New Uniti Core

PBenny1066 posted:

Question for Phil -

have you heard the new Core, and if so how would you characterise it, compared to the Serve ? If you haven't heard it, perhaps you could tell us what was the design brief (i.e. design intent) for the Core ?

cheers

Paul

I may have 'heard' one...

Within the context of my own system at home (which is basically an NDX / Naim DAC + XPS / 252 + SuperCap / 2 x NAP300s) I can't tell the difference between the S/PDIF out of my NS01 (I don't have a UnitiServe) and the S/PDIF out of my Core - the overwhelming sonic signature is that of the Naim DAC and I really don't think I would be able to determine one from the other with any kind of accuracy in a blind test.

Similarly when running via the NDX / Naim DAC / XPS then it's the Naim DAC that I'm hearing rather than a definite 'one source sounds different to the other'...

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

CharlieP posted:

Phil,

Can you comment on the impact on sound quality, if any, of the new operating system in this new Unity range?  

Charlie

Flippant sounding but serious answer : How about when they're released you go have a listen...?

Seriously - it's not possible to say that "This specific OS has x, y, z of a sonic character" when the product as a whole cannot be auditioned without the OS and the OS can't be run from outside the product - the various parts are intrinsically linked, hardware and software, and it's not possible to separate out the OS from the equation.

Phil

Fair enough.  I look forward to listening - and with high expectations.  I have great respect for all of you at Naim, and have been very impressed by you other recent efforts.  I have this image of your engineers spending time at frequent listening sessions, assessing the impact on sound quality of every reasonably-imaginable (to a Naim engineer) detail.  Thus developers would in fact have assessed the sonic impact of the OS during development.  I have heard the profound (to my ears) improvement of the Naim DAC firmware (released a year ago), and so I imagine that a streamlined-for-audio OS might have considerable impact.  I also note the discussion around the microrendu on this topic.

I note the positive report from James at Tom Tom after an audition of the Core and Atom, so I expect Naim have hit the ball out of the park on these.

Charlie

CharlieP posted:

Fair enough.  I look forward to listening - and with high expectations.  I have great respect for all of you at Naim, and have been very impressed by you other recent efforts.  I have this image of your engineers spending time at frequent listening sessions, assessing the impact on sound quality of every reasonably-imaginable (to a Naim engineer) detail.  Thus developers would in fact have assessed the sonic impact of the OS during development.  I have heard the profound (to my ears) improvement of the Naim DAC firmware (released a year ago), and so I imagine that a streamlined-for-audio OS might have considerable impact.  I also note the discussion around the microrendu on this topic.

I note the positive report from James at Tom Tom after an audition of the Core and Atom, so I expect Naim have hit the ball out of the park on these.

Charlie

Hi Charlie,

At the end of the day if I say that it sounds wonderful - better than anything else etc. - then a good chunk of readers will shrug and go "You would say that", others would expect it to better their full separates systems at home and pillary it for that. (I kid you not - I had a guy complaining that he sold his 202 / 200 / S400 and bought a Mu-so then and it didn't sound as good as the 202 / 200 / S400....)

There's still an awful lot of work to be done and, as we are very aware, sound quality can be affected massively by relatively minor changes to software but we have units being demo'd in the real world this weekend so we await the feedback on that with great expectation. We think its a fantastic bit of kit but I would hope that you would expect that we wouldn't waste everyone's time launching something that we weren't really happy with ourselves.

"Streamlined for audio OSs" realistically is a bit of a vague term as that could be anything from "We've pulled out all the unused GUI code from the build in an effort to make it small enough to shoehorn into a device that's really not man enough for now let alone the future but at least we can use a set of normal kernal updates to patch any vulnerabilities that are found" to "We've end-to-end recoded and optimised the entire OS and its now all custom but we're either going to have to hope we don't have to patch anything or we'll have to manually hand-craft every update and vulnerability release" ... the actual list of things that the R&D and software guys jump on for getting things to sound right is quite scary - before the Qute finally started shipping there were several hundred units prebuilt awaiting final code and at the 11th hour it was found that if the number of cable ties around the mains inlet wiring to the main transformer was changed then it sounded better and so all the units were dutifully changed to incorporate that update ... the level of tweakery that the guys find to meddle with and all these changes are all going on in parallel is quite nuts. I remember there being nearly a weeks listening tests being done on a release of Naim DAC code that had different arrangements of the same number of NOP instructions in the code!

In that respect yes, the underlying OS here has been extensively honed to work together with the hardware platform and the hardware platform is our own design which should give us the headroom to move forward for a good few years to come but conversely looking at it from the perspective of the OS being "streamlined for audio" is like trying to evaluate the characteristics of a car only by knowing it's got an LS3 engine in it...

I have to say though it was nice to see James yesterday and his reaction to it ...

Phil

So, Nova2 about this time next year than

Phil,

thanks for your reply. I very much appreciate all of your efforts, and I think your products are world class. 

cheers,

Charlie

Wow, that's one heck of an extensive reply Phil, you really have gone beyond the call of duty (as usual) answering all of the questions put forward over the last couple of days. Cheers!

Phil Harris posted:

CharlieP posted:

Fair enough.  I look forward to listening - and with high expectations.  I have great respect for all of you at Naim, and have been very impressed by you other recent efforts.  I have this image of your engineers spending time at frequent listening sessions, assessing the impact on sound quality of every reasonably-imaginable (to a Naim engineer) detail.  Thus developers would in fact have assessed the sonic impact of the OS during development.  I have heard the profound (to my ears) improvement of the Naim DAC firmware (released a year ago), and so I imagine that a streamlined-for-audio OS might have considerable impact.  I also note the discussion around the microrendu on this topic.

I note the positive report from James at Tom Tom after an audition of the Core and Atom, so I expect Naim have hit the ball out of the park on these.

Charlie

Hi Charlie,

At the end of the day if I say that it sounds wonderful - better than anything else etc. - then a good chunk of readers will shrug and go "You would say that", others would expect it to better their full separates systems at home and pillary it for that. (I kid you not - I had a guy complaining that he sold his 202 / 200 / S400 and bought a Mu-so then and it didn't sound as good as the 202 / 200 / S400....)

There's still an awful lot of work to be done and, as we are very aware, sound quality can be affected massively by relatively minor changes to software but we have units being demo'd in the real world this weekend so we await the feedback on that with great expectation. We think its a fantastic bit of kit but I would hope that you would expect that we wouldn't waste everyone's time launching something that we weren't really happy with ourselves.

"Streamlined for audio OSs" realistically is a bit of a vague term as that could be anything from "We've pulled out all the unused GUI code from the build in an effort to make it small enough to shoehorn into a device that's really not man enough for now let alone the future but at least we can use a set of normal kernal updates to patch any vulnerabilities that are found" to "We've end-to-end recoded and optimised the entire OS and its now all custom but we're either going to have to hope we don't have to patch anything or we'll have to manually hand-craft every update and vulnerability release" ... the actual list of things that the R&D and software guys jump on for getting things to sound right is quite scary - before the Qute finally started shipping there were several hundred units prebuilt awaiting final code and at the 11th hour it was found that if the number of cable ties around the mains inlet wiring to the main transformer was changed then it sounded better and so all the units were dutifully changed to incorporate that update ... the level of tweakery that the guys find to meddle with and all these changes are all going on in parallel is quite nuts. I remember there being nearly a weeks listening tests being done on a release of Naim DAC code that had different arrangements of the same number of NOP instructions in the code!

In that respect yes, the underlying OS here has been extensively honed to work together with the hardware platform and the hardware platform is our own design which should give us the headroom to move forward for a good few years to come but conversely looking at it from the perspective of the OS being "streamlined for audio" is like trying to evaluate the characteristics of a car only by knowing it's got an LS3 engine in it...

I have to say though it was nice to see James yesterday and his reaction to it ...

Phil

Now, to me, that is an impressive dedication to the 'art' of music reproduction in the home. Yes, there are the technical advances that have to be embraced but to take it to the lengths of internal wiring arrangements and cable ties is the 'art' bit of the equation and I am sure the bit that most manufacturers miss or can't be a**ed with. Truly, truly impressive and maintains my faith in the brand.

Question: Why on earth does the new Muso not sound as good as the 'ageing' 202/200/S400? Only kidding. 

the market for ripper/hard drive is not on the top of the list. because a few years down the road and the increase of high rez downloads  makes it hardly worth it,BUT very smart one box solution of naim pedegree will fly of the shelf

Core have Tidal?

audio1946 posted:

the market for ripper/hard drive is not on the top of the list. because a few years down the road and the increase of high rez downloads  makes it hardly worth it,BUT very smart one box solution of naim pedegree will fly of the shelf

The uServe always did a little more than rip and store (like, integrating multiple sources into one view).  While in 2016 I'm happy with ripping with a Mac (and now a days I rip about 3 cd's a year; I download) and using a QNAP to serve, there IS room for more in my system, be it Roon (??) or whatever.  So while ceding ripping and storage to much cheaper solutions, I do look forward to how my music might otherwise be "reimagined."

spurrier sucks posted:

Core have Tidal?

Core is strictly ripping and serving - not streaming.

Phil

Question for Phil:

you said the Core retains the concept of a Music Store for rips, and separate Downloads folder.  Reminiscent of Unitiserve.  Does the Core support editing of metadata for downloads via Naim App, in the same way as Unitiserve supported metadata editing for CD rips? 

Equivalent functionality for managing a collection across rips and downloads would be a very welcome usability feature......  Or will we have to wait for Roon?

As above.  With downloads becoming more popular, will the Core treat all files as part of one library when it comes to various search options?  For example, on the UnitiServe, the Composer search only works with CD rips even if that metadata exists in a downloaded file.  For those with large classical collections this would be appreciated.

40 below posted:

Question for Phil:

you said the Core retains the concept of a Music Store for rips, and separate Downloads folder.  Reminiscent of Unitiserve.  Does the Core support editing of metadata for downloads via Naim App, in the same way as Unitiserve supported metadata editing for CD rips? 

Equivalent functionality for managing a collection across rips and downloads would be a very welcome usability feature......  Or will we have to wait for Roon?

As far as I am aware the Naim App will acquire editing functionality for music ripped on the Core but not for downloaded music (in the same way that n-Serve currently does).

Phil 

Kirkpg posted:

As above.  With downloads becoming more popular, will the Core treat all files as part of one library when it comes to various search options?  For example, on the UnitiServe, the Composer search only works with CD rips even if that metadata exists in a downloaded file.  For those with large classical collections this would be appreciated.

This is something that is still being finalized so I can't say for sure how complete the mapping between searches on 'ripped' and 'downloaded' music will be yet...

Phil

Will the Core be able to make backups to HD plugged in directly over USB, or will we still see the time consuming backups to NAS?

gmischol posted:

Will the Core be able to make backups to HD plugged in directly over USB, or will we still see the time consuming backups to NAS?

Backups are possible to both NAS and USB.

Phil

That's good news, thanks

Robbor posted:

May I just double check if the Core stores music in the same format as the UnitiServe, 

that, is:

 

• .wav files and album art in folders for each album?

 

• And will it share the Music folder as a Network drive which can be accessed via PC or Mac?

 

Many thanks,

 

Hi, Yes ... to both.

Cheers

Phil

Thanks for this, Phil, very much appreciated.

all the best

Is it possible to set up Core as a DHCP and/or with static IP-address?
This to exclude a switch when connecting to NDS.
Of course there will be a problem controlling NDS with the Naim app but maybe this can be done via wifi or something...

The core has a USB connection
Play, store music to a hard drive or USB stick.I t say

Is this in anyway different from the USB feature on the ND5XS?

MNn posted:

Is it possible to set up Core as a DHCP and/or with static IP-address?
This to exclude a switch when connecting to NDS.
Of course there will be a problem controlling NDS with the Naim app but maybe this can be done via wifi or something...

Hi,

It will be possible to set static IP addresses / subnet mask / DNS / Gateway etc. however I really wouldn't recommend just doing that with a direct connection between the Core and an NDS as you lose the ability to do lookups on rips and also there would be no app control.

If you're looking to simply separate your audio system from the rest of your network why not use a cable router to create a separate network just for your HiFi and uplink to your home network from that - then you'll still be able to control everything via the Naim app and get lookups on new rips and do internet radio etc.

Cheers

Phil

Phil Harris posted:

Core is strictly ripping and serving - not streaming.

Phil