Browsing and organizing USB media library is very tedious

[Wosi]

I have my music library on a USB medium connected to my WiiM Ultra and have some trouble getting used to work with the USB library using the WiiM Home App. There are some features I miss. At least some of them should be easy to implement:

- Add option to sort albums by artist+year
- Add menu for adding entire albums to playlist
- Allow multi-selection of songs in order to add them to a playlist
- Also allow multi-selection of songs in playlists in order to remove them from the playlist

I regularly update some of my playlists so that they always contain my currently most-liked albums. This is a very tedious task with current WiiM Home App.

 

[Cartman25]

If you spend even 5 minutes searching this forum you will learn quickly that the play queue is a mess for USB music library, and they failed to properly implement the basic things important to listening to digital music that, you know, a music app should do as you note above.

Wiim acknowledge awareness of the problems and are supposedly trying to fix. I'm not part of the beta group so can't comment on progress. Used my Ultra for 1 day, it's now in it's original box waiting on an update to the Wiim app that addresses the shortcomings. App is so poor I gave up and went back to my old system of streaming through a PC. Hopefully they fix the app before the holidays, when I have time again to play with this in my stereo system. If not fixed by then, I will be selling my Wiim hardware in early January. Right now I've told all my music friends to avoid Wiim products until their app improves. Doesn't matter how good the hardware is if the app UI sucks.

 

[slartibartfast]

If you spend even 5 minutes searching this forum you will learn quickly that the play queue is a mess for USB music library, and they failed to properly implement the basic things important to listening to digital music that, you know, a music app should do as you note above.

Wiim acknowledge awareness of the problems and are supposedly trying to fix. I'm not part of the beta group so can't comment on progress. Used my Ultra for 1 day, it's now in it's original box waiting on an update to the Wiim app that addresses the shortcomings. App is so poor I gave up and went back to my old system of streaming through a PC. Hopefully they fix the app before the holidays, when I have time again to play with this in my stereo system. If not fixed by then, I will be selling my Wiim hardware in early January. Right now I've told all my music friends to avoid Wiim products until their app improves. Doesn't matter how good the hardware is if the app UI sucks.

The beauty of the WiiM products is that you don't need to to use the WiiM app to control your music. Unless I want to play from Amazon Music I would never use the WiiM app to play music.

 

[hgo58]

Funny how people in one thread complain about the WiiM Home App should not do music management, only device management, while in another thread is skipping the product because it doesn't.

 

[harkpabst]

Unless I want to play from Amazon Music I would never use the WiiM app to play music.

But you don't have to use the WiiM Home app for streaming from Amazon Music ...

 

[slartibartfast]

But you don't have to use the WiiM Home app for streaming from Amazon Music ...

True I could use the Amazon Music app I suppose. I haven't tried yet. The Android Amazon Music app uses a lot of memory on my phone since it puts every single CD I ever bought from Amazon in my library.

 

[harkpabst]

True I could use the Amazon Music app I suppose. I haven't tried yet. The Android Amazon Music app uses a lot of memory on my phone since it puts every single CD I ever bought from Amazon in my library.

You mean in your offline library, cached locally on your phone?

I don't have Amazon Music Unlimited, to Amazon Music is mostly unusable anyway, but I didn't notice that behaviour.

 

[Burnside]

True I could use the Amazon Music app I suppose. I haven't tried yet. The Android Amazon Music app uses a lot of memory on my phone since it puts every single CD I ever bought from Amazon in my library.

That’s just like a large playlist though, and I’m not convinced it downloads all entries to your phone as scrolling would be quicker if it did. What it might be is caching of the artwork.
That aside, I find AlexaCast from the app preferable to the WiiM home app which feels like a restricted window into my account.

 

[slartibartfast]

You mean in your offline library, cached locally on your phone?

I don't have Amazon Music Unlimited, to Amazon Music is mostly unusable anyway, but I didn't notice that behaviour.

It must be downloading . If I uninstall the Amazon Music app I regain 5 GB.

That’s just like a large playlist though, and I’m not convinced it downloads all entries to your phone as scrolling would be quicker if it did. What it might be is caching of the artwork.
That aside, I find AlexaCast from the app preferable to the WiiM home app which feels like a restricted window into my account.

I am probably mistaken about the 5GB. Ot definitely isn't downloading them since I haven't given it permission.

 

[slartibartfast]

That’s just like a large playlist though, and I’m not convinced it downloads all entries to your phone as scrolling would be quicker if it did. What it might be is caching of the artwork.
That aside, I find AlexaCast from the app preferable to the WiiM home app which feels like a restricted window into my account.

When you use AlexaCast is there a setting to control the volume change for one click of the phone hardware volume controls? I am seeing a volume change of 10 which is not ideal.

 

[Cartman25]

The beauty of the WiiM products is that you don't need to to use the WiiM app to control your music. Unless I want to play from Amazon Music I would never use the WiiM app to play music.

Maybe hard to believe, but some of us don't rent our music. Your comment above shows a level of ignorance about a group of users and functionality that the Wiim Ultra is advertised as providing, although obviously not of interest to you. Your ignorant comment adds nothing of value.

Since the Wiim can have a USB drive plugged into it, and allow the user, through the app, to interact with their music, then there is an argument that this functionality should work for those users. Hopefully this will improve in time (and no, you don't need to use it. You do you.)

 

[slartibartfast]

Maybe hard to believe, but some of us don't rent our music. Your comment above shows a level of ignorance about a group of users and functionality that the Wiim Ultra is advertised as providing, although obviously not of interest to you. Your ignorant comment adds nothing of value.

Since the Wiim can have a USB drive plugged into it, and allow the user, through the app, to interact with their music, then there is an argument that this functionality should work for those users. Hopefully this will improve in time (and no, you don't need to use it. You do you.)

I don't rent music either but thanks for your concern. I agree it should work, good luck with that. Alternatively use a proper server.

 

[Burnside]

Maybe hard to believe, but some of us don't rent our music. Your comment above shows a level of ignorance about a group of users and functionality that the Wiim Ultra is advertised as providing, although obviously not of interest to you. Your ignorant comment adds nothing of value.

Since the Wiim can have a USB drive plugged into it, and allow the user, through the app, to interact with their music, then there is an argument that this functionality should work for those users. Hopefully this will improve in time (and no, you don't need to use it. You do you.)

Why the pointed negativity? @slartibartfast’s comment wasn’t specifically about renting music and given their longevity on the forum, you might be surprised to find that they do know a fair bit about this group of users and what WiiM devices can or can’t do.

As a long term user myself, I don’t tie myself to the WiiM Home app either - to get round what some perceive as its shortcomings, there are several alternatives such LMS, BubbleUpNp, mconnect etc which provide the functionality some seek and which can still exploit the core features of WiiM devices. And for those of us who also “rent our music”, the use of streaming services’ own apps and their casting mechanisms will inevitably provide a more feature rich experience than they make available thru their APIs to third parties like WiiM and other suppliers.

 

[Wosi]

The beauty of the WiiM products is that you don't need to to use the WiiM app to control your music. Unless I want to play from Amazon Music I would never use the WiiM app to play music.

What options are available for playing music from an USB drive plugged into a WiiM Ultra? I only know about the WiiM Home App but I'd be more than happy to try alternative apps.

However, it is not an option for me to run my own media server only to work around WiiM's weaknesses. I bought the WiiM Ultra because it is advertised to work without such server.

 

[Burnside]

Any media player which supports UPnP such as BubbleUPnP on Android, mconnect on iOS etc can be used to access USB mounted drives on a WiiM device,

USB attached storage on the WiiM Ultra does work, but some feel the WiiM Home app doesn’t yet have functions they might wish to use in the playback of that media - others are happy with what it offers. But given it’s based on mini DLNA, you can use alternative UPNP client apps such as those suggested if you personally feel that the WiiM app is deficient.

I’ve long held the view that locally attached usb storage isn’t the best vehicle for larger dynamic music libraries, which are best served in my mind by the use of a NAS and better UPNP solutions such as Minimserver, or leaving UPNP aside, by systems such as LMS (Lyrion music server). USB support for me is little more than a nice-to-have feature for adhoc small static libraries.

 

[harkpabst]

You can use 3rd party apps like e.g. BubbleUPnP or Hi-Fi Cast (Android) or mConnect (iOS) to navigate the library build by the WiiM Ultra and play it on any DLNA endpoint like the Ultra itself.

Some of the features you seem to expect (although nobody ever promised that the Ultra would support them) will not work efficiently when implemented on the client.

- Add option to sort albums by artist+year
- Add menu for adding entire albums to playlist
- Allow multi-selection of songs in order to add them to a playlist
- Also allow multi-selection of songs in playlists in order to remove them from the playlist

In particular, any non-standard sorting options like artist+year could take very long when executed by the app with no server based index available.

Others, like more sophisticated playlist handling might make it worth looking into any such app.

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

I'm saying nothing.

 

[harkpabst]

I'm saying nothing.

Not sure how saying nothing helps with more flexible playlist handling, though.

Unless one is willing to copy files to folders and rename them to emulate playlists, of course.

 

[Steve Woodhouse]

Not sure how saying nothing helps with more flexible playlist handling, though.

Unless one is willing to copy files to folders and rename them to emulate playlists, of course.

There’s more to creating a more bespoke folder structure than duplicating files.

 

[harkpabst]

There’s more to creating a more bespoke folder structure than duplicating files.

Like ... playlists?