Unitiserve/vortexbox accuracy

According to it's website, Bliss uses MusicBrainz as it's prime source of tags. Out of interest I've just checked how MusicBrainz (sic) would have tagged 5 recent cds of mine... it thought that Mozart was an artist rather than composer for one, it hadn't heard of two others at all, and it had no Genre for the last two - so 0 out 5. AMG and GD3 managed all 5 fine. I use dBpoweramp for my ripping - it accesses up to 4 online databases (including MusicBrainz) and lets you pick the one that most suits your needs, and allows override where necessary. Maybe you should try it before going with a US or Vortexbox - it doesn't stop you using either as a repository, and in the scheme of such things is pretty cheap. 

Thanks for checking that out!. I was aiming toward's a ripping appliance  However, I guess something like DBPA could be setup to auto rip, and save across the network to the NAS in one shot. So essentially the same as an applicance. Does the US use naim's own custom repository of metadata ?

Couldn't tell about accuracy, especially for non-US releases, but the way Naim handles metadata information should give you a more comprehensive information (i.e. performers, composer, conductor). See their whitepaper. The caveat is that Naim servers rip to untagged WAV files, which need quite a bit of processing (conversion and retagging) if you want to use them in another format (but MP3 additional conversion is said to be coming in a future version of the servers software).

Yes, all Naim servers have an embedded XML database that holds the metadata and keep them separate form the ripped WAV music files. When ripping, the metadata is primarily searched for in Rovi's AllMusic database, or others (FreeDB I think) if not found.

Accuracy of the rips -- assume they are equal.

Accuracy of the tagging data -- assume that there will be errors / glytches from any system.  None of those databases are perfect, but you can edit as needed or wanted.

As mo points out, the big difference is in the database that's created.  With the uServe you will have .wav files in folders appropriately named for the artist and album, and album art as folder.jpg within the folder.  But all of the tagging info will be in a separate database, rather than embedded within files as Vortexbox does (and other systems do) with the flac format files.  Thus, the uServe's database of music and tag info is not 'universally useable' on other systems where the standard is more flac/internal tags, but that didn't bother me.  If the world will come to an end (again), I can always batch convert my .wav to .flac and batch tag them. (I'll need something like that to keep me busy after the world comes to an end anyway!)  In the meantime, the uServe serves up great info to my Naim player.

Great information there. Very helpful. Have a nice weekend guys.

dBpoweramp accesses the All Media Guide, GD3, MusicBrainz and freedb tagging databases as well as verifying the accuracy of it's rips against an online database. You can use any file structure you want - artist\album is the default, but you can have whatever you fancy - Genre\Composer\Album is good for classical for example. You can move your rips, or rip to wherever you fancy without losing any tagging information. Getting tags right, especially for older cds and classical music is a lot of work; I would think long and hard before having them squirrelled away in some private database. It is extremely unlikely that any automated process could re-tag them acceptably in the event of an end-of-the world scenario - look what a bad job Bliss did with 5 cds of mine chosen at random - and they were recent relatively mainstream purchases. 

I use XLD for ripping and usually add the artwork manually if it cannot find it on FreeDB, from there i put an ALAC copy on the drive attached to my Mac Mini and a FLAC copy on my Vortexbox. 

The Vortexbox will create bit perfect FLAC rips itself using CD Paranoia though i do not exploit that capability. It does not transcode to WAV if that is something you think is important ...

This means my Vortexbox serves FLAC to my unitiQute which plays them extremely well.

The Vortexbox is excellent in my view and you can try it for free on any old PC.