Hi,
I have a u-serve-ndac-xps ...
I have moved 4 weeks ago into a new place. As soon as I move in, the system was set up and everything went fine until about 10 days ago. I was listening to music and the music stopped playing for a second or less and continued after. The sync light was still on on the dac while the music stopped. It did it a few times within 15 miuntes so I did a shut down of the userve and the n-dac. After the shutdown, everything was fine up unit this Saturday. It did it again once and then twice but it never recommenced palying on the second time. I went to see on the web interface and I could see that the Play button was in the pause mode. I pressed play and then I could see that the U-serve was frozen, I had a hard time trying to shut it down by the logo shutdown after trying a couple of times, it finally shut-down. I restarted and it's been ok for the rest of the weekend. Then I started to think:
1- Could it be the browser? (I use Google Chrome for a couple of months and it never happened with IE, I've had the U serve for 9 months). So I used IE for the remainder of the weekend and no blackouts.
2- Could it be the voltage in the house which is higher than the regular power voltage in my old house?
3- Would you recommend to shut down the Userve when not in use (will it affect the sound quality when it's cold)
4- Would you recommend shuting down the Userve once in a while
5- could the first blanks I heard come from the ndac digital section???
I don't know but I paid a lots of money for this setup and I want it to play flawlessly otherwise I'll switch back to a cd player...
Thanks!
Posted on: 20 February 2012 by Noogle
Originally Posted by Blakey:
1- Could it be the browser? (I use Google Chrome for a couple of months and it never happened with IE, I've had the U serve for 9 months). So I used IE for the remainder of the weekend and no blackouts.
No.
2- Could it be the voltage in the house which is higher than the regular power voltage in my old house?
No.
3- Would you recommend to shut down the Userve when not in use (will it affect the sound quality when it's cold)
Naim recommendation is to leave equipment powered up.
4- Would you recommend shuting down the Userve once in a while
You shouldn't need to.
5- could the first blanks I heard come from the ndac digital section???
Don't think so.
Sounds to me like either Win XP or possibly the DigiFi app is periodically hanging in the Userve. Maybe get your dealer/Naim to re-image the hard drive?
(BTW - obviously, back up your rips before you send off your Userve!).
Posted on: 20 February 2012 by Blakey
If I reinstall the last service pack, would it help?
If this thing is failling after 9 months, I hope I will not be happening too often....
Posted on: 20 February 2012 by Blakey
Noogle, When you say WinXP, do you mean that windows XP can make the userve hang??? if so I can try to run it exclusively with my other computer..
Posted on: 20 February 2012 by Jan-Erik Nordoen
No, he's referring to the Win XP Embedded version that's used in the UnitiServe. Changing your computer won't solve the problem.
Take the UnitiServe back to your dealer or, if no dealer nearby, contact Naim technical support and they can log in to your Serve remotely for diagnosis.
Jan
Posted on: 24 February 2012 by Jan-Erik Nordoen
Hi Blakey
Last night while backing up files from my Unitiserve, I tried to play a few tracks and experienced drop outs similar to what you describe in your first post. I cancelled the backup and all was fine. Could this have been the problem in your case?
I have the 1TB UServe and during backup I could hear that the harddisk / read arm was very busy. I guess it just couldn't keep up when also asked to play back music.
ATB
Jan
Posted on: 24 February 2012 by Blakey
Hi Jan,
No backup was happening then. I took my serve to Todd from Codell on Thursday. The last day I listened to it, it really failed. The browser interface was not keeping the screens steady, it was reloading constantly... I had to shut it down and did a second backup just in case which lasted 2 days. It did not fail or freeze while backing up but I did not try to listen to music while doing it. Something must be wrong with the playback function within the operating system...
By the way, I do not know if you where listening to HD music and I don't mean to scare you but should'nt the serve be able to read up to six different streams at the same time??? CD quality signal should be fairly light to handle for a computer. Let me know if you experience drop outs again...
Hopefully Naim will create a restore disc for the operating system so that I do not have to take it back again if it ever hapens in the future. After all this is a computer and it might be simple enough to perform a restore. I like going to the shop but it's a little far and Naim will not pay for the gasoline and time...
Cheers!
Posted on: 24 February 2012 by Jan-Erik Nordoen
Hi Blakey,
Todd will see you right. I have no doubts there !
I wasn't listening to HD music, just good old Redbook 
. I've never had the dropouts before, but had never tried to backup and play at the same time.
Check with Todd about the restore disk. Hope your music was backed up !
ATB
Jan
