n-Stream Album Details worthless for Classical

Sounds like your server/tagging is titsup. The streamers can only deal with the information they are given.

I am totally unimpressed with the 'improvements' in the current vsersion of nStream! especially the on-line database type info.  Problems are related to the online database

1. Only shows the bare minimum of any tagged data.  e.g. no Conductor, Composer, Year

2. Just about acceptable if the album you choose is in their database

3. Absolutely amazing how often it either doesn't have even albums which one might think popular.  If it's a Classical album, most of my (large) collection doesn't seem to be represented.

4. Every now and again it manages to find the correct album for one of my LP 'rips', but this is so rare I wouldn't rely on it.

I really would like the facility to turn off this online database and revert to the old taggng.  After all, if I am really desperate to read the sleeve blurb, I can dig out the original album

The streaming server has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. This is n-Stream's so called feature to look up album details online. I don't think it could possibly be more broken than it is.

I think n-Stream can join the company of iTunes for software that is totally broken in terms of classical music. I don't even bother streaming from iTunes it's that bad.

Dear all,

I must agree, the new n-stream did not add anything of value. Instead, when I press the "info" button the program doesn´t find any meta data at all. Previously, it gave quite valuable info at least for jazz and pop. Now it´s dead despite efforts to reboot, rebuild data etc. Does anyone have a clue why?

//Thomas

@RaceTripper
What are the exact album and artist name tags of the Aeolian String Quartet album you are listening to?
n-Stream gets it's extended info from the Rovi online database and because the streaming source is UPnP we have to rely on a text search of the album/artist name to get the correct album details. Admittedly this is not 100% accurate but it does in general give a very acceptable hit rate. If the first hit is not correct you can manually search using the magnifying glass. I entered "Aeolian String Quartet" as an artist search and the album it returns is Hayden. It is classed as rock/pop though...not ideal I know! On iPad you can use the "Not this album" button to teach n-Stream. If the first hit is incorrect tell n-stream which album it actually is and next time you play it n-Stream should remember your teachings and show the extended info for the correct album.

@Garyi
indeed, the better the tagging the better the results

@Dungassin
We haven't removed any of the old info at all. The online metadata is in addition to what you had before. If you select "Now playing" from the info screen you get whatever metadata fields your UPnP server chooses to send to your NDX.

@Osteoclat
Wrong online info is one thing but none at all could indicate the online service was down when you tried to use it. I will contact Rovi to see if they have been experiencing any problems of late.

TOO much talk about tagging  the basic control using ipad/asset is a lot better than a cd .  enjoy the convenience of and more important streaming sounds as good as playing a cd and some cases better. thank god the cd is rapldly is deaD

I agree that classical data can be pretty poor, although I have managed to find most of the albums eventually using the "not this CD" button.

Even worse though is the rovi look up for compilation albums, it onlu seems to look at the first track and finds albums for that artist. Not so useful...

D

(Some of) you guys are confusing the establishment of a database on your local server (tags, or the way Naim does it with .wavs) and the Rovi online database that provides "information" about the currently played album, if queried, using nStream.

They are totally independent.

The Rovi database is an "extra" in nStream.  If you don't like it, don't use it   And yes, it gets it wrong some percentage of the time (I listen to little classical and am happy to assume it's worse with classical than other genera.)

Artist: Franz Joseph Haydn

Album Artist: Aeolian String Quartet

Album Complete String Quartets

It's not just this album, it's all of them. Every one.

It may become a moot point for me anyway. I've been thinking I overspent for my digital front end for what I get and use, so I may dump it all and go to a Squeezebox Touch and inexpensive DAC (Arcam rLink). That's exactly what I have in my office system and it works brilliantly, compared to sorting out out a UPnP server and n-Stream with the ND5. 

Spinning vinyl is so much faster, easier and better...and I don't have to look up anything online. It's all there sitting in my lap.

I have no Naim streamer or server yet, so the following is only a guess.

This is not that visible anymore now, but in the previous version of the AllMusic database operated by Rovi, it was obvious that Classical music and Pop/Jazz/etc. music were not handled the same way.

For anything but Classical you would search by Artist/Album/Song.

For Classical, you would search by Composer/Compositions/Part or Movement, then it would be linked to the interpretations that were organized like any other music, as Artist/Album.

There has been deep work on the AllMusic database for the current web site incarnation, but I'm willing to think that this general behaviour remains.

So depending on how you tag your classical music, the Album/Artist (as explained above by TJ) search key nStream sends to Rovi might be quite confusing and not give meaningful results indeed.

I'm betting that the results are not that disastrous for Naim servers users, as the tagging is from the start consistent with the AllMusic database.

Not quite in your particular case, Bart, as per your profile you're using a UnitiServe.

I think the whole tagging thing for classical music is a complete disaster anyway. I find that when ripping CDs -- no matter what system I use -- that the tags are mostly incorrect, misspelled, misattributed, etc. -- at least in some way -- and need substantial correction. What a mess.

If you search AllMusic with Artist<space>Album, like this:

http://www.allmusic.com/search...lete+string+quartets

It obviously doesn't find what you're looking for. Aeolian String Quartet is listed in the 12th position.

For Rovi, "Franz Joseph Haydn" is not an Artist, it's a Composer. The Composer is often added to the Album title as well.

The way you tag makes perfect sense, it's just that the AllMusic database is not organized like that.

One way to solve this would be for Naim to allow, in the nStream settings, to describe with "standard" -- i.e. minimal -- tags how the customer's music is tagged when not using a Naim server.

The whole tagging thing is deplorable, if you ask me. Only FLAC Vorbis Comments could be vaguely useful -- as they are free-form -- if they were supported correctly in the pieces of software that are supposed to display them. Most don't display anything more than the most minimal subset, and don't know what to do with freely defined tags. And no comprehensive standard beyond "recommendations"... No surprise Naim went his own way with Rovi and the Naim Extended Music Database.

Even worse: now that we have a -- more or less; but more less than more -- stable standard of managing this in the form of UPnP/DLNA, and as it is a 3-tier architecture, why can't we have a nice way to display comprehensive digital booklets on the Control Point ? The Server can handle many kind of media, the streamer acts as a music Renderer, and the Control Point could act as a booklet Renderer. An open format like ePUB would be nice, but I think much better could be done with a complete experience rendered on the Control Point, with videos and the like, in the same way some artists are doing it with apps using HTML5/CSS/etc.

Not a solution for everyone, but if Naim could get round to implementing Airplay and you have a well organised iTunes library then most of these issues should be history.  I'm not holding my breath though....

There is a very simple and effective technology that works really well. It's accurate, easy to read, easily accessible once you own the media and includes both graphics an text. It requires no software or hardware, and the never ending frustrations associated with them. If cared for properly it only requires an ocasional dusting off.

The vinyl LP. God save analog and our sanity.

Not for classical. iTunes is just as abysmal when it comes to that. It even has tags for groupings (i.e. multi-movement works) yet doesn't bother to support it in any way that is marginally useful.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Airplay supports anything better than 16/44 resolution either.

I'd like to agree with you because there's some truth in this. But though I used to like vinyl when it was the only medium available -- and would like to have a TT again once --, when I read some threads about turntable fettling, I feel my sanity is seriously endangered (what the heck is VTA for instance, and why should I care ?). And don't tell me to buy a RP3 and be happy, or I would tell you to buy a 2TB HDX. This would obviously lead nowhere.

Some people are familiar with one kind of technology, others with some other. All consumer technologies have shortcomings. And in our hobby some people like to try various MC cartridges where others discuss the benefit of DSD over PCM.

Not that I find the actual state of the digital streaming nation impossible to better, quite the opposite. At least in terms of usability.

Whatever happened to just coming home to relax to some tunes. 

+1 to that. I find iTunes much simpler than the the clutter of physical media, but I don't waste much time on fine tuning the tagging. As long as I can find it, I'm good. Searching for something by typing a few letters of the composer or conductor's name works for me every-time, even though most of the classical tagging is a mess.

I agree vinyl is a PITA. Turntable setup can be fussy and you need to handle the media properly. However, I do both and don't think digital is any less fussy. My turntable is now dialed in. When I enter my listening room and want a path of least resistance to playing music, where I can relax and enjoy it with minimal fuss, vinyl wins for me hands down. I also like it better and can listen to analog for much longer periods.

Not to beat a dead horse, but that is precisely what I do.  Works every time!  Go to nStream, pick out what I want to hear, and voila, it's playing.  Instantly.  (But if I was "into" a lot of classical, I would suffer the same fate as others in this thread.  The classification / tag system when applied to classical is just awful.)

Probably 70% of my listening is classical. The other 30% is jazz. Tagging for that is almost as bad, at least for classic jazz it is, which is what I mostly play (50s and 60s).

Sorry to take so long to reply, but I've been loathe to use my laptop for the last couple of days whilst upgrading the drives in my QNAP NAS (just in case it all went pear-shaped - see my thread re 219PII which drive is which)   I suppose I could have done it on the iPad, but that WOULD have been a last resort (I don't have the love affair with iPads that some seem to do)

My UPNP servers are (unless I am very sadly mistaken) : Twonky and Asset.  As I have no way of going back to an earlier version of nStream to check, you'll just have to take my word on this, but prior to the nStream upgrade (and change of firmware in the NDX), I could certainly see composer and year tags when using Asset.  Don't use Twonky much, so can't confirm that bit.  Since the nStream upgrade, no composer, no year.   Are you saying that Asset isn't sending the information? Could we perhaps have the facility to turn off this online database?

I had the thought that perhaps my habit of changing my metatags to surname, first name (e.g Presley, Elvis) might be part of the cause of the problem but artists such as Thorogood, George still display correctly via the online database.

The new app still manages to find in the onlline database some of my LP rips and present the correct album(each of which is identified by adding LP to the end of the album title), e.g. Self Control LP, Artist Branigan, Laura,  I also have the habit of often adding some information in the "comments" metatag when doing my "LP rips"