Dear all,
New here so a short info. Having led a former audiophile life (10 yrs ago - Pass Thiels etc) I recently decided to re-enter.
Bought a used Nait 5i (straight) and SF 1.5 Venere's to hook-up my Sonos player. Nac A5 is under way.
I must say that I already very much enjoy the music I hear, but also know its only the start ;-)
Next step would be NDX but would a UnitiQute or Uniti 1 as source in the meantime help me get the Naim-feel for indexing, ripping settings etc and more of the Naim sound?
Long journey ahead! ;-)
Cheers Arnold
I would look out for a second-hand ND5XS -- great digital source for a reasonable price in the used market.
New versions of the NDX and ND5XS are arriving soon, so you may want to either wait for the improved functionality of the replacements, or look out for a bargain on the existing models. In the meantime, a used Unitiqute will be fine to get you up and running.
If you have a CD collection, getting a decent NAS and ripping them might also be on your to-do list.
Thanks guys. In fact, I have bought dBpoweramp and am about halfway. But I read in some posts that Naim more or less has its own way of ripping... not sure....
Naim used UnitiServe and now uses The Core to rip and store / serve CDs.
But it’s not mandatory - a decent NAS with a good UPnP server software is also perfectly OK.
NAS makes that are most often used by the Forum members are: Synology and QNAP.
UPnP server software most often used: Asset, MinimServe.
Hi AJ55, welkom terug bij audiophileville & the world of Naim. Its a fun place to be, geniet die rit.
If you have dBpoweramp, does that mean you are, or plan to start, ripping to a NAS ?? dBpoweramp is one of the best software programs for ripping & also for editing metadata in both rips & downloaded albums as & when that is needed. Naim have their own way of ripping with their own servers, but if you are ripping to a NAS that is of no concern.
Hi Mike-B. I am already ripping to my NAS in FLAC;-)
I read about on-the-fly decompression to wav, but it seems a complex thing to me. Installing software (Asset?) on my NAS etc.
I think I stick to playing flac's for the moment until my system has been upgraded to a level where it matters. And then I can always decompress all the files with the batch converter in one go....
aj55 posted:Hi Mike-B. I am already ripping to my NAS in FLAC;-)
I read about on-the-fly decompression to wav, but it seems a complex thing to me. Installing software (Asset?) on my NAS etc.
I think I stick to playing flac's for the moment until my system has been upgraded to a level where it matters. And then I can always decompress all the files with the batch converter in one go....
Hi Arnold,
If you use a (Naim) streamer and a NAS, you will need to instal a UPnP server on the NAS. Without this, the streamer will not find your music files. Asset of Minimserver are popular, and it is not difficult to set them to transcode FLAC to WAV 'on the fly' if you want to. You can also convert the files to WAV with dbPoweramp, although they will take more space on your hard drive.
Hi again AJ55, the on the fly thing is called transcoding, it sets the NAS to convert from FLAC (or whatever other format) to WAV as it streams to the player (on the fly) You keep all your files as FLAC & there is no need to batch convert. It is an easy thing to do, I'm not so familiar with Asset, but on my Synology Media Server its simply enabled with a 'check box'. ( I keep everything as WAV so I don't need to transcode )
Hi Chrissu,
I use a WD MyCloudEX2 NAS. I suppose it has an Upnp server installed, as my Sonos can find the music files and index them!
However, I can't find anything remotely looking like transcoding....
Correction... I can install an app called SqueezeCenter which can do transcoding.
I will try to install and run that app.......... (and see what happens;-)
Hi AJ55
From the My Cloud EX2 manual
"Media Server Overview
The My Cloud EX2 Ultra device uses TwonkyMedia as its DLNA media server. It streams your music, photos and videos to compatible devices in your home."
You can usually access Twonky's config. webpage by typing the MY Cloud's I.P. address followed by ":9000" into your web browser. However, I don't know whether Twonky has an option to transcode flac files to wav on the fly.
Hi Arnold,
The UPnP / DLNA Media Server on the WD NASes is Twonky.
Twonky usually works, but many people have odd problems with it (e.g. track ordering) - hence it being known as Wonky Twonky!
Sonos doesn't use UPnP at all, it uses it's own system to access and index the files on the NAS - it's completely different and the two can happily co-exist on the same network (but they won't co-operate!).
It would appear that, by default, the WD version of Twonky may not be able to transcode audio or video streams, and setting it up looks to be vey convoluted (with no guarantee of success on lower powered hardware such as the EX2 series).
About 3/4 of the way down this
https://community.wd.com/t/faq...r-setup-use/95373/26
there is information on transcoding in Twonky.
aj55 posted:Hi Chrissu,
I use a WD MyCloudEX2 NAS. I suppose it has an Upnp server installed, as my Sonos can find the music files and index them!
However, I can't find anything remotely looking like transcoding....
You can't run Asset on a MyCloud NAS, you really need a QNAP for that, or a Synology NAS running Minimserver. To my ears, the difference between FLAC and WAV is not great, so if your MyCloud works well for you, probably best to forget about transcoding for now.
Having started off with a My Cloud - I didn’t really know what I was doing and it was cheap -I quickly discovered that it is a very poor device and inflexible in use. I’d strongly suggest you get a Qnap with Asset, or a Synology with MinimServer. The former is a bit easier to use. For about £450 you will get a good two bay nas with two 3TB drives. You will then have a good foundation for trouble free streaming to your Naim system.