Uniti-Serve HD Problems

It's now completely died. Back to Naim it must go :-(

Hello lola20124,

thanks for that, I suspect whilst it's called a music server, it does not have server HD installed just the standard PC hard drive. Naim suggest this should be always left on and should be designed accordingly.

The best advice I can give you is when it comes back fixed, get shot of it and get a NAS. You can fix it yourself and it will sound just as good, if not better. 

Nigel,

That's twice now that you've mentioned a NAS sounding better than the U/S, so naturally, I'm intrigued. Are you quite sure of this ? Have you compared them back to back ? Can you describe the improvements in SQ ?

Thanks,

Jan

I have tried them back to back, before selling the UnitiServe. I tried the serve against my Synology, which at the time was running Synology's proprietary media server. The Synology was much more engaging. Since that time I've been using MinimServer, which gave a further boost to sound quality. I don't understand how a £400 nas can sound better than a £2,300 bespoke Naim server, but it does. 

Interesting HH,  personally I don't see how a UPnP media server that does not carry a signal can affect SQ & I did not notice a change when I tried MS.  However I don't want to change this threads topic; do you want to open a separate discussion thread & see if we can get some consensus ?

I don't understand it either, Mike, but if you want to open something up, feel free. 

Have a look at this. Not a fan insight and all boxed in with no allowance for air movement, although they may well of changed the design since Feb 2014

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F-lAWHF1e6I

now WD Mycloud NAS has HD's together but there is ventilation. There is none on the US not even underneath.

The US HD is an interesting and epitomizingly boutique product offering to me. Convenience at a price. A task otherwise accomplished using a typical desktop or laptop PC, which presumably most already have. Granted, a little homework involved. Given the US HD failures reported here and set on the convenience, I'd buck up for the SSD version or not revisit it. Otherwise, I'd get the HD version fixed, dump it on the s/h market, and do some homework.

I think that's right. Even I can cope with DBpoweramp, but it does take longer than the serve, which is a wonderfully effective ripper. If everything is already ripped and backed up on a NAS, there seems little reason to keep the serve. Just make sure that the Naim rips are converted to FLAC before letting the serve go, otherwise a upnp server will see all the tracks separately and you'll have a huge tagging task to face. 

I've sold my US too. Currently using BS Node to stream from Synology 213j and it sounds great. I want to explore the MinimServer option but do Minimserver have control app? 

Probably obvious but you need a streamer to use other upnp servers on a nas.

Claus

Yes, this happened to me but after a while it wouldn't start up at all. When mine came back from repair it carried a sheet of paper urging me to never turn off the Unitiserve without pressing the front button first. Apparently, this causes a cumulative error of some sort which will only get worse. It could perhaps be a similar problem caused by a sudden power outage?

The UnitiServe (and HDX / NS0x) have all been verified by the drive manufacturers as providing an appropriate environment for their drive ... the UnitiServe does not have forced cooling but does monitor temperatures at several locations (including the drives own S.M.A.R.T data) and will shut itself down if any of the thresholds are exceeded ... The NS0x and HDX do have forced cooling and so they will kick on their fans if they detect they are getting hot and - similarly - will shut themselves down if they exceed any temperature thresholds.

Phil

Now that is very interesting Phil. How do I find out if the S.M.A.R.T threshold was invoked? and where are the logs stored because I could not see any meaningful data in server app logs.

Steve

Well....Full Marks (Possibly more) to Naim and my dealer in Dunston, Bedfordshire. They replaced the unitiserve. Complete turnaround in 3 days. No that's what I call customer service.