Uniti upnp support for Apple Lossless

Posted by: Mike Ghibaldan on 31 March 2010

I am a recent Uniti owner (Jan 2010) and am delighted with it. Currently using it with music stored on a Mac running Itunes and Twonky. I can play ALAC files in Itunes by using a digital cable from the Mac to a digital input on the Uniti, but I can't do this using Upnp (wired) since the Uniti won't recognise the ALAC files.

Does anyone know if Naim has any plans to upgrade the Uniti to allow this? If not, can anyone advise me if I can play ALAC via Upnp in some other away?

Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks
Posted on: 01 April 2010 by ferenc
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Ghibaldan:
I am a recent Uniti owner (Jan 2010) and am delighted with it. Currently using it with music stored on a Mac running Itunes and Twonky. I can play ALAC files in Itunes by using a digital cable from the Mac to a digital input on the Uniti, but I can't do this using Upnp (wired) since the Uniti won't recognise the ALAC files.

Does anyone know if Naim has any plans to upgrade the Uniti to allow this? If not, can anyone advise me if I can play ALAC via Upnp in some other away?

Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks


Try Elgato's Eyeconnect, it will convert ALAC to uncompressed on the fly.
Posted on: 01 April 2010 by Steve Bull
Interesting - and answers a question I hadn't got around to asking.

How does it work? Can I still drive things from iTunes (does eyeconnect run in the background with no further intervention needed)? How stable is it?
Posted on: 01 April 2010 by Mike Ghibaldan
Thanks Ferenc - I will give that a try.


quote:
Originally posted by ferenc:
quote:
Originally posted by Mike Ghibaldan:
I am a recent Uniti owner (Jan 2010) and am delighted with it. Currently using it with music stored on a Mac running Itunes and Twonky. I can play ALAC files in Itunes by using a digital cable from the Mac to a digital input on the Uniti, but I can't do this using Upnp (wired) since the Uniti won't recognise the ALAC files.

Does anyone know if Naim has any plans to upgrade the Uniti to allow this? If not, can anyone advise me if I can play ALAC via Upnp in some other away?

Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks


Try Elgato's Eyeconnect, it will convert ALAC to uncompressed on the fly.
Posted on: 01 April 2010 by Mike Ghibaldan
Hi Steve,

I have a Russ Andrews optical toslink cable plugged into the headphone socket on the back of my Imac which is connected to one of the Uniti's digital input sockets. This disables the Mac's speaker and sends a digital signal out.

I use Itunes to play my music, currently stored on the Mac. ALAC files sound very good IMO, far, far superior to the Mac's speakers.

It has been utterly stable - no glitches at all.

Nothing else needs to run to get the music out, but Twonky runs in the background so I can use that when I want to.

Eventually I plan to use a NAS device for
storage so I don't have to keep the Mac running hence my interest in the Uniti recognising ALAC.

quote:
Originally posted by Steve Bull:
Interesting - and answers a question I hadn't got around to asking.

How does it work? Can I still drive things from iTunes (does eyeconnect run in the background with no further intervention needed)? How stable is it?
Posted on: 03 April 2010 by geodiak
with eyeconnect and Upnp is it possible to control uniti (play, stop , pause ...) through itunes?
Posted on: 03 April 2010 by 0rangutan
No, this would not work.
You could try Songbook instead of iTunes on the Mac.
Alternatively, use PlugPlayer from an iPhone or iPod Touch to control streaming from EyeConnect to Uniti. If you can wait another month or so, Naim's own iPhone app should do this too, almost certainly more reliably.
John
Posted on: 05 April 2010 by serious_scotsman
I got my uniti a couple of days ago and am struggling to get it to play apple lossless files via upnp from my mac. I'm streaming them via Eyeconnect v1.6.6. The uniti sees them as 44.1kHz WAV files and claims to be playing them but refuses to emit any sound. Any ideas anyone? I'm tearing my hair out!
Posted on: 05 April 2010 by Martin Sixsmith
I have had success with Asset UPNP streaming Lossless files to my Uniti. Others such as Twonky and Allegro didn't work for me:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/asset-upnp-dlna.htm

Plugplayer I found to be very unreliable on my iPhone when paired with Asset - repeatedly freezing, error messages
and delays between tracks which sometimes resulted in losing the first few seconds of a song.

If you want to use your IPhone to control music then I would suggest to either wait for the forthcoming Naim application or purchase Apple Airport Express which, in combination with Remote (a free application from Apple), does a fantastic job of streaming i Tunes, including album artwork, playlists etc.It is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS.
Posted on: 07 April 2010 by serious_scotsman
An update from my previous post... After a day spent to-ing and fro-ing between myself, my dealer and naim it finally transpired that the problem was the version of eyeconnect I was using. So: don't use v1.6.6 - it doesn't work!! Stick to 1.6.5 and all should be sweet. Hope this might save others from the grief I went through.