Does Unitiserve understand multitrack FLACs?

As far as I know, no ...

HTH

Phil

Thanks for the prompt response, Phil.

Any idea if Naim is going to support it in future?

There's no reason for it to be impossible to do so - we just haven't done any testing with multitrack FLACs as it's never been asked for so far.

Phil

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Harris:
There's no reason for it to be impossible to do so - we just haven't done any testing with multitrack FLACs as it's never been asked for so far.

Phil

To be able to handle it properly would require support for internal or external cue-sheets. I would love it if it would be able to handle cue sheets properly for any format not just for flac

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aleg

If anyone wants this supported then just email me or post up here and I'll add it as a feature request ... nothing is impossible it's just that it's a case of priorities and (apart from this post) no-one so far has asked for multi-track FLAC support.

Are you using multi-track FLACs because there seems to be little real-world use of them out there other than as bittorrent downloads...

Phil

quote:

Originally posted by Phil Harris:
..

Are you using multi-track FLACs because there seems to be little real-world use of them out there other than as bittorrent downloads...

Phil

That's quite a bold statement Phil

Making a single file rip which contains a complete CD image plus a cue-sheet with the track layout, is IMHO the best and most elegant way to back-up your CDs and have them playable. Not related to torrents etc at all. For most of my CDs I make a rip for streaming and for some a copy for car-use. The originals get stored away. But I regard the rips as a backup of my original CD (I have my rips also backuped to separate storage).


I now rip my CDs to single track files out of necessity because not all my players support cue-sheets but I would prefer it otherwise. I now have to make sure I'm able to recreate to original CD-layout out of single tracks which I want to be able to do as a means of backup.

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aleg

Phil, it seems there is a growing amount of PC users who keep their musical collection in multitrack flacs as it's the most convenient way to handle the albums. One file contains all the tracks, tags and album Front artwork. Anytime one can generate wav+cue or extract any track or all tracks using Foobar or similar software. Easy for copying, sharing and backing up.

I think it's the most reasonable way to archive flac albums. It could be the default format for Naim rips (HDX and UnityServer).

I'm currently using PC/Hiface with Foobar/WASAPI which supports multitrack flacs. I know many forum members do the same. If we want to change for UnityServe we have to re-code our collection (terrabytes !!!) into separate tracks. Ohhhh ..........

I believe it would solve any gapless issues too.

It may accelerate the NAS navigation as it depends on the number of files in disk header and multitrack flac NAS have 10 times less tracks then one-file-per-track NAS.

quote:

Making a single file rip which contains a complete CD image plus a cue-sheet with the track layout, is IMHO the best and most elegant way to back-up your CDs and have them playable.

One of the historical problems with this is the inability of some devices to extract individual "tracks" from the single file on the fly, due to limited processing power, memory or otherwise.

Setting multi-track FLAC aside, this was a technique commonly used in the days when CD disc images were used for primary storage (a similar situation is used for many video servers with respect to CSS copy protection compliance)–in fact, I do recall building a basic but expensive music PC with disc image files loaded upon it for a studio client I had in my engineer days.

Also - any feature built into the servers would also need to be built into the Uniti / NDx family as regards playback compatibility.

quote:

Also - any feature built into the servers would also need to be built into the Uniti / NDx family as regards playback compatibility.

I believe this can be resolved with simple software upgrade. The existing Naim owners can get this feature as well.