Unitiserve firmware issues

Posted by: stebro on 13 June 2018

I’ve posted recently about upgrading my Unitiserve to firmware 1.7b. I appreciate all the advice and it’s now been upgraded. But now, when I rip a classical CD, it almost seems to get lost. If I rip a Beethoven disc, there is no field for composer so it my show up on my iPad under artists, conductors, albums, etc. but not under Composer>Beethoven, which is the place to find it most readily. I wrote to Eric Adler at Naim about this and he proposed two solutions: replace my US (with 2GB hard disc) with a Uniticore (expensive and probably time consuming to transfer all my ripped music from my backup drive to the Uniticore) or use the Roon ecosystem. I know nothing about Roon and am not great at technical stuff. I’m wondering what’s involved with the Roon system. Am I correct that it’s strictly a software program available by subscription? How complex is it to download and set up? Has anyone tried it and would it seamlessly solve my problem? Would it interfere at all with my Sonos system? Do I need any additional hardware (my DAC is an Auralic Vega whuch I believe is compatible with Roon)? Is there any other solution? Some have posted that I could add a composer field using my iPad or PC but no one has said how to go about doing this and I haven’t been able to figure it out)? Sorry for all the questions. Thanks again for any help/advice.

Posted on: 13 June 2018 by ChrisSU

There are quite a few different ways to run Roon, but it has to run on a computer of some sort. If you want to make full use of its many functions, it needs to run on a reasonably powerful computer. If you just want use it to browse your music, as your dealer is suggesting, a more basic computer or a moderately powerful NAS would run it. It will find the music on your Unitiserve and if you use Tidal, is integrated with that

Your player then needs to be a Roon ‘endpoint’ and if the Vega supports this, you’re sorted on that front.

There’s a free trial of Roon, so you can always try it on any computer you have and see what you think.

Posted on: 14 June 2018 by David Hendon

Another work-around that Naim could have suggested is that you edit the newly-ripped disc with n-serve so that it has Beethoven as the first word in the disc name and then use album view to see all the discs in alphabetical order. I do this with my UnitiCore just as I used to with my US.

There is another workaround if you can be bothered and that is to copy the rip from the music folder of your US to the downloads folder. Then you edit the files in the downloads folder with the metadata editor of your choice and you delete the original in the music folder. You must do this properly using n-serve. Now the US will treat the copy in the downloads folder as a download rather than a rip and it will be show up properly in the app under Beethoven.

But Naim's advice is wrong in saying that the problem is solved with a UnitiCore because it isn't. If the metadata found by the Core during the rip doesn't populate the composer field, then you have to live with that because although you can search on composer, Naim hasn't yet enabled editing of composer in the Core.

One other thing is that it is simple to restore your US rips to a Core either from a backup or from the US itself. The process is automated and works reasonably well.

best

David

Posted on: 14 June 2018 by Bart

David Hendon posted:
There is another workaround if you can be bothered and that is to copy the rip from the music folder of your US to the downloads folder. Then you edit the files in the downloads folder with the metadata editor of your choice and you delete the original in the music folder. You must do this properly using n-serve. Now the US will treat the copy in the downloads folder as a download rather than a rip and it will be show up properly in the app under Beethoven.

This is my recommendation. When I still owned a UnitiServe, I ended up moving ALL of my Naim rips to the Downloads folder and using a metadata editor to get the tags and artwork just as I wanted them.

That was the last step before I sold is off, as it revealed the severe limitations of its software platform.

Posted on: 14 June 2018 by Jan-Erik Nordoen

Hi Stebro,

As ChrisSU has said above, try Roon. As another UnitiServe owner, I can highly recommend it. If your Auralic Vega is "Roon-ready", it will serve as the endpoint. All you need is the main Roon software (Roon Core) running on a computer connected to your network. I currently run Roon Core on a MacBookPro.

Once you've pointed Roon at the UnitiServe, it will scan your music files and fill in the missing information (and do much more). Here is nServe's view of a recently ripped classical album. The thought of manually adding metadata for 29 tracks left me feeling nauseous:

Here's the view of the same album after Roon automatically scanned it.

It handles composer information brilliantly, and pretty much everything else.You can subscribe to Roon on a yearly basis ($119) or pay once for life ($499). A yearly subscription can be upgraded to a lifetime one later.

Worth every penny, in my view,

Jan

Posted on: 14 June 2018 by TN

Jan-Erik,

I presume your statement "If your Auralic Vega is "Roon-ready"" means a nDac and Unitiserve combo will not work with Roon?

I have my Unitiserve connected to the nDac with the DC1 and was wondering if I could add Roon to my setup.

Posted on: 14 June 2018 by Sloop John B

[@mention:1566878603874671], I thought Roon needed some metadata to do its stuff, how did you get Roon to scan something tagged unknown album?

i see you have a merging-nadac, what do you think of it? What did you have previously?

.sjb

Posted on: 14 June 2018 by ChrisSU

TN posted:
Jan-Erik,
I presume your statement "If your Auralic Vega is "Roon-ready"" means a nDac and Unitiserve combo will not work with Roon?
I have my Unitiserve connected to the nDac with the DC1 and was wondering if I could add Roon to my setup.

You would need some additional hardware to run Roon. One option would be to replace the Unitiserve with an Innuos server, as these are able ro run Roon.

Other solutions require a Roon ‘core’ running on a computer, and a Roon ‘endpoint’ attached to your system. This means an extra box in front of your NDAC, and there are lots of options there. With this approach, you can use Roon with multiple devices if you want.

Posted on: 15 June 2018 by Bart

I've not been keeping up with Roon implementation lately. I have a QNAP nas running Asset server, an NDS and a Qute 2. What would be a reasonable low-cost way to implement Roon? It won't run on my nas; too little processing power.

I think that the basic options are (1) a new server that is more powerful, or (2) an additional device on the network. I'd lean to (2) as I assume it'd be more cost effective. But the solution should be relatively simple too

Posted on: 15 June 2018 by Jan-Erik Nordoen

Sloop John B posted:
[@mention:1566878603874671], I thought Roon needed some metadata to do its stuff, how did you get Roon to scan something tagged unknown album?
I did nothing other than open Roon the day after ripping the disc on the UnitiServe. I assume that the number of tracks, their lengths and album length were enough data for Roon to identify the recording. I was already impressed with Roon, but this floored me.
i see you have a merging-nadac, what do you think of it? What did you have previously?
It's an end-game DAC. Currently reviewing it in place of the Metrum Pavane (level 1), which replaced the Naim DAC. I also have the Resonessence Labs Mirus Pro. In musical engagement, the NADAC tops anything I've had here, not only maintaining focus on the music, but laying out very clearly what the musicians are doing. Extremely detailed, natural and dynamic. Nothing is hyped. Zero listening fatigue. Also wonderful on soundtracks and for gaming.
Jan (figuring out how to fund the purchase)