Help with n-Stream?!

It sounds like you do not have a robust setup for serving the music to the Uniti2; a combo of Windows Media Player and iTunes providing music files to the server built into the MyBook.  I'm not surprised that you're having issues.

Hopefully your dealer could be more helpful!  Any chance of that? Otherwise, someone who uses a MyBook as a server will come along and give you some tips for getting it sorted out hopefully.

The best place for a MyBook is the bin. Not particularly helpful, but true nonetheless. Buy cheap, buy twice.

The dealer his fine...but not very helpful to date! He's the one that suggested MyBook Live in the first place! Today, he suggested we return it for an exchange...will try that this week...

My wife says if you want artwork visit a gallery  She must be having a hot flush or something! But seriously try and keep it in perspective, a missing 'square' of low-res art is not a catastrophe, as long as the music can be queued and played. I use a WD MBL and it's nowadays totally robust for storage and playing. As for the art, it's pot luck.

I generally agree with that! But it's the dealer who suggested MyBook in the first place...so will try an exchange before it possibly ends...to the bin!

The art should not be pot luck; it works flawlessly for me, although the art can take a little longer to show up than the music itself.

To the new poster, the essential elements of serving music to your Uniti2 include a hard drive to store the music and a UPnP server program to serve it.  And the server must be able to find the music files, and the artwork files, where it is looking for them on the hard drive.

The MyBook does have its critics as a not very robust UPnP server.  And the way you've populated it with music files, I am strongly guessing, has resulted in its server program not seeing everything.  Many folks have much better luck with a more robust server setup, such as a nas from Qnap or Synology.  And leaving both iTunes and WMP out of the equation entirely, as they CAN and TEND TO put files in places that an unrelated UPnP server program is not looking. 

Yes Bart the art can take a little time to arrive but it does do what I want it to (unlike this awful ipad mini keyboard). I'm getting music cold turkey with all the hifi currently in storage  So everyone please forgive my current lack of empathy...

I also expect the art work to 'follow' flawlessly: that's what I saw and loved when I bought the system!

And I understand that MyBook has it's detractors...but our dealer specified to get MyBook LIVE and says he hasn't had any customer problems reported in the last 3 years he's been recommending it...

It hasn't been 'populated' yet with music files (10 albums at the most!); but I understand your point of a need of a more robust server set-up...and leaving iTunes and WMP out of the equation seems good advice from what I've experienced with both so far! Thanks for your input!

To help folks figure out the set up of my entire new system, it contains one lightly used Uniti 1 (with the updated DAC burr brown PCM 1793) that is connected to AE-109 speakers, plus one brand new Uniti 2 related to Magneplanars 1,7; everything is connected with Naim cables and with network cables to the My Book Live external drive that is connected to a powerful recent PC computer.

If you are more robust with how you store your music files, you might get rid of all of your issues.

It would be beneficial to put all of your music into one folder.  Call it Music.

Within Music, create a folder for each artist.  Within each artist folder, you can have one folder for each album (cd).  Within that album folder, you should have nothing but the music files, and one file for the cover art named "folder.jpg"  (without the quote marks of course).  Each of the artist folders, and album (cd) folders, should only contain standard English language letters or Arabic numbers or a space or the _ character.  No other fancy characters!

If you do the above, all of your issues likely will disappear.  If you chose to move to a more robust nas, the same will apply.  This is exactly how you should do it

Actually, all my music is already in only ONE folder...and each downloaded CD transfers itself automatically following the path you described i.e. Music/Artist/Album folder/Song files and Art work files so in the computer (iTunes AND MyBook Live), everything looks fine....but in n-Stream, it messes up!   What I mean is that the art work of an album can only be seen in 'Info' (when it can be found, which is not all the time...)...and when an album is selected to play, the title is ok but it says it's from 'Unknown' for all of them, even if in the preceding lists, the correct author was identified...

Assuming you are confident that the server side of things is running without bugs, have you looked at a few of your rogue albums and gone through the tags? It's going to be different for all of us. I have found that when something does not show as it should and/or lacks cover art, the answer lies somewhere in the tags. Just a thought.

Actually, I think that what nStream (and nServe?) requires is a MANUAL.  I spent ages yesterday trying to figure out how to set up (and delete) different playlists so that when the grandkids arrive they can have their choice of music running with minimal effort from yours truly.  Still not sure I've got it completely sussed out.

P.S.  May not reply to any answers until Saturday as we're off to spend the week with our daughter.

Hi

Have you checked that the sleeve artwork file is in the folder containing the music tracks,and not in a sub-folder within the music track folder. If it is in a sub-folder you will need to cut and paste it into the music track folder. You do not say which music format you are using, if it is WAV then the chances are that the artwork file is currently in a sub-folder.

Philip

That is very interesting because the music format used is WAV...so I will definitely check out if the art files are in sub-folders...as soon as I get the MyBook Live replaced, hopefully today! Will keep all posted...but in the meanwhile, I've regained hope to solve 'the mysterie', thanks to all the answers I've received on this forum!

It would be nice indeed to have a Manuel...but there are so few setting options that n-Stream probably   thinks it wouldn't be very useful?!

I am sure you will solve it. Hopefully it won't take a long time.

Sorry but I'm unfamiliar with 'tags'...where should I look for them and what should they 'say'??

Information (metadata) embedded in the file to identify it. It can also be stored as a text file in the directory which an album resides – Naim use this method with their rippers.

We use an HDX for ripping CDs which takes care of the tags and presents the information to our NDS. For albums which I download or rip myself, I convert to WAV if need be and use dBpoweramp to tag the files. Lots of information out there, Google is your friend.

Having album artwork displaying properly when you have hundreds of albums is, by far the easiest and most enjoyable way to browse your album collection. Sometimes I don't even remember the name of an album, but I can picture the album cover in my head.

In order to get n-stream to recognise artwork correctly you will need to save it inside the album folder and name it 'folder'. it also needs to be a 'jpeg' file format. Don't rely on iTunes or media player to find the artwork for you, just do a google search and save the cover art in the appropriate folder.

It took me a while to figure this out but now I've got all my 700+ albums displaying their cover artwork. 

Take no notice whatsoever of those who tell you this or that hardware or software is crap and you're an idiot to buy it, your dealer's a fool/knave etc etc.  No more helpful than religious zealots; I'm always pleased they've found true happiness with their Widow Twanky, Sinolosophy or whatever.   I use  WDMBL with a BT Homehub4.  It's a bog standard NAS, I'm sure there are better at three times the price, just as I am sure a Maserati is better than a Focus. Being snotty about ordinary stuff does not help

The WD is slow at picking up changes I've made to my collection and drives me mad sometimes but it is stable and works well

Bart's helpful suggestions above as to how to organize your files should do the trick, BUT GIVE THE WD TIME.  In my experience it might take a DAY or even more to pick up everything you put on. (Sorry about caps; can't underline) If you've put it on like the others above suggest it will get there eventually.

But as Dungassin has said, a Manual would help.  But it is the music and not the little pictures we buy Naim for

PNG files also work, possibly GIF but I have not tried any. 

Not a problem, I'm glad I could help.

I had these issues in the past, took a while to find answered to get the album artwork sorted.

Obviously, it will be a bit different for each user as different NAS drives use different media serving software.

The artwork is not my only problem.  The main problem remains that neither nStream nor the Unitis show artists names and always indicate ''Unknown''.  That is very frustrating because our dealer tells us that everyone of his numerous clients have the same setup and no problem at all.