Utilizing flash drives

Posted by: Quads on 14 October 2018

Hi all, I had some questions about flash drives and their ability to be used outside the context of my Naim main system.

I do have a Naim Uniti Core with a good number of ripped cds stored on its internal drive. I would like to copy/drag a number of the songs for use in my car or on a dealers rig who may not have Naim components.

Has anyone done this? What are the considerations given that my drive and its songs have been formatted by the Core; in Wave; and NTFS?

Thanks for any ideas

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Quads

Sorry, this topic was meant for the Streaming area, and if needed can be moved there

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Mike-B
Quads posted:

Hi all, I had some questions about flash drives and their ability to be used outside the context of my Naim main system.

I do have a Naim Uniti Core with a good number of ripped cds stored on its internal drive. I would like to copy/drag a number of the songs for use in my car or on a dealers rig who may not have Naim components.

Has anyone done this? What are the considerations given that my drive and its songs have been formatted by the Core; in Wave; and NTFS?

I've fiddled with USB in the car for a while & frankly its not worth the bother,  MP3 works just as well in the not very good sonics  of a car on the open road,  plus it's very much easier with an MP3 type player.      Anyhow, if you want to give a go  .........  I found the small form drives most convenient - e.g. SanDisk Cruzer Blade.  Format to FAT32 & be sure your car will actually play WAV codec & even more so that it will play the quirky Naim version of WAV if you copy from the Core;  if your car player doesn't play WAV then you will need to convert to FLAC.   

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Richard Dane

Quads, I have moved your thread to the Streaming audio room.

Regarding your question, although I have ripped all my CDs in WAV with a Core, I have always done separate additional rips with a laptop using dbpoweramp into FLAC files and folders. This laptop is my digital music workshop where I can clean up downloads, clean up metadata, rip difficult discs etc.. The FLACs I use for portable devices and for music when away from home.  I have never tried to copy a Core ripped file off the Core drive. I would imagine it would be fairly convoluted and involve a degree of format conversion and also metadata clean up and editing.  Easier by far just to re-rip the CD into FLAC on a computer. Probably not the answer you're looking for, but it works well for me.

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by ChrisSU

 

I use a cheap 256gb USB stick in my car, full of CD rips (and a few downloads) copied from my Unitiserve. Although I use FLAC on the US, my car will not play them, so I convert them back to WAV. I did try converting a few to 320 MP3s and AACs, but even in the car I found these sounded a bit flat and lifeless compared to lossless, so stick with WAVs. 

The last USB stick I bought cost under £30, and came formatted in FAT32, ready to go. I just plug it into my MacBook and drag files to it from the US. I think you’ll find the Core is pretty much the same in the respect. 

If you want full metadata such as artwork, genre etc. you may find that Naim rips stored as WAV do not show this when played in non-Naim devices. For me, this is not a problem as while driving anything more than a simple list of artists, albums and tracks would be a distraction. 

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Quads

Thanks Mike, Richard and Chrissu, most appreciative for your responses!

I’ll do some investigation for the formats my car (2012 Toyota) accepts as well as formating the stick to FAT32. I’ll probably do some experimentation of songs dragged to the stick from the Core in case this works at the outset.

As well, re-ripping my favorite cds on a laptop could be in my future.

ps, thanks Richard for moving the topic to the Streaming Room

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Bart

I've yet to have a car that would play flac files from a usb stick.  So when I owned a UnitiServe, I let the UServe make a 256kbps mp3 library and dragged those onto a usb stick for the car. I'm happy to listen to good quality lossy files in the car.

The "problem" with your cd rips that were created by the Core is that the Core's unique metadata system is not translated easily to external devices.  You'll end up needing to use another program (such as dbPoweramp, or Metadatics (OS X only)  to edit the metadata yourself.

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Quads

Thanks Bart for the additional information.

I may try a few samples to see if these Core files are playable, if not the metadata bieng intact.

Also is the circumstance where I’m at a dealer, friends, or show where they have some kind of setup with usb. Would my stick most likely play from their laptop or other devise (non Naim)?

Would be most convenient if it did...

Regards

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by ChrisSU
Bart posted:

I've yet to have a car that would play flac files from a usb stick.  So when I owned a UnitiServe, I let the UServe make a 256kbps mp3 library and dragged those onto a usb stick for the car. I'm happy to listen to good quality lossy files in the car.

The "problem" with your cd rips that were created by the Core is that the Core's unique metadata system is not translated easily to external devices.  You'll end up needing to use another program (such as dbPoweramp, or Metadatics (OS X only)  to edit the metadata yourself.

My wife's Mazda will play FLACs, although my BMW won't.

Regarding Core CD rips, I'm pretty sure they will be the same as Unitiserve rips regarding metadata. For me, using them as original WAVs, the one place they work well in is my car. While driving, I really do not want to be browsing by genre, admiring album artwork, etc. when I should be watching the road. So just having the basic artist/album/track folder view, which I can scroll through and select with the car's controls, is ideal. 

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by ChrisSU
Quads posted:

Also is the circumstance where I’m at a dealer, friends, or show where they have some kind of setup with usb. Would my stick most likely play from their laptop or other devise (non Naim)?

There should be no problem with playing the files on non-Naim devices. The issue that you may have is being able to access the metadata, which works differently on Naim devices. The solution is to convert them to FLAC in the Core, then copy them to the USB stick. This makes the metadata accessible from non-Naim devices.

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Quads
ChrisSU posted:
Bart posted:

I've yet to have a car that would play flac files from a usb stick.  So when I owned a UnitiServe, I let the UServe make a 256kbps mp3 library and dragged those onto a usb stick for the car. I'm happy to listen to good quality lossy files in the car.

The "problem" with your cd rips that were created by the Core is that the Core's unique metadata system is not translated easily to external devices.  You'll end up needing to use another program (such as dbPoweramp, or Metadatics (OS X only)  to edit the metadata yourself.

My wife's Mazda will play FLACs, although my BMW won't.

Regarding Core CD rips, I'm pretty sure they will be the same as Unitiserve rips regarding metadata. For me, using them as original WAVs, the one place they work well in is my car. While driving, I really do not want to be browsing by genre, admiring album artwork, etc. when I should be watching the road. So just having the basic artist/album/track folder view, which I can scroll through and select with the car's controls, is ideal. 

Thanks Chrissu for sharing your experience, much appreciated. 

So for car it's: USB stick > FAT 32 > WAVE/FLAC/MP3 depending on the cars' system capabilities.

For domestic non Naim it's: USB stick > FAT32 > Convert Core WAVE files to FLACK temporarily  > copy/drag some files to stick > convert Core files back to WAVE.

Hopefully, I can experiment this coming week...

Regards

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by ChrisSU

Yes, it's worth experimenting with a few albums first to check that it works OK. With the Unitiserve, you can store in FLAC, and it will convert to WAV 'on the fly' when you play files to the streamer. That makes copying FLAC to other storage easier, but the Core unfortunately does not do this. Perhaps Naim will add this in future via firmware update? 

Posted on: 14 October 2018 by Quads

Thanks again for the clarification about the Core's limitation in this respect.

Posted on: 15 October 2018 by Rich 1

 I copied the the wav files from the Core MQ file (I didn't copy the MQ folder, only the files), and can play them on other equipment, also shows album art etc. As I've an old car I can't play them in that. My new car arrives around Xmas and supposedly can play both wav and flac from sd, USB etc. Might raise a topic then. Rich 

Posted on: 15 October 2018 by Quads

Thanks Rich

I take it that the files are from your internal Core drive, viewed on your computer with HQ, MQ, etc. then visible?

Also, no need or added functionality gained by removing the hd from the Core and directly connecting it to the computer and working with the files this way?

Regards

Posted on: 15 October 2018 by ChrisSU

You certainly shouldn’t need to remove the drive! Just find the Core MQ folder and copy from it, just like you would with any computer storage, and you should be fine. You may need to map the drive to make it consistently discoverable on the PC. 

Posted on: 15 October 2018 by Quads

Thanks Chrissu, appreciated