UnitiServe – Latest Issue/problem (cc. Naim support)

Problem:  Offline Issues, stopping promotion of Share to Store, thereby preventing new Rips.

On the 13^th of Feb 2014 – came back from work & US has shut itself off & I automatically turn it off & on to re-start it.

From then on, all the music stores & shares are offline & showing Red/amber/green in circles.

I’ve been on this forum to found out of ways the resolve the problems and I’ve tried everything from sequence rebooting, renaming the workgroup to NAIM, check & uncheck DHCP, deleting the control log, creating new shares on the both NAS etc. After 5 days of trial/error + sleepless nights – I gave-up, had enough.

Internet Radio – is unaffected (music on tap as usual)

Background information:

Router – Standard supply from Sky Broadband, All Media Devices on Fixed IPs.  {DHCP as recommended by SKY}.

Switch – Netgear GS108 gigabit

NAS – 1 & 2 are main NAS while 3 & 4 are used for backups

1. WD MyBooklive 2TB – main store with approx. 2,000 albums
2. WD Music 1TB – Share for B&W Music download subscription & temporary Store
3. WD My world – 2TB – USB piggy back to [2] for 1^st manual back up {NOT ACTIVATED}
4. Seagate Goflex – 2TB – for 2^nd manual Backup {NOT ACTIVATED}

NAIM nserve/DTP Software – all latest versions.

Also, all these server/NAS (including US) are displayed/viewable on file manager of Windows 8.1 {ASUS T100 wonderful little PC/Tablet (reduced my ipad to expensive NaimRemote) – if only NAIM has a better Windows front-end than DTP}.

HELP!

On DeskTopClient: {Tools – Music Repositories – Scanable shares}.

Status – Online / Offline / Scanhost, - non selectable options

Active – Yes / No, this is standard to be YES for the relevant SHARES & ready to promote to STORES

ScanType – Automatic / Manual / Schedule - selectable

The Scantype has always been on Automatic (I think, to be honest I’m not sure) but the status of NAS-Share stays as OFFLINE…

If I change it to Manual, the NAS-Share changes to ONLINE but frequently changing back to scanhost – which doesn’t affect the SHARE to show/playback music on DTP/Browser/Nserve.

IF (big if) it stays ONLINE long enough – it allows me to promote SHARE to STORE (green) but when it flicks to scanhost again the STORE becomes pending (red) & un-usable.

By the way, any viewable NAS-Shares on option of: NO (Active) & Automatic – Stays Online with frequent Scanhost. Very Strange!

On DeskTopClient: {Tools – System Messages}.

13^th Feb 2014 – Severity (Engineer); Category (Music Management) [PING] Host Mybooklive Unavailable

14^th Feb 2014 onwards – Severity (User); Category (Music Management) [No Digifi track found for “track name” in “album title” on music store \\mybooklive\public  - Repeated for each track/album in the store.

History of Unitiserve Ownership.

I originally bought the 1TB hard disk version – after 1 year, the Hard disk sporadically plays music & after 3 trips back for repairs, NAIM gave me a new one & I seized the opportunity to go for SSD version. Last year the US couldn’t find the Shares/Stores – NAIM email me a process to fix it and it has been great/ok until now.

Occasionally when US raises its ugly head, a little bird whispers into my ears – you should have bought a Streamer BUT the problems has always been where/how the music is ripped/stored, which still applies to streamers.

Opinion:

NAIM support is second to none but I found the US software implementation/operation a little bit cumbersome. I have no other knowledge of a music server for comparison (apart from squeezebox duet + laptop). I am not an IT expert but I know a bit about IT (I could program old-school COBOL & pascal/fortran/C++) and I make 50% of my living as an Excel spread-sheet modeller. Most of my thinking is based on logics. On my 3 years of ownership of US, its software operation is far from any logics – DTP/Browser/Nserve (mismatched).

Surely, NAIM could/should do better.

Amazing Grace:

To my ears, music sounds wonderful & glorious with this System: Naim-202/Napsc/hicapDR/200/Ndac/XpsDR/US +Usher MiniDancer 2 (Cables: Naim Hiline & Tellurium Q Black & Reflex power block)

Thank you

AKD – 18^th February 2014