[A version of this post (July 23, 2012) has been deleted from my gaming blog. It never belonged there, but was placed there at a time when Posterous was having issues. Updating the post, and placing it here seems only fitting.]
A free iPhone/iPod Touch app - MPoD - controls the MPD service on the Auraliti PK 100 (there is a premium version of MPoD for the iPad, MPaD, that sells for $2.99/ €2.39). The good news with the PK 100 is that, if you use the right MPD client, you don't need to know anything about MPD - so don't be intimidated by MPD! There is a client for MPD on just about any mainstream computing platform, but I'm partial to MPoD and MPaD. An important concept to grasp is that multiple MPD clients can control MPD at the same time, and the view of the Playlist dynamically updates across all clients.
In many instances, one has to know the IP address of the machine(s) running MPD; but the Auraliti PK 100 will usually be auto-discovered by MPoD and MPaD (assuming your iOS device's wifi connection can "see" the network the PK 100 is connected to). Here is how a PK 100 looks in MPoD:
Once you have connected to MPD, it will update your client's copy of the MPD database and start caching album art. This can take a few minutes for the former and much longer for the latter. In any event, here is MPoD's main menu:
As you can see, you have several ways of selecting music for playback. I'll cover each of the selection options, but will start with the most useful option for me - Browse. This is the option that allows one to directly access the folders where one has saved one's music. From this view one can select albums or tracks directly from attached USB (and some NAS) devices; and it is particularly handy if one's metadata is less than perfect or if one just prefers to view a music collection via the folder hierarchy on a storage device. I put a great deal of care into the folders where I store my music. Thus, this is the most useful way of finding what I want to play, but this may not be the case if you put your effort into tagging your music collection. In any event, here is a shot of the Browse view in MPoD (there is no search feature here):
This is the Artist view in MPoD (by pulling down on the screen, one can search in this view):
This is the Album view in MPoD (search is availble in this view):
And this is the Genre view in MPoD (no search feature here):
I skipped the Song view as it is only good for searching for a single song title in my opinion. In any event, from the Album, Artist, Genre and Browse screens one can select an album to play (or a group of albums depending on organization). As soon a you select an album for playback, it is automatically placed in the Playlist (the active queue of songs that may be played); and the song at the top of the Playlist will start playing. In MPoD, it looks like this:
MPaD works much the same way as MPoD, but is a little more streamlined due to the extra screen real estate:
As you can see, your Playlist is on the left side of the screen, and you can choose from all the selection views MPoD offered as well as selecting music from last.fm. The Info view adds a handy integrated web browser on the right side of the screen. For completeness, I'll provide screen shots of the selection views available in MPaD at the end of this post. This is probably a good time to talk about some of the weaknesses of MPD and/or MPoD/MPaD.
The greatest weakness of MPoD and MPaD is the limited space for text in any of the selection views. This might not be as big a deal as it is were album cover art always available and always correct, but this is not the case.
The Album, Artist and Genre selection views are going to be of greatest use if you have been scrupulously consistent with tagging your music collection. The less true this is, the less useful these selection views are. In my case, the tags for flac, ogg and mp3 files are not well maintained as I did that sort of thing in iTunes. In addition, I've not found an MPD client that offers anything like iTunes' Smart Playlists. Thus, I tend to look things up in iTunes if I want to browse a tagged music list; and then search for the album or artist in MPoD or MPaD.
The Playlist can be treacherous. The currently selected song in the Playlist is the insertion point for any songs or albums that you want to add to the Playlist. If the last song in the Playlist is selected, then new songs or albums are appended to the Playlist as one might expect:
However, if you want to add to the Playlist when the song that is playing is not the last song in the Playlist, you get this:
Another annoyance with MPoD and MPaD is album cover art. MPoD seems to be limited to the cover art saved in the album's file folder as an image file (commonly "Folder.jpg"). MPaD has a Cover Wizard button:
Even with the aforementioned MPoD/MPaD deficiencies, the Auraliti PK 100 is still my favorite digital file player . . . it is transparent with no background noise that I can hear when paired with a good DAC (Schiit Gungnir in my case). YMMV of course, but I really like the PK 100. MPoD is fine as it is free, and it does everything necessary to play music on the PK 100. MPaD . . . that is a tougher call. I recommend skipping it if spending $3 is something that you have to think twice about before hitting the "buy" button.
If the Auraliti PK 100 is too rich for your blood and you don't mind some light editing of configuration files, you may be able to duplicate the magic with GMPC (Gnome Music Player Client) or Ario with MPD on Audiophile Linux and a "quiet" PC build of your own. This will probably be the topic of my next post on the big blog.
As promised, here are more screenshots of MPaD. The Album view:
The Genre view:
Fixing the Playlist with the MPaD:
