Streaming Basics: Starting Part Way Through an Album

[AudioSceptic]

I can't believe I'm asking this but I've spent ages on fruitless searches without success.

I have Volumio running on an RPi. It pulls music from a NAS. I can use the Volumio HTTP interface in a web browser or the Linn Kazoo app (iPhone, Android tablet, or Mac) to choose and play music. I play albums, not playlists. I can easily play a complete album or single tracks, but I often want to start an album part way through by simply selecting one track and then have it carry on, one track after another. I must be missing something obvious because I can not find a way of doing this simple, obvious thing, which any CD player, iTunes, or kodi does automatically.

I think it's a control point issue rather than a limitation of the player/renderer but any advice would be welcome.

 

[Martin]

I use the Volumio app on my iPhone. The only way I've found to do what you want is to play the first track then add subsequent ones to queue. Pain in the arse but it works. Maybe someone knows a better way.

Martin

 

[FooYatChong]

Looks like they haven't thought about that.
Workaround seems to be to add the album to the queue and start from there.

 

[AudioSceptic]

I use the Volumio app on my iPhone. The only way I've found to do what you want is to play the first track then add subsequent ones to queue. Pain in the arse but it works. Maybe someone knows a better way.

Martin

Yes, I know that, thanks. This is effectively creating a temporary playlist to do something that should be instant and trivial. I haven't tried the Volumio app because it's not free, but does it do anything extra that's worth paying for? I know it's a tiny amount, but on principle I don't pay for stuff that does nothing extra for me.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Looks like they haven't thought about that.
Workaround seems to be to add the album to the queue and start from there.

View attachment 42986

Bizarre. It's the single most obvious thing anyone (?) does when playing a CD (or music in iTunes or kodi), other than starting at the beginning.

 

[Berwhale]

Have you tried playing the album, then immediately skipping to track you want to start at?

 

[AudioSceptic]

Have you tried playing the album, then immediately skipping to track you want to start at?

If there's a way of skipping directly to a track, that would be great, but I can only find a way to skip one track at a time. Try that with a multi-CD album where you want to jump to, say, track 20.

 

[Martin]

The Volumio iOS app was free.

You can play the entire album then open the queue and tap the song you want to start with.

Martin

 

[AudioSceptic]

The Volumio iOS app was free.

You can play the entire album then open the queue and tap the song you want to start with.

Martin

The only one that appears in a search is £1.99, so perhaps that's changed.

So what happens when I play other stuff and then come back to that album? I do that a lot (doesn't everybody?).

 

[Martin]

You can go back anywhere in your queue, tap any track and restart playback from that point.

Martin

 

[AudioSceptic]

The only one that appears in a search is £1.99, so perhaps that's changed.

So what happens when I play other stuff and then come back to that album? I do that a lot (doesn't everybody?).

Just trying another iPhone app, mconnect player. This appears to do what I want, but I'm not sure if it's controlling volumio or actually sending the audio using AirPlay. More tests required!

 

[AudioSceptic]

Just to follow up. The iPhone mconnect player app can use either AirPlay or act as a UPnP controller. The Android version can not use AirPlay, of course. I can select any track in any album and it plays from there, one track after another. It automatically adds the whole album to the queue, regardless of starting point (I don't care about queues: I just want to play music as if it's on a huge CD jukebox). A further big plus is that it's much, much faster than either the volumio web interface or the iPhone and Android Kazoo apps. This is the free, lite version.

Thanks for the various tips.