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Streamer that can read Mac files


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I am after a streamer/ dac that will read both Mac and Windows formatted hard drives. I am keen to hear recommendations  I bought a blue sound node 2 here and it does lots of great things BUT all my music is on a Mac and it won’t read a Mac formatted hard drive. Yes that’s confirmed on their site. It may be possible to connect the Mac by Bluetooth to the node, I haven’t got that working yet

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35 minutes ago, Alpine Electrocats said:

I am after a streamer/ dac that will read both Mac and Windows formatted hard drives. I am keen to hear recommendations  I bought a blue sound node 2 here and it does lots of great things BUT all my music is on a Mac and it won’t read a Mac formatted hard drive. Yes that’s confirmed on their site. It may be possible to connect the Mac by Bluetooth to the node, I haven’t got that working yet

So, assuming the Bluesound is accessing your music over the network, it would suggest that the hard drive is not the problems but the file format of your music, which is???

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52 minutes ago, Frank Prowse Hi-Fi said:

So, assuming the Bluesound is accessing your music over the network, it would suggest that the hard drive is not the problems but the file format of your music, which is???

That assumes that SMB has been enabled on Mac. For OP, has the following been done?

https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/200271776-File-Sharing-MacOS

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4 hours ago, Frank Prowse Hi-Fi said:

So, assuming the Bluesound is accessing your music over the network, it would suggest that the hard drive is not the problems but the file format of your music, which is???

Macs don’t use NFTS. According to blusound’s site it can only read NFTS , Linux and one other type 

there is the possibility of trying to copy the files onto another hard drive via a pc- PCs and macs have got better at reading each other’s discs

 

 

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4 hours ago, pwstereo said:

Ah, I was assuming a USB or other wired connection from the Bluesound to the mac is too far away from the stereo to use a cable -someone told me that wouldn’t work too

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3 minutes ago, Alpine Electrocats said:

Macs don’t use NFTS. According to blusound’s site it can only read NFTS

All that local file system stuff goes out the window when you're talking network shares.

Either NFS (a long-standing UNIX network file sharing system), or SMB (Server Message Block from the Microsoft world) are the usual ways of exposing files over a network. These protocols are not dependant on the local file system.

Something else is causing your issue with the connection of the Blue Sound equipment.

Do you have some sort of file sharing (SMB has been suggested as the appropriate method) enabled on your Mac?

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To be honest this is one of the reasons I fell out of love for Bluesound - too many issues I found (at least in the early days with Gen 1) with Mac equipment. But to iterate, it should play the files, its more a question of getting the two to talk to each other.

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2 hours ago, pwstereo said:

All that local file system stuff goes out the window when you're talking network shares.

Either NFS (a long-standing UNIX network file sharing system), or SMB (Server Message Block from the Microsoft world) are the usual ways of exposing files over a network. These protocols are not dependant on the local file system.

Something else is causing your issue with the connection of the Blue Sound equipment.

Do you have some sort of file sharing (SMB has been suggested as the appropriate method) enabled on your Mac?

In this instance I am talking about inserting a hard drive into the blusound. 
which I can do with a windows drive easily 

and to repeat and clarrify

blusound is adamant that you can not do that with a MAC journaled drive 

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So I'll go back to my original idea, why not use a FAT32 formatted external drive?

Here is what the support notes on the device say:

"BluOS Players will index and play music from USB mass storage devices formatted as FAT32, NTFS or Linux ext4 but with limitations. The index of these units, by design, is limited and sometimes unstable. USB Mass storage devices are designed for plug-and-play storage, not for an extended or permanent storage solution. For a more stable, permanent solution, Bluesound strongly recommends network sharing from a local PC, Mac, Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Bluesound VAULT or VAULT 2."

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6 hours ago, Snoopy8 said:

That assumes that SMB has been enabled on Mac. For OP, has the following been done?

https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/articles/200271776-File-Sharing-MacOS

That looked good, I went all the way through but the app couldn’t find the shared files. I should add that for some time the phone app has not been able to find the node network and has been functioning on Bluetooth 

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25 minutes ago, pwstereo said:

So I'll go back to my original idea, why not use a FAT32 formatted external drive?

Here is what the support notes on the device say:

"BluOS Players will index and play music from USB mass storage devices formatted as FAT32, NTFS or Linux ext4 but with limitations. The index of these units, by design, is limited and sometimes unstable. USB Mass storage devices are designed for plug-and-play storage, not for an extended or permanent storage solution. For a more stable, permanent solution, Bluesound strongly recommends network sharing from a local PC, Mac, Network Attached Storage (NAS) or Bluesound VAULT or VAULT 2."

Well, interesting but my search turned up this, in the response to the question 

https://support1.bluesound.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/222378188-External-Hard-Drive?mobile_site=true

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That support question was answered with:

"If it was connected directly to the Player via the USB (which this doesn't sound like the case) than yes we can not read Mac OS Journaled. We only read NTFS, Fat32 and Linux ext4."

 

Just use FAT32, your Mac can format/read/write to that, and your Blue Sound device can read it too.

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47 minutes ago, Alpine Electrocats said:

In this instance I am talking about inserting a hard drive into the blusound. 
which I can do with a windows drive easily 

and to repeat and clarrify

blusound is adamant that you can not do that with a MAC journaled drive 

hi AE I think as a mac user I am doing exactly as intended. I transfer music to a samsung SSD usb drive that I plug into my bluesound node 2 and now 2i and has been working no problem....

 

ps if want drives that work on pc and mac lacie make them - out of box. sure other brands as well :) 

 

 

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43 minutes ago, betty boop said:

hi AE I think as a mac user I am doing exactly as intended. I transfer music to a samsung SSD usb drive that I plug into my bluesound node 2 and now 2i and has been working no problem....

 

ps if want drives that work on pc and mac lacie make them - out of box. sure other brands as well :) 

 

 

Interesting . I did a disc repair before starting and the mac formatted it  I will see if i can get it format the disc in fat32 

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 Very new here - first post.

 

I also have a BS Node2i and a Mac... as with nearly everything (eg TVs that play from USB), FAT32 is the go.

 

 

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Thanks for all the resposes and help. The hard drive has been reformatted and is once again being loaded up with 660 gB of music.

I have to admit I am not really a mac person- I have always had one,mainly as I often had to use the stupid things for work, taking over from people who insisted on using them). I ended up just using the mac as my media computer I just record CDs on it and watch netflix, iview and stuff. I do all my real work on normal  pcs. and as I started with lossless files here I have stuck with the mac. I was unware of exfat- its at them bottom of a list of about 8 file types. Now I know a new word, and have a way out of macs.. 

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For anyone interested....

 I formatted the hard drive in exfat plugged it into the node and a case of same old- it sees the usb but wont open any files. Like another user (in another topic) I connected it to my oppo 105 and the oppo read the files straight away.

to be specific, the Bluos sees theUSB , when you open the usb it has a menus of Artists....down to composers then Folders. Open up any of these and the message is "content not found". Open up the Folders submenu and it comes to //USB then ad files  to play list but nothing happens. The hard drive was put in overnight , Just now the app started opening the oppo media folder and gracenot folders which are the smallest folders there, but not much use. artist searches also fail to yield any results

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I have avoided La CIe for years because of their ridiculous prices. Howver the prices have some down, they are still more expesive but the I TB  is ot too bad,around $80 which I know is exxie, just not like the $300 prices of your for something that looks cute

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My understanding of this problem is the cause is not the Mac but the BS OS.

Reformat the HDD to Fat32 or get Tuxera on your Mac and format the drive to NTFS. No need for any fancy HDD. They can all be formatted to whatever you want.

I’m not familiar with Bluesounds but if the BS OS still won’t recognise the music files it may be incompatible with ALAC or AIFF if that is what your music is stored as. If so you’ll have to convert the files to FLAC.

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