naim nds with aurender

I can not answer your first question but Aurender can be accessed like a NAS share, that means you can transfer your unitiserve files to Aurender with a mac/pc.

ralf

ahh ad-on: please use flac not wav because of tagging/ metadata....

The A10 has a BNC output, so you could relegate the NDS for use only as a dac, and use a Naim DC-1 cable to connect the A10 to the NDS I am assuming.  The A10 also has an optical digital output that you could use similarly, but only up to 24/96 format (not 24/192).

thanks you for your answers; in fact i would like to upgrade my nds/555 dr/ unitserve combination. So i am thinking of aurender. I know there is a bnc cable to put between the aurender and the naim, but i don't know if the combination works very well. Sometimes some dacs work better than other with music players like aurender. Aurender is working very well with ps audio and dcs, but with naim?

I'm using a MSB dac with Aurender without any problems, see no reason why a Naim dac shouldn't work...the point is: does it make sense:-)?

What are you seeking to upgrade in an NDS/555DR?

Why not replace the UnitiServ with a NAS, a Melco or a Innuos Zenith?

Just to understand - you already have an NDS and a UnitiServe. What do you you need another music server for?

A simple solution would be to set up a NAS and possibly stream from there or use it is as back up, and let UnitiServe act as a high quality ripper / UPnP server, with files stored on a NAS. This is a solution I use with my NDS.

Note only that the Aurender's are not UPnP compatible whereas Melco's and Innuos' are. You might also just want to wait a few more weeks for, and compare with the Uniti Core before making the plunge for such an expensive server.

Chag -

Adam Zielinski posted:

Just to understand - you already have an NDS and a UnitiServe. What do you you need another music server for?

Because:

1  the US is a 1st gen music server that stores the metadata from CDs ripped to WAVE in a non-standard format

2  it's network interface doesn't give as consistent a performance as more modern hardware

3  it requires an external Ethernet switch that could potentially degrade the network packet timing

Chag... posted:

Note only that the Aurender's are not UPnP compatible whereas Melco's and Innuos' are. You might also just want to wait a few more weeks for, and compare with the Uniti Core before making the plunge for such an expensive server.

Chag -

Surprisingly, the Core seems to only have one Ethernet port (rather than having internal dedicated switch functionality); see point 3 above.  How important this is has yet to be seen.

I guess not very.. the switches affect on frame / packet timing is minimal to non existent unless under load and congestion which is unlikely to happen formost home setups even using cheap consumer network equipment like Netgear switches etc, packet timing is more determined by the media server...

The switch has more impact with transport clock jitter which can produce low level intermods in the connected device at the end of the switched segment.. but in the grand scheme of things we are insignificant here, especially as I anticipate for this class/level of audio device.

Fairy snuff.

I do remeber your explanation Simon, from one of the threads few weeks ago.

So the question to the OP still remains I guess..

Of course the proprietary format of WAV rips is somewhat proplematic. This however can be partially countered by converting WAV to FLAC within the UnitiServe.

Adam, WAV rips don't have to proprietary at all, the standard allows for a rich set of metadata.. the challenge with WAV is, because it was invented before home ripping was popular, its specific mapping for use with ripped audio files is open to interpreatation with some of the attributes, unlike for example  Vorbis comments used in FLAC or ID3 as used in MP3 ... to help  now WAV for many consumer uses  has additionally unofficially adopted ID3, albeit that wasn't in the original standard, but the standard allows extensions..including private proprietary ones...

The issue with WAV is that for quite a time a lot of consumer software, unlike commercial software in my experience  did not implement WAV metadata making its use problematic for much of  Joe Public .. however since home streaming has become popular this appears less of an issue, albeit Apple for some reason steadfastly refuse to implenent WAV metadata, where as Microsoft have it (the standardised version) built into its operating systems.

Simon

Good point Simon.

A small clarification as to what I meant by proprietary: WAV files are ripped,  but data except for an album cover and a track name, are stored in a special file, which is stored within an album folder. UnitiServe uses that file to sort the album in a multitude of ways.  So WAV files are of course standard, but seem to be stripped of most 'usable' information, which other UPnP servers need to enable sorting by various 'tags'.

Adam, yes Naim stores the WAV metadata separately and not within the  WAV file and so is proprietary to Naim, but generally WAV metadata attributes themselves are inbuilt into the file itself using chunk IDs. Most quality upnp media servers read these attributes (if they have been written when the rip file created)  when parsing/inputting the WAV media with no issue so as to build the media database to allow media navigation, selection and streaming.

hello guys, thanks a lot for your responses. My purpose is to upgrade the unitserve that is associated with my nds/555 dr. A Nas is not an upgrade i think.

The aurender w20 must be used as a player for best results, with an external dac. So with the nds , which is also a player/ streamer dac, i will use only the dac part of the nds, so it is not a good idea.  With the aurender , external dacs (only dacs) as dcs debussy or vivaldi, emmlabs, meitner...are more convenient ( sorry for my english).  I learned that yesterday from an aurender and naim dealer.

I learned also from a review of jason kennedy that the cad cat is better than a naim unitserve in association with a naim nds. 

Perhaps the Melco is also a good choice...