Unitiserve as UPnP Server -- several questions

Posted by: Gene on 02 June 2014

I discovered Naim about a year ago, and since then acquired two players -- NDX and Unitiquite 2. Both work pretty well, so I was looking for a decent UPnP server to stream my files stored on a Synology Rackstation. I tried virtually every type of the software DLNA and UPnP server available, and settled for two -- Asset (running on dedicated Raspberry Pi box) and Minimserver running on Synology itself. Unfortunately, both had some drawbacks, so at the end, being very confident, that Naim knows better how to do things, I decided that Unitiserve would be the best solution to stream music to my two Naim players, plus feed another stream locally (to my outdoor sound system).

 

When I installed the Unitiserve, I discovered several issues, which rendered Unitiserver practically useless in my case. maybe I just don't understand the ways things should be done, so expert advices would be highly appreciated.

 

1. No Unicode support. I have a bunch (several hundred) albums which have Russian tags (in Unicode). I spent several years carefully converting the tags into correct encoding, and finally I could play all of them on all my devices (Unicode support for Naim players was added in 2010). But Unitiserve doesn't handle Unicode tags a all.

 

2. I can not point Unitiserve to the right directory on my NAS. It scans every folder on shared drive. If there are several shared folders, then one can deactivate some shared folders, but I couldn't find the way to force Unitiserve to look only at specific directory within the shared folder. I have ton of other "music" files in the same shared folder which I do not want to be included in my library. All the other UPnP servers allow to select a directory, Unitiserve does not.I created a separate share and put a link to my desired music directory there (in Windows world it is known as "shortcut"). Unitiserve can't follow the link.

 

3. Not all my collection have proper tags (yet). All the other UPnP servers allow to find music browsing folders/files. I can't find the way to do so with Unitiserve

 

4. (not a show stopper, just curious). It was stated that Unitiserve can send 6 "n-streams" to compatible devices. I think that both NDX and Unitiserve are compatible. But in the "Zone maintenance" menu of the Naim Desktop Client there is only one zone (local sound card), and the "Add" button greyed out.

 

5. When I browsing music by "album", each combination album/artist is shown as a separate "album". Kinda annoying.

 

Overall, I like Naim equipment, in it would be a shame to dump the server because of these troubles. Maybe I just missing something? But in any case, I will not "translate" the Unicode tags, move the terabytes of my music into different folders... Positive uggestions how to deal with these troubles are highly appreciated.

Posted on: 03 June 2014 by Claus-Thoegersen
 

When I installed the Unitiserve, I discovered several issues, which rendered Unitiserver practically useless in my case. maybe I just don't understand the ways things should be done, so expert advices would be highly appreciated.

 

1. No Unicode support. I have a bunch (several hundred) albums which have Russian tags (in Unicode). I spent several years carefully converting the tags into correct encoding, and finally I could play all of them on all my devices (Unicode support for Naim players was added in 2010). But Unitiserve doesn't handle Unicode tags a all.

 

You will have to ask Naim support about this, but it sounds strange. Remember that the main tags the Naim upnp server uses are artist and title.

 

2. I can not point Unitiserve to the right directory on my NAS. It scans every folder on shared drive. If there are several shared folders, then one can deactivate some shared folders, but I couldn't find the way to force Unitiserve to look only at specific directory within the shared folder. I have ton of other "music" files in the same shared folder which I do not want to be included in my library. All the other UPnP servers allow to select a directory, Unitiserve does not.I created a separate share and put a link to my desired music directory there (in Windows world it is known as "shortcut"). Unitiserve can't follow the link.

 

You need a specific share on the nas that is a "real" share.

In the desktop client you should be able to deactivate the shares you want the server to ignore, however my ns01 has a nasty habbit of rediscovering the shares I tell it to ignore, but since they do not hold music it is not a problem for me.

 

 

3. Not all my collection have proper tags (yet). All the other UPnP servers allow to find music browsing folders/files. I can't find the way to do so with Unitiserve

I do not think it is possible, annoying when the server refuses to see an album! 

 

4. (not a show stopper, just curious). It was stated that Unitiserve can send 6 "n-streams" to compatible devices. I think that both NDX and Unitiserve are compatible. But in the "Zone maintenance" menu of the Naim Desktop Client there is only one zone (local sound card), and the "Add" button greyed out.

This is not for upnp but for the digilink, or what the homeautomation system is called, so no need  to worry about that.

The software should be able to Work with 6 devices that uses the naim upnp server, but I suppose the server itself Counts as one device.

 

5. When I browsing music by "album", each combination album/artist is shown as a separate "album". Kinda annoying.

 Yes Again this is the consequence of the servers  insistance on using only the artist tag, this gives problems with compilation and also when the originalartist tag is used, since this will be different from the artist tag. In this case the album will not show up at all.

 

Claus

Posted on: 03 June 2014 by nudgerwilliams

On your point 4, I think what you are referring to is that the uPnP server can run 6 separate streams in parallel.  Zone maintenance is something to do with Naim's old NaimNet solution I believe.

 

Running 6 uPnP streams in parallel does not need any setting up as far as I am aware.  You just ask a uPnP player device to get something from the server, and presumably when you add a 7th player the server won't respond.  I've not tried that though.

Posted on: 03 June 2014 by Gene
Originally Posted by nudgerwilliams:
On your point 4, I think what you are referring to is that the uPnP server can run 6 separate streams in parallel.  Zone maintenance is something to do with Naim's old NaimNet solution I believe.
I was referring to the pure old NaimNet. I was just curious, if the old "NaimNet" protocol is better than UPnP dealing with Naim players in proprietary NaimNet mode. In the marketing papers about Unitiserve it was stated that it can support 6 NaimNet streams. But  I couldn't find the way to enable them.
This question had nothing to do with UPnP at all.
Posted on: 03 June 2014 by rjstaines

Gene, without going into detail, if you have a Windows pc try  MP3TAG (works on all sorts, not just mp3s) - this has a scripting language that's easy to use (e.g. append artist to title and then set artist=various is how I handle compilations).  MP3TAG will find artwork, but so will BLISS - just point it to your music and let it go!  Both are free to try and together they will bring order to the chaos of a music library.

I'd suggest give them a go, you've nothing to lose and an ordered music collection to gain.

 

PS - just Google each but beware of Trojan sites !

Posted on: 03 June 2014 by Gene
Originally Posted by rjstaines:

Gene, without going into detail, if you have a Windows pc try  MP3TAG (works on all sorts, not just mp3s) - this has a scripting language that's easy to use (e.g. append artist to title and then set artist=various is how I handle compilations).  MP3TAG will find artwork, but so will BLISS - just point it to your music and let it go!  Both are free to try and together they will bring order to the chaos of a music library.

I'd suggest give them a go, you've nothing to lose and an ordered music collection to gain.

 

PS - just Google each but beware of Trojan sites !

Thanks, indeed, I use MP3TAG all the time, it's my main tool to manage tags. Great program. But obviously messing up with properly assigned tags in 10,000 albums just because ONE particular UPnP server doesn't handle them properly is hardly the right thing to do. IMHO, if a tag called "Artist", it should be filled with artist's name, not something else. Hopefully, Naim will fix its bugs in the future, and start treating tags properly. In general, deviating from standards to be compatible with a single product is a very risky thing... the next release software may adhere to the standard, and the "features" immediately turn into bugs...

 

Overall, with current state of the software, it looks like I need to dump unitiserve and get back to Asset and mininiserv, until Maim comes with the new updated firmware.

 

Posted on: 03 June 2014 by Bart

I point my UnitiServe to a nas with hundreds of cd's....which I tag conventionally.  And have zero problems.  I'm not aware of any issue with the Artist tag not being rendered properly by the UnitiServe.

 

But I'm not exactly sure what you're seeing happen.

Posted on: 05 June 2014 by Claus-Thoegersen
Originally Posted by Bart:

I point my UnitiServe to a nas with hundreds of cd's....which I tag conventionally.  And have zero problems.  I'm not aware of any issue with the Artist tag not being rendered properly by the UnitiServe.

The op has the probelm with compilations, as I understand it there is a tag for that, but Naim does not use it currently.

 

Claus

Posted on: 05 June 2014 by Bart

Oh -- compilations.  I have no solution for that! 

Posted on: 06 June 2014 by Big Bill

Unicode support requires 2 bytes (16 bit) for each character and if NAIM haven't implemented that in code then it will be a problem.  I am old enough to remember when we only had 7 bits for ASCII characters (bit 8 was for parity), then along came extended ASCII with 8 bits.  But Unicode is much more recent and unless the development system you are using supports it then you are stuffed.  However, it has been around long enough that I would expect that ALL development systems now support it and so it should be easy for NAIM to implement it on UnitiServe, or maybe it is an option buried somewhere.  It is definitely supported by the mp3 tagging standard (FLAC uses this too) because I have seen some Japanese characters cropping up in mp3tags.

 

Have you contacted NAIM support?

 

I use Minim and I find it works fine for me, what problems did you come across in it?