Unitiserve and Sonos

Posted by: Olly on 18 November 2015

I know there are a few with experience of using a unitiserve to serve Sonos Play units, but a search has not revealed any comment or suggestions on my issue/irritation. 

 

I purchased a unitiserve last month and have now ripped a few hundred CD's. It works brilliantly with the Muso/Naim app and acceptably with the Pioneer streamer/app I have as a stop gap on my main system. Today I got round to setting it up as the server for Sonos Play units elsewhere in the house (Sonos had not found it itself).

 

A session on the desktop controller duly found the unitiserve and successfully added the music folder as a music library. Ace I thought, but in the Sonos app the result in albums and artists is "no selections available". If I select the folder option,a sub-folder MQ is listed and within is all the music on the unitiserve but only listed by artist. 

 

Ah ha I thought, select the MQ sub-folder as the music library and I'll get the usual fab Sonos app functionality - er no!  Music is also listed under the track option (as well as folder) but track names start with 01, 02 etc which isn't very helpful. 

 

So my question for those ahead of me on this is - is this a consequence of unitiseve tagging not being Sonos friendly and as good as it gets when using Sonos with a Unitiserve? Or am I being a numpty and missing something?

 

Olly

Posted on: 19 November 2015 by David Hendon

I see no one has replied.  I don't use Sonos myself so thought I would leave answering to another who did.  But in the absence of that, what I can tell you is that the Unitiserve uses its own system of metadata for WAV files and this doesn't work with anything else.  So what you report is what I would expect.  If you look elsewhere in the forum there are a couple of recent threads which mention the issue of playing from a NAS which has the Unitiserve backup, in case of a Unitiserve having to go back to Salisbury for repair and the same issue is mentioned.

 

So what can you do? Well one strategy would be to convert all the WAV files to FLAC (I think you can tell the Unitiserve to do this for you, but I must admit I haven't tried to do it).  Then the Sonos app should see what it expects to see in the MQ folder.  Ideally you want to transcode the FLAC files back to WAV on playback via your Naim streamer for best sound quality.  I think you may be able to do that with your Unitiserve too, but again it isn't something I have tried.

 

Maybe this answer will prompt some other forum members with better understanding of the arcane world of the Unitiserve to explain it all better than me.

 

best

 

David

Posted on: 19 November 2015 by Olly

Thanks for your reply David. 

 

I've got a previous library in ALAC on a Lenovo NAS, so I may just go back to using that if there isn't an easy answer on the Unitiserve,

 

Regards

 

Olly

Posted on: 19 November 2015 by 40 below
Can Sonos access US as a UPnP/DLNA server? If so metadata should be OK?

Accessing the MQ directory from Sonos directly as a file share, the US rips will be sans metadata unfortunately.
Posted on: 19 November 2015 by hungryhalibut

I had a UnitiServe, and yes you can tell it to convert the files to FLAC. And yes you can tell it to transcode to wav. This worked fine with my Roberts radio, but as to whether it works with Sonos I have no idea. Having had a Serve, my view on it now is that it's best in someone else's house. Using a nas is just so much easier. 

Posted on: 19 November 2015 by ChrisSU

Sonos doesn't support UPnP, although they have said that they may consider adding this in the future. You say you already have another NAS, so you should be able to use that with the Sonos. You could put all your Unitiserve music on it, then it will act as a backup for that too. Then you'll have killed two birds with one stone - your Unitiserve needs a backup!! You will need to convert your Unitiserve files to FLAC first if you haven't already, otherwise you'll have the same metadata problems you've already mentioned.  

Posted on: 19 November 2015 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi Olly, Sonos supports various UPnP  media servers, and so if you go to the Sonos advanced settings and enable media servers and / or Rhapsody music servers, you should see your UPnP media server appear under the services and you can navigate the UPnP media server using your Sonos app.

however not all UPnP media servers show up. Asset works well but Minimserver appears not to for example. It will be interesting to see if the Unitiserve appears. Do let us know. Of course if Unitiserve does appear  all the metadata is read from the media server and not the file itself so whether it's wav, flac, alac for example, as long as it's been already parsed and indexed by the UPnP media server it becomes irrelevant.

BTW underneath the covers native Sonos uses UPnP media protocols as well but in its own bespoke way.

Simon

 

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by David Hendon
Originally Posted by Hungryhalibut:

I had a UnitiServe, and yes you can tell it to convert the files to FLAC. And yes you can tell it to transcode to wav. This worked fine with my Roberts radio, but as to whether it works with Sonos I have no idea. Having had a Serve, my view on it now is that it's best in someone else's house. Using a nas is just so much easier. 

I think HH is being a bit unfair to the US. It is brilliant at what it sets out to do. You feed CDs into into and you select them for playback with one of the apps.  You don't need to understand anything. In no way is a NAS easier.

 

But I agree that if you try to do anything else with it, like backing it up even, or adding downloads, then you need a PC and it all gets much more tricky.  A Unitiserve and a NAS is more complicated than just a NAS.  So it's all a matter of horses for courses.  But if you have a love/hate relationship with computers, as I do myself, then the Unitiserve is a low hassle entry to the world of streaming.  An expensive entry, true.  But then lots of things about Naim are more expensive than that in objective terms.

 

best

 

David

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by ChrisSU
Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

Hi Olly, Sonos supports various UPnP  media servers, and so if you go to the Sonos advanced settings and enable media servers and / or Rhapsody music servers, you should see your UPnP media server appear under the services and you can navigate the UPnP media server using your Sonos app.

however not all UPnP media servers show up. Asset works well but Minimserver appears not to for example. It will be interesting to see if the Unitiserve appears. Do let us know. Of course if Unitiserve does appear  all the metadata is read from the media server and not the file itself so whether it's wav, flac, alac for example, as long as it's been already parsed and indexed by the UPnP media server it becomes irrelevant.

BTW underneath the covers native Sonos uses UPnP media protocols as well but in its own bespoke way.

Simon

 

Simon, I stand corrected! I was digging around on the Sonos website support pages last week and found an article claiming that it wasn't possible, but clearly, it is.

As for weather it'll work with a Unitiserve, that might be a different matter. Having said that, my Sony Walkman can see my Unitiserve, play its music, and view metadata and artwork, and required no fiddly configuration whatsoever, so how hard can it be?  

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by PaulC

Hi Olly,

i have a Unitiserve and also run a Sonos system in the house.

My Sonos had no problem in finding the UServe (files ripped and stored as WAV) and the music is listed as normal under artist or album. I do use a wired network managed by a Netgear GS724T switch and don't rely on wireless other than for  Sonos (one unit is wired into the network as recommended).

ATB

paul

Posted on: 20 November 2015 by Olly

Thanks all for your replies. 

 

After a long time procrastinating I decided to invest in a Unitiserve for a few reasons

 

1 - I was generally underwhelmed by the performance of all uPnP servers I tried with the PC/NAS holding the library for my Muso. Minimserver was the best of a generally poor bunch but stopped working after (I suspect) a power outage. Frankly, I just got tired of the presentation in and/or the inter-operability with the Naim App never being ideal and faffing around trying to improve it. 

 

2 - I realised post-Tidal that I really don't have to worry about the unitiserve being an unsuitable/inflexible source of music for my portable devices because I can just use offline Tidal playlists. All the Unitiserve needs to do is what it does best - serve music to my Muso and (in due course) Naim streamer using the Naim App. I will also use it direct into a dac/amp in a third room in due course. 

 

3 - A local dealer was doing a very special promotion that too tempting to resist. 

 

Anyway back to optimising Sonos integration for the rest of the house, to clarify I can play back from the unitiserve via Sonos, it is just the presentation/functionality in the Sonos App at the moment is poor. However, I have just been digging around in the manual and have found the section on managing uPnP settings. I don't have time to experiment right now, but will have a fiddle later and report back. 

 

Olly