I have a few queries on the SuperUniti, mostly relating to the (IOS) app. Apologies if some of these questions have been posted elsewhere, but I only have the unit for a week on demo and so don’t have too much time to investigate. I’m sure some of them are quite straightforward for anyone who is more familiar with it.
1) Clock shows incorrect time. I know there are numerous postings on this and it seems that a fix is being developed. The only point I would add is that initially, by adjusting the GMT offset, I could get it to show the correct time. Subsequently it reverted to the incorrect time though, and now adjusting the offset makes no difference. When doing the adjustment, the correct time is shown at the bottom of the display, but as soon as you exit from the adjustment screen it returns to an offset of 0.
2) When you’re selecting music to play, you can tap on the icon to the right to add to queue, play now, etc. However, if you inadvertently tap on the track name, it just starts playing immediately and obliterates anything that you have in the queue. This is very annoying if you have spent some time adding songs to the queue and just do this by mistake. Is there any way to overcome this?
3) Display of album artwork seems a bit hit and miss. Previously I had a folder.jpg in each folder (a folder being one album) and this worked fine on another system. With the SuperUniti I got nothing. Reading some other posts, I tried renaming folder.jpg to cover.jpg and now I get the artwork when I have actually selected an album and the track listing is displayed. But there is nothing prior to that, e.g.; when viewing the list of albums.
4) It seems to get confused when multiple artists have an album of the same name, e.g.; both Kylie and Ed Sheeran have an album called X. When selecting Kylie as an artist, that particular album is listed as being by Ed Sheeran. If I select it though, it has Kylie’s tracks in. I’ve noticed the same thing with albums called Greatest Hits.
5) Artist names that start with “The” are listed under T, e.g.; The Police would be under T not P. I could probably re-tag them, but again, it was not an issue on a previous system.
6) When I’m on the now playing screen (the one where the volume control and queue list is), if I close it by using the X in the top left corner, it sometimes seems to go back to the initial screen where I have to select the input source again, e.g.; UPnP, Spotify, Input 1, etc. rather than the album list that I was in previously. This seems a bit intermittent though, it’s not always the case.
7) The front panel display always shows the clock. If I change something via the app, e.g.; select a track or adjust the volume, it displays it for a couple of seconds before returning to the clock. I would like the track info displayed all the time that I’m playing something. I have set the “Auto off” setting to 10 minutes, but this doesn’t seem to make any difference.
8) Again, a bit intermittent, but sometimes when first opening the app, I have to again select the device that the music is on, e.g.; my NAS. It seems to have picked up a couple of other things such as a Sonos controller and my router. I just want to go straight to the music listing on the NAS.
9) How do I manually refresh the contents if I have added new music or changed something on the NAS?.
Apologies for all the questions, but as I’ve said I’ve only got this for a limited time and I’m sure many of them are very straightforward. I’ve got a Linn Majik DSM on demo next week as I couldn’t make my mind up at the dealers. My inclination was for the Naim, but going on my experience so far with the software, that may not be the case.
Any comments gratefully appreciated!
Posted on: 14 May 2015 by hafler3o
Quick answers)
1) ignore, bug, will be fixed soon
2) No idea, don't bother with playlists myself
3) NAS defines what is sent to the app, btw what are you playing wav, flac etc?
4) Tagging problem with your metadata, nothing to do with the SU.
5) Again, this is a setup issue. Personally I control what metadata is stored with the files so there is never an issue.
6) Never seen that myself, and I've had a SU and 2 UnitiQutes for 2 years now.
7) You may be accidentally not exiting the setup (spanner) with your desired settings saved?
8) I've never seen a router listed, not saying it's not possible but I can't help with that.
9) my cheap WD NAS always has the music I store on it available for playing in seconds, not sure why your NAS is so tardy, maybe a power option?
Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Blackthorn
ChrisSU - Brilliant, sorted that one. Thanks.
hafler3o - thanks for all your comments.
1) OK, thanks.
2) Sorted now.
3) How does the NAS define what is sent to the App? Isn't it just a repository of data? Even if I could define this on the NAS, I wouldn't know where to start. I am using FLAC files for 99% of my music. A couple of MP3's that have been downloaded from Amazon display the artwork ok, these must be tagged within the metadata of the file. For the rest of them, the artwork only exists in one place - jpg file within the album folder. With Sonos, this was called folder.jpg and worked fine, both thumbnails when listing albums and a bigger picture when the album was selected. With the Naim, the only thumbnail I get is where I have both a cover.jpg and a Folder.jpg. If I have just folder.jpg I get nothing, and if I have cover.jpg I get the full size image when an album is selected but no thumbnails prior to that. I'm currently doing some more experimentation on this, but a definitive answer as to what is needed would be good! The NAS must be sending it, or I wouldn't get the full size artwork when an album has been selected surely?
4) I've checked by tagging and there is definitely no reference to Ed Sheeran is Kylie's album. I assumed Sonos was ok, but in actual fact once you've selected an album there is doesn't display the artist name again each one like the Naim does. So it could be wrong, but just not displaying it. In my tagging I have the "artist" field set to Kylie but "album artist" is blank. Perhaps the blank is somehow getting populated with the artist name from another album of the same name? I will stick Kylie in there as well and see what happens.
5) OK, I could retag them all, but it would be nice if the Naim just handled it by dropping the "The" (which Sonos does).
6) OK, leave that for now, I haven't noticed it for a bit.
7) The setting is being saved, beacuse when I go back in to it it still says 10 minutes. I'm not sure this is the issue though. Does Auto Off relate to how long the display should stay on before reverting to clock once your music has stopped playing? That would seem logical. Mine reverts to clock within a couple of seconds, even when music is still playing.
8) OK, leave that for now.
9) It was more a query than relating to a specific problem. I wanted to know how I could refresh it so that I could check any changes I had made, e.g.; to try and get artwork to display.
Thanks again!
Posted on: 18 May 2015 by Blackthorn
Thanks everyone for all your replies. All this talk of severs was confusing me somewhat, so after some more research I have found that I am using (without realising) ReadyDLNA which is what came bundled with my Netgear ReadyNAS Duo. Furthermore, due to the chipset installed in this model, the only alternative I have available is Twonky.
I have however resolved the issue with the album artwork. Creating a cover.jpg in each (album) folder does the trick, although it is necessary to "Rescan media files" on the NAS to refresh them. Point taken about embedding the artwork in the file, it just seems a bit OTT to do this for every track when you only want it at album level. And having said that, it didn't seem to work anyway. I use mp3tag and doing Actions > Import Cover displays it in mp3tag but it still doesn't show up on the Naim app. Anyhow, not too worry as I've got round that one.
The two issues I'd really like to resolve now are albums with identical names incorrectly displaying the artist name and the front panel display on the SU reverting straight to clock rather than showing the track that is playing. Any suggestions?
Thanks again everyone for your help. This has all been a learning experience for me. Sonos just works.
