Unsupported file format

I would suggest figuring out why the error is occurring, rather than figuring out how to just run around it.

Something is wrong -- perhaps with the files, or perhaps with your server.  If you have files of some unsupported format on your server, you should fix that rather than hope that the player would just skip over them.

(I assume this "streamed server" is a server in your home. Or is it Tidal or Spotify?)

Give us more details of what you're playing, with what server, and what the files are . . . people here will be glad to help.

I'm playing music streamed from a Thecus N4800 locally, which uses twonky.

I don't know what format the files are as the error message does not show which file causes the problem.

Which end decodes the file, the server or the client?

The client (the ND5 XS) decodes the file.

However it's the server that determine which file actually used to create the stream sent when a stream is requested using its tag data.  The server also determines which file formats are used when sending the list of available tracks to the control point; so if you edit the list of file extensions so it only has file types the ND5 can understand the problem will probably go away.

I'm not sure what you mean by "edit the list of files" - do you mean remove files that the ND5 XS doesn't like?

If a file is on the server, it means that one of the family is listening to it with another client.

Do you store video files on your server and, if so, do you use Twonky to stream these also?

It may be that Twonky is trying to serve video files (avi, MP4 etc.) files to your ND5XS which, of course will  only be able to stream/play audio files (FLAC, Wav, MP3 etc.)

You may need to look at how Twonky is configured to ensure that it will only stream audio files to your ND5XS

Actually the file is not sent to the streamer by the UPnP media server. The media server strips out the media aspect of the file and transfers (streams) the media element to streamer (NDX etc) sperately from other parts of the file.

The UPnP media server after having decoded the file, tags the sent media with a specific type. These types are defined by the UPnP standard. They include things like WAV-PCM, FLAC, AAC etc. However if the media type  tag is not recognized by the streamer you will see the message 'unsupported file format' or equivalent.

it does suggest your UPnP media server is doing something strange with its media type tags or you genuinely have a strange file format or media header..(multi channels, or non standard sample rate etc)

Simon

The media server is streaming audio, images and video, so the error would occur much more often if the ND5 XS was trying to play images or videos.

The error is relatively infrequent - only a few times a month - so I can live with it, though it would be nice to know which files the ND5 XS doesn't like.

What about the "random" play - is this generated by the client or server?

This is easy -- the ND5 XS doesn't like the images or videos. 

Can you set up your server to stream randomly but only from a particular folder/folders? You could segregate files this way.

Or use the Naim App to "shuffle" play.

The server is set up to stream music from a folder named "music", videos from a folder named "video" and images from a folder named "images".

Although I mostly use the ND5 XS to play streamed music, I have used other devices such as a laptop, iPhone and the TV to play music and haven't seen the same errors.

I believe (I might be wrong) that it's up to the client to decide which streamed files it can play rather than the server.

I'm using the ND5 XS remote control and/or the Naim App to set the music to random/shuffle.

In the case I described in the first post, I'd used the remote control to set play to random and, starting with the same track, it played the same three or four tracks in the same order before reaching the track it couldn't play.

I just upgraded the Thecus N4800 Twonky version to 7.2.8

I am now able to choose "Naim Audio Streamer" from a drop-down-list against the streaming media clients Twonky discovers - hopefully this will help with the "unsupported file format" error.

I note that alone out of the four streaming media clients discovered, the ND5 XS is the only one whose mac address is not shown, which probably goes hand-in-hand with the fact that it is MIA on the Naim App again - immediately after the recent firmware upgrade and next to last App upgrade, network discovery was much improved, but now things seem back to square one

I used to have this and it turned out that some of the files were not compatible, I think they may have been protected iTunes files. In the end I went through all my ripped music to search them out and deleted or converted them. Now, don't ever get that message

juanito,

You clearly have a network issue there (probably in the discovery protocol).  You need to get this sorted first or your system will never be reliable.

Fit a separate switch to handle the NAS to streamer traffic and ensure that the UPnP protocol(s) are enabled for Wi-Fi in your Broadband router.

So, the ND5 XS is the only device having problems, but my network settings are at fault?

Of course this might be the case, but I'm really not so sure anymore.

Both the WAP and NAS are connected directly to the router whereas everything else is connected via a switch.

Bonjour and UPnP services are enabled on the router and are shown by various network scanners as working on every appropriate attached device except the ND5 XS, which doesn't show up at all most of the time even when it is playing from the NAS.

Anyway, we're getting off topic and so far the unsupported file format issue has not reappeared