Problem with Multiroom and High Resolution FLAC

You cannot multiroom these hires albums. It's not just you, the same happens here. I agree that it would be much better if one could, but as things stand, one can't. 

I've had this problem and raised it with support. I was told that multiroom doesn't work above 48KHZ.

Unfortunately, it's a case of RT*M, the maximum that multiroom can handle is 48kHz/24bit. I guess you're supposed to be partying too hard to appreciate Hi-Res music......

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.  At least I know its not me.

However that does bring up other questions:

- Is this unique to Naim or do other manufacturers have the same issue?

- What causes the limitation, is it the streamers, is it the app, is it the NAS, is it the network?

- Is the situation likely to be resolved in the foreseeable future or is it beyond the laws of science?

There is nothing in any of the Naim documentation or advertising that alerts you to this inadequacy/limitation/feature. The Reference Manuals clearly state that both Mu-so types and the Superuniti will support WAV, FLAC and AIFF up to 24bit/192kHz + etc., no ifs, no buts!

It might sound easy to say - don't include Hi-Res music when making up a queue or play list, but when a significant proportion of ones music library (comprising many thousands of albums) are Hi-Res this is impractical, hence my comment that this restriction makes the system "useless".

CHRISSU, thanks for the input but what is RT*M? I have tried to look it up on Google but come up with nothing. I'm not really that up to date with this high tech stuff (I still use a slide rule).

Thanks all Paul.

It means Read The F****** Manual, but use of the F word seems a little excessive to me. In this case, the manual being the Naim Multiroom Supplement, which explains what you can and can't play with multiroom. Not what you want to hear, but I guess that's just the way it is. 

Paul - all NAIM streamers support files up to 192 kHZ / 24 bit. So not sure why the agitation.

The fact that you cannot multi-stream high res files is most likely down to network capacity rather than Naim's inability to process the files. 

Frustrating I know. You can force your UPnP server to play high res audio in 44.1 kHz, but I think that would be a bit pointless.

It would be a good feature to have going forward nonetheless. I buy quite a lot of 96k downloads and also use multiroom quite a lot. It would be nice to play new albums on the Qb as well as in the sitting room. Hopefully it will be introduced at some point. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

It would be a good feature to have going forward nonetheless. I buy quite a lot of 96k downloads and also use multiroom quite a lot. It would be nice to play new albums on the Qb as well as in the sitting room. Hopefully it will be introduced at some point. 

Agree with you HH - could you perhaps mention as part of the Beta-testing?

I wonder if the amount of data involved makes high res streaming to multiple devices difficult, especially if many users will want to use WiFi for at least part of the process. I have managed to stream 24/192 over WiFi in the past, but only by turning off the Naim streamer WiFi and using a more robust Apple setup. That was just a single stream from NAS to Streamer, though. 

Adam Zielinski posted:

Hungryhalibut posted:

It would be a good feature to have going forward nonetheless. I buy quite a lot of 96k downloads and also use multiroom quite a lot. It would be nice to play new albums on the Qb as well as in the sitting room. Hopefully it will be introduced at some point. 

Agree with you HH - could you perhaps mention as part of the Beta-testing?

Will do.

As I understand it (please correct me if I am wrong), for multiroom the 'master' player broadcasts our 320Kbps MP3 streams to the 'slave' players. Therefore the master player needs to transcode in real time. I would guess that doing the transcoding above 48K is not possible because the sampling rate is too high to process. This may be a limitation in the hardware or in the software (hopefully the latter which can be updated to cope at some stage). As I buy more and more High Res music this is becoming a greater problem.

OK, so lets look at a couple of points:

-CHRISSU castigates me for not reading the "Naim Multiroom Supplement" manual.  I have searched the Naim Customer Support website for this with no success.  Please CHRISSU enlighten me to where I might find this publication.

-The Mu-So Reference manual states that "Note: All formats to 48kHz maximum over wireless network" but I am using LAN Cat 5e to all units so that does not apply.

-With regards the capacity of the network, all three units will play the same Hi-Res music simultaneously but not synchronised via multiroom.

and finally, - Is this unique to Naim or do other manufacturers have the same issue?

Regardless of the perceived agitation, I still love my Superuniti/Spendor A9 combination and both MU-So's and would still have bought them if I knew about this limitation before purchase.

Paul.

I have raised this formally as a feature request to Naim. Hopefully they will be able to address it. 

Paul - the document is called 'Multiroom Supplemement'. It seems to have been removed from the Naim website though (most likely given the fact that a new Uniti range is coming on line now). 

If you email me (email is in my profile) I will send a PDF over.

Adam

I suspect it is indeed a hardware limitation for the reason that Peter gives.

The multiroom supplement is here: https://www.naimaudio.com/site...nt%20Iss%201N%20.pdf

If the link doesn't work, you can get it by going to the SuperUniti product page and looking at the manuals page from there.

best

David

David - the link works.

Thanks all, we seem to be getting somewhere.

Now that I understand the issues I can see that I have a solution (in part) for me.

On my network I have a NAS drive where I keep my backup photographs, documents, etc. and also my entire music collection copy but converted to MP3 48kHz.  These MP3s then get copied to my iPod classic (160GB) for mobile use.

So for party/multiroom mode, not serious listening, I can play from this library instead.

Paul.

PeterJ posted:

As I understand it (please correct me if I am wrong), for multiroom the 'master' player broadcasts our 320Kbps MP3 streams to the 'slave' players. Therefore the master player needs to transcode in real time. I would guess that doing the transcoding above 48K is not possible because the sampling rate is too high to process. This may be a limitation in the hardware or in the software (hopefully the latter which can be updated to cope at some stage). As I buy more and more High Res music this is becoming a greater problem.

I have been informed by Naim that it is the hardware limitations of the current platform that prevent multi room on high res albums. The new platform that is being used for the new Uniti range will do multi room up to 192k. It doesn't help me but for people buying the new stuff it's good news. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

 

I have been informed by Naim that it is the hardware limitations of the current platform that prevent multi room on high res albums. The new platform that is being used for the new Uniti range will do multi room up to 192k. It doesn't help me but for people buying the new stuff it's good news. 

Unfortunately, as it's a limitation on the 272 that means I might have to wait for a new platform for that before I upgrade. My HiRes collection is increasing and the majority is 96KHZ+.

Same for me Peter, but as I have over 2,500 CD res albums on the NAS I'm not over-concerned.

Hungryhalibut posted:

Same for me Peter, but as I have over 2,500 CD res albums on the NAS I'm not over-concerned.

Unfortunately, I've been deleting CD versions of my albums as I replace them with HiRes versions.  However, I do have backups of those but I don't want to mess around with stuff. It means having different playlists for multiroom and serious listening.

I've never replaced anything with hi-res, so all the old favourites are still there. No way am I paying for something I own already! I'm sure we will all cope somehow....

Roon can do multi-room with hi-res material. Roon (Ready I presume) is to be "turned on" in the new uniti series in the near future according to Phil Harris. If this option can be retrofitted to the legacy uniti range ( of which I own 2) then hi-res multi-room will be an option. 

Having said that I run Roon on my 3 systems and have only used multi-room to check it actually works. 

My instinct is that muso will get Roon capability but the legacy uniti series won't. 

I would have thought that multi-room is a sort of party function where absolute fidelity is not an issue?

SJB