Looking for a smart-audio/media player..

[Brilliant Tech]

Hi, I'm new to mybroadband and have a question non of the retailers can assist with, so thought I'd give it a shot.

I'm helping someone out with their outdated home audio system. They have ceiling-mounted speakers throughout the house which all come together at a central point, where they have an older Yamaha amp.

What I am looking for is a media-player (device) to which I can connect a portable HDD with music on, then connect said device to the existing amp to send audio to the speakers.

Here comes the tricky part:
I want to control that device (scroll through playlists that are saved to the HDD, select tracks, control volume etc) using a phone, from another room. So the playlist needs to be visible on the phone's screen..

I have thought of backing up the music to cloud storage, connecting a phone to the amp using a Bluetooth receiver and then stream the playlists using the phone, but then if internet connectivity is lost, the music can't be accessed..

Hope this makes sense and that someone here can assist!

 

[Goobie]

I use an old sony M5 smartphone running Plex connected to my amp. I can control that from another phone running plex. I have a media server serving up the music to plex on the M5, but I guess you can put all the media on SD card on the phone

 

[RoganDawes]

http://www.pimusicbox.com/ ?

 

[Trompie67]

Use Kodi on the media player.

Use Kore remote on the phones. Allows browsing of the library, playlist creation, volume control too.