Uni serve
Posted by: Nickalexander0703 on 23 July 2011
Sorry to be a bit thick cheers
The UnitiServe can aggregate all the stored music across your network.
Appart from this it looks nice and costs 6X as much.
Tog
Convenience and ease of use.
The US is one of the best devices I've bought. I re-ripped my 600 CD's quickly and UNPN sharing around my house 'just worked' - six streams accessible at the same time.
I did not have the time to mess around with a million settings to get a decent 'audiophile' rip of my music. US just did the job for me, well worth it IMHO.
The Unitiserve takes rubbish bits of computer audio and turns them into advantages. I spent a pleasant hour Fopp in Bristol yestrday. As soon as I got home I started feeding my new CDs into the slot and a short while later, I was in business, or would have been if the kids hadn't got to the PS3 first!
If you're using UPNP I assume there's no sound quality advantage with the SSD version of the Unitiserve.
Keith
FWIW, quite a few people I spoke to were of the opinion that, if anything, the HDD versions of the HDX and US sound better...
I'
M not denying that there are More cost effective servers. The Userve has the advantage of being made by Naim and is sold by my trusty Naim dealer, so any problems will be dealt with quickly and effectively. It's also compatable with my NDX so I don't have to worry about the vagueness of the UPNP specification. If Naim would make a cheaper UPNP only version it might tempt a few folk who are put off computer audio by the involvement of computers.
Does the SSD thing make a difference via UPNP. I'm sure it's an issue with SPDIF but if the rip is accurate and delivered down an ethernet cable, surely not?
Keith
Can't see how SSD would make a blind bit of difference to anything but the acoustic output of the UServe - but I'm sure there are those who will say it affects SQ.
It doesn't affect SQ but will impact on responsiveness. Putting the OS on SSD and using traditional HDD for data is a very sensible solution and now appears on many specialist CA servers including Sonore's Vortexbox models.
On Naim's Unitiserve it should speed things up sufficiently to allow for the speed hit of pulling data from across the network; particularly if your NAS is a bit tardy.
Tog
Couldn't the OS just fit in RAM? AFAIK the UServe runs Win XP Embedded, which doesn't have that big a footprint.