Radio 3 lossless

Perhaps they have used string rather than copper, which will of course work better when wet, especially if salty...

Sounds like a bit of a faff, but I guess it's probably worth it in the absence of a proprietary solution, which I guess Naim might not be able to offer to us 'legacy' users. 

 

Took a couple of hours to set up but now works flawlessly. Was easier (and quicker) to set up on a Mac but now working fine on a Synology NAS. 

ChrisSU posted:

R.K posted:

ChrisSU posted:

The R3 FLAC trial is only available on a computer through the Firefox browser.

You can now stream the BBC FLAC trial directly to  a Naim streamer such as the NDS using a combination of plugins on Logitech Media Server running on a NAS drive, PC, or mac.  You will need the following plugins:
Triode's BBC iplayer for FLAC stream and 
Philippe's UnP Bridge

The NDS shows as a player in the iPeng or the squeezebox app and can be controlled from that. 

There is no need for Squeezebox hardware. 

Sounds like a bit of a faff, but I guess it's probably worth it in the absence of a proprietary solution, which I guess Naim might not be able to offer to us 'legacy' users. 

Agree and only really viable if you're  a IT geek and have decent broadband. I'm just pulling the HLS stream via the NDS this evening but have to confess that I still prefer live broadcasts via the NAT01 - or perhaps it a bit of the old Olive sound via these older ears.

Dave***t posted:

Does that actually work right now? The info on the BBC site says the FLAC trial ended in May.

Indeed. New trial since the start of the Proms. 

Ravenswood10 posted:

Agree and only really viable if you're  a IT geek and have decent broadband. I'm just pulling the HLS stream via the NDS this evening but have to confess that I still prefer live broadcasts via the NAT01 - or perhaps it a bit of the old Olive sound via these older ears.

That's really what I wanted to know. I think the BBC needs to know this too before they even consider switching off the FM transmitters.

The NAT01 really is (was) a gem in the Naim Audio catalogue.

ChrisSU posted:

Sounds like a bit of a faff, but I guess it's probably worth it in the absence of a proprietary solution, which I guess Naim might not be able to offer to us 'legacy' users. 

Why should you have to consider a product that's still in the catalogue to be 'legacy'?

As I have mentioned in a couple of previous threads, a simple solution that doesn't involve apps and software is to use Firefox on a PC and a USB DAC (the one I have is the £169 Dragonfly Red) and connect the output to an analogue input on your preamp or streamer. This completely bypasses the PC's own audio circuits that may or may not be good quality in the Naim HiFi sense. I find the quality of the R3 FLAC to be really excellent and much better than the FM receiver in my office Superuniti, but I haven't compared it with a proper Naim FM tuner.

The Dragonfly DACs are plug and play, so you don't need drivers or anything. The red is the better of the two but the black costs about half the price of the red at about £89. They are very low power consumption. You can even use them on an iPad (but not to get the BBC FLAC trial unfortunately).

best

David

Clive B posted:

ChrisSU posted:

Sounds like a bit of a faff, but I guess it's probably worth it in the absence of a proprietary solution, which I guess Naim might not be able to offer to us 'legacy' users. 

Why should you have to consider a product that's still in the catalogue to be 'legacy'?

You'll have to ask Naim that question!

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

And for those of us in the U.K.  who can still only get 4Mb broadband (and in my village that is one of the top speeds) then we will need to carry on relying BBC Radio 3 on FM.

Simon

Is LTE available in the UK for domestic broadband?

In a rural location in the Czech Republic broadband has always been a struggle for us. We're way too far from the exchange for a wired connection and the only alternative up to now was wireless broadband but that was wildly unreliable - it could be 40mb/s one day and zero for 10 hours the next. Vodafone have started offering home internet using LTE - it's limited to 8mb/s download and 4 up - the unlimited service available on mobile phone can be over 100mb/s download. What's good about it for us is that the service is completely reliable. Using just the aerial on the modem/router we get about 5mb/s but it delivers the full 8 (and more!) if I step out on to the balcony with it. There is an option to fit an external aerial and this would no doubt be beneficial in our location but, for our use, what we have is fine for business and pleasure. BBC FLAC works fine!

I read somewhere that the Czech Republic is one of the leading countries with the roll-out of LTE technology. It's claimed that 98% of the population now can access it and 95% of the area of the country has coverage.

Chris

Hi Chris, it is, and coverage of 4G is growing a pace, but is no where near the coverage levels you state for the Czech Rep. ... however because its spectrum contended its data throughout is usually metered and so is not really a very affordable replacement for fixed line broadband... not in the UK at least.

What I would say 4G/LTE is by design variable and contended, so performance will fluctuate on environmental and user load conditions... and so is not ideal for all applications, but certainly useful for many.

So in the Czech rep is LTE flat rate or metered, and how does it cost compared to fixed line broadband?

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

 

So in the Czech rep is LTE flat rate or metered, and how does it cost compared to fixed line broadband?

 

Simon

The monthly allowance is 60Gb but it's planned to make it unlimited in the next 12 months or so as more of the infrastructure is rolled-out and the capacity increased. It's the equivalent of about £12 a month, which is similar to their fixed-line service price.

They are very much aiming it at people with second homes in the country, which have been with no service what so ever until now. The level of second home ownership here is amongst the highest in Europe and so it's a very significant market. O2 even provide a battery-driven modem/router for people with a "chata" in remote locations with no electricity.

Chris

Thanks, btw I didn't respond to your earlier point, yes ADSL uses longer lines back to exchanges, but VDSL or Superfast uses little cabinets at the side of roads to convert fibre into VDSL feeds ... these will be quite local/short distance. Some of the cabinets can be quite small.

Realistically in the U.K. if you have a very isolated property / remote farm well away from a hamlet which may be or scheduled to be VDSL enabled  etc it's either potentially very expensive dedicated fibre, LTE/3G and some isolated locations do have this, Satellite which can get very contended, is metered and has high latency, or long line ADSL... or nothing.... 

MusicRoom posted:

As we all know, R3 is trialing Radio 3 using FLAC lossless.  We can currently listen to the Proms better on our PCs using Firefox (?!)  In the rating they ask you to complete, they ask if they should make it permanent (?!!!!).

Of course they should make it permanent!  What a silly question!  Is there an alternative now that it's possible?

Now that 70+ Mb broadband is becoming more and more available they should be thinking soon of 24 bit 96KHz

Dear Auntie.  Please keep your foot on the accelerator.

I believe Minimserver is now able to support the R3 FLAC trial too. I'm not at home to try it, but could be worth a go. 

Just installed the minimserver patch. Seems to be working fine

I too have now installed the MinimStreamer beta and the FLAC stream from my QNAP NAS is SO much better than the current lossless stream available from vTuner that the thought of going back to it is unthinkable.

Here's hoping that the BBC and the likes of NAIM and many others manage to get this established as soon as possible.

I have also installed this on my QNAP NAS running MinimServer and am bowled over by the results.  So good are they that I would recommend anyone using MinimServer to follow Simon Nash's clear installation instructions and give it a try.  Indeed I think it would be worth anyone with a streaming system installing MinimServer just to be able to access this service.

Yesterday evening, I listened to the opening of the late night prom: the first performance of a chamber orchestra version of the Philip Glass/Ravi Shankar concept album 'Packages'.  I was intending to sample it for a few minutes to try out the sound and then wend my way to bed.  Well, an hour and a half later, as the applause died down, I finally switched it off.  The "being there" sensation was so strong and the music so enjoyable and appropriate for the time of day that I could not turn it off before the end.  The quality of the FLAC stream allowed me to hear the efforts of the BBC sound engineers who really are outstanding.  Fine details of instrumental attack and decay came though without losing the overall sense of a group of musicians playing together, making this one of the best listening experiences I have had recently.

Finally, a plea.  If it's feasible with your system, please try this service out.  If you enjoy it, and I'd be surprised if you didn't, please, please pester the Beeb to make it permanent.

Roger

Well said Roger! Oh how I agree! It is marginally better even if you convert the stream to WAV.

Have a look at this URL (you probably have) [http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2...gh-quality-flac-dash].  In reading through, I found this statement:

"Whilst we currently have no plans to launch any service using lossless compression, data from this pilot will inform future strategy."

How, in the name of fortune, can we get them to pull their fingers out?!

Tim (MusicRoom)

Just installed the latest Minimserver version that supports this and created a radio playlist per Simon's instructions. Works fine (well it did once I'd worked out how to create the playlist on my Synology - I'd never done that before). Will have a serious listen to compare it to the NAT01 later this evening.

The volume level is quite a bit down on the tuner, so will have to mess about a bit.

Gary Shaw posted:

Just installed the latest Minimserver version that supports this and created a radio playlist per Simon's instructions. Works fine (well it did once I'd worked out how to create the playlist on my Synology - I'd never done that before). Will have a serious listen to compare it to the NAT01 later this evening.

The volume level is quite a bit down on the tuner, so will have to mess about a bit.

@Gary Shaw

I think a lot of us here will be very interested in what you think. It seems very much better to me in every way than the SDR FM tuner in my Superuniti but no-one has yet given an opinion on the forum on how it sounds compared with a proper Naim FM tuner.

best

David

By tweaking the output volume on the Dave I've got the volume levels about equal (to the NAT01) and have listened to a bit of live music (some pretty skronky Maxwell-Davies) on In Tune. A-B is still a bit tricky as the FLAC stream is a couple of minutes behind FM and the tuner has a Hi-Line compared to the DAC's Sarum (but considering the other bits of wire involved...).

So far, so very very good. I'm pre-disposed to the NAT01 (probably my favourite bit of Naim kit ever), and I think maybe the FM feed is a little more rich? But I'll need to blind test this this evening if I can drag my wife away from Corrie et al. for a bit

Interestingly the stream shows as 16/48 (which may have been said before, but then again I'm old). 

Yes it's 16 bit 48kHz. The BBC uses 24 bit internally but I suspect that's mostly about having lots of headroom in their content handling system so it never clips however casual someone may be about levels when they add new content onto the system. So I guess they think that 16 bits should be enough for public consumption.....

Although the delay is annoying in one respect, if you play the FM first you get the last two mins all over again when you switch to FLAC, which is quite helpful I think.

best

David

Just to poison your objectivity (!), what I noticed in particular with the FLAC is the total lack of background noise, the sense of space and realness about the sound, very low distortion and a speed and lightness about the high notes. But my old ears don't hear high frequencies well at all so what suits me may not suit someone else.

As I said earlier in the thread I'm using a Dragonfly Red DAC plugged into my laptop and an analogue feed from that to my office Superuniti. This is an extremely simple and cheap way of trying out the FLAC feed.

best

David

Just to add to the list - I have also added BBC R3 FLAC to my MinimServer running on one of my Pi's and it sounds superb into my NDX/Hugo - congratulations to the MinimServer team!!!!

Having swapped through Composer Of The Week Granados (and in the Bream piece I can compare to the CD) I could not tell the difference.

Enter Saint-Saens and the wife. Big changes in dynamics as the delay kicked in made it tricky, but neither I nor my wife could reliably tell the difference, though non-blind I thought the NAT01 had a bit more depth (but I deem myself an unreliable witness in that). Voice quality was an even match too.  

I switched over to the HLS stream and "bang" went the colour and dynamics. 

I'll see how the Egyptian goes (a favourite).

Yes - its very good, that piano almost sounds like its in the room - and against my more humble NAT05 there is alas no real comparison now - the FLAC stream wins... i never thought I would say that... just need to get superfast broadband to my village/parish - planned for Dec 2017 but just been advised by Suffolk County Council  that it might be being delayed 

Although the 48k FLAC stream appears to be coming in around 1.6Mbps