Library, metadata & Naim Server

I think you are right to consider a NAS for a music library of that size. I would store your Star CD rips in FLAC, not WAV. Then, when you transfer them to a NAS, non-Naim servers will still read the metadata, which is not the case if you use WAV with a Naim ripper. Also, the file sizes will be smaller for the transfer. 

To clarify - NAIM servers rip files to WAV in a special way. Metadata is stored separately, in a little file, stored in an album folder.

Not sure if Star rips to FLAC - if it does, FLAC files would contain the metadata.

Adam Zielinski posted:

To clarify - NAIM servers rip files to WAV in a special way. Metadata is stored separately, in a little file, stored in an album folder.

Not sure if Star rips to FLAC - if it does, FLAC files would contain the metadata.

Yes, the Star rips to Flac and Wave....

What does it mean “in a special way?”

thank you

But, there are a way to read Naim metadata with a different servers?

Emme posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

To clarify - NAIM servers rip files to WAV in a special way. Metadata is stored separately, in a little file, stored in an album folder.

Not sure if Star rips to FLAC - if it does, FLAC files would contain the metadata.

Yes, the Star rips to Flac and Wave....

What does it mean “in a special way?”

thank you

 

Meaning that WAV files are stripped of metadata. Other servers will not read the metadata from the data-file. All they will see are track numbers and track titles.

If you ever plan on using the files you are now ripping with other servers, I’d strongly encourage that you rip to FLAC.

Emme posted:

But, there are a way to read Naim metadata with a different servers?

Not that I’m aware of - I even asked the creator of Minimserve and he replied: no - it’s a proprietary format, to which we don’t have access.

Adam Zielinski posted:

Emme posted:

But, there are a way to read Naim metadata with a different servers?

Not that I’m aware of - I even asked the creator of Minimserve and he replied: no - it’s a proprietary format, to which we don’t have access.

Yes but please remember this is only with the way Naim change the stnd WAV format on there own software.    Why they do this goodness knows as it causes just these problems.

I rip to WAV as do millions of others,  & like all other ripping software with all other rippers,  it has no such "problems"

Just make sure that you convert any WAVs to FLAC on the Star before moving them and you’ll be fine. Converting them on another device later won’t work. 

Indeed Mike - WIth the way WAV fiels are ripped by NAIM servers, NAIM seem to have chosen an odd path and they are sticking to it.

But the backstop is things like Picard can get all the metadata for you).

Emme posted:

Adam Zielinski posted:

To clarify - NAIM servers rip files to WAV in a special way. Metadata is stored separately, in a little file, stored in an album folder.

Not sure if Star rips to FLAC - if it does, FLAC files would contain the metadata.

Yes, the Star rips to Flac and Wave....

What does it mean “in a special way?”

It means that it is a proprietary and undocumented format and that you will not be able to export it to any open format. As suggested by others, you should probably rip to .flac and take advantage of well established and cross-platform tools to manage your files and edit the metadata. I also would suggest that you use MinimServer (running on a NAS or on a Raspberry Pi) to serve your music library.

Emme posted:

But, there are a way to read Naim metadata with a different servers?

No, Naim uses an undocumented proprietary format to store the metadata of the files that are ripped to the music folder.

nbpf posted:

Emme posted:

But, there are a way to read Naim metadata with a different servers?

No, Naim uses an undocumented proprietary format to store the metadata of the files that are ripped to the music folder.

As mentioned above, use FLAC and this is not an issue. 

Actually tagging Naim wavs is very easy to do with mp3tag. In fact you can tag an entire library in a few seconds. Essentially the software looks at the file name which the naim software does a good job of and populates that data into the correct metadata fields.

in my experience they then work perfectly with upnp, slim server, mini dnla etc

garyi posted:

Actually tagging Naim wavs is very easy to do with mp3tag. In fact you can tag an entire library in a few seconds. Essentially the software looks at the file name which the naim software does a good job of and populates that data into the correct metadata fields.

in my experience they then work perfectly with upnp, slim server, mini dnla etc

True for pop music and pehaps jazz but what about classical music? I still have to find a system that assigns proper values to Artist, Composer, Composition (Work), Ensemble, Conductor, Period, etc. especially for opera or for albums with different conductors, artists, composers, etc. The Naim UPnP server makes anyway a very poor job on classical music metadata and the only server that fully supports classical music metadata is MinimServer, to the best of my knowledge. The bottom line is that it very much depends on the kind of music one is interested in. For pop music and perhaps also rock and, up to a certain extent jazz almost everything will do. But for classical music one needs much more flexibility and a very good UPnP server.

I am not sure on classical. Essentially mp3tag relies on what’s i that file name. So have a look at the files names. If the info in there is consistent then this will at least enable you to have the wavs identified.

you can then bring more powerful software to bear as the files will be identified.

mp3tag is easy to configure. So if your file name is track no>track name>artist>album you simply inform mp3tag that’s the order. If the file name also has composer you tell mp3tag that to.

garyi posted:

I am not sure on classical. Essentially mp3tag relies on what’s i that file name. So have a look at the files names. If the info in there is consistent then this will at least enable you to have the wavs identified.

you can then bring more powerful software to bear as the files will be identified.

mp3tag is easy to configure. So if your file name is track no>track name>artist>album you simply inform mp3tag that’s the order. If the file name also has composer you tell mp3tag that to.

mp3tag is a good tagging program, of course. But it does not help if the UPnP server does not honour indexes which are relevant for classical music such as Period, Composition, Ensemble, etc. What I was trying to say is that for classical music a flexible UPnP server is mandatory. The Naim UPnP server is simply not good enough. Of course, one also needs a good tagging tool but there is plenty of them, among others mp3tag.

There's a commercial version of SongKong Music Tagger that is apparently able to parse Naim ripped Metadata files, so re-tagging the WAV rips should be easy enough with that.

In my experience though untagged WAV does sound better than tagged WAV, so I think that Naim are onto something with the separate metadata file thing. I would just get a Core for the size of your collection, as it's likely to continue to expand. 

J Saville posted:

There's a commercial version of SongKong Music Tagger that is apparently able to parse Naim ripped Metadata files, so re-tagging the WAV rips should be easy enough with that.

In my experience though untagged WAV does sound better than tagged WAV, so I think that Naim are onto something with the separate metadata file thing. I would just get a Core for the size of your collection, as it's likely to continue to expand. 

Does "SongKong Music Tagger" support filling in Composition, Ensemble or other user or genre specific tags? Even though a software might be able to parse and modify Naim's proprietary metadata format, I would advice against using that format even if it sounded slightly better than tagged .wav. It is undocumented and one does not have well established utilities to export/import to tagged .wav, .flac, etc. It is an heritage of the old UnitiServe system which is meanwhile obsolete.