Latest Core Update Issues?

Phil

if you go to settings in the app, and select "tap for options" which is I think in "Other settings", then when you tap a track to play it, you will be given a choice of playing just that track now, playing from that track or adding that track to the current playlist etc. Does this enable you to play a whole album?

best

David

David Hendon posted:

Phil

if you go to settings in the app, and select "tap for options" which is I think in "Other settings", then when you tap a track to play it, you will be given a choice of playing just that track now, playing from that track or adding that track to the current playlist etc. Does this enable you to play a whole album?

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David

David, The Core just refuses to play anything as originally posted. It shows the CD cover that is selected at the bottom and the pause/play stays stuck at play. Most other things work such as monitoring the backup and browsing music.

The first time I was backing up (which appeared to work), so I let it complete which took till 3.30am having started at 9pm. I have yet to rip anything as I wanted to compare its SQ with the UnitiServe SSD.

Phil

Phil

Yes I did read your original post. It's always unclear with the Core whether the issue is with the Core or the app as you can't use one without the other.

One way to try to identify would be to let it play a track and get stuck, then stop the app (by swiping it off in IOS) not sure exactly how in Android but there is a similar process. Then restart the app and see whether the Core is still stuck. If so, then it most probably is the Core.

There isn't much you can do with the Core except completely unpower it,  leave it for say half a minute and then restart it.

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David

I had big issues with The Core update, no album art and then it wouldn't play anything!!! Unplugging it from the mains supply for 10 mins worked for me, maybe a complete power off may work for other people.

You don't need to power off for 10 mins. Once the capacitors are completely discharged (a few tens of secs at most), the Core is ready to go on again.

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David

Powering off for the time it takes to make a cup of tea is my tried and tested method with anything involving computers!

David Hendon posted:

Gazza posted:

when you hold the power button for a few seconds, it starts to flash, let go, and it is then in standby. In this mode only the power button is illuminated.

Or you can just leave it on and it will automatically go into network standby after a period which is determined by the setting in the app. All the lights except the power light will go out but the important thing is that you can still talk to the server over the network, so play music, change the playlist or whatever.

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David

Or it won’t if you have a hard disc fitted

Sorry Jon but you are totally mistaken about that. It will go into Network standby just as I said.

But if what you mean is that the power consumption won't lower significantly, then you are right on that score.

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David

Dropping by about 1w from 16 to 15 is an insult to the term “power save”

And the only way Naim can waltz this past the eu regs (max 2w standby if no display, 4w if there is a display) is because there is no hd offered by the factory. 

jon honeyball posted:

Dropping by about 1w from 16 to 15 is an insult to the term “power save”

jon honeyball posted:

And the only way Naim can waltz this past the eu regs (max 2w standby if no display, 4w if there is a display) is because there is no hd offered by the factory. 

That's all as maybe, but nothing to do with Phil's problem.

David, Yes turning the power off for awhile helped. I went to see my mother in the morning, and now it’s back playing more than one track because I skip to the next..........and then it stopped when it reached the end of a track and won’t restart from any track. Powered off again for a minute and it’s back with the same playlist and will play and skip, but get to the end of a track and it stops. Deja vue!

In answer to your earlier question about tap to play - Yes this was set and I unset it before the end of a track and it still stopped. Just rebooted with a 30 second pause. Still doing it but this time I will clear the playlist before rebooting. Makes no difference it still stops playing and needs to be rebooted!

I noticed that the entries in the play list are duplicated but it starts on the second one of the duplicates. So are the album track entries for that matter. Is this because I’ve backed it up? The backup was set as a network share, so I unset it as a network share and rebooted, but it still shows two entries for each track.

If you clear the playist it does not clear the area at the bottom of the screen. If you then tap it, it tries to display the playlist which is empty, and on return the area at the bottom clears.

Not very impressed that I can find so many bugs so quickly. I spent 30 years in software and system development, and all this kind of problem would be found and fixed before even the first release of a new product. Naim are just adding features on the fly and then not redoing all the testing. I would not have let these bugs get past software design review yet alone code reading.

Phil

Filipe posted:

David, Yes turning the power off for awhile helped. I went to see my mother in the morning, and now it’s back playing more than one track because I skip to the next..........and then it stopped when it reached the end of a track and won’t restart from any track. Powered off again for a minute and it’s back with the same playlist and will play and skip, but get to the end of a track and it stops. Deja vue!

In answer to your earlier question about tap to play - Yes this was set and I unset it before the end of a track and it still stopped. Just rebooted with a 30 second pause. Still doing it but this time I will clear the playlist before rebooting. Makes no difference it still stops playing and needs to be rebooted!

I noticed that the entries in the play list are duplicated but it starts on the second one of the duplicates. So are the album track entries for that matter. Is this because I’ve backed it up? The backup was set as a network share, so I unset it as a network share and rebooted, but it still shows two entries for each track.

If you clear the playist it does not clear the area at the bottom of the screen. If you then tap it, it tries to display the playlist which is empty, and on return the area at the bottom clears.

Not very impressed that I can find so many bugs so quickly. I spent 30 years in software and system development, and all this kind of problem would be found and fixed before even the first release of a new product. Naim are just adding features on the fly and then not redoing all the testing. I would not have let these bugs get past software design review yet alone code reading.

Phil

None of us going beta testing have seen any issues such as you describe. These aren't general bugs although that isn't to say that you haven't found one or bugs in your specific setup.

Did you try restarting the app instead of restarting the Core?

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David

And yes if you leave your backup connected and defined as a share, the Core will do what it is supposed to do and scan the backup share. So I should undefine the backup as a share.

You can force the Core to rebuild its indexes or you can wait a few minutes and it should lose the duplicates on its own.

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David

Hi All

I upgraded the Core last night and have had similar issues. 

1. Can’t play via Upnp;

2. Artwork from download folder disappeared.

I did a couple of power cycles on the core, restarted the App and it still didn’t work. Have written to Naim support. 

Regards

Tai

David Hendon posted:

And yes if you leave your backup connected and defined as a share, the Core will do what it is supposed to do and scan the backup share. So I should undefine the backup as a share.

You can force the Core to rebuild its indexes or you can wait a few minutes and it should lose the duplicates on its own.

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David

David, Regarding the above firstly. I did not set it as a network share. I have unset now and after rebooting the App it remains unset. However, the duplicates are still there.

l have reset the database and then the App, and the duplication has disappeared. Also it no longer stops after the first track!

Clearly there are problems with the software/firmware that it/they can get its/their nickers in such a twist. It has been my understanding that the Firmware controls the display by the app by sending it various types of data stream to display much like a web page. The App then creates events based on user interaction with the different types of object displayed by the app. So it’s probably in the firmware. 

To avoid problems such as I have had the software needs to be written to be more resilient by dealing with all eventualities. Range checking parameters is a simple form of this, but use of state machines is another step where unexpected events for the state needed to be trapped and processed. Clearly all I did by rebuilding the database was to reset the state to one that it can handle properly. This shows that the design and implementation do not meet availability requirements because it became unusable without unintuitive intervention.

Phil

Hi Phil

Well you may be right, but there is no point in telling me because I'm just a customer like you and Naim may or may not read this thread, so you might want to send your comments to the support email address or via feedback in the app.

It often is worth restarting the app because while it may be reading stuff from the Core in the way you describe, if it gets something wrong it can stay like that until it restarts. It takes only seconds to do too.

Anyway I'm glad you got it working.

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David

David Hendon posted:

Hi Phil

Well you may be right, but there is no point in telling me because I'm just a customer like you and Naim may or may not read this thread, so you might want to send your comments to the support email address or via feedback in the app.

It often is worth restarting the app because while it may be reading stuff from the Core in the way you describe, if it gets something wrong it can stay like that until it restarts. It takes only seconds to do too.

Anyway I'm glad you got it working.

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David

David, thank you for your help. I’ll consider reporting problems to Naim, but some posts on the forum suggest that Naim will not listen.

Phil

Phil, please do report to Naim. They would want to know of an issue such as this, I’m sure.

Just to support Richard's comments. As this a long-awaited and big update for the Core that has only just been released, I'm sure the people at Naim will want to know about any issues that people are having.  

Whether they will ditch their firmware and start again using the development methodology you describe is less certain I think, but anyway It's worth making the point.  Incidentally Apple could do with some advice on getting IOS releases right first time (or even second, third or fourth time) too!

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David

David Hendon posted:

Just to support Richard's comments. As this a long-awaited and big update for the Core that has only just been released, I'm sure the people at Naim will want to know about any issues that people are having.  

Whether they will ditch their firmware and start again using the development methodology you describe is less certain I think, but anyway It's worth making the point.  Incidentally Apple could do with some advice on getting IOS releases right first time (or even second, third or fourth time) too!

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David

David, It’s seldom necessary to start again. The development team need to work within a Quality System such as ISO 9000 and someone needs to produce software standards. These then need to be followed. It’s usual to produce high level design documents and detailed design for the smaller parts of the high level design. If there are failings one tries to isolate the weaknesses within the high level design and implement extra layers. I suspect that there are synchronisation problems when fairly major state changes occur such as adding or removing a network share or Music Store. The app just seems to flag a change to the firmware. The app does not show the progress of the change to the user which encourages one to take a look again. The system needs to be designed to be more defensive to actions that developers and testers might consider to be stupid. 

When I get time I will think about reporting my problem. At the moment I’m trying to check out various digital cables. I think the DC1 is probably better than Chord Clearway digital on my CDX2. While listening to the UnitiServe and Core using the DC1 I was lulled thinking they were almost as good as the CDX2, but they are not. The DC1 just improves their SQ. Neither is the Core better than the UnitiServe as best I can tell. FLAC is certainly not as good as WAV.

Phil

I think I do just still prefer the Unitiserve sound to the Core, but I don't check these days, although I have both on the network.  I just use the Core.  

And I bought a CDX2 because I like the theatre of playing CDs on a Naim player and it sounds great too. I don't know whether I could actually reliably hear any difference between the CDX2 and the Core. Old ears and all that. (I'm not tempted by the theatre of playing LPs though, so my old Thorens/SME is in the loft and I gave all my LPs to a friend with a Linn LP12...

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David

David Hendon posted:

I think I do just still prefer the Unitiserve sound to the Core, but I don't check these days, although I have both on the network.  I just use the Core.  

And I bought a CDX2 because I like the theatre of playing CDs on a Naim player and it sounds great too. I don't know whether I could actually reliably hear any difference between the CDX2 and the Core. Old ears and all that. (I'm not tempted by the theatre of playing LPs though, so my old Thorens/SME is in the loft and I gave all my LPs to a friend with a Linn LP12...

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David

David, I have a nDAC+XPSDR into 282+SuperCap DR into 300DR and full SL. By doubling all the box spacings there was a big improvement in SQ. Quite a wow or blimey moment! I think it works for all Naim Classic configurations. It’s not difficult to tell the difference between CDX2 and UnitiServe or Core now. My ears are old as well, and although I have to ask my wife to repeat things at times, it doesn’t stop me hearing differences.

The DC1 makes the bass fuller and the higher frequency notes sparkle more. It’s wow when you hear it. The net effect is that I have to adjust the volume level down compared with the US or Core. 

Loricraft restored my Thorens TD124 Mk II and put it in one of their Garrard plinths. The fitted the arm from the RP8. It really is an amazing TT.

Phil

Phil, don,t take this wrong. Take some time with the Core, changing cables so soon, may make you end up making the wrong decision. Ethernet cables and switches are a consideration?

I have a cheap digital cable into a Nova and then Dr300 and a PMC 25.26. Yes the DC1 did better, but I ended up paying for a Fraim second hand. In the end I will get a DC1, but look at all options, and have fun.

@Kevin C - "The CD appears to rip fine, but then when completed it is not being ejected and requires a manual eject?"

I have seen this on one system which updated from 1.4 to 2.5, the auto eject feature did not get enabled by the update. You can fix this by doing a factory reset:

• Factory reset. Do this by powering off the Core. Then switch power on with the standby button held. Keep holding the standby button until the light above the USB socket flashes. NOTE THAT THIS WILL DELETE YOUR FAVOURITES AND PLAYLISTS

If you want to preserve your favourites and playlists then one of the following methods will also work:

• On a mac launch the terminal app. Enter the following command (changing the IP address for that of your Core): "curl -X PUT 192.168.1.19:15081/rip?autoEject=1"
• Windows or Mac. Use the chrome browser and install the Postman app. Launch the postman app and do PUT request with the following (changing the IP address for that of your Core): "192.168.1.19:15081/rip?autoEject=1"

Regarding ripping errors, If there are ripping errors reported then often cleaning the CD and re-ripping can result in an error free rip. Often a track with a few rip errors may have very few if any audible glitches. I have found that some pristine CDs can have errors, presumably minor defects in the manufacturing or pressing process. I confirm in these cases it was the CD by swapping mech and ripping solution.

Core 2.5 will log every uncorrectable C2 data error and you can see if a CD ripped with errors on the iOS app album page. There is an icon under the album image with a tick or exclamation mark to denote if there were errors. Also on the home screen you can select "More..."  > Albums with ripping errors. This show albums ripped on Core 2.5 that have errors.

List of changes for Uniti Core 2.5 is here:

https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...niti-progress-update