UQ questions.

Well, really you should have read the forum a bit. WAV will be the most difficult format for you to work with, prey to what ever god you believe in that your UPNP server can make sense of the tagging.

If not I suggest starting again with XLD and ripping to FLAC, it will save you headaches in the future.

Other than that, yes it should be simply a case of dumping the folders into the relevant share on your NAS, in the case of QNAP Qmulitmedia folder. That being said you might need to turn on UPNP file sharing in the NAS set up.

Okay, great, thanks for the reply.

Luckily, I've only started ripping a few so no probs to start ripping cd's again to avoid any future problems.

Will check out my NAS prefs and makes sure UPNP is on.

Thanks again.

I'll echo Gary's advice.  You will find things so much easier if you rip to flac because flac "tags" are so much more universally supported.

On my Synology nas I made subfolders within its supplied "Music" folder for each artist, and folders in each for each cd.  But at least with the Synology's upnp server, the folder structure isnt important. And yes, had to turn on the music server -- it was 'off' by default.  Then the only other step is to tell the Qute where on the network to look for the music . . . and you should be all set.

I've never tried Eyeconnect so can't be of any help there.

Let us know how you make out!)

Did he show you it working or offer to set it up for you? 

Hats off to him if he did. 

I'd use Yazsoft Playback, as it works. You tell it what directory you keep for music files in and then they'll appear on the UQ front panel if you select UPnP or on nStream if you put that on your iPad. 

Have a read of james n posts (click here)

+1 for Playback on the Mac.

Flac is definately the way to go for upnp. It is possible now to use uncompressed flac which I presume sounds similar to other uncompressed files.

I don't think that there is anything new about uncompressed flac.

To rip CDs, I use dBpoweramp with 'Lossless Level 5' compression. This enables the player to reconstruct the bit stream perfectly.

If you have ripped a bunch of CDs to WAV there is a very useful utility called Traders Little Helper that can be used to compress WAVs to FLAC (or MP3 [shudder]) or uncompress FLACs amongst other things. It is free. A quick Google search will locate it for you. It is utterly virus/bug free. I've been using it for a decade without issue. Much easier than re-ripping....

Guys, just a quick one if i may. I have all my music in AIFF on an iMac, is it possible to convert AIFF to FLAC files all at once, or would they need to be changed one by one? Just thinking about how much hassle it would be.

Sorry for the question on your thread Aidan, and congratulations on your purchase, let us know how you get on with it.

xld will happily convert your AIFF files. Dump the entire folder on it and it will do its thing.

However work through the preferences really carefully to make sure you have everything the way you want before hitting the button. It does not touch you original files in any case.

Thanks Gazzer!

If you want to avoid having to transfer your album art and eventual pdf booklets manually folder by folder, it is a good idea to make a full copy of the original library. Then select all *.aiff files in that copy and delete them. Now you have the complete target folder structure including all non-audio files already in place. Now you can start converting and you'll be all set when conversion is done.

Are you low on disc space ... if not AIFF is fine (best format to use)

I ran out of disc space so converted my AIFFs to ALAC, I could have chosen FLAC ... didn't lose a thing. I used XLD. Of course FLAC is no use if you ever want to use iTunes. as it won't play them. However, FLAC is a good format, almost as good as AIFF. 

I took me 20 hours to covert about 3,000 AIFF albums to ALAC and I just set it running and it did it .... I sent the new files to a new disc because the old files were not deleted ... I had to run another script to do that (rm -r <folder name> *.aiff) .... do you care about iTunes compatibility? If you do a little care is needed ... if not then go for FLAC. 

Thanks guys for your comments. To explain further, i'm not low on disk space, just looking at a basic UnitiQute, and i realise that it will not play AIFF. To my limited experience, i thought this is the easiest way to sort the problem. Any further feedback really appreciated.

Thanks

Where the uq is concered if you are streaming, its what the server is capable of delivering.

if i were you keep itunes out of it, its a bit of a turd any how. Rip with xld onto your nas. Find out what your nases upnp server can do and stick with that. macs do not make a great upnp server, so use the nas to the best of its ability.

iTunes is just fine, and that is idiocy.

iTunes is used by MAC as a platform for their own promotion. As soon as you realise that there is no reason to load it with iTunes [lossy] downloads, it plays CD better than most CD players can!

And it's free!

ATB from George

Is it a very old UQ? ... newer ones should play AIFF.  

No, a new one, but it appears they are not AIFF compatible! Currently have a Weiss DAC202, with Grado PS1000 headphones, and wanted a reasonably cheapish bedroom/speaker system. I do use iTunes on iMac, as i like the Apple Remote app via iPad, typical Apple, in that it just works, although potentially will not work with the Qute!

Very frustrating.

I'm rather concerned - I thought the UQ played AIFFs?!

Thanks for all the replies folks, really informative.

Have re-ripped my CD's in Flac with no compression using XLD, seemed to go okay, just had to remember to save my cover art into the directory folder each time.

Not received my new UQ, yet I'm waiting for the call from my dealer, most likely tomorrow as it's been a week now.

Can't wait to get it singing though my B&W Nautilus, will report back with my experience.

Thanks once again.

Will try & make this the last question.

I've just updated the firmware on my NAS (WD mybooklive), noticed that i had Twonky up & enabled.

My dealer told me to use EyeConnect.

So, which one would you go with, Twonky or EyeConnect?

If there is not much in it I'd probably use Twonky as it's already set up with my NAS by default.

Thanks.

YazSoft's Playback with a Mac. Look at post 5. I have a Mini serving a SU and Playback has been very stable and problem free.

Neil

If you have a NAS then use the NAS to deliver the UPNP server, the mac serves no purpose as a streamer, its no god at it. The nas will be much better. Furthermore you won't need the mac on/awake when you want to play music.

Its the whole point of a NAS!

Eyeconnect is dreadful IMHO. I've only tried Twonky once on a Mac and thought it was no better ... however, if it works from your NAS then I'd use it. Personally, I find the Vortexbox just works for streaming so that is what I use. However, Yazsoft Playback worked no problem when I tried it. 

If the dealer is saying Eyeconnect then get him to demo it with a 1000 rips on your Mac .. he is much cleverer than me if he can get it to work reliably. Did he show it to you? Does he use it? If a dealer told me to use it then I'd have serious reservations about his advice. 

Okay thanks folks.

I'll use the Twonky installed on the NAS seems best option, and works independently as garyi says, see how I go on with that. Thanks again.

Cheers