Nas set up and Album details for Mac
Posted by: Walt on 01 May 2014
I have a Naim Uniti, which provides me superb quality audio, however, as my supplier was used to setting up streaming for PC in Windows, and I have a Mac, I believe that I am not making the most of the system.
I currently have a QNap Nas, and was advised to place my iTunes library into Wav format and place my extensive collection in Wav onto the Nas drive, then use Twonky as a virtual drive to stream.
Now that I have the Naim App for i phone and i pad, none of the album details appear on the App screen, which is hugely frustrating.
I know this will not be pain free, BUT Can anyone suggest the best way to remedy this, and explain in the simplest non techie language for a techno klutz but hi fi nut ???
Once a remedy has been suggested, I would also be grateful for advice as to the best ripping software to combine with the set up.
I live in hope,
Walt
Put simply, WAV is a pain in the arse and you are not going to get relief.
Frankly all bets are off. All I can suggest is convert the music to apple lossless from itunes locally, then convert that to FLAC in XLD.
Put the flacs on the server, but itunes wont be able to read them.
I know what you thinking and yes you are right. You can blame naim for saying the prefer WAV, if they had said flac none of this would have happened 
Walt, I think that you can stick with the music files as-is; no need to convert at all.
Do a test -- copy a few of the individual artist or album folders from your iTunes library and put them in a folder on your nas that Twonky can see. See how that works out and report back.
For the future, yes, I would rip to flac or Apple Lossless.
Twonky wont read them probably, because apple deal with the tags differently, like every other company dealing with bloody wavs. He'll land up with a bunch of untitled tracks.
If that scenario has changed happy days, but I bet it ain't hence why I suggested converting within itunes, as itunes will then apply the tags into the lossless file.
The fact itunes does not read flac is another problem, of which we must hate apple for.
You're dealer is a PC person so faced with a customer with an apple computer he's recommended the route he's comfortable with. Great for him but no so great for you stuck with a problem...
As the others have said, getting iTunes libraries served up by UPnP servers normally creates issues.
Things to consider -
Do you want to manage your library using iTunes ?
Do you need to sync to other iDevices such as iPods or iPhones ?
Are you wanting to use the Qnap NAS so you don't need to have the computer on to listen to music ?
I've happily run a Naim streamer with a Mac. I've tried other solutions but found this gives me the most flexibility for managing and serving my music across a number of devices.
James
You're dealer is a PC person
Damn auto correct - Your not You're ! (before someone else says it!)
Twonky wont read them probably, because apple deal with the tags differently, like every other company dealing with bloody wavs. He'll land up with a bunch of untitled tracks.
If that scenario has changed happy days, but I bet it ain't hence why I suggested converting within itunes, as itunes will then apply the tags into the lossless file.
The fact itunes does not read flac is another problem, of which we must hate apple for.
I re-read his post and had missed that he was using iTunes to rip to wav. That's going to remain a sticking point, agreed!
Whilst "Naim prefer wav" and thus the uServe rips to wav by default, Naim also implement software to manage the metadata. Outside of the Naim servers, I'd definitely recommend ripping to flac. That means NOT ripping with iTunes.
Hi Walt -
I see a couple of possibly confused issues here, so please forgive me if I a solving a non-existent problem!
First off, I'm guessing your existing iTunes library is in mp3 format. To get started with streaming from your qnap NAS, you can do as Bart suggests and just copy some or all of the music files from your Mac hard drive over your network to the NAS. Use finder, not iTunes, copy these files (as if they are just data, which they are)...no need to export or convert or whatever iTunes can do. Point your Twonky at the NAS directory you used ("music" is usually the default) and you should see your albums, including all metadata like album and artist and cover art that was embedded by iTunes for you. Note that you will first want to drill down through the iTunes directory hierarchy until you get to the level where your albums are stored, and just copy from there. If you're letting iTunes manage things, this will be a few layers deep. For example: Macintosh HD/Users/Walt/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music
At this point, you should be up and running and streaming merrily away. I think this is Bart's suggestion and it's a good one. Now your NAS, your network, and your Uniti are all you need; nStream and your iPad should be working too. If your iTunes is in mp3, converting to any other format won't help your sound quality: it's already been compressed using a "lossy" method, and changing it back to a "lossless" format like WAV won't magically recover anything. For that, you must start again with the original cd... So in my opinion, it's best to avoid this messy and unproductive step. Get started quickly, have fun, get more advanced at your leisure.
Next you you will want to learn a few things and improve your audio quality and so on. There are many things to try here. One is to create a second music folder on your NAS for lossless files, and begin re-ripping your cd collection. Download XLD, a nice ripper for Mac, and try it out - choose FLAC as your format (metadata is easy with FLAC and difficult or impossible with WAV as garyi says), double check that you're happy with the metadata found on the web, and rip away. If you want, you can copy this directory into your existing NAS Music hierarch and try it out, see if you can hear the difference, etc. Give it an easy name to find, and use folder view in Twonky to get there and compare against the existing mp3 rip. After that, you can just change the directory Twonky uses for streaming (it may automatically find all music on your NAS or it may only look in Music...don't worry, you can choose later)... Now you have some FLAC lossless discs to get used to and you're still streaming away. Think of managing your music on the NAS as a data management problem first: use the directory structure to keep things clear (you could create Music/MP3 and Music/FLAC for example). When you want to be able to stream both, allow Twonky to serve both directory structures; when you don't want to be mixed up with two copies showing in nStream, adjust so Twonky only serves from Music/FLAC.
After all that, since you have a qnap, you may wish to explore on-the-fly transcoding of your FLAC files (where the server program does the math and sends a WAV file over the network to your uniti), or you may wish to try adding a second media server application to your NAS (Twonky is not everyone's favorite). More advanced stuff like that is fun, but you should stay simple and get started and enjoy the music you already have with the server you have while you are sorting the other stuff out.
Best wishes and again, apologies if this is more basic and preliminary than you need!
Regards, alan
Put simply, WAV is a pain in the arse and you are not going to get relief.
Frankly all bets are off. All I can suggest is convert the music to apple lossless from itunes locally, then convert that to FLAC in XLD.
Put the flacs on the server, but itunes wont be able to read them.
I know what you thinking and yes you are right. You can blame naim for saying the prefer WAV, if they had said flac none of this would have happened
Thanks, I thought as much !
Walt
Walt, I think that you can stick with the music files as-is; no need to convert at all.
Do a test -- copy a few of the individual artist or album folders from your iTunes library and put them in a folder on your nas that Twonky can see. See how that works out and report back.
For the future, yes, I would rip to flac or Apple Lossless.
Hi Bart,
I have all my collection as wav on my Nas and MP3 on i tunes, so no problem there. Problem which exists is seeing the file details from the Nas on i pad etc. Hardly any track / album details, and no artwork !
Thanks,
Walt
Twonky wont read them probably, because apple deal with the tags differently, like every other company dealing with bloody wavs. He'll land up with a bunch of untitled tracks.
If that scenario has changed happy days, but I bet it ain't hence why I suggested converting within itunes, as itunes will then apply the tags into the lossless file.
The fact itunes does not read flac is another problem, of which we must hate apple for.
Hi Gary,
Yes, we are hating the same people. You'd think this stuff would be relatively simple once the files are created.
Walt
You're dealer is a PC person so faced with a customer with an apple computer he's recommended the route he's comfortable with. Great for him but no so great for you stuck with a problem...
As the others have said, getting iTunes libraries served up by UPnP servers normally creates issues.
Things to consider -
Do you want to manage your library using iTunes ?
Do you need to sync to other iDevices such as iPods or iPhones ?
Are you wanting to use the Qnap NAS so you don't need to have the computer on to listen to music ?
I've happily run a Naim streamer with a Mac. I've tried other solutions but found this gives me the most flexibility for managing and serving my music across a number of devices.
James
Hi James,
I don't wish to use iTunes to manage my whole library. I keep a small selection in i tunes as MP3 files for my i phone etc. I would like to maintain wav files on my Qnap Nas, and manage those as wav files. Problem I have at present is that the Naim app, as used by my iPhone / i pad shows limited album detail, and no album artwork. I'd be happy if I could resolve that, so very interested to hear exactly how you have yours set up. I can already listen to my music without the Mac being on !
Cheers,
Walt
Hi Walt -
I see a couple of possibly confused issues here, so please forgive me if I a solving a non-existent problem!
First off, I'm guessing your existing iTunes library is in mp3 format. To get started with streaming from your qnap NAS, you can do as Bart suggests and just copy some or all of the music files from your Mac hard drive over your network to the NAS. Use finder, not iTunes, copy these files (as if they are just data, which they are)...no need to export or convert or whatever iTunes can do. Point your Twonky at the NAS directory you used ("music" is usually the default) and you should see your albums, including all metadata like album and artist and cover art that was embedded by iTunes for you. Note that you will first want to drill down through the iTunes directory hierarchy until you get to the level where your albums are stored, and just copy from there. If you're letting iTunes manage things, this will be a few layers deep. For example: Macintosh HD/Users/Walt/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music
At this point, you should be up and running and streaming merrily away. I think this is Bart's suggestion and it's a good one. Now your NAS, your network, and your Uniti are all you need; nStream and your iPad should be working too. If your iTunes is in mp3, converting to any other format won't help your sound quality: it's already been compressed using a "lossy" method, and changing it back to a "lossless" format like WAV won't magically recover anything. For that, you must start again with the original cd... So in my opinion, it's best to avoid this messy and unproductive step. Get started quickly, have fun, get more advanced at your leisure.
Next you you will want to learn a few things and improve your audio quality and so on. There are many things to try here. One is to create a second music folder on your NAS for lossless files, and begin re-ripping your cd collection. Download XLD, a nice ripper for Mac, and try it out - choose FLAC as your format (metadata is easy with FLAC and difficult or impossible with WAV as garyi says), double check that you're happy with the metadata found on the web, and rip away. If you want, you can copy this directory into your existing NAS Music hierarch and try it out, see if you can hear the difference, etc. Give it an easy name to find, and use folder view in Twonky to get there and compare against the existing mp3 rip. After that, you can just change the directory Twonky uses for streaming (it may automatically find all music on your NAS or it may only look in Music...don't worry, you can choose later)... Now you have some FLAC lossless discs to get used to and you're still streaming away. Think of managing your music on the NAS as a data management problem first: use the directory structure to keep things clear (you could create Music/MP3 and Music/FLAC for example). When you want to be able to stream both, allow Twonky to serve both directory structures; when you don't want to be mixed up with two copies showing in nStream, adjust so Twonky only serves from Music/FLAC.
After all that, since you have a qnap, you may wish to explore on-the-fly transcoding of your FLAC files (where the server program does the math and sends a WAV file over the network to your uniti), or you may wish to try adding a second media server application to your NAS (Twonky is not everyone's favorite). More advanced stuff like that is fun, but you should stay simple and get started and enjoy the music you already have with the server you have while you are sorting the other stuff out.
Best wishes and again, apologies if this is more basic and preliminary than you need!
Regards, alan
Alan,
Many thanks for your comprehensive response. I thought that a resolution may look something like this. I can already listen to all mu music collection stored on the Nas in wav format. It is purely the more detailed album info and that artwork which the Naim app cannot see in the Nas / Twonky.
I am considering starting again with some test rips in Flac / Lossless as you suggest and see how it goes ( a job probably best done in the dark winter months !), maybe by then a foolproof compatibility fix will have been invented !!! I live in hope.
Walt
Walt can you explain one thing to me please. You have stuff in i-Tunes and also in WAV but is the stuff in WAV just a conversion from a lossy Apple format or is it genuine WAV from the 'pure' PCM source?
I think you have been given some very useful advice - rip to FLAC and transcode to WAV from your NAS. To me that is sensible advice, I suppose basically because that is what I do. Certainly if you have a large music collection the tag situation in WAV is awful. I think what happens is that when you produce the WAV file the tags are hard-coded and you would have to re-create it to change the available tags - which can be done but who would want to?
I came at the High Res audio arena as a PC user, I am now retired but for many long years I was a programmer and nearly all of my clients used PCs. The only time I saw real trouble was back a bit when we took on a client who was mainly PC but had a few Apple Macs - man the Mac was a truly awful machine.
I bought an iPad when I bought my Uniti and I had already ripped my CDs to FLAC, since I have bought this new kit I have purchased quite a few 24bit recordings and have been amazed at these. I don't think iTunes will be doing 24bit soon because none of their devices can handle it. I have to say I really like the iPad but it is much too expensive and the lack of Flash is much more of a problem than Apple fans admit. But it is a good pice of kit.
You could use FooBar to convert WAV to FLAC. You should also look at mp3tags (does FLAC too) this lets you store multiple values in any tag - so Genre might be: Romantic\\Solo Piano - this would show up in the Genre Romantic and Solo Piano. Dead cool.
PlayList Creator is also very useful and is used to create PlayList - believe it or not.
For the Upnp server I came to the conclusion a little while back that Twonky is not very good, mainly because of the lack of control you have over the decision tree. So I looked around at different servers and eventually came up with one called MinimServer a freebie (donations appreciated by the author) which is brilliant and I really must send a donation sometime soon.
Twonky has been resoundingly criticized here on the forums for a long time. "Twonky is wonky." (I've never used it myself.) Almost every time someone posts about UPnP problems and they are using Twonky, the first response could well be, "Change servers."
I think my suggestion and post was too obscure, but Big Bill picked up my main points. If you point your Twonky server at your mp3 collection, you should have all the tags, artwork, etc. If you want to stream lossless files that are faithful to the original cd then you must re-rip from the cd. If you want nice tag management including artwork when you stream lossless, you should choose flac as the ripping format rather than wav.
Not everyone likes Twonky, but as a basic server, it is certainly capable to stream flac files and properly show artwork and album details via nStream - even though other applications such as MinimServer or Asset offer more flexibility and many prefer the navigation while selecting albums.
My advice was to start back at the beginning and see where you first encountered problems. My guess is that you converted mp3 files to wav files either on iTunes or another application, and the lack of tag support for wav has tripped you up.
Best wishes and good luck.
Regards alan
Good advice in my view. It comes bundled with QNAP so I stuck with it for a while. With minimserver, the author Simon even supports the product.
I was also saying that converting from mp3 to wav is a waste of time because there is no way that the resulting wav file will be any better than the original mp3.
Rip to FLAC and forget iTunes!
Jude
Jude
I think Jude that it is possibly because FLAC and WAV are in wider use than the Apple formats. I buy 24bit downloads from a number of sources and they are usually in FLAC but very occasionally in WAV. So why should I convert them to to AIFF or ALAC? They ain't gonna sound any better.
Dothe NAIM streamers read these formats?
Jude
I think Jude that it is possibly because FLAC and WAV are in wider use than the Apple formats. I buy 24bit downloads from a number of sources and they are usually in FLAC but very occasionally in WAV. So why should I convert them to to AIFF or ALAC? They ain't gonna sound any better.
Dothe NAIM streamers read these formats?
According to the Naim web site, the streamers play AIFF or ALAC. too
By the way, I have started storing some of my media as ALAC files and I transcode to WAV using my Asset UPnP/DLNA app for my Naim, and of course the advantage of ALAC is it is Apple friendly.
I'm with Jude on that. If you want to keep the uncompressed L-PCM audio quality from WAV, but with metadata integrated in standard ID3 tags, then I'll go with AIFF (and I did ;-).
The file formats are correctly explained by Tog and Wat here:
https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...ou-adam-and-eve-it-1
Scroll all down and one up, to Wat's answer to Tog from January 1, 2014.
My lossy compressed AAC music for my iDevices is in iTunes, but my uncompressed CD-Rips for the NDS are on the NAS.
I use XLD on my Mac for CD-ripping and converting. In this case = re-wrapping the LPCM uncompressed 16bit/44.1MHz music data (from a former Naim server) from WAV to AIFF.
Here, I have posted links how to configure XLD properly:
https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...62#35779270801067662
XLD took over the covers from the folder.jpg files in the WAV music folders, but of course the remaining metadata like album, artist, genre, ect. misses.
Then I use Yate to tag the AIFF files, with the missing metadata. http://2manyrobots.com/yate/
Like Adrian, I keep two separate libraries; lossless for replay at home, and lossy (I use 256kbps AAC or MP3) for my iPod/iPhone and for the car.
Walt can you explain one thing to me please. You have stuff in i-Tunes and also in WAV but is the stuff in WAV just a conversion from a lossy Apple format or is it genuine WAV from the 'pure' PCM source?
I think you have been given some very useful advice - rip to FLAC and transcode to WAV from your NAS. To me that is sensible advice, I suppose basically because that is what I do. Certainly if you have a large music collection the tag situation in WAV is awful. I think what happens is that when you produce the WAV file the tags are hard-coded and you would have to re-create it to change the available tags - which can be done but who would want to?
I came at the High Res audio arena as a PC user, I am now retired but for many long years I was a programmer and nearly all of my clients used PCs. The only time I saw real trouble was back a bit when we took on a client who was mainly PC but had a few Apple Macs - man the Mac was a truly awful machine.
I bought an iPad when I bought my Uniti and I had already ripped my CDs to FLAC, since I have bought this new kit I have purchased quite a few 24bit recordings and have been amazed at these. I don't think iTunes will be doing 24bit soon because none of their devices can handle it. I have to say I really like the iPad but it is much too expensive and the lack of Flash is much more of a problem than Apple fans admit. But it is a good pice of kit.
You could use FooBar to convert WAV to FLAC. You should also look at mp3tags (does FLAC too) this lets you store multiple values in any tag - so Genre might be: Romantic\\Solo Piano - this would show up in the Genre Romantic and Solo Piano. Dead cool.
PlayList Creator is also very useful and is used to create PlayList - believe it or not.
For the Upnp server I came to the conclusion a little while back that Twonky is not very good, mainly because of the lack of control you have over the decision tree. So I looked around at different servers and eventually came up with one called MinimServer a freebie (donations appreciated by the author) which is brilliant and I really must send a donation sometime soon.
HI Bill,
I'm thinking this is the road I need to go down. Foobar looks interesting, does this include the mp3tags stuff or do I need something else to do that. I apologise for being incredibly non techie, but thats not likely to change soon !!!
Thanks for the input. Its slowly coming together......I think !
Walt
Walt can you explain one thing to me please. You have stuff in i-Tunes and also in WAV but is the stuff in WAV just a conversion from a lossy Apple format or is it genuine WAV from the 'pure' PCM source?
I think you have been given some very useful advice - rip to FLAC and transcode to WAV from your NAS. To me that is sensible advice, I suppose basically because that is what I do. Certainly if you have a large music collection the tag situation in WAV is awful. I think what happens is that when you produce the WAV file the tags are hard-coded and you would have to re-create it to change the available tags - which can be done but who would want to?
I came at the High Res audio arena as a PC user, I am now retired but for many long years I was a programmer and nearly all of my clients used PCs. The only time I saw real trouble was back a bit when we took on a client who was mainly PC but had a few Apple Macs - man the Mac was a truly awful machine.
I bought an iPad when I bought my Uniti and I had already ripped my CDs to FLAC, since I have bought this new kit I have purchased quite a few 24bit recordings and have been amazed at these. I don't think iTunes will be doing 24bit soon because none of their devices can handle it. I have to say I really like the iPad but it is much too expensive and the lack of Flash is much more of a problem than Apple fans admit. But it is a good pice of kit.
You could use FooBar to convert WAV to FLAC. You should also look at mp3tags (does FLAC too) this lets you store multiple values in any tag - so Genre might be: Romantic\\Solo Piano - this would show up in the Genre Romantic and Solo Piano. Dead cool.
PlayList Creator is also very useful and is used to create PlayList - believe it or not.
For the Upnp server I came to the conclusion a little while back that Twonky is not very good, mainly because of the lack of control you have over the decision tree. So I looked around at different servers and eventually came up with one called MinimServer a freebie (donations appreciated by the author) which is brilliant and I really must send a donation sometime soon.
HI Bill,
I'm thinking this is the road I need to go down. Foobar looks interesting, does this include the mp3tags stuff or do I need something else to do that. I apologise for being incredibly non techie, but thats not likely to change soon !!!
Thanks for the input. Its slowly coming together......I think !
Walt