Are UnitiServe NAS backups NDX Compatible?

No its not certain it will work at all. Naim rips to wav, consequently the tagging of the files is difficult. There is no certainty that your nas will be able to read the tags to dish out via upnp. 

you might get lucky, or you might get thousands of files saying untitled or you might get nothing.

Hi,

The first thing to understand is that your NDX will not see your UnitiServe's backup folder on your NAS ... the NDX has no network browsing abilities at all - it is a UPnP *CLIENT* which requires a UPnP *SERVER* to function ... your UnitiServe has a UPnP server build into it and your NAS is likely to have as well.

It is highly unlikley that your NASs UPnP server will "understand" the metadata that the UnitiServe creates and the best that you are likely to get is Artist / Album / Track name and cover art ... at worst you'll get a single album with every track that you own on it.

Asset UPnP running on a PC will allow you to do folder browsing which would give you a little better experience.

Cheers

Phil

Wow, how random... so I was wrong in assuming Naim rips would produce something a Naim streamer can understand? Hm...

If the latter happens, can I simply re-process the files and add-in the metadata/album art, etc.?

OK, I understand the first point - my ignorance of that aspect of streaming showing!

The latter point I don't understand - although the Naim rips don't add the metadata into the WAV files, surely if the WAV is a standard issue WAV, a program such as tag&rename or MediaMonkey can reprocess them and add various tags into the riff header of the file...?

No, an external tagging programme will not be able to read the UServe database. But you can assign completely new tags to the file of course. This said, please note that wav supports tags only to a very, very limited degree. This, I suppose, will also be the reason why Naim has chosen to take the route of a database instead of writing the tags to the audio files.

Yes, that's what I was referring to - not getting something to understand the Naim database, but copying the actual .wav files over to another drive/directory and reprocessing them with MediaMonkey or similar in order to write basic wav tags into the header of the .wav files. Does that sound feasable? From doing a little research today, that combined with artwork in the folder for an album as folder.jpg should give me at least the basic data- not as rich as the Naim metadata, to be sure. I must say I have quickly found the UnitiServe excellent - easy, accurate and surprisingly good SQ in it's own right with a decent DAC! This is only a safety net so I'm not without music when the HDD fails.

you might find a programmethat could sort it out from the name of the album folders. But it won't be great.

palso you don't want to be touching the library naim creates, so you would need to be copying them out before messing.

in short by the time you messed around getting it sorted your naim device would probably have been fixed and resturned.

best bet is a cheap cd player in the loft if it all goes tits up.

James has a valid qustion. How do others deal with back ups of UServe - created libraries? Do you just keep a one-on-one copy, without the posibillity of other software to read the info, without reworking it? 

So I have my uServe do a differential backup every day at 0400.  It goes on my nas.  I also back up my nas to an external usb hard drive.  I have had the occasion to restore my uServe from the backup (following upgrade from 1tb to 2tb version), and it worked flawlessly. (The restore function "moves" the music, so I had to start backing up anew!)

I'm sure I could copy my backup into a new folder and "play" with it to tag it if I wanted . . . but just have no motivation to do so.  I am more likely to use the uServe's functionality (if/when it finally gets released) to create a high bit rate mp3 version of the library to install on my iPod.  I have no idea if the tags and artwork would come with the files . . . so might have to do a MediaMonkey-type bulk tagging operation.  Too early to tell on this, as this function is still 'vaporware.'

When my uServe was out, I used my nas as a upnp server, but only served up the music that was NOT ripped by my uServe.  There was still plenty to keep me going 'til the Serve returned.  But if I wanted to serve up that library, it might have needed some work.

Why does someone not just try it too see what happens when the NDX is pointed towards the NAS rather than the UServe?

A second question is when the US is repaired and the back-ups copied back to it what will happen to the metadata?

The point is that here is no meta data in the files, which makes it more or less useless for other servers, unless retagged.

Bart, I have a 160kB transcoded AAC version of my complete library for use with portable devices since I started with this digital stuff. Why on earth do you want to rely on Naim for this? It can be created so easily by means of all the known protagonists (dbpoweramp, EAC, foobar). This would, however, require that your primary library (as the basis for the copy) is properly tagged. 

At this point I really struggle to understand, why anybody would use a UServe, unless he is completely illiterate of the basics of computer based music.

Thanks for all the replies - it seems there are some unknowns here, but it's an interesting thread to me, as I'm learning a lot as I go about how streaming actually works, as well as the specific question at hand.

It would seem best to have a copy of the backup's actual .wav files stored on a separate drive, or directory, and re-tagged with embedded data from third-party software, in case of uServe failure. I gather from another thread one could even have this stored as Flac and get the server software to transcode to .wav before serving to the streamer, which would allow less problematic metadata tagging, while still retaining full quality (presumably).

Bart, could you explain the as-yet unrealised functionality you reference regarding the Userve? I don't know to what this refers... Can I gather from your experience with reloading from a backup after your Userve was repaired that the manual is now outdated and one can, in fact, reload the backup at the user end on the 2TB version? This is a good move, if true!

1. Because it is a Naim designed server designed to work with Naim streamers, thus eliminating all the UPnP server related issues you read so much about on this forum - Allowing for an;

2. Organised catalogue of your music properly indexed with album art that is accessible by dedicated Naim iPhone / iPad apps (Nserve & NStream)

2. For Naim build quality & support

3. For Naim ripping to WAV (Naim's preferred file format) and more importantly granular metadata management in this file format.

4. Convenience & user experience- some people don't like spending hours faffing with computers and prefer a couple of taps on an iPhone / iPad

These days I only use my computer to edit my High Res downloads and no other music related duties  - trust me when I say this is a royal pain in the arse compared with using NServe to manage my music library. 

Would you like me to go on? 

No, I would not like you to go on, because it is mostly irrelevant stuff.

Naim-design as such is superfluous with regard to network based content.

Rather than 'optimizing for wav', which I deny to be sonicaly superior to any other lossless format, a codec which will support tags, would make the propriatary database model of the UServe completely redundant. 

I would go as far as to state that wav was only chosen, BECAUSE it doen't support tags, which in turn justifies the propriatary solution. The usability of the library is thereby restricted and limited to be used with Naim products only. ...... not a very clever move, only a few ten thousand poeple of the 40+ generation ( which I am part of) will fall for it - then it will die out. Take a look at Bart's 'problem'. He is waiting for a feature for the UServe to transcode his library to an iPod usable format. What a modest wish ...

Pete still does the windmill!

You are obviously very clever indeed not to have been taken in by this cunning plan. I hope all the other members of this forum, who like me have fallen for this dirty trick and bought a naim Ripper / Server will not be too distressed by this revelation.

Hi James,

There's been discussion on the forum here from the Naim rep(s) that an upcoming release of the server software will support that feature.  All I know is what I read here.

The user guide describes the "Move Music" function, which is used to restore from a backup.  But I don't think that the user guide comes out and says that explicitly; it could be clearer. But in any event it does work just fine -- you move the music from the backup store to the primary music store.  (A backup would be pretty useless if it couldn't be used to restore!)

Hi - it has been possible to backup a single drive unit to a NAS (as the OP was suggesting that he would do when he got one) for several years - this creates a music store folder in the backup location that can simply be added in as a network music store on a new unit should it ever be needed (and the music transferred from the NAS back to the serve with the "Move Music" functionality).

Cheers

Phil

*IF* I were going to be without my Naim Music Server for a while then I could do one of two things...

1) Use a copy of Asset UPnP to allow file and folder browsing of the normal music store / backup.

...or...

2) Use a batch converter such as dBpoweramp to produce a FLAC / ALAC copy of my library and then batch tag it with the cover art and album / artist / track names keeping my original library intact.

Cheers

Phil

Hi PinkHamster,

We actually made the choice to go with WAV for sound (if you'll forgive the appropriate pun) sonic engineering reasons - it can be easily shown that playing back an uncompressed WAV file is sonically superior to decoding and playing back a compressed (but lossless) FLAC file.

This has been demonstrated by us on many occasions and is also accepted by a number of LINN devotees who are using our servers for their music collections after trying them for themselves and realising that what they had been told (i.e. that ripping as FLAC was fine because it was lossless) wasn't quite true ... decoding FLACs or ALACs on the playback device *DOES* cause a slight degradation in the sound quality of that device.

Our libraries are actually probably the most universal out there as WAV files are supported by all the popular OSs and portable music players (FLACs are not) and if you have a platform where WAVs are not supported then it is relatively easy to use a batch converter / batch tagger to create usable files from our libraries without any losses being imposed from our own choice of file formats.

Cheers

Phil 

Phil, it is great you're posting on here and helping people out.

Understand this may be a tangent you're not inclined to go down but if you are then please can you explain why this degradation occurs? Not sure if you mean all playback devices or just that it is possible on some.

Only logical options which spring to mind are that a playback device can't decode to a faithful representation of original WAV for some reason or it does not have the grunt to do so in a timely manner. The former seems unlikely and I find the latter hard to rationalise given the processing load / throughput is so very minimal and given these operations can occur in memory rather than with I/O on a disk.

I am probably missing something!

It has been discussed on here a number of times but briefly although the FLAC file "decompresses" to the same numerical data as the original file the additional processor load on what is generally a low power and quite electrically sensitive assembly caused by the decompression skews the sound of the playback device for the worse...

Cheers

Phil

It will depend *COMPLETELY* on two things...

1) Whether the NAS has a UPnP server running on it - if it doesn't then you won't even see anything of the NAS itself as the NDX does not browse network folders.

2) What the UPnP server does with untagged WAVs ... something like Asset will allow folder level browsing so can work quite well here but other UPnP servers would just show a single album that contains every track on the NAS..

Nothing - it will still be intact.

Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks for posting on here indeed! I have just purchased an AssetNAS and will start ripping my CD collection soon. One question from my side, which format in your experience is second best to WAV from a SQ point of view, would that be AIFF? It's completely lossless as WAV is, as far as I understand, but it also allows for metadata management. I will be using XLD for ripping and am undecided whether to rip to AIFF or FLAC. I am leaning toward AIFF, mainly because it's an uncompressed format but also because it works in iTunes (which I also use). Asset UPnP transcodes on the fly though, so if I get a Naim streamer at some point in the future it could transcode AIFF or FLAC to WAV before serving up the file to the Naim streamer or it could serve up the original AIFF/FLAC version. At the moment I am still using my modefied Sonos ZP90 feeding an nDAC/555PS based set up and although the differences here is negligable, I want to plan ahead long term.

Thank you for your thoughts

tp