N-stream really buggy

Posted by: Ptangyang on 19 May 2012

Hi all

 

Pretty new to naim, but I've got to say while the hardware in awesome, Im not getting on well with the software. I'm using n-stream on my iPad/iPhone, that's streaming music from my mac with twonky, and playing it on my uniti. It works fine with playlists, but with 'all tracks' option selected it really struggles. Some times it will play the totally wrong track. Some times it won't play anything at all. Some times it will render the volume button ineffective. It almost seems to crash, without actually crashing. I've got quite a hefty collection, don't know if that has anything to do with it? Im getting similar problems on my iphone - just hangs on 'all tracks' page, and wont let me do anything at all (even navigate away), but fine in playlists. Has anyone else had similar experiences, or can offer some suggestions please?

 

Thanks

Posted on: 19 May 2012 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi, Nstream is rock solid these days and very robust and reliable (although we would like some more bells and whistles).

The issues you describe (apart from volume button) appear issues with your upnp server and NOT Nstream.

Try using Asset, it works very well. I abandoned Twonky, could never get it to work well, but others have persevered and seem to have got Twonky working.. They might be able to advise.

 

With the volume button being intermittent, is your wifi and wired LAN reliable? Ie using a wireless access point that uses multicast and wired Ethernet between it, your NAS and streamer.

 

Simon

Posted on: 19 May 2012 by McGhie
nStream is robust but is does rely on the UPnP server and the iDevice. Runs quicker on my iPad than my 4S and quicker on 4S than 3GS. Also, unsurprisingly, browses albums faster than tracks, though response for me is fine for both (I only have 650 and 8,500 respectively though - can't comment on performance if there were, say, 25,000 tracks). Overall it runs fine with my Asset UPnP server (running on either my PC or my MicroServer). When you are browsing tracks, do you have album art turned on or off? If on, you could see if it responds better with art off. You toggle this by touching the title bar at the top of nStream on iPhone (you can do it on iPad too but I can't remember how off top of my head). Cheers Ian The nStream volume control only works in the 'now playing' mode not the browse mode but it's so easy to toggle between modes that this is irrelevant. Cheers Ian
Posted on: 19 May 2012 by jobseeker

I use an Ipad with Nstream to a Superuniti served by a Vortexbox. Never had a single glitch

Posted on: 19 May 2012 by Hook

Hi Ptangyang -

 

Not sure what you mean by hefty, but I have over 2000 cd's being served by Asset, and I can use nStream's "All Titles" view with no issue whatever.   It is just as fast as the artist or album displays.  If I pick a place on the right hand set of vertical dots, it refreshes and displays the selected range in under a second.  Scrolling is very smooth and very fast, with no refresh pause at all (no matter how fast I scroll).

 

It helps that both my Asset server and my NAS are hard wired to my router.  Only my iPad running nStream is wireless.

 

Your issue appears to be related to the volume of data being handled, so, as others have mentioned, I would look to your network, or to your UPnP server, as the source of your poor performance. 

 

Best of luck!

 

Hook

Posted on: 19 May 2012 by Thorsten_L

Forget Twonky, get Asset.

 

Everything fine.

Posted on: 20 May 2012 by Ptangyang

Thanks all. I've gone with asset after the advice, and things have certainly improved.  

 

The issues that persist are the following:

 

Search: just hangs on 'searching', no results

Play: still wont play anything if [All Titles] selected. Its lists the music and goes green to the touch but nothing else. It never gets to the point that all the tracks are listed. Scroll down 200 or so tracks and the loading wheels are all still circling.

Back: having got to situation above, it wont let me 'Back' up to previous page, I have to refresh connection

 

It will play fine when selecting title from [A...] [B..] etc, but search function still not working.

 

My general impression is that it does not like large collections of data to deal with - it works OK when presented with a smaller selection of tracks eg a certain album. As far as collection size, its 15,405 tracks, perhaps this is too sizeable for the application or the ipad or asset or network to handle?

 

Incidentally, can anyone tell me how to get my iTunes playlists to show up?

 

Thanks

Posted on: 20 May 2012 by DQ
Hey Do you have server and player hired wired off a decent quality switch? As others mentioned, this helps. Also in asset disable upstream art streaming. Agree with others that nstream is rock solid.
Posted on: 20 May 2012 by McGhie
I almost never view by track but when I have done it will let me browse 8,500 tracks no bother (via a 4S, if I pick a random place to scroll to it takes about 4s to display uncached tracks and album art compared to 2s in album view, and about 2s on iPad for tracks and instant for albums). What iDevice are you using? I'm sure that some of the browsing response time is down to the performance of the iDevice but I'd say it is tolerable on each of the three iDevices I use. Search does work for me when browsing tracks but it takes a long time to return each result. My MicroServer and SU are both on a gigabit switch, which is off the router, and the iDevices use wifi to router. The MicroServer is a lot more powerful than a NAS. Conclusion: with this combination (Asset on MicroServer wired, along with SU, to switch off router and using nStream on iDevice connecting to router via wifi) browsing via nStream is fine (searching tracks is slow though).
Posted on: 22 May 2012 by dickey

A lot of people say Twonky is bad and Asset is better. I have a QNAP NAS with Twonky on it. Can I simply put on another program? Any tips?

Posted on: 27 May 2012 by Ptangyang

Just to update - basic asset resulted in all the problems above. The fully paid up version is now working perfectly. 

 

Now then, does anyone know if you can make playlists on the fly with an iPhone/pad. Somewhere along the line i've heard there's a 3rd party app?

 

thanks

Posted on: 28 May 2012 by dickey

Maybe E-Lyric from PS Audio. I've heard about that, but haven't tried it myself.

Posted on: 28 May 2012 by DQ

All on the fly playlists are buggy for the time being, e-lyric is as good as it gets but still falls over way too much.