My car has a wonderful LARGE LCD screen which shows the folders and song titles of the CDs I have on my USB thumb drive. I can easily navigate to a particular CD, then play the music on that CD…
So I thought by now there would be a home stereo amplifier which had a USB connection and a LARGE DISPLAY SCREEN similar to a car stereo. Well I went to the stereo store and all they seem to have are old style homes stereo amplifiers with a USB connection added, but still a small display.
The salesman said I could connect a TV to see the files! (I don’t want to have to turn on a TV to see the files!)
Anyway I can imagine an amplifier with a CD slot, USB connection, 1 terabyte solid state memory, and a LARGE display screen where you can see various CD folders/files easily. And the smarts to be able to save new CDs to memory. And know what type of music is what - country, rock, classical, etc. Be able to play just one type of music at random for example.
I guess no one has figured out people would like this sort of system in their home yet? Maybe I need to wait another few years?
I doubt there will ever be a market for such a thing. CD’s are already well on the path to extinction and most people either stream or download music, which means a computer/smartphone interface of some sort.
I have a decent sound card acting like a pre-amp which outputs to my home theater sound system and I use a media server that I control from a tablet as the control interface. It looks at all my drives, including plugged in USB drives, for source files.
I think stand alone amps with big interfaces to help you play the music are more a thing of the past, not the future.
I don’t think waiting will do much good…a TV is of course a much LARGER screen than what you have in your car or could find on an amplifier - most people interested in doing this sort of thing already have one hooked up to their stereo, and use it in conjunction with any number of devices (game consoles, Apple TV, PC media server, etc.) to play music and video from any number of sources (physical media like thumb drives or hard drives, streaming services, etc.)
I think you can manage this with a tablet computer and the appropriate USB adapter. That said, you end up with the USB stick dangling awkardly off the side of the tablet (which itself can be placed on a dedicated stand or maybe just a picture/plate holder).
Alternately, if the tablet has a memory card slot, you can load your tunes up on that instead for a slightly cleaner setup. As for output, either run an audio cable from the headphone jack, or use a stereo with a Bluetooth connection.
I actually upgraded my home stereo a year or two back to get one with a USB port (not to mention other network capabilities).
The display is large and usable but I ended up just using a spare tablet I had lying about as a large “graphical” remote for browsing through the music library.
The fact that it is “networkable” means I don’t even really use the USB port much anyways since I have it connected through my network to my media library which has several terrabytes of music on it…which is really the second part of your question as it is the media library software running a on a PC that would allow you to expand and categorize your music library.
Finding one device that does all of this excellently might be impossible but, it sounds to me, as others have mentioned, that possibly just a decent laptop with some nice amplified speakers might really be exactly what you are asking for…I mean you say “an amplifier with a CD slot, USB connection, 1 terabyte solid state memory, and a LARGE display screen”…that’s a laptop with a nice set of amplified speakers.
Screen too small? Get a smartTV instead and hook your USB up to that. Doesn’t rip CDs? Well you’re out of luck there, including a CD-player today is a speciality feature that means limited market and high price. Don’t want to have to press two buttons? My stereo automatically wakes up when the TV produces sound.
Most laptops are set up to sleep (go into a low power state) when you close the lid. If they aren’t set up by default that way, it can be done in the “Power & Sleep Settings” control panel on Windows.
When you wake a computer from sleep mode it only takes a second or two to be usable. No rebooting.
I realize that doesn’t do everything you specified but that is just the tip of the iceberg, getting one with a built in CD ripper etc. is no problem.
For regular, non-rich folks though, what may be an idea to consider is an A/V receiver or amp with a USB slot and video output which you could connect to a small (tablet size roughly?) dedicated LCD display. All of the menu’s etc. would then be output to the dedicated display.
As I said prior, I use a similar setup except that I use an actual tablet as the remote display as this adds touchscreen control capability as well as nice graphical media library (audio and video) interface.
The reason most A/V receivers and/or amps don’t have large dedicated displays is they are not generally intended to be the content source and are simply amplifying what content is sent to them from whatever the source happens to be…my Marantz, for example, one reason I bought it is because it looks freaking awesome as it simply has a small round “porthole” style LCD display…very basic with nothing to distract. When I need a display, I either turn on the TV which displays all the menus etc for the A/V receiver (music in a folders and files format) or grab the tablet.
Then use an Android tablet or iPad connected to your stereo. Easiest way is to copy all your music to the tablet (you’d probably want an Android tablet with a micro-SD slot). But you could use a USB adapter instead and use your existing flash drive. Or, just sync your library to the cloud and stream.
Because those screens are really expensive and people aren’t willing to pay for them when they can have a real screen for less. If you want to pick your tunes on a full color large screen you get a laptop or a smart TV.
I just use my regular laptop. I have an external HD with all my music organized by artist, then suborganized by album. I connect my laptop via 3.5 cable to my speaker system. Its honestly a pretty decent system.