard very good things about Peachtree Audio for playback of MP3 and other file formats, but that stuff is fairly expensive.

If your computer is reasonably close to your stereo, you can run a line from one to the other. Headphone out to stereo pair of RCA cables is the cheapest and easiest. A nice audio interface between your computer and stereo can give you better quality and if you get one that goes both ways you can have analogue input into your computer as well to transfer LPs, cassettes, CDs, etc.

mike

[ghmerrill]

And as long as you have WiFi, you you can still use all of the streaming music apps like like Amazon Cloud Player, TuneIn Radio, iHeart Radio, and anything else you might want.

Yes, I forgot to mention this. Needed to get a wifi range extender (Netgear in WalMart) because of the layout and network in our house. She has it talking to Pandora. I have a good set of industrial hearing protectors.

[fairweathertuba]

It seems "audiophile" may be an outdated term. I unfortunately use an iphone hooked up to a semi crappy set of speakers or just straight to sony headphones for most of my listening these days.

For a long time I had some nice Bose speakers with a decent Onkyo receiver/amp and some other nice components such as a Technics turntable, Onkyo dual cassette player/recorder, Sony CD player and even an old Sony reel to reel tape machine. Even though this was a mish-mash slapped together rig, back in the day I thought this was a super killer system though the amp was probably only around 50 watts per channel.

Using an iphone hooked up to some Best Buy home theater type system definitely seems like a step backwards. A lot of the younger crowd have probably only ever known Dr. Beats being driven by their cell phones, so being older and somewhat musically curious I have at least sampled some higher end stuff from time to time.

[Eflatdoubler]

you can also get a stereo with airplay. You can either get it wireless or one that plugs into your router. I beam everything wirelessly from my computer(itunes) or iphone. There is no degredation in quality using airplay.

[Art Hovey]

Well, I ordered the inexpensive unit that MattTuba suggested last Monday, and it arrived from Ohio yesterday (Thursday) late afternoon. I hooked it up today and it does exactly what I wanted it for. It can play MP3s from a thumb drive or an SD card, and it also has an FM receiver.

I did not order the recommended "wall-wart" power supply because I had one already with the right specifications. I thought I might have to go shopping for the right connector, but was pleased to find one included in the package. (Turns out that I didn't even need to replace the plug I already had.)

It comes with a little remote control; the off-on, mute, skip to next track and back buttons work. The volume, eq, and FM tuning buttons don't seem to do anything, but I don't really need them.