iPad Air Music from external SSD

[CarlosNino]

I have an iPad Air 4th gen. with only 64GB. I also have a lot (more than 100GB) of CDs converted to mp3 files and stored in an external SSD drive. My question is how to play music directly from the external SSD without having the iPad copy the files locally. I tried with VOX player bur it makes a copy of the file on the internal iPad's memory.

 

[bradbomb]

I don't have a great solution for using the external SSD directly, but I can say paying for iTunes Match (not Apple Music) will let you sync your whole library in the cloud ($24.99 a year). It matches whatever already exists in their library with AAC files and uploads whatever it doesn't have.

 

[sparksd]

I have an iPad Air 4th gen. with only 64GB. I also have a lot (more than 100GB) of CDs converted to mp3 files and stored in an external SSD drive. My question is how to play music directly from the external SSD without having the iPad copy the files locally. I tried with VOX player bur it makes a copy of the file on the internal iPad's memory.

I use nPlayer for video on an SSD and it works great. It supports audio and plays without copying. I even created a playlist using a single folder and it should support more. You would have to connect to the SSD at the same level (you select it in nPlayer) each time for the playlists to work again. It supports repeat and random play.

 

[AutomaticApple]

I have an iPad Air 4th gen. with only 64GB. I also have a lot (more than 100GB) of CDs converted to mp3 files and stored in an external SSD drive. My question is how to play music directly from the external SSD without having the iPad copy the files locally. I tried with VOX player bur it makes a copy of the file on the internal iPad's memory.

I would also recommend nPlayer. I have never had any issues with it. Audio playback never seems to be choppy either.

 

[CarlosNino]

Thank you all very much for your comments. I decided to try nPlayer and managed to get al link to all my SSD's .mp3. nPlayer basically copied the directory structure of the SSD (organized by bands/themes/soundtracks etc.)
Now the question is, how do I make nPlayer to behave like iTunes and play songs randomly?

 

[sparksd]

Thank you all very much for your comments. I decided to try nPlayer and managed to get al link to all my SSD's .mp3. nPlayer basically copied the directory structure of the SSD (organized by bands/themes/soundtracks etc.)
Now the question is, how do I make nPlayer to behave like iTunes and play songs randomly?

When nPlayer is playing music, it has a little menu window with two crisscrossed arrows - that enables randomization.

 

[CarlosNino]

When nPlayer is playing music, it has a little menu window with two crisscrossed arrows - that enables randomization.

Yes, I saw it but it only plays songs within that directory (Band name) If I want it to switch to another directory (to play another band) what should I do?

 

[sparksd]

Yes, I saw it but it only plays songs within that directory (Band name) If I want it to switch to another directory (to play another band) what should I do?

I'm stuck - couldn't see a way to do it. I looked at other players and file managers I have and couldn't see anything possible there, either. Music players like Flacbox can't see the SSD, Music Streamer will stream from devices on your network (e.g., desktop) but not from an SSD. iOS does not play well with attached storage.

 

[CarlosNino]

So what I'll do is rename all files like this bandname - songname.mp3 and put them all in one single directory.
Thank you all for your help