Unitiserve advice

Posted by: stebro on 18 February 2014

I'm thinking of buying a Naim Unitiserve and would appreciate any advice.  I have an Olive 6HD music server now but it keeps breaking.  I'm about to give up on it.  The Naim looks like a good replacement but I don't want to make the same mistake again.  The Olive not only is unreliable but the software is terrible.  When I burn classical CDs, it seldom knows the metadata and stores everything under "unknown".  Also, it will each movement of a classical piece in a different place. Does the Naim have any of these issues? I was considering the SSD version of the Unitiserve but my dealer recommends getting the regular version, saying there have been some problems with the SSD.  Does anyone have experience with the SSD? Thanks in advance for any thoughts/advice.

Posted on: 18 February 2014 by ChrisH

Hi Stebro, you can probably see another thread about Unitiserve running at the moment.

I have had a US (US1, 1TB version HD) for a couple of years now and have found it to be reliable and the user interface with iOS devices is superb. (apart from 1 power supply failure, very quickly replaced by my dealer).

I rarely have any issues with incorrect metadata, and on the rare occasions something crops up, it is easy to amend in the nServe App.

I dont have any classical music though.

I use it to stream to my SuperUniti which sits in another room in the house.

 

2 comments I would make.

As you can see from the other thread, some people clearly do have issues with a US, but for me its been great, and takes all the hassle out of the computery stuff allowing me to concentrate on enjoying the music. There are many others that dont have problems, maybe good news isnt worth posting some times..

 

Could you maybe take a couple of classical CD's into your dealer, get him to show you how it works ripping the CD's, and at the same time see how the Unitiserve names the pieces?

You can then compare it to how your Olive manages it.

 

Posted on: 18 February 2014 by hungryhalibut

I have ripped about 400 classical CDs of all types, and the Serve has handled them all fine, so have no worries there.

 

Like Chris, I think the Serve is great. The SSD version is supposedly a bit better, but the normal one seems fine to me and has the advantage that you only need a single NAS for backup. You can get an upgrade power supply, which gives a significant boost to its performance.

Posted on: 18 February 2014 by Jan-Erik Nordoen

The only issue here with classical music on the UnitiServe is the naming of composers by first name before last, which is counterintuitive. This is not unique to Naim and stems from the AMG and other databases that the Serve looks up when ripping.

Posted on: 18 February 2014 by hungryhalibut

That is true. However, if you search on, say, Bach, it will pull up all the albums. Once you get to know nStream, it's really easy to find things.