Low, or lower-end audio. Or middle. But not high.

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Originally Posted by George

As far as $5/month goes, can I just dial up the full "Exile On Main Street" album by the Rolling Stones, just as an example, and have it play in its entirety without ads? If this is possible, that's something to consider.

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*checks* I was wrong, it's $10/month, or $15 for a family plan (family plans let you have ~6 people with their own logins, playlists, history, etc, and simultaneous streaming on different devices).

https://music.youtube.com/music_premium

https://www.spotify.com/us/premium/

I did confirm that your example album is on YouTube Music, and yes, it would play the entire album straight through without ads. You can control exactly what plays via your phone by setting up a saved playlist or your in-the-moment queue, or you could get a smart speaker and just tell it what to play.

I think Sonos also plays stuff off YouTube music. Haven't tried it, though. I do have a family, so the Spotify family plan works out well. The audio quality is also better than on the ad-supported version.

For years I dreamed of the same, George. Pull up any song or album I want on a phone or tablet, have it play in CD-quality through my stereo with no cables attached to the phone/tablet. It was possible for several years back in the day but more complicated and expensive. Google Chromecast changed all that and made it possible to set up on a shoestring. You just needed to subscribe to a music streaming service. At the time I bought a Chromecast for my TV (it's hooked up to a nice sound system) and a Chromecast Audio, which doesn't have any video capability, to my 2-channel living room stereo. They were like $30 each. Each Chromecast has its own name on the home network, and I can name them whatever I want.

With the Chromecast hooked up to the TV, you can also easily stream YouTube videos or Facebook videos from your phone. Many apps have Cast capability, at least with Android.

One advantage to YouTube Music is, if you watch YouTube on other devices you will no longer have ads there either (assuming you're signed in to your account).

As a sound quality snob I find it slightly lacking, but 99% of the population is probably fine with it. HiFi streaming services like Tidal and Qobuz fill that super high quality void, but for many people they are add-ons due to their somewhat more limited content vs Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music. I actually can't remember not being able to find any albums on Tidal so far in about a year of using it.

Edit - I would usually buy 2 or 3 albums a month on average, back in the CD days. There was a period of a few years where I was buying albums on MP3 digital download instead, or buying the CD through Amazon and getting the download thrown in so I could load it into my iPod more easily. I pretty much stopped buying albums when I started streaming music, and it worked out cheaper anyway. I just buy Dream Theater albums to have the physical copies because they're my favorite band.

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Originally Posted by George

The short version: I want to pick up my iPhone while inside my house and connected to my home wifi network and be able to choose music stored on a USB flash drive that's plugged into a Windows 10 PC (or possibly Linux, more on that below) and stream that music to a bluetooth speaker from the phone.

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Add music to your iTunes library. Control iTunes from your iPhone.

Easy!

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Originally Posted by Rare White Ape

Add music to your iTunes library. Control iTunes from your iPhone.

Easy!

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That's my solution. Stream from iTunes thru the old Apple TV into the receiver.

That way I avoid the bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth and thanks to Foobar, I can transcode CDs and FLAC files to apple lossless.

I've got a similar setup with Youtube Music and various devices in my house. I've got a couple of the first-generation Google homes, and they sound fine, though they have much better speakers on the newer ones. I can just stream to those from Spotify or my own music collection on Youtube Music.

I preferred it when it was Google Music, the new app just is not as good, but I still can play all my tunes in pretty much any room in the house.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBgq2QbXsAQo4pi.jpg:large

Cheapskates way to watch ad free Youtube on PC is to use the Brave browser.

Both the amp and the turntable are probably still topping some lists.

I mean, just look at them. They're massive!

It is entirely possible my uncle still has that reel-to-reel.

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Originally Posted by FaultyMario

That's my solution. Stream from iTunes thru the old Apple TV into the receiver.

That way I avoid the bandwidth limitations of Bluetooth and thanks to Foobar, I can transcode CDs and FLAC files to apple lossless.

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I think iTunes can import to Apple Lossless too, but it's been so long since I have ripped any music that I just don't know.

But in general my suggestion is a way to avoid overthinking it to the nth degree.

George, you already own an iPhone, you already own a PC. Just download iTunes to that PC, sign into your Apple account to pair the phone to it, import your USB music into iTunes (I recommend first copying the whole lot to the HDD to avoid messing up your file structure on the USB drive) and boom. You can connect to iTunes on the PC via wifi, and the PC can send your music out of Windows via whatever option you want.