Feature request for Naim app - display album information from PDF booklet

That'd be nice, especially for Android users who have no Rovi either. Probably a time sponge nightmare adding booklets to a pre-existing collection (and even finding them in the first place in most instances), but it'd bring a certain completeness to the streaming experience.

I won't hold my breath, but +1 for what it's worth.

Rovi is generally rubbish. What is the point of a review of something you already own?

As an interim save the pdf book in the music folder anyway. Then if you wish to refer to it set it up so you can find that folder on your network and open and read if from there as you listen.

I like Rovi, I enjoy the backgrounds on albums and artists it provides, and often helps you navigate through and listen to related and influential artists and albums.

My gripe is that there should be a better more reliable way to identify an album as look ups fail more than I would like.

Simon

dsc posted:

As many forumites will know, when you click on the little book icon in the Naim app connected to a Naim streamer, album information from the Rovi database is displayed. Frequently I find that the information displayed is for the wrong album. Having completed ripping my CD collection some time ago, all the music I now purchase is in the form of downloads, either CD quality or high res. Usually album information is provided in the form of a digital booklet in PDF format. To my mind, it would be so much better if the Naim app were able to display the contents of that PDF booklet, if present in the same folder as the music files. If there is no PDF booklet present, then the Naim app could default to displaying the Rovi data as it does currently. It may be the case that an update to the UPnP/DLNA specification, and hence to the UPnP server software, is required in order to achieve this. I throw down the challenge to Naim and to the industry as a whole to bring about this enhancement to the user experience.

+1!

I was upset when I first realized that virtually no control point supports displaying the PDF booklet of an album. This was also one of the reasons why I was not very impressed by Naim streaming solutions and control point software.

To me, being able to display the booklet of the currently playing album is essential and certainly more important than being able to retrieve album information from whatever internet services. In fact, I want to be able to access all the information I have paid for (included booklet and cover art) without having to rely on an internet connection.

The only application that, to the best of my knowledge, supports retrieving and displaying the booklet of the currently playing album from LAN data is MPoD. This is an MPD client for iOS.

There have been several requests on the MinimServer, Linn, MPD and BubbleUPnP forums for finally adding support for displaying the booklet of the currently playing album. But no commitments from developers so far. On the server side, the usual argument for not providing booklet information (along with cover art information) is that there is no UPnP (OpenHome) standard for serving this bit of information. On the control point side, the argument is, of course, that servers do not provide information about booklets!

This argument is actually just a pretext, I believe. It would be a no brainer to retrieve and display the booklet of the currently playing album by quering a user-definable HTTP server. Users would be responsible for setting up such server and for providing a default name (like folder.jpg for cover art) for the .PDF booklet files: booklet.pdf, for instance.

I have written a little script that retrieves the booklet of the currently playing album and opens it full screen in a Linux system and it just takes about three lines of code. But I do not know how to port the script to iOS.

It would be very nice to have this functionality supported by all UPnP (OpenHome) servers and control points.    

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

I like Rovi, I enjoy the backgrounds on albums and artists it provides, and often helps you navigate through and listen to related and influential artists and albums.

My gripe is that there should be a better more reliable way to identify an album as look ups fail more than I would like.

Simon

I too suffered frustration with Rovi's inaccuracy. All is well since I discovered the search facility. When you press 'Not this album' you are presented with a scroll through list of alternatives. What isn't immediately obvious is that if you scroll the othe way, hidden at the top is a search bar. Enter the album name and artist, guaranteed success every time!!

Whatever we have is probably not gonna keep all the peeps happy all the time.    

Not all albums have a .pdf booklet  .......  Rovi is iOS apps only,  I wonder why it isn't/can't go into Android  ..........  Rovi is unreliable in many respects - "Not This Album" -  & the reliability is variable,  it shows the wrong album & sometimes its way off track - Beatles becomes Ella Fitzgerald - & next day it finds the right album. ............  Rovi is the summary review of the album is one persons "opinion" & frequently I find that I disagree,  also the info is often incomplete or sometimes incorrect.

For all that,  IMO its not important but is a nice to have when it works.   I would rather Naim not waste resources on this & focus on continuous improvements with hardware/software.

What do the other streamer makes use - Linn, Cyrus etc.  ???

Qobuz will retrieve and display the booklet for many cds, so it can't be difficult! It's really useful, especially on an iPad.

Also, if you use JRiver and JRemote, JRemote will display any pdfs you have associated with the ripped file, though in this case you have to have found or scanned the booklet yourself.  Useful for some downloaded albums - from Linnrecords for example - where you can also download the cd booklet.

Good idea! HD Tracks supply artowrk and a PDF booklet of sorts with their downloads. It would be good to use that info. 

Mike-B posted:

Not all albums have a .pdf booklet  ....... 

Right, but many albums do have a .pdf booklet. For those, it would be nice to be able to access it through the control point in much the same way as one can access cover art (also not necessarily available for all albums)! Best, nbpf

Mike-B posted:

Whatever we have is probably not gonna keep all the peeps happy all the time.   

True. But some features might be a reason for choosing a system instead of another. I do not know if I had bought a Naim streamer if Naim had supported displaying an album's booklet in their control point. But I certainly would have taken their streaming solution more seriously. Just my two cents, of course. Best, nbpf

Adam Zielinski posted:

Good idea! HD Tracks supply artowrk and a PDF booklet of sorts with their downloads. It would be good to use that info. 

HDTracks album art (jpeg) is crap.  It's a TINY file; low resolution.  I always have to go online and download something better, or convert their .pdf to jpeg.

www.albumart.org is a good place for finding a wide choice of artwork, if it exists. dBpoweramp usually gives a pretty good choice too ime.

likesmusic posted:

www.albumart.org is a good place for finding a wide choice of artwork, if it exists. dBpoweramp usually gives a pretty good choice too ime.

It just directs me to images on Amazon for the most part; I can do that on my own; faster just doing a Google image search.

With respect, my OP was concerned with displaying the PDF booklet (where available) and not album artwork. There might sometimes be issues with album artwork but that is a separate matter.

Simon-in-Suffolk, I take onboard your liking for Rovi data and therefore I would amend my original request to make the Naim app capable of displaying either the PDF booklet (where available) or the Rovi data as a user selectable option.

Two weeks have now passed since my OP and not a squeak from Naim on this matter despite an email to Naim Support. Some response from Naim would have been appreciated. Further communication failure???

David

dsc posted:

Two weeks have now passed since my OP and not a squeak from Naim on this matter despite an email to Naim Support. Some response from Naim would have been appreciated. Further communication failure???

I'd have thought it reasonable to expect at least something along the lines of 'We can't promise anything, but we'd like to do something like that, and hope to eventually' or 'We can't/don't want to, so no', possibly with a (technical?) reason why in the latter case. It's not like it's a crazy thing to ask about.

Maybe try emailing again in case the previous email got lost somewhere along the line?