Unitiserve back from Naim, sounds like a lawn mower and some other questions....

Posted by: ray sheldon on 26 April 2017

Evening all,

PROBLEM 1:

Recently picked up an ex display uniti, heavily discounted and 2yr warranty. Worth the risk despite its reputation. Why this route?...well...firstly I'm useless with computers(don't understand all the jargon of alternatives discussed on here) and the US is simply plug n play. I used to own HDX and loved it, I have a lot(and still buy CD's).

Had to sell all my stuff a year ago as needed emergency funds for a property purchase, that venture payed off very well and I now have NDX, SN2, pmc 25.23(super lumina 5pin and 2 x PL) and quite happy. I would have gone for another HDX but, it's not a streamer and thought I would get something more future proof. Besides, NDX and US should be better than HDX.

Only had the US a few weeks and it needed a new loader. Had the unit back since monday and I have continued ripping the remainder of my CD's. I kept them all even when I had a HDX and NAS.

Now it is very noisey when ripping. I don't mean the usual hum associated with Naim amps/PSU's, this is on another level and very audible. You can even hear it ripping from upstairs. Bizarrely this is disc dependent... some CD's rip with only the sound of the fan(or that what I think it is). Some rip with the sound of a fan plus additional buzz. Some CD's rip with a continuous loud noise from start to finish. It sounds similar to someone mowing a lawn.

Weirdly too, sometimes there's lots of noise whilst ripping tracks but goes quiet in the gaps in between tracks(i.e. as one track finishes being ripped as it prepares the next) and sometimes it's the complete opposite(i.e. very quiet whilst ripping tracks and goes very noisey in the gaps between tracks). What on earth is all that about? Surely in the grand scheme of things, all CD's are the same. One disc rips quietly, the next like a lawn mower and so on.

I even switched the US to play mode after a noisey rip....it plays the same disc quietly. Anyone experienced this before?

Plays all rips ok, so hard drive hasn't failed......yet. Looks like another trip to Naim?

This brings me onto:

PROBLEM 2: (discovered by chance)...

When I owned the HDX I backed it up to a WD my book live 1TB NAS. After selling all my stuff as mentioned above and not wanting to be without music for a long time(I kept my old pmc gb1i ), I started off with lower end Naim kit and bought ex dem unitilite until funds allowed to get back up the ladder.

Of course there was an immediate noticeable difference in quality but it sounded rather lifeless. Soon enough I ditched that for an ex dem superuniti, still I was rather disappointed. Then I added a second hand nap200. A bit better but nowhere near to what I had before. Then I switched the SU for a second hand 272, still not convinced that anything would match match my old HDX.

Then came the audition of NDX, SN2 and pmc 25.23. I was going to take my NAS to the dealer, he suggested that I simply put some tunes on a USB stick instead. So I bought a stick, plugged it into my laptop, run a network cable to the network switch and pulled some tunes from the NAS. Then, purely for experimental purposes plugged the USB stick into the 272 and WOW!!! It was like a window had been opened. I'd lived for a year streaming from my NAS and never knew how crap it was. Completely shocked. The difference from using the same files played via a USB stick rather than playing directly from the NAS was the same as the difference between MP3 and WAV.

I honestly thought it wouldn't make any difference at all, its digital music, zero's and ones etc....

Now I'm stuck for 2 reasons...1, when my US goes off for repair again and 2, one day when the hard drive fails on the US....back to poor quality back ups. It kind of makes the whole NAS thing a waste of time and effort. I discussed this with my dealer, he's been around a long time and know's his Naim stuff. He said that if you own a Naim streamer, you really need a Naim server and could not suggest an alternative NAS. So, what's the answer...re-rip hundreds of CD's when/if your hard drive dies?

Surely there must be a NAS that can store and serve as well as your US?

ALSO... I believe that in the event of a complete hard drive failure, you can send all your files from the NAS back to the US, but, if the NAS is rubbish as a server, then wont it send all the files back to the US in the same poor quailty. In other words, your US is just a replica of the poor NAS when it comes back with a new hard drive.

Help !

Thanks,

Ray.

Posted on: 26 April 2017 by Claus-Thoegersen

Hi,

Different drives use din the servers over the years sounds different. the drive in my ns01 from 2011 was very quiet. If I wanted to hear any disk activity i had to put my ear to the case, and then it was sstill almost silent.

The cd drive I had replaced in 2015, makes much more noise, but not as much as what you describe.

Most people have a hard time hearing a difference between files from a Naim server or from a nas. But most people here use mmodels from QNAP, Synology or a few of us readynas. My guesss from what I have red many months ago is that you are using a cheap nas, and that it may degrade the sound?

Remember that the US only has one internal hard disk, not 2 like the HDX, so at least you should use the nas to make a backup of the ripped files on the userve.

Claus

Posted on: 26 April 2017 by hungryhalibut

The fact that your Serve makes a lot of noise on some CD rips and very little on others is completely normal.

As you have a Serve, you still need a nas to back it up to. I used to gave a Serve, and backed it up to a Synology. I needed some cash so thought about selling the Serve. Before I did I loaded Minimserver on the Synology and what do you know, it sounded better. So I sold the Serve. If you dealer says that you 'need' a Naim server if you have a Naim streamer, they are talking bollocks.

I'd advise you to rip everything to FLAC and set the Serve to transcode to WAV. Then get a Synology or Qnap nas as your backup. If you back up Serve WAV rips, they won't play as whole albums from the nas should you one day want to do that.

Interestingly, I found that setting the Serve to backup to a nas was infinitely harder than setting up a nas with music server from scratch.

Posted on: 26 April 2017 by Sloop John B

Hungryhalibut posted:
erve. If you dealer says that you 'need' a Naim server if you have a Naim streamer, they are talking bollocks.

And isn't it amazing that such bollocks is spoken and even more amazing that it's believed?

.sjb

Posted on: 26 April 2017 by ChrisSU

My US whirrs away gently and constantly when ripping, with very little stopping and starting, if any. Unless you're ripping damaged CDs or cheap CDRs, yours must be faulty.

Regarding a restore from backup, I don't think the quality of the NAS is an issue. It either works properly and restores you music files exactly as they were, or it doesn't work at all.

I use a Synology NAS to back up my US. If I use Minimserver to serve the backup files to my NDX, it sounds more or less the same as the US. It certainly doesn't sound better, as others have reported. Neither does it sound noticeably worse, so I, too, have to disagree with your dealer when he says that a Naim server is essential (to you!) with a Naim streamer.

Posted on: 26 April 2017 by Richard Morris

I've recently ripped about 3,500 cds. Some were extremely noisy, most weren't, quiet gaps were common.

Posted on: 27 April 2017 by ray sheldon

All,

Thanks for your input, some responses....

HUNGRYHALIBUT

I had already ripped about 300 CD's before the loader broke and went off for repair. I never noticed any unusual noise before. What it's doing now is somewhat different to before it went back to Naim. However, as I was waiting for delivery of NDX/SN2, I was only ripping a few here and there over a few weeks. Since it's been back from Monday, I have been ripping 30-40 a day taking a few hours. Perhaps it's just being over worked and getting hot. I've done a few this morning and it's reasonably quiet, perhaps that's the answer?

Your suggestion of ripping to FLAC then getting the US to convert to WAV seems a very tedious time consuming task. Imagine, I rip a few discs today in FLAC, tomorrow morning after the NAS has performed differential update(i.e. backed up new files), go back to US, find said files and change them to WAV. Sounds like a headache.

Besides, I remember A few years ago, I for some reason had the HDX set to FLAC. I changed the files to WAV. it wasn't until I sold the HDX and started using the NAS for music that apart from track name, I lost all metadata. A dealer told me that once you convert a file that's backed up, you lose metadata. It seems that when I set HDX to convert FLAC to WAV, it also instructed the NAS to do the same in differential back up???

Also, I find that WAV is approx 1400 kbps, FLAC around 900. WAV seems better and I can hear the difference?

And, I also found that using my NAS in WAV had no problems with albums when using various name streamers, I did play whole albums contrary to your findings?

See, this is getting confusing already!

SLOOP JOHN BMEMBER

Hence why I asked the question....'Surely there must be a NAS that can store and serve as well as your US?'

CHRISSU

Majority of CD's in mint condition, only ever been out of box once to rip.

RICHARD MORRIS

Have you also found that the harder you work the US, the noiser it gets?

ALL ,

OK I go for a better NAS. But which one. All the brands mentioned above have lots of different models by the looks of it. I don't want to spend hundreds but don't want to make a mistake?

Will minimserver make any difference to the quality of the backup(presuming I wont be using it to play) and any difference to the quality of restore in the event of US hard disk failure?

I'm lost with this already, you install minimserver on a NAS to make the files sound better on your NAS even after spending 000's on a streamer?

Posted on: 27 April 2017 by Sloop John B

Transcoding to wav from Flac is done on the fly, it's not a conversion, they remain as flac files but are transcoded while playing.

You you don't need s new NAS if you are only using it for backup and you don't need minimserver either.

.sjb

Posted on: 27 April 2017 by Richard Morris

I think the noise was disc related. An impression - no more - is that loud discs took longer to rip which might support that.

Posted on: 27 April 2017 by ChrisSU

ray sheldon posted:
Have you also found that the harder you work the US, the noiser it gets?

No, when I first got mine, I shoved CDs in it all day long and it just quietly got on with it. I think yours needs fixing.

Regarding FLAC vs WAV, I stared out ripping to WAV, then switched to FLAC, with the US set to convert to WAV on playback as the Naim streamers seem to prefer that. The other advantage of that is that I can use my backup NAS with Minimserver if I need to, and I can transfer the files to other devices (Sony DAP, USB stick for the car) and the metadata is still usable, which it wouldn't be it I stored in WAV.