Amazon Echo

Echo's software is a lot more intuitive and friendly than the competition. Apple's  Siri really sucks compared to it. Kudos to Amazon. 

It is very easy to use and the speech recognition is much better than Apple. So far, it is good for voice controlled radio playing, controlling our Nest thermostats and as a Bluetooth player for the iPhones. I'd really like it to be usable as a UPNP player as well. It will get better as more apps are developed.

There is absolutely some conflict between the Amazon Echo and the NDX. I have 3 Echo Dots, and if any of them are plugged in the NDX frequently seems to "reboot." It will stop playing, clear the song queue, and show "Input Initialising." This is true regardless of the source it is playing - whether UPNP, Spotify, or even USB. Use of the NDX as a DAC through the digital inputs is unaffected, though.

I solved this by putting the NDX on its own subnet so that it cannot talk or hear the Amazon Echos. This is rather technical though and may be beyond most users. I hope Naim fixes this issue - it seems like there is some broadcast message the Echo is using (perhaps for smart home discovery) that is causing part of the NDX to crash and reboot.

I have stopped using my Echo - it interferes with the NDX too much.  I tried putting the NDX onto a separate ethernet switch, shared only by the PC that has the music and Asset UPNP server, but that didn't help.

I had the same problem - my NDX would reset every 10-15 minutes - but was able to solve it by putting the NDX on a separate subnet. You'll need to put a well configured router in between the NDX and the Echo - a switch won't do.

Thanks - that's a pain.  What do you mean by a well-configured router?

Cheers

Steve

The problem you have is that you need the NDX to be able to talk to some wi-fi devices, like your iOS & Android devices, but not others, like the Echo. Therefore, you can put the NDX on a separate subnet from the wi-fi devices, but you need to configure the router to allow some communications through between the subnets and not others. It seems that allowing TCP and blocking UDP between the subnets is sufficient isolation to prevent the Echo from crashing the NDX.

It might also be possible to achieve this by separating the Echo from everything else by giving it its own wi-fi subnet on a separate wi-fi SSID. However you'll still need a router to allow the Echo to talk to the Internet but not the NDX - this is a bit more straightforwards to set up than allowing TCP and blocking UDP though.

No problem with my Echo and NDX or anything else for that matter here. All shares the same subnet - and I have the Naim App and Amazon Echo share the same wifi SSID. Nothing special what so ever is required for the Amazon Echo.

Intrigued by what you think the possible interferences are....

S

Gents...me to!!!

I am also having problems with my NDS and Echo Dot.

Please read here  https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...68#69004037605876468

Hello all, 

I am also having problems. Interestingly it only started after a dot was added. I have now done a full reboot of every part of the network and things seem more stable. The issue I had affected NDS and Unitiqute but not Muso. UPNP stream would continually fail and lose play queue. I was on the verge of getting another router before I saw this stream! 

David

I haven't done any real debugging, but I will speculate that the Echo's attempts to search for smart home devices is somehow triggering a bug in the NDX firmware that is causing it to reset. The way that both the NDX and the Echo discover other devices on the network (like UPNP servers for the NDX, or a smart thermostat for the Echo) is that they periodically send messages to every device on the network. Devices that understand the message should reply. It's possible the NDX is understanding part of the Echo's discovery messages but crashes while processing it.

As I say i do have home automation and Echo - and you have to tell Echo to search for automation- its doesn't do it all the time - and I have no issue at all -  I do however have a beta version of the NDX firmware.

UPnP uses multicast discovery - i.e. the enquirer sends a discovery packet  to 239.255.255.2520 and all devices belonging to that multicast group - or on simple networks that is translated to a broadcast packet - will respond. As far as I am aware home automation doesn't use this - but might use another multicast group - I'll look around

Update, OK Philips Hue does use UPnP discovery - and so yes it appears Echo will be sending a packet out to 239.255.255.252 to discover Hue amongst other systems - which means the NDX will also see this - but should discard it - but it looks like on your firmware version it isn't but crashing.... one for Naim... and perhaps a prompt to release beta firmware?

Agreed & I think this is the likely cause, but I wonder if there are other sound quality benefits to keeping network chatter going to the NDX to a minimum.

There is but it is marginal in my experience. Most home networks have limited broadcast traffic, and its broadcast traffic by definition that has to be processed, if only to be inspected,  by every host on the subnet such as the streamer. Of course lower down you have a fairly constant stream of ARP requests handled ny the Network interface card.. the traffic and load here is proportional to the number of hosts on your network. Again for home networks this is probably benign.

Now one area that would be more relevant here is if you were using large scale multicast for streaming media... such as video or audio... here things could start to matter. The multicast discovery load for UPnP is trivial and therefore the multicast address can be converted to a broadcast address by little cheap switches like consumer Netgears with no real impact.

However if multicast video is taking place, then managing the group of hosts for a particular multicast address becomes essential if not to load the hosts such as the streamer with irrelevant data. Here using switches that understand IGMP snooping would become key so the multicast group traffic can be correctly directed and doesn't bombard the poor streamer.

I guess most don't use multicast video (IPTV) at this time, or if they do their ISP router and its switchports handles the IGMP snooping.

Simon

I see Echo / Voice commands as an adjunct to using a remote or an app. Especially useful when starting play when say walking into a room.  We have become totally used to Echo controlling our lights and I'll eventually have her controlling the TV/SKY part of the system.  Music control would be a very convenient addition and perhaps would encourage my wife to play more music. 

It can unexpectedly get you dolls houses and cookies delivered too, apparently! The funny bit though is that, according to the press today, the TV report of the dolls house incident triggered a lot more Echos to do exactly the same thing!

best

David

David Hendon posted:

It can unexpectedly get you dolls houses and cookies delivered too, apparently! The funny bit though is that, according to the press today, the TV report of the dolls house incident triggered a lot more Echos to do exactly the same thing!

best

David

I heard this on the radio last night too and thought it most amusing...

This made me chuckle too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfCfTYZJWtI

With regards to this latest issue here (thanks to JT for emailing us to make us aware of it) a number of us here are also using Echo and Echo Dot and haven't seen the issue so it's a new one on us but it has been logged and we have contacted JT back to progress it. It could be something as simple as was happening with Netflix a while ago when they were incorrectly broadcasting a global reset command from their portable device app and eventually modified their app so that it behaved but if we can get some info on it then we can look into it.

Phil

I've been having this issue for some time now.  If there is anything I can do to get diagnostic information to you, let me know.

Cheers

Steve

I feel like buying a Dot just to try it . . . but I'm paranoid enough as it is . . . don't need to KNOW that audio is being stored!  

jtwang posted:

...the NDX frequently seems to "reboot." It will stop playing, clear the song queue, and show "Input Initialising." This is true regardless of the source it is playing - whether UPNP, Spotify, or even USB. Use of the NDX as a DAC through the digital inputs is unaffected, though.

I have exactly the same problem with my SU. It does it sometimes like that when a song is playing or can drop off the network when not being used and can only be roused by the remote control. Fortunately, it only happens every week or so. It started happening over the last few months and may well have coincided with the installation of the Amazon Echo.

Hi Gents, 

For those of you who have problems, could you let me know the firmware version that your product is on, if connected wifi or wired and also what model of product it is.  

Many thanks

Steve

Group Software Director

I knew there was a reason why my hifi is on entirely separate fttc network

Interesting - I should have checked this before, but apparently it is version 1.8 (does that make sense???) according to the Naim app on my android - build version 1128, streamer version 4.4.00, BSL version 2.3.0

I will try to update - though a little nervous because I had an NDX before which crashed and burned when I upgraded...

Cheers

Steve

Aha - Phil has talked me through the proper way of finding the version - which is 4.4