Trouble with My Book Live

Sounds like a tagging issue to me. I have a MyBookLive 2TB and a MyPassport for backup (goes in a safe, disconnected of course!) I run Twonky as that's what it came with 2 years ago. Everything works perfectly across the house wired/wi-fi to 3 Naim streamers consuming fullfat files simultaneously playing different music with all metadata to my (high) standards!!

So it can be done. 1st questions:

Where did the files come from and what format are they? Is ALL your music in the same format? What metadata editor do you use?

I have found Twonky on Mybooklive to be awful, very slow to lonk to the Naim app and artwork frequently missing. The same rips on a Synology on a different system show no problems with artwork.

I do have a suspicion that the ripping software makes a difference on artwork display with Twonky, with dbpoweramp being generally ok but others like EAC not showing up, even though it does on Synology.

I have a feeling that Mybooklive now uses a different software, but I may be wrong on this.

Mybook will be replaced in the near future by another Synology.

The my book is about two years old, it's always been an issue but it's becoming a bigger issue lately.

most music on the nas are ripped CD's in Flac by dbpoweramp. Other music on the nas are wav and flac downloads.

i understand the software is twonky on the nas. I have logged into the nas but cant find anywhere to solve the problem other than buying a different nas like synology.

Ok, my MyBook is 2 and a half, running the same v. of Twonky, I have no experience of EAC, but I use dBpoweramp. Now as far as artwork issues are concerned, there are a few issues I have found in the past that caused artwork to 'fail'.

1) Different format, my Twonk likes .jpg but does not like .png (the extension is shown when you use the metadata editor, a mouse rightclick option when I select a file or group of files).

2) Different size of file, say (750x750) vs (400x400) for some thumbs within an 'album'.

3) Different number of artwork views for files within albums.

In essence if you select click all the tracks within an album and they show a 'different artwork' message you are in trouble. I have a hunch some data sourced by the accessed metadata providers is imperfect, or sometimes the rip program selects different providers on a track by track basis. If you have more than one embedded art for one track in an album this can cause problems, delete all views but the front cover on all tracks. Make sure you have the same image for each file in each album too, the larger the better. Make sure they are all the same size.

Once edited and saved, flush the image cache on the Naim app. I've never needed to do anything to the NAS. Come out the app, flush it (upswipe) and relaunch. The app should slowly find all the art, hopefully including ones that have never appeared before.

Many people also enable energy saving or disk life saving option then wonder why the NAS is slow to respond. My NAS is slow to respond but only if I leave it to sleep for an hour. Normal operation is a quick as my fingers and it is really good at refreshing the database.

I would also use dB to convert any other lossy formats to flac, I've experienced intermittent library and music playing 'hangs' on all machines when switching from one format to another. Obviously I've not tested this since 4.3 as all music is flac here. If you need more assistance please ask, I'm out till 10pm UK time. If I can get Twonky to work so can you!

hafler thanks for that. as I'm not PC savvy I assume I am doing as you describe on the PC?

i will read and re read what you say until it seems obvious and sinks in.

Hi Maze, back now and ready. Yes I am running Windows XP on an old Novatech tower so I am not running the very latest of anything but it can work! Can you go into a bit of detail about your art problem, for instance is it along the lines 'I have six Coldplay albums, but when I use the Naim app and use MyBookLive > Music > Artist/Album view, the thumbnail on the left for album 'X&Y' never appears but the others do, or is it a different or intermittent problem? 

My word are Novatech still going?  I had one of their systems years and years ago, if I remember rightly I picked the bits and they put it together for me.

Hafler it is always the same artists or albums or tracks that this happens with, I have wiped the my book a few times to begin again and it is always the same ones that are the trouble, which sort of ties in with what you said in your earlier post.

as an example Jacksons off the wall album only two tracks appear, Geoerge Benson Breezin album track 4 Affirmarion always missing, and various albums no album cover art but all tracks present. Too many to list here. It seems like you say a conflict with file types and file formats.

I also use MyBookLive as a NAS on my main system. (2 x MyBookLive actually - I think it's safer!)
Mine are both a couple of years old now and use something called "dnla Media Server" and apparently not Twonky.
My Naim HDX rips all the CD's and does all the tagging etc. and I've had no noticeable issues with the MyBookLive NAS.
Having said that, on my other system, I use a QNAP NAS running Assett and I can't fault that, plus it just seems easier to work with generally.

I've no idea if they are, but my PC is, and most importantly, I am! And you do remember rightly, luckily I chose a decent CD/DVD mech. so it's spinning away merrily over a decade on.

If tracks 'disappear' it's often due to a blank field in Artist, Album or Track for that particular file. The ripping software cares nothing for albums, artists etc, all the collation is done later by Twonky or the server software. Either Twonky is ignoring badly tagged items or sticking them in something called 'Unknown'. I remember buying a 24bit WAV download and being unable to make ANY tags stick (I tried a few including MP3, mediamonkey etc) I eventually found an album called 'Unknown'  in the Naim app, played the listed tracks (all called unknown, and out came the music, played in a scrambled order, presumably as the track position info was unknown too!) Converting the Album to 24bit Flac sorted the metadata and art, and all is well.

Maze have you used the Tag editor for dBPowerAmp much? Can you confidently edit fields for a given flac file or swap / delete art? In other words, can you rip the Jacksons album to flac and then view the metadata after the program has finished ripping? Or would you like some help? I'd be interested to hear what the metadata reads as for the Jacksons rip.

Not sure what that is exactly, I thought that was a generic umbrella term for various 'brands' of server software. My MyBook is running TwonkyMedia Server 5.1.9.

hafler, I'll give all your ideas a go and let you know how I get along and  other ideas suggested from others.

it maybe Sunday before I can get to delve deeper.

In my experience Twonky does not intelligently combine Artist and AlbumArtist tags in the way that say Asset or Minimserver do. So you could select artist Queen, album Hot Space and find the Under Pressure track is missing. Even The 7.x versions of Twonky have this problem. When I was still using a MyBook I upgraded Twonky via Linux terminal commands, more recent versions are more tag friendly, e.g AIFF tagging came along after 5.1.9. If you want to stick with Twonky you could edit the config to force use of the AlbumArtist tag which by default Twonky is unaware of, but then you can end up with issues if the AlbumArtist tag is missing. 

Unfortunately there is is no getting away from the fact that Twonky is poor. If you feel at all adventurous, Minimserver CAN be installed on a MyBook but it requires some steps, e.g. installing Java. I was the first to test the WD PowerPC build that is now on Minimserver site, and it runs really well even though the MyBook has a pretty slow processor. Details on how to install are on a thread on the Minimserver forum. It takes some effort, and there is a learning curve with MinimServer, but it's well worth it as it's incredibly versatile. 

DLNA is a flavour of UPNP designed for media serving/streaming. Naim streamers use DLNA, as do most competitors.

The Western Digital products such as My Book often use Twonky, but I believe they have a WD Media Server option as well. Quite honestly, and I'm sorry to say this, the WD NAS products are not generally well loved for streaming music. I tried one, but somehow, no matter how I fettled it, it just wouldn't consistently do what I wanted, so I switched it to pure back-up duties, where it seems happier. Some people get along with them, but not me. I recommend switching to Synology or Qnap (other brands are available) which seem better for media, and then checking all the tags with MP3TAG or similar.

The WD media server is even worse than Twonky. Given the OP is running a MyBook, no harm in pointing out that it can be customised into an excellent budget audio server. The problem though, and why I too would not recommend the model, is that you have to do a lot of Linux work to realise the potential. With Synology etc they work out of the box, and also provide much more reliable personal cloud support than you get with WD, so if Linux tinkering is not of interest to the OP, a budget Synology model may be the way to go. 

That would be because of the 'David Bowie' information no doubt. As I ONLY listen to albums / complete recordings, I set Artist and Album Artist to the same value. Composer  / Genre I strip out, so I can't say if it works or not on mine. I suspect Maze just wants a rock-solid basic streaming system, similar to dropping a CD in a tray. This can be achieved with Twonky. Even I have second thoughts about trying to install another server prog on the WD, and I would not recommend it unless everything is backed up in triplicate, but it's not really worth the effort until those rips are edited to perfection.

I agree - you can get around these issues with tag editing to an extent, but Twonky will otherwise stumble on things that Asset and Minimserver take in their stride. Establishing a solid tag foundation is of course a good idea regardless of streaming client choice. Another option for the OP to consider is to play with the free PC or Mac versions of the alternatives, then if one stands out head for an appropriate NAS solution.