Uniti Core: technical questions and answers

Sorry, I don't have answers but will follow this thread with great interest.

Maybe someone from Naim can step in? Or ask these questions directly to Naim and post the answers here ...

nbpf posted:

The idea of this thread is to collect open technical questions about the Uniti Core and, hopefully, come up with some answers. The idea is to help Core users and perspective buyers understand how the device works. Please no comparisons, discussions on advantages, disadvantages, merits, cost, sound quality, delays, etc! Here we go with a first batch of tech. questions to which I have currently no answers:

0. Is there a sanctioned way moving a file (set of files) from the music folder to the downloads folder?

Hi NBPF,

No - there is no "sanctioned" way to take an album from the Music folder (after having been ripped by the Core) and putting it into the Downloads folder.

The "Music" folder is shared on the network as a read only share and the "Downloads" folder is available on the network as a read/write enabled share so physically doing so (if you needed to) wouldn't be difficult.

nbpf posted:

1. Is there a sanctioned way of exporting some or all the files of the music folder in .flac format, for instance, to an external USB drive?

No - however the backup function would allow the creation of a copy of the internal drive on a USB device.

nbpf posted:

2. For files in the downloads folder: which embedded metadata are actually parsed and honoured by the Core's UPnP server (SPDIF player)?

We currently use and index on Album Artist, Album Title, Track Title, Track Number and Cover art...

...composer, conductor and genre are planned to be added shortly and other indexing fields can be added as required.

nbpf posted:

3. Is it possible to have symbolic links in the downloads folder?

No - Symbolic links are not supported.

nbpf posted:

4. For files in the music folder: which metadata indexes are made available by the Core's UPnP server (SPDIF player)?

I'm not sure that I understand the question ... can you clarify exactly what you are asking?

nbpf posted:

5. Does the Core's UPnP server (SPDIF player) support multiple metadata index values? Is it for instance possible to access the same file through two different Artist values?

It is only possible for a track to have a single artist...

Best Regards

Phil Harris

Thanks a lot for the reply and the clarifications Phil! With respect to question 4:

4. For files in the music folder: which metadata indexes are made available by the Core's UPnP server (SPDIF player)?

what I mean here is which metadata are actually supported for files in the music folder. I guess these will be Album Artist, Album Title, Track Title, Track Number and Cover art as for files in the downloads folder.

But, given that the metadata of the files in the music folder are created by the ripping engine and stored in an internal database, there could be, in principle, differences. Hence the two separate questions, 2 and 4.

Best, nbpf

Maybe an interesting supplementary question in the context of your earlier answer Phil about conductor, composer and genre coming later is whether the Core currently populates those fields in the metadata when ripping even though it's not possible to utilise them yet.

best

David

David Hendon posted:

Maybe an interesting supplementary question in the context of your earlier answer Phil about conductor, composer and genre coming later is whether the Core currently populates those fields in the metadata when ripping even though it's not possible to utilise them yet.

best

David

Interesting question! I would expect the ripping process to populate all those fields that are supported by the internal database. In principle, it would also be possible to re-query internet CD metadata databases for the files in the music folder as "composer, conductor and genre are [planned to be] added [shortly and other indexing fields can be added] as required", of course. But it seems to me that, if the internal database supports doing so, it would be easier to store this information in the database from the very beginning even though the Core's UPnP server and SPDIF player cannot currently exploit it. Let's see what comes out! I imagine that, at this point, Naim are very busy getting the other Uniti devices ready to ship. But I hope that, at a later point, the understanding collected in this thread will be useful to suggest possible avenues for improving the Core.