Playing CD on Unitiserve without ripping it

The real joy of a us is not playing the cd at all.

its playing the already ripped cd from your nas and the us being the source.

using the n stream app you are about to find a whole new dimension of musical enjoyment, simply unlocked for you by no longer listening to one cd at a time.

Thanks Jan-Erik for the advice.  You're right, Neophyte, but sometimes I may just want to hear a CD without waiting 5-10 minutes for the Unitiserve to rip it.  Anyway, I can tell already that the US is a much better designed product than the Olive I had previously.  I'm still trying to sort out whether to rip Cds in Flac or Wav.  Also, I have a Western Digital 4TB mycloud on order to back up the US (some day, I may get a more high end NAS but I hope this will get me started.  Can I just plug it into a USB plug on the back of the US or is there more involved  to set it up?

Sections 4.8.3, 4.8.4 and 7.1 of the manual should set you straight (Network shares, Music stores and USB storage, respectively).

The best way to use the UnitiServe is as a server, sending the music over Ethernet. If you want to just play CDs, you must connect a digital lead from its spdif socket to a digital input on your streamer. You then switch between the two inputs on the streamer, and switch between play and rip mode using nServe.

I suggest that once you have all your music in the Serve, you will never need to play a cd again. If friends bring a cd round for you to hear, the six minutes is just right for making a pot of tea.

Now to the backup. You cannot just plug into the back. You need to set up a NAS on the network as a backup. One piece of advice - cancel the order for the WD. It's a truly awful device, and is cheap because it's rubbish. For £200 more you can get a proper NAS, with couple of WD Red drives. I'd recommend Synology - one of the two bay ones is adequate.

If you rip in WAV, and then backup to the NAS, you will have problems if at some point you want to stream from the NAS to another streamer, due to the way Naim do the metadata. I would set the Serve to rip to FLAC. In fact it rips to WAV, and then converts. Flacs are smaller and easier to handle. You then set the Serve to transcode to wav for playback.

Download the set IP tool from Naim and install that.

Buy a linear power supply for the serve, it will sound a lot better. They cost $399 and you'll see details in my profile.

These are a few of the things I've learned over the last 10 months with my Serve. If you follow just two of the tips: do not get the WD cloud thing, and rip to FLAC.

Have fun with the Serve, it's a brilliant device.

I use WD and it works perfect.

HH, what's the crack with the linear power supply? Is there a thread I have missed or can you provide some words on the improvement and where you purchased it form?

regards

Gary

Drop me a line Gary, it's my forum name at gmail.

Thanks, Halibut, for all the great advice.  So far--after one day of use--the Unitiserve seems to be everything my late Olive was trying unsuccessfully to be.  Setup was much easier than I expected and, as you can tell, I'm now dealing with details.  I looked at the power supply and it's on my wish list.  Since my US is so new, I may delay a while because there are already so many new toys to deal with (I also bought an Aurilac Vega DAC at the same time as the US).  I ordered the WD NAS from Costco for 199 dollars  with the idea of using it for backup in the near term and upgrading in the future..  Costco has a very liberal return policy (90 days on computers and lifetime for almost everything else--not sure whether the WD drive is considered a computer). I will check into Synology prices and see if the 199 dollars is better used towards one of their drives..  I have set my US to record in FLAC, as you suggested.  Also, I have hundreds of CD's that I downloaded into iTunes and than onto a memory stick to use in my car.  I made a second memory stick, plugged it into the US and got access to all the music it contains.  If I understand correctly, the sound quality on the iTunes derived memory stick is not equal to ripping a disc using the US so I've started this laborious process. Finally, I've found that as Jan-Erik posted above, you can play a CD without ripping it without any additional connections by just using the on/off switch in the settings. Thanks again!

Hi Stebro,

I also have the basic WD My Book Live Cloud thingy. It has worked fine for a year as a simple back-up NAS. But Mr Halibut is right in that you can buy a better NAS than this one. So far mine has worked perfectly but I only rely on this for my back-up and I want to keep this game as simple as possible, maybe to the detriment of watertight security.

Jason.

Stebro, I'm glad you find the advice useful. I think you are able to play the CDs without extra leads because you are connecting the Serve to a DAC, so the digital lead is already connected. If you were streaming over Ethernet, and therefore using an rj45 lead, you would need to connect the coax lead as well.

Once you have set up the NAS, you can set the Serve to backup automatically. Mine does it at 4am every Sunday morning. Remember that the downloads folder cannot be set by the the Serve to backup automatically; you have to do it manually.

Thanks still again.  At the risk of becoming a nuisance, here are my latest questions: 1) The Unitiserve Reference Manual (section 1.1.3) refers to a separate manual for the Desktop Client, supposedly available on the Naim website.  I've looked and looked and can't find it.  Anyone know where it is?

2) Am I correct the sound of the CDs that I ripped into iTunes on my computer and then loaded onto a memory stick and inserted in my US will be inferior to the sound of CDs ripped on the Unitiserve? 3) Finally, an on/off question.  I turn my US off by touching the Naim logo on the front, without switching it off in back.  When I want to turn it on again, I've found that I have to turn the rear switch off and then on again.  That doesn't seem right so I'm probably doing something wrong.  Any advice?

Thanks again for your patience.

Stebro, I have a 2 year old U-Serve (1.6c), with this came a CD that has; "Naim Music Server Support Disc, Desktop Client Application & User Manual", written on the front.

Unless Naim have changed their system, have a look in the box for this CD?

Jason.

I wrote to Naim about he Desktop Client manual and they replied promptly with this link :

http://www.naimaudio.com/sites...t_english_issue1.pdf

So I take that to mean that you don't have a CD?

Jason.

You received the link to the manual because that's what you asked for...

ask for the link to download the application... (Not trying to soundy snarky)

if on Mac, it's available in App Store 

if on PC it's on naim site.

or... And better IMHO....

plug in a keyboard, mouse and monitor directly to your US to monitor it.

+1. It's a nice way to run the US. You can also reproduce this on a web browser :

(from the manual) : 

To access the External Display Interface from a web browser, open the web browser and type the unique "name" of your UnitiServe-SSD into the browser address field. The name is the last four characters of the MAC address (excluding the colon separators) printed on the rear panel preceded by NSSRV. A typical "name" would be NSSRV5E6F.

Stebro, I am so glad you asked those questions I understand more.  This new technology doesn't come easily to many of us, I was stumped on the direct CD play also.