Micro-managing a smaller second library is not an elegant solution.Īnd what of iPhones (and any ‘Droids) that just don’t do microSD cards? We’d have to connect the phone to the server with a USB cable (or Pushbullet’s Portal) to enter another game of selective drag and drop. Moreover, each time we buy a new CD, we’d have to search for its streaming availability to know if we’d also have to push the server rip to the microSD card for portable playback. This would create extra work: 1) a DAP means we’d have to battery-manage a second hardware device 2) we’d then have to know what to drag and drop 3) and then find it in a possibly tiered folder structure - going through each and every artist folder (1000+ in my case) to drag and drop all releases that are not streamable would be finger-fiddly in the extreme, not to mention time-consuming. We could go back to the home server to copy all non-cloud-streamable content to a microSD card, ready for playback on a compatible Android phone or DAP. Streaming apps give us a wholly elegant solution but with one crucial gotcha: what of those albums, EPs or alternative masters that aren’t covered by streaming services? I’d peg at least 20% of my own FLAC collection as unavailable on Tidal or Qobuz.

And if we don’t wish to chew through our phone plan’s monthly data allowance, we can choose to offline albums with a single click.

MacOS’ Finder says that’s almost 3TB of data.īut how do we listen to this same music outside of the house in CD quality? Tidal or Qobuz will independently cover most of it.

My FLAC library of downloads and CD rips, according to Roon, comprises 8000 albums and EPs. Much of an audiophile’s music listening is done at home, an ever-expanding library of digital files laying the foundation to streaming.

Plex amp