Uniti Core Metadata

@David Hendon: thanks for the clarification, the fact that the Core's UPnP server does not ignore the Composer, Conductor and Genre fields of the files in the downloads folder is certainly good!

[@mention:3678285648728720]: I do not have a Core but if I had one I would probably keep all my files in the downloads folder and in the .flac format. I know that the Core does not actually support transcoding .flac to .wav but I am pretty sure that Naim will add this functionality, at least if enough users ask for it. In my classification scheme I clearcut distinguish between Genre and Form. Genre is populated by values like "classical", "jazz", "rock", "electronica", "vocal", "instrumental", "pop", "chamber", etc. Form, on the other hand, qualifies formal aspects of a piece of music and is populated by values like "adagio", "andante", "berceuse", "etude", "fugue", "cantata", "cello concerto", "concerto", "symphony", "nocturne", "requiem", "sonate", "toccata", "scherzo" and many others. What I find particularly useful in classical music is to index my files by Work and an Ensemble. I can then take advantage of MinimServer's support for "intelligent browsing" to nail down a piece of music through Composer > Work > Album or even Period > Composer > Album searches.

Thanks for the advice.  I am currently ripping to .wav as that's how my dealer set it up for me, but there's plenty of information I can find online to understand why perhaps I should be using .flac

I suspect overall your collection is bigger than mine is (at least at present); to be honest simply being able to search by composer and/or genre will be all I need, although in the long run would be good to identify different composers to different bits of a CD

Frances posted:

Thanks for the advice.  I am currently ripping to .wav as that's how my dealer set it up for me, but there's plenty of information I can find online to understand why perhaps I should be using .flac

I suspect overall your collection is bigger than mine is (at least at present); to be honest simply being able to search by composer and/or genre will be all I need, although in the long run would be good to identify different composers to different bits of a CD

I actually have a rather small collection, about 500GB. Most of these are prestoclassical, hyperion and qobuz downloads, the rest are rips of my own CDs. They are all in FLAC format.

In my view, it pays off to invest some time in thinking about how your collection looks like and which indexing schemes best fit your needs. As a rule of thumb, it pays off focusing on indexes that are most populated. For listeners of classical music, these are often (but not necessarily) Composer, Work, Artist, Conductor, Ensemble and perhaps Period.  But if you are particularly focussed on, say, vocal music, other indexes might be more relevant for you. In practice, I have found that I rarely use Genre and Artist in browsing my collection. And I have found it very useful to have an IncDate index that tells me when I have added a given album or set of files to the collection. This allows me to select my recent purchases directly. I have a Gramophone subscription and I found it very useful to look at the criteria (indexes) that the magazine uses to organize classical music. Just buy an issue and have a look at their table of contents.

Relevant criteria for selecting data formats and storage options are editability (of metadata) and portability. I do not have a Core but my understanding is that if you rip your CDs on the Core (in .wav or in .flac format) your files will land in a so-called "music folder" and the associated metadata will be stored in a proprietary database. According to Phil Harris' answers to my questions about the Core in https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...uestions-and-answers, there is no supported way of exporting the files of the music folder together with their metadata to an external drive in a non-proprietary data format (e.g. .flac with embedded metadata), see his answer to question 1. In practice this means that -- if you rip your CDs with the Core -- you will be locked into a non-portable, proprietary system with very limited support for metadata editing. This is, in my view, unacceptable. Thus, if I had a Core (and if the device would actually work in that way) I would avoid ripping my CDs on the device. Instead , I would rip using well-established OS X, Linux or Windows software on a computer and then them move the files to the Core's downloads folder.

A further aspect of organising and managing a music collection that you might want to consider is recovery. Dependable backups are of course mandatory, but if you have a small collection and if you put some efforts in cleaning up and editing your metadata, you might want to be able to restore a previous version if you are not satisfied with your edits. This is particularly true in the beginning when your collection is small and there are more chances that you will rethink your choices. I am not suggesting that you put your music collection under a versioning system. But if you might considering using a time machine or keeping a few external drives (1-2 TB drives are quite cheap) with two or three versions of your music library. I have found rsync based scripts a very versatile and efficient way of managing backups and recovery schemes.

Have fun, nbpf

Hi David, new to forum. Editing metadata via app on Core for ripped albums, I understand and am getting on ok. However, my dealer preloaded a selection of music for me which appears in the Downloads folder. What is the correct step by step process in your opinion for editing the metadata here. For instance some of the album titles could be more accurate, album artwork could be improved and ditto track titles. Additionally, is there a method for deleting individual albums? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Mike Rivers posted:

Hi David, new to forum. Editing metadata via app on Core for ripped albums, I understand and am getting on ok. However, my dealer preloaded a selection of music for me which appears in the Downloads folder. What is the correct step by step process in your opinion for editing the metadata here. For instance some of the album titles could be more accurate, album artwork could be improved and ditto track titles. Additionally, is there a method for deleting individual albums? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Find the downloads folder on your computer, and use your choice of metadata editors for this. As a Mac user, I like Metadatics, but there are plenty of others. Delete albums just as you would for any file on your computer. 

That easy? I’m encouraged Chrissu. Once changes are made do I have to reboot the app or anything? Thx for  your help here.

Mike Rivers posted:

That easy? I’m encouraged Chrissu. Once changes are made do I have to reboot the app or anything? Thx for  your help here.

If the app is slow to show your changes, try clearing the UPnP cache. Also a rescan in N-Serve for OSX or the DTC, whichever one you use. 

Thx Chrissu, I’ll post later on if I have any issues but all sounds clear to me. Will try tonight after work! (What an inconvenience!)

Mike is using a Core Chris, so n-serve and DTC don't work with it.

Mike the Core/Naim app should pick the changes up within a minute or so but if it doesn't you could try restarting the Core. You can also tell the Core to rebuild the database which forces a rescan. This takes a few minutes to do depending how many albums you have on it. So it's sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I used to find the US very slow to pick up changes in the Downloads folder, as in hours sometimes, but the Core is much better.

best

David

Quite right David, I temporarily forgot we were discussing the Core here! I believe the advice re. editing the Downloads folder is the same for both devices, though. 

Good to hear that the Core is a bit faster at updating, though. My record so far on the US is about two months!

Thanks David and Chris for your guidance. Look forward to putting into practice. 

Yes the downloads folder editing is the same as US. You can either do it in a PC/Mac and upload the edited files or you can do it while the files are already in the Downloads folder, assuming you can connect to it with your PC (some people have had an issue with that since the last Core firmware update. But the imminent Core firmware update fixes that for me.)

best

David

Thought I’d post an e-mail I sent to Phil re album sorting in particular but essentially just observations on my new Uniti Core.

’Hi Phil,

Two observations re my new Uniti Core.

1) Album sorting solution

Clearly with a 2Tb SSD drive I can store a very large number of mixed genre albums. The impression I get from reading all the forums is that the firmware, whilst improving, still fails to allow even rudimentary sorting of albums.

The options at present are to sort via artist or album.

Sorting by artist presents problems as albums by that artist cannot be further organised into chronological order.

Additionally, classical music presents further problems regarding indexing by composer, orchestra, soloist, etc.

Sorting by album basically mixes albums up altogether regardless of genre, following a crude A-Z methodology which presents the likes of ‘Led Zeppelin 1’ alongside Ashkenazy’s ‘Live in Moscow’.

My solution to all of this (with the benefit of wrestling with a large iTunes library for 10 years) is as follows.

Within the metadata you introduce a further ‘sorting’ tag, not visible when viewing the album whilst browsing, which allows the album to be renamed with a prefix. eg Hunky Dory would become 02Bow03 Hunky Dory. The prefix can be anything determined by the user. I use a simple system where in this example 02 denotes classic rock, Bow - David Bowie, and 03 indicates third album. The Hollies would fall under 01 Classic Pop, The Temptations under 03 Classic Soul etc.

The beauty of the system is to put back the control of library organisation into the users hands. Albums would be presented in blocks of genres, with artists in alphabetical order and albums in release order.

2) Change album cover

The photo album lookup does not allow ability navigate to a folder within my photo albums marked CD Covers, instead defaulting to ‘Moments’ in my iPad photo library which means I have to trawl through from start to finish in order to find the album cover I’m looking for. Cumbersome is the word I’m looking for.

Sincerely hope this helps

Mike Rivers (naim forum member)’