Using the UnitiServ SSD

Posted by: Timbo on 26 October 2012

Got my US SSD yesterday which replaces the SB Touch. First impressions are that the ripped CDs do sound a lot better then those ripped in itunes and played back thru the Touch! I also have a lot of downloads from HD tracks in various formats and the 192/24 do sound extremely good, a lot more detail coming through and a bigger sound stage. Thankfully the internet radio is good and I quickly managed to load in my favourites and save them as presets.

 

Now for the setup. Not easy! I already has purchased a Qnap T219 II s which has two drive bays which I filled with a couple of WD Caviar Red 2tb disks running in a mirror array. This was set up with two shares 1. MyMusic which was converted into the music store and 2. Network-music which is where i dumped all my HD Tracks and other downloaded stuff.

 

Installation of the US SSD was easy, however it took a long time for it to see my network shares, in the list of shares was a load of Naim factory entries i.e. other servers and shares of which some were enabled and some disabled. I chose to disable them all and when the unit finally found all of my network locations I disabled those as well just keeping the two shares mentioned earlier.

 

Started to rip a few CDs, very straightforward, first one showed up quickly but the next two didn't, could find them at all. So checked over the system, could not find them manually either and also noticed that the firmware version on the US SSD was 1.6b and we are now on 1.6d. So with the help of forum posts (thanks guys) the US was easily updated, although I did panic a bit after the unit spat out the update CD and then didn't do anything for a few minutes, but I was patient and then it rebooted itself. So far so good, but still couldn't see those other two rips, so decided to reset my NAS to factory settings, create the two shares re- copied over the downloads and started ripping again. So far so good, everything is tickety boo!

 

Now the difficult bit, I can see how to edit the ripped files thru the DTC, but I have had to use a tag editor to sort out some of the HD tracks stuff, although it worked well thru the Touch using Ipeng, I had to sort out some information i.e. on one album the first track had a misspelled artist surname so had to correct that using Tag, another had gobbledegook instead of the orchestra, sorted as well. I wonder why this happened, twas OK before??

 

Another anomaly is Meet Me in London (BTW going to see AF next saturday at the Stables in Milton Keynes when i fly over to England) the super 192 download, the US SSD refused to pick up the album art. Not sure how to sort this as the album art is present as a png file and Tag doesn't do art (I think), so will have to use another app.

 

Anyway, all sounds good at the moment and I am regularly feeding the beast with CDs, I have around 1500 so a 2tb disk should be enough!

 

Any advice on how to back up the music store would be helpful, I do have at least one copy of all the downloads I have done so far.

 

Cheers

 

Tim

Posted on: 31 October 2012 by Timbo

Well just as I leave for England it has all gone terribly wrong!!!

 

The U/S is now seeing my NAS with an IP address of 208.69.32.145 and the rest of the network i.e. all computers the router etc. sees it as 192.168.0.116 which is what it has always been. Although the data is still there I fear I have lost my music store unless there is a way to recover it. By the way the U/s sees all my other NAS shares with the correct IP address.

 

So perhaps one or both of two things 1. Some setting has been changed by me in the NAS so that the unitiserve cannot see the shares correctly or 2. Something is wrong with the unitiserve.

 

God - I hope I haven't lost all those ripped CD's.

 

Yours very pissed off

Tim

Posted on: 31 October 2012 by endlessnessism

I've got an HDX but I think the principles are the same. 

 

From time to time, and for no apparent reason, my music store ceases to be a store and reverts to being a share.  The data's all there and nothing is lost or corrupted but it doesn't appear correctly in desktop client or n-serve.  Fortunately, it responds if you just convert the share back into a store.  I know you only supposed to create an empty store (you make it a store before you put anything in it) but somehow, if it was once correctly created as a store, you can convert it back into a store without any problem. 

Posted on: 31 October 2012 by Cbr600
Originally Posted by endlessnessism:

I've got an HDX but I think the principles are the same. 

 

From time to time, and for no apparent reason, my music store ceases to be a store and reverts to being a share.  The data's all there and nothing is lost or corrupted but it doesn't appear correctly in desktop client or n-serve.  Fortunately, it responds if you just convert the share back into a store.  I know you only supposed to create an empty store (you make it a store before you put anything in it) but somehow, if it was once correctly created as a store, you can convert it back into a store without any problem. 

I have had this experience before with my HDX. Had the Naim agent over and he idexactly that, to restore the store. His advise was that as long as the music in the store was naim ripped, no problem. The manuals recommendation on converting empty stores is because there is a risk that non naim ripped music would be lost

Posted on: 11 November 2012 by Timbo

Back home from jolly England and I've just fired up the HiFi. Looks OK but the Unitiserve is still seeing the Music store as a completely different IP address, but sees a different network share on the same NAS perfectly with the correct IP.

 

Looks like I can still play and rip music, just had to remove the share as a store and re do it all over - frustrating!!!

 

Another thing is that NServe on my Ipad can see all all my albums 278 in total in both the music store and on the other network share I use for HD tracks and similar. But the web app cannot see the downloaded stuff, only the albums I have ripped, strange but equally frustrating...

 

Tim

Posted on: 11 November 2012 by Bart
Originally Posted by Timbo:

 

Another thing is that NServe on my Ipad can see all all my albums 278 in total in both the music store and on the other network share I use for HD tracks and similar. But the web app cannot see the downloaded stuff, only the albums I have ripped, strange but equally frustrating...

 

Tim

Tim are you sure you're browsing the right share with the web app.  I'm pretty sure that, unlike nServe, the web app can't see / show you ALL of your music, across shares, at once.  It'll show you what's in the default store, or the share on your nas, but not merged (all at the same time).

 

Posted on: 12 November 2012 by GerryMcg

Hi Tim, the Web browser can show all music on the Unitiserve, you need to got to Browse Music>Musiclocation> All Music. My guess is that you just hvave CD Collection set here.

 

Gerry

Posted on: 12 November 2012 by Timbo

Hi Gary and Bart, thanks for your suggestions.

 

But looks like I have the same problems with the US SSD seeing both shares with an incorrect IP address of 208.69.32.145 instead of 192.168.0.116 which is what everything else sees it as, so it must be a problem with the Unitiserve. I will email Naim support.

 

Tim

Posted on: 12 November 2012 by Timbo

I think it is fixed!!

 

I removed all the shares from the Unitiserve, then used the NAS admin tool to delete the shares, but not the data. Recreated the shares and the Unitiserve picked them up straight away.

 

Back in business.

 

Tim