Anyone else given up on uPnP streaming to Uniti?

No probs here with XP Home or XP Pro SP3 - install those updates!

If internet radio is working fine, it's likely an OS issue.

Is there any way of switching to a wired connection to eliminate the possibility of the wireless being the problem? Even if it means having a long bit of cable across the house for an afternoon its got to be worth a try. I would have thought iradio will work better as its much less data to transfer than streaming larger, higher quality music files. Whilst I understand the problems have seemed to happen since your Uniti was upgraded I think the wireless is the most likely issue.

As for the XP service packs, its always worth keeping them up to date regardless as to whether you have the install cd or not.

Dave

The wireless is almost certainly the issue, the internet radio stream is going to be much smaller than flac or wav thats for sure.

I know its frustrating but how old is the router? Its one area I never skimped and as such have only purchased two in 10 years and only two because I wanted wireless N so upgraded one.

And I recommend just trying XBMC its a full blown media application but also acts as a UPNP server which in my experience is the most stable with Uniti. You can pause streams and everything.

I agree that the wireless is probably the issue.

I initially had a few problems with the wireless connection and wondered whether it was my fairly old Netgear router that was the problem. This was causing problems with both UPnP and iRadio streams intermittantly.

However, since I moved the router into the same room as the Uniti and hence wired the two together, I've had no problems whatsoever and it works perfectly. Prior to getting my Uniti I used Foobar as my media player of choice and use its UPnP application with the Uniti too. It works very well, skips tracks, pause etc. no problem. One small annoyance I have however is that if I stream an album with various artists it plays the album in the alphabetical order of the artists name rather than in track number order. Still trying to figure that one out!



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quote:

Originally posted by DIB:
I agree that the wireless is probably the issue.

I have found that intermittent network faults can be quite hard to diagnose as everything appears to work some of the time.

quote:

One small annoyance I have however is that if I stream an album with various artists it plays the album in the alphabetical order of the artists name rather than in track number order. Still trying to figure that one out!

If you rip using dBpoweramp you can include a track number at the beginning of the file name.

Hello!
I wonder why everybody seems to know that the wireless/router is the problem here. Steve clearly writes that upnp worked absolutely fine before updating the uniti. The wireless/router settings were never touched, only the uniti was updated. I think its absurd to recommend bying a new router when the already existing perfectly worked until updating.
Obviously the problem lies in the uniti/updated uniti.
I would try to undo the update, which probably is not that easy since updates can only be executed by computer specialists, ähhh HiFi dealers...
Greets drfthomas

I agree that wireless problems can be difficult to troubleshoot - sometimes I've had problems caused by an aerial not quite screwed in tightly, or even in the right position.

If you connect to the IP address of your Uniti using a web browser, you'll see its mini web page which includes the signal strength of the wireless signal that it sees. Try changing the wireless channel, sometimes this can improve things (maybe your neighbour has just installed a wireless router broadcasting on the same channel?)

For what it's worth, my PC/server has 2 network cards (NICs), one for 'normal' use and one dedicated for uPNP music streaming. They are on different IP subnets. I have a dedicated .11g wireless access point (not router) plugged into the 'music' NIC, and this broadcasts on a different SSID and wireless channel to my 'normal' LAN, and uses no wireless encryption (I have MAC address filtering on the AP so that only the Uniti and my iPhone running PlugPlayer can connect to it).

On the whole this setup is extremely reliable and I can stream FLACs all day long with only the extremely rare dropout (like once a week or so).

Peter

Hi, can you try connecting the Uniti wired temporarily for diagnosis purposes.

Do you get the same issue?

Hi Steve,
I have given up on wireless UPnP streaming with my Uniti.
Finally i came to the disappointing conclusion that the Uniti wireless is just not up to the job. I live in a small block of flats, and i believe there is just too much interference from other wireless networks in the vicinity. In my opinion, the limitation to wireless 'g' networks is a severe shortcoming of the Uniti, and has meant I cannot use one of its primary features. I now use Netgear 200 Mbps powerline adapters (XAV101), and have no problems streaming (speeds of >80Mbps indicated).Obviously I now have extra wires, and it has cost me £100 though.

Regarding the firmware update, so far I have not been able to get my Uniti updated due to lack of knowledge and interest from my dealer. If I ever manage, i'll report back on the results. You should definitely try to connect with a wire and see if your problems persist as AV@Naim suggests.

I had my Uniti upgraded a week ago, had no problem streaming prior to upgrade. Using an Apple airport extreme and Netgear ReadyNas duo.

After the upgrade everything still streams without any problem. However when I try some HiDef downloads then the problem begins, 24/96 keeps pausing but 24/44.1 streams fine. Tested with a long cable and all ok, sadly not a permanent solution. The 24/96 files play fine from USB stick.

Till their is sufficient music to my taste available as 24/96 I will stay with the USB stick for hidef and live in the hope that naim can upgrade the uniti from 'g' to 'n'.

I get exactly the same results. Everything works fine until I go for 24/96 files and then it descends into a buffering mess pretty quickly.
Wired is one solution, but only if you can run the cable.
An 802.11n bridge (eg. Airport Express) is another. This works as the Airport Express can operate at the higher bandwidth (and range) of 802.11n and then presen this via its network port to the Uniti over a short cable run.
John

quote:

Originally posted by John Bleasdale:
I get exactly the same results. Everything works fine until I go for 24/96 files and then it descends into a buffering mess pretty quickly.
Wired is one solution, but only if you can run the cable.

Mine's wired and I also get this problem. I have also had 'Unsupported file type'. Rebooting the Uniti overcame the problem. I leave it powered on.

Realistically wireless cannot always be garuanteed to perform at its best with 24/96 files. There are various reasons for this, for instance:

-channel contention
-distance
-overall network load (fairly unlikely)
-interference
-wireless encryption type (stronger encryption = more overhead)
-cpu/buffer/transceiver in access point
-packet re-transmission (more overhead)

Note here also (NaimUniti Updates to Hi-Res):

http://www.naim-audio.com/news.html

"Playback of files with a sampling rate above 48kHz is not suggested if using a wireless connection – it may work well but performance cannot be guaranteed"

What I am more interested in is why Michael has this problem wired, overall you should not be having this issue with wired connection (unless you are running over 100m Ethernet or are streaming massive amounts of data across the wire at the same time...)

And what does UPnP stand for again?

Hi Steve,

In v2 of Uniti code work has been done on the UPnP side and I think you are a victim of something that was very carefully balanced between your router and Uniti, has now gone over the edge.

The general problem that you are being hit with is that your ADSL modem is "intelligently" managing UPnP discovery traffic and its making a mess of it. The result is that the UPnP devices then end up thinking that each other have been disconnected and the result all ends in tears.

The easiest work around is buy something like an Apple Airport Extreme and make all your UPnP traffic go via that. Then have one wired feed from the Airport to your Virgin media box for internet access. Naturally, it does require investing in such a device and its not the cheapest bit of networking equipment, but a solid reliable networking backbone can avoid a lot of frustration when doing realtime streaming. See: http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/

We are doing continous improvements and development on the Uniti and Qute software and we try to get hold of problematic kit and diagnose compatibility issues to minimise pain. However, with computer peripherals the permutations of compatibility are truely vast, expecially on wireless where environmental factors also play a part.


While I'm here I'll just do some clarifications on other stuff that have cropped up in this thread:

Wireless streaming for hidef - On the Uniti platform 48kHz@24bit uncompressed WAV is about the most will work on wireless. Beyond that use a wired connection for an easy life. For 96kHz/24bit unpacked WAV the min continous throughput needs to be 768KBytes/Sec across the wireless network. It actually needs more than that because a streaming system needs the ability to "catch up" if its buffers start to empty due to short term network congestion. Realistically the network real bandwidth needs to be around 4 times the streaming requirements to make it all run smooth - ie. it can do about 3MBytes/Sec.

Streaming in congested wireless areas - Unfortunately if you do live in an area where the airwaves are completely saturated (eg. in a block of flats or close proximity neighbours who all use wireless-g) then wireless streaming is probably not for you. If a wired connection is not practical, then consider one of the Ethernet over mains adapters as a compromise.

Hope that all helps.

Steve (R&D)

Thanks to everyone who replied since my last post, even though I went quiet.
The sort of problem I have is a pain to diagnose because ideally you need to change just one thing at a time and then re-do all your various tests (wired/unwired; WMP/Twonky/other uPNP server; router settings; etc) and it takes forever.
Copying my music files to USB stick is quick, and gives me an immediate backup, so that is how I have got used to listening.
Of the ideas suggested, the ones that involve using a dedicated device for music streaming sound the most promising, especially if a standard WAP (wireless access point) device will do the job (I blew my budget on the Uniti).
I will shortly be taking possession of a Robert's Stream83 device (I am a great fan of last.fm, and the Roberts lets you listen to it like an internet radio station), so if I can't get a signal in the bedroom on that, I'll have another reason to invest in a WAP.
I must also have a look at the Uniti's own webpage - I hadn't thought of that.
I thought that wireless routers negotiated with their clients about the best channel to use, but if they don't, then trying different channels manually should also be worth a try.
Thanks again.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Cox:
Thanks to everyone who replied since my last post, even though I went quiet.

I thought that wireless routers negotiated with their clients about the best channel to use, but if they don't, then trying different channels manually should also be worth a try.
Thanks again.

Stick with it Steve it does work when you get everything correct.
I was having a buffering problem with 24/96 over wireless so picking out a few comments made on this thread I added an Airport express in bridge mode to my airport extreme, 0.5 metere cable from express to uniti, did a scan of surrounding wireless channels in use around me and manually set my network to a channel as far away as possible. Result... no drop outs streaming at all, including 24/96. So it's back to just enjoying the music and forgetting all about the pains of networking

Good work - I did pretty much exactly the same in my network, using an Airport Express to extend the wireless and also managed to get 24/96 streaming working smoothly.

This is essentially using the APX to provide 802.11n levels of bandwidth to the Uniti, a problem that will hopefully be solved if Naim do the right thing and use 802.11n for the UnitiQute and future streamers.

John