Hi,

I have all my old mp3s on an old macbook, I need to retire it. What’s the best way to make the mp3s playable from a client say, android phone, to Bluetooth speakers?

Raspberry pi and a USB disk with plex the way to go? Just started looking, so any advice appreciated. At home there is a wifi router and separate bt whole home mesh ( which is what everything uses).  Ideally I just want something that I can connect to and play. Simples? Probably not I fear.

Ta,

Jsm

Also interested.

PiRate radio used to be a thing and I think they had Bluetooth modules as well, it sounds like something a Pi could easily do.

Me? I just want Winamp to stream with the same controls.

yes, I do exactly that with Plex – app on phone, play to BT speaker – for my collected and ripped music.  What I’m not sure about is if a Pi would work for the Plex server. Mines running on a bigger box than that.

@jwray – what are you running it from?

I have a big box running Linux and I run a bunch of different things, including plex, on it – mostly using docker. I had the box for those things so made sense to use it for plex also.

‘This suggested a pi would work – https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-plex-server/

Another one https://howtohifi.com/install-headless-plexamp-endpoint-home-network-raspberry-pi/

Cheers

Plexamp on the phone and plex server on the pi/USB disc.

How many MP3’s do you have or better still how much space are they taking up?

USB stick. Then used with your TV or OTG on the phone.

I haveine on a Linux home server* running ReadyMedia (formerly miniDLNA). Many clients, including Wiim pucks, music apps on your smartphone and both our smart TVs will stream from it. Bluetooth to your speakers and you are good to go.

* Any old windows mac or linux computer can be used for this

I looked at all this ages ago and decided for the faff and cost it was far easier to upload it all to OneDrive and use an app called Cloud-player. I’m more than happy with the results.

What you’re describing is DLNA – you need a server in one place holding your media and a client on the other devices. There are many, many options and they should all interoperate.

I use Plex (as you suggest) for video, I bought it years ago when they were offering a lifetime subscription for peanuts though the free version is fine. For music I sacked off local media in favour of a Spotify subscription, the CD albums I have which aren’t on there take up one shelf of a Billy bookcase.

Why do you need to retire the Mac? Stick it in a corner somewhere and use it as a server.

If all you want to do is play some mp3s through a single bluetooth speaker, Plex is massive overkill for what you are describing.

As a rule, I’m a huge advocate of overkill – but, if thats all you want to do, just save the mp3s directly on to the phone, and plug it into the speaker.

That approach only wouldn’t work if a) you have more content than would fit onto a phone or SD card, and/or b) you want several people to be able to access the music from one central location.

Plex is free and will run on a potato, so just download it onto your existing computer, and the client app (or Plexamp if you are mostly interested in music) and give it a go.  It’ll take you 30 mins to get everything working if you’re only using it for music.

As long as the “client” (whatever you are playing the media on) can play the media in the format it’s saved as on the server (mp3 in this case), then your Plex server doesn’t need to be powerful at all.  It’s only when you want your server to start “transcoding” the media files (eg: if your server needs them in a different format or compressed to send over 5G).  Even then, if it’s only mp3s, your old MacBook shouldn’t have a problem.

Another plus with Plex is that it’s a single port to forward at the firewall for worldwide access from a fixed IP address.

I ran a plex server on a RPi 2B for a while, only thing it struggled with was some of the video coding. Audio it’ll do all day and all night.

Thanks all, built a pi last night. Did what I needed – usb disk sharing music from back in the day via plexamp to bluetooth speakers.

Quite enjoyed digging into my brain from back in the day when I fettled more with ‘nix stuff.