n-Stream and Flac tracks in alphabetical order.Any ideas?

It is nothing to do with the ND5XS, it is the way that your NAS is serving the files up to the ND5XS.  You almost certainly need to change a setting on the NAS or within whatever upnp server software it uses (sorry not familiar with that particular NAS).

In fact have you enabled the media server on the WD NAS?

Hi,

I've had the same problem using n-Stream.

Now, I select "album" instead of directory/folder, finding the right order of tracks.

Try it.

Good music.

Yes, I did enable the media server on the NAS drive.In fact everything works just fine, playback is as expected.I can see the selected artwork for each album plus artist-album-track names.It ''s just this detail (alphabetical track order) that spoils the whole experience.Being a fan of concept albums, it drives me crazy 

I understand it 's most likely not a ND5 XS issue, but still, having already bought the NAS drive will eventually stop me from getting the Naim.I was hoping that someone might have similar experience with any hard drives and ideas about solving the problem...

Hi Gaetano,

The result is the same no matter which 'route' I follow to listen to an album.

What storage device do you use and encounter the same problem?

I use a ReadyNas by Netgear, connected to my ethernet LAN (wired).

My SuperUnit is also connected to the same net (wired too).

I use Twonky as media server.

I was very nervous for listening in alphabetic order but, as I've said, now I select the album (after select the media server) having the tracks in correct order.

Hello, first ever post.

I have the ND5 XS with RipNAS.

I have had the same issue. Using N Stream, if I search by artist, then click on a particular album, the list of tracks appear in alphabetical order. However, on the row above the first track, it says 'Album' if you click on this, the tracks then appear in the correct order.

What version of Twonky is installed on your NAS? Click on "Media" in the NAS web manager toolbar then click on "Status >" to see the version. I've got a QNAP NAS with Twonky 6.0.39 installed and I don't see the problem you describe. I ripped with dBpoweramp and it names each file with a numeric prefix. Are your music files numbered 01 - artist name - track name.flac? Did you rip to FLAC or WAV? My files are FLAC and I chose the uncompressed option to get WAVE PCM audio in a FLAC wrapper so that I get the benefits of the FLAC tags.

Unfortunately these new WD NAS/Servers don't use a traditional version of Twonky (it looks similar to Twonky with the music trees) anymore so there is really no configuration of the media server section. The best you can hope for is a firmware update for the NAS which fixes this annoying problem or cut your losses and jump to something like a QNAP TS-212 or better.

Thank you for your attention everyone!

I rip my CDs to Flac compression level 5 and tagging  chain being :

artist/album - year/track number - artist -track

Unfortunatelly the problem seems to be as slacker076 describes.I can' t really find a way to get into the media server menus, nor see a firmware version.I don 't even know if it's this Twonky programm we are talking about...

Dear Pstergio,

Welcome to the forum. Your issue is one many people here have to deal with .... me too, unfortunately. I have Twonky as UpnP server. It works weel and stable, but has no facilities whatsoever to tune or tweak and deal with sortings and tracknumbers. It is indeed important to have the tracknumber embedded in the Flac tag. In the end I started working with both MediaMonkey and MP3Tag which both have (limited) facilities to generate the correct tracknumber. It helps though - in my case - doesn't solve the issue completely.

Cheers,

Iver

Hi Slacker,

I have a QNAP 219 PII. It has Twonky pre-installed. Current version is 6.0.38. I have seen on the web that a 6.0.39 version of Twonky is available, but it doesn't mention QNAP as its supported NAS drives, so I don't dare to install it. What version doe you use ? Can you explain a bit more about the differences you mention regarding "traditional" Twonky and "non-traditional" Twonky. I didnot know these seprate versions exist.

Iver

Hi,

have you music not ripped by yourself?

What's happened for these tracks?

If the problem remains, it don't depends on the ripping.

Hi,

maybe its the question of where the track number exists in metadata. Some sorting in n-Stream is done. Its obvious that the tracks of one album doesn’t sort in alphabetical order by chance.

Pstergio: You told you have the tagging chain: artist/album - year/track number - artist –track. I tried that and then you don’t get the number in filename. I don’t know where n-Stream is looking for the first block to sort the tracks: filename or some metadata field. The sorting is done in Naim (n-Stream).

Maybe its worth trying to rip one album in dBpoweramps default tagging chain. And also so that you have the track number first in chain. Now it seems that n-Stream is reading first your tracks first letter instead of the number before it. Gaetanos advice trying music ripped somewhere else is a good point.

Jussi

I will try the default tagging in dbPoweramp and come back with results.I don't really believe that the source of the problem lays there, since, as mentioned before, copying/pasting the same flac files in a defferent USB external hard drive results in flawless reproduction from ND5 XS.No tagging alteration whatsoever.Drives me crazy...my humble  3-years old 320 GB drive works perfectly but my 6TB won't!

As for trying files ripped elsewhere, same results in every test...

I've installed the 6.0.39 QPKG on my TS=119P II NAS and it's OK. I had to download the QPKG from the link on the QNAP forum as they'd not updated it on the QPKG list you are presented with through the web manager. I was interested to see if the scaling fix they've added helps with album art as it looks as though they may now be doing a bicubic scale instead of a linear one.

I'm still having issues where the album art on my new iPad looks blocky when I use n-Stream. I'm not sure if this is due to the iPad scaling up the image for the retina display or if it is n-Stream picking the wrong image size from Twonky or if it is the Twonky server sending scaled art to n-Stream. I took a packet capture yesterday so I just need to find some time to sit down and analyse it. Another option is to use another client.

I suspect it's a file naming thing.  I encountered something similar when converting vinly LPs to digital through a soundcard, using Audacity. 

If you just name the tracks and exporting them to the shared folder, the folder will sort itself alphabetically and your tracks will be listed accordingly.  This is so even though Audacity will identify the track by a number when exporting it.  

Instead you have to name them with the correct track number at the beginning.  Instead of All Along the Watchtower it's got to be 01 - All Along the Watchtower [number space hyphen space at the beginning].  The shared folder will then sort itself by track number.

It works if you start 01, 02, 03, etc

And dbpoweramp will automatically name the tracks with numbers first in the filename (01, 02, 03...), if it is configured right. The default naming will do it.

As I told already, I had the same problem.

N-stream seems to have troubles showing the album art blocky. I have the problem with n-stream in my ipad, the same time I saw the same album art pictures shown perfectly in my Sonos controllerin the same ipad. The albums and the art was in NAS.

Jussi