It's a very flexible and convenient ripper, hard disc player and upnp server. You use the Naim app to tell it what to do. It's at the beginning of its life so will get proper updates going forwards. It looks good, has a proper power supply, can be forgotten about, with an SSD it's totally silent, if it goes wrong recovery is straightforward. You can put a new disc in yourself and restore from your backup. 

It sounds great whether you use it as a hard disc player or as a upnp server.

But it costs a lot more than a NAS, doesn't do iradio or streaming, and metadata management is not properly developed yet - only an issue if you like classical music or very obscure specialist music. 

Some will tell you that a NAS is the way to go. Personally I would go for the Core. Either will do what you want!

best

David

I must entirely agree with David having used a NAS for many years and switching to a Core early last year.

I use a Seagate Pipeline 2TB HDD the Core sits on the equipment rack and is totally silent in operation occasionally you might get a noise when ripping but it is so easy and simple to rip and back up.

Always struggled with a NAS and a PC so to me well worth the money.

Have to agree as well, I really don,t get any enjoyment from using a computer. But, I do enjoy my music on the Core, and it’s ease of use, for me worth every penny. I also use the Seagate Pipeline HDD, but in 4 TB form.

If you are computer literate and messing about with a PC to play music is OK for you, then a NAS is much cheaper.

Gazza posted:

If you are computer literate and messing about with a PC to play music is OK for you, then a NAS is much cheaper.

That hardly seems fair. If the music is on a nas you simply select it with the Naim app and press play, which is exactly the same as using a unitiserve or Core. No ‘messing about with a PC is required’. 

Just wanted to add that I have a Nas. Got it after the US broke down for the second time. The Synology Nas contains all my hi-res music (1000 albums) + the US backup.  Its a 215j and has mirrored 4tb drives  

So even with the US not working I am not without music. 

I'm now at the end of my patience with the US!!

I know a few people here moved from a US to a Core and I'd like to get their views. 

Its probably going to cost an extra thousand after US trade-in. 

Really not sure if its worth it...

CSI_Basel posted:

Just wanted to add that I have a Nas. Got it after the US broke down for the second time. The Synology Nas contains all my hi-res music (1000 albums) + the US backup.  Its a 215j and has mirrored 4tb drives  

So even with the US not working I am not without music. 

I'm now at the end of my patience with the US!!

I know a few people here moved from a US to a Core and I'd like to get their views. 

Its probably going to cost an extra thousand after US trade-in. 

Really not sure if its worth it...

hello CSI Basel,   i have a unitserve too, since 2 years.  I fear to have one day the same problem as you.  How it happened when you serve broke down?  did you unplugged the power cable?  problems of power surge?   or it broke just like that?

I had a linear ps on it, which normally is more safe for the us....but don’t know really.

I'm chuffed with my ex-demo Core. Added a Samsung Evo SSD and it does exactly what it's meant to.

Ripping is simple and playback via the app is a doddle.

Answer to your question = YES.

I did exactly the same with my Core - Samsung SSD. Worked from the start and no issues even with the software update. I spend all my working hours with a PC so when I’m listening or ripping the last thing I want to do is mess around with another PC. Love the Core for its simplicity as well as its looks. I have a QNAP as backup but that’s all it does. Perhaps if you’re lucky to be retired and messing around with PCs and NAS drives floats your boat but at 58 I have a few years of the dreaded workplace PC in front of me

Issue here is with the unitiserve.

I can understand , not all cakes come with a hole.

It sometimes happens , so now it's up to you , either follow the mild comments on here on turning on something else (i.e. innuous)not bad really,   or rather pessimistic ones walking away from naim solutions and/or worse considering nas solutions as definitely complementary but poor SQ (that's sure as no one seems to really be into that ) 

Having said that personally  I'd give naim a second chance, the Core is that good ,  I wish I could get one the sooner the rest is just bullshit to me , think for one second of how many hyped naim products have being talked bout so far in fancy set-ups .

Get it, it deserves , really.

Use the Nas see if you hear a difference, core is a fancy Nas at the end

I have been thinking about this too and came to the conclusion that I would not bother getting the Core to replace my Unitiserve.

I'm on my third Unitiserve, having it replaced twice with a new unit when it failed and I sent it in for repair.  I'm just waiting for the day when it will fail again.

Emre posted:

Use the Nas see if you hear a difference, core is a fancy Nas at the end

Much nicer looking though and made in this country - fly the flag whilst we still have one.

Emre posted:

Use the Nas see if you hear a difference, core is a fancy Nas at the end

I'm afraid that's just a hoax my friend. 

the CORE is a real server committed to excellence .

Do not belive to the hypes here  nd save a lot of hassle and money for the future being.

Ravenswood10 posted:

Emre posted:

Use the Nas see if you hear a difference, core is a fancy Nas at the end

Much nicer looking though and made in this country - fly the flag whilst we still have one.

you should be proud of that , trust me 

Overseas, We definitely lag behind hat's why  Im really British in my hearth.

the  British who I  really appreciate are very conservative and respectful o good practice and that's what really counts to me : i.e.  committing to excellence not bothering much  to fancy ideas n spite of  the he first hour revolution.

hungryhalibut posted:

Gazza posted:

If you are computer literate and messing about with a PC to play music is OK for you, then a NAS is much cheaper.

That hardly seems fair. If the music is on a nas you simply select it with the Naim app and press play, which is exactly the same as using a unitiserve or Core. No ‘messing about with a PC is required’. 

That’s the level of my ignorance Nigel, and fear of computers, I am not trying to denigrate the NAS solution. I survived the corporate world with an IT department, just about. Now, retired, I need an easy solution and, others may need that too. But I think I am right you need to connect a computer.....I have no interest?

Not frankly concerned about that, I’ve always bought British and am proud of that...if only more us did likewise. I’ve been all over the world and know where I’d sooner be - our wines are improving and our IPAs are top notch. I’m sitting here looking out over the Sussex countyside overlooking the Bluebell Railway. What could be better

Ravenswood10 posted:

Not frankly concerned about that, I’ve always bought British and am proud of that...if only more us did likewise. I’ve been all over the world and know where I’d sooner be - our wines are improving and our IPAs are top notch. I’m sitting here looking out over the Sussex countyside overlooking the Bluebell Railway. What could be better

Looking out over the West Yorkshire countryside overlooking the Calder Valley.  

What's happening there ?

A good friend of mine lives in Sheffield (yorkshire i'm going pay a  visit to him this summer.I love IPA, though Id have never believed wines to be improved or rather existed there (he buys his wine from Italy ) 

Antonio1 posted:

What's happening there ?

A good friend of mine lives in Sheffield (yorkshire i'm going pay a  visit to him this summer.I love IPA, though Id have never believed wines to be improved or rather existed there (he buys his wine from Italy ) 

It’s where I live, so at the moment I’m listening to an album while sipping a pleasant New World Pinot. Amazingly there are now a few vineyards in Yorkshire,  one (Leventhorpe) does actually make a pretty good white wine from Madeleine Angevine grapes, not just a curiosity, a very quaffable classy wine.

Enjoy your trip over.

CSI_Basel posted:

...

I like the US interface and I find the unpn to be quicker than Minim. I don't really buy cds anymore, usually just a couple of hi-res downloads per year. I have almost 2000 albums anyway. 

...

If you like the the US than you should be fine with the Core. But I find it difficult to understand what you find good in a UPnP server that uses a proprietary format with very poor support for classical music metadata. I personally would get back the US, convert all files to FLAC and have them served by MinimServer or Asset running on the NAS. You could then run NAS and US in parallel for a while until you have made up your mind. No matter what you do, get out of the proprietary format for metadata because it just doesn't make any sense anymore.

Have a look at 'Core vs Qnap Nas, my twopence worth' thread. I did a comparison. There is a difference. And to paraphrase Tolkien 'for those that have ears to hear ...'. Briefly, both have similar amount of information but presented it differently. Some will prefer Nas to Core, others like myself will go for the Core. My unsubstantiated conclusion is that different NAS will all present music slightly differently. Could be a loooong audition. Rich 

Eoink posted:

Antonio1 posted:

What's happening there ?

A good friend of mine lives in Sheffield (yorkshire i'm going pay a  visit to him this summer.I love IPA, though Id have never believed wines to be improved or rather existed there (he buys his wine from Italy ) 

It’s where I live, so at the moment I’m listening to an album while sipping a pleasant New World Pinot. Amazingly there are now a few vineyards in Yorkshire,  one (Leventhorpe) does actually make a pretty good white wine from Madeleine Angevine grapes, not just a curiosity, a very quaffable classy wine.

Enjoy your trip over.

thank you ,will let him know and hope to taste it the sooner.

As for the NAS as difference are obviously there with different ones one should be aware he's picking the less worse rather than the best 

David Hendon posted:

 

But it costs a lot more than a NAS, doesn't do iradio or streaming, and metadata management is not properly developed yet - only an issue if you like classical music or very obscure specialist music. 

best

David

Could you please tell, what kind of metadata issues one could expect from the Core? My former US worked very well in that matter. My cd collection is about 3- 3500 and 2/3 of it is classical music.

I sold my US with its third party psu and can get a Core for about the same money. In the meantime I'm wondering when to try installing Minimserver, (since a lot of users in here says NAS with Minim are brilliant) to get my NAS user interface come close to US. 

For how long should I wait, until my interest on NAS and computing increases 

S

Stover posted:

David Hendon posted:

 

But it costs a lot more than a NAS, doesn't do iradio or streaming, and metadata management is not properly developed yet - only an issue if you like classical music or very obscure specialist music. 

best

David

Could you please tell, what kind of metadata issues one could expect from the Core? My former US worked very well in that matter. My cd collection is about 3- 3500 and 2/3 of it is classical music.

...
 

From https://forums.naimaudio.com/t...ware-and-app-update:

1. Editing of Composers and Conductors will not be enabled and is not currently planned as a future update.  
2. The metadata editing functionality is based solely within the app, there is no desktop editing functionality.
3. Only ripped CDs or CDs imported from a previous Naim server that have been ripped, can be edited.
4. Music content in the Downloads Folder cannot be edited so the option will not be available.
5. 'Artist Name' cannot be changed globally, only on a per CD basis.

On the top of these oddities, it is not possible to add a Composition (or Work) index and, in fact, it is not possible to add any index to the default indexes. For classical music, this basically sucks.

On the whole the metadata works ok on the Core, but it has to work with what it can download. And the now defunct AMG service used by Unitiserve was much better than the current MusicBrainz and Rovi offerings that Core uses.

I don't think anyone at Naim involved in the design had ever thought about classical music, so the idea that you might need conductor and composer fields as well as artist was overlooked. This hasn't been fixed yet. This means that although you can edit the artist field, it's not enough to make searching for works by composer or conductor in any way reliable.

The second problem is that when the Core looks up the metadata for a classical CD, what is returned may be the work you have been ripping, but it's likely with older recordings that it will be, as happened to me earlier this week with some Chopin CDs, that they will be volume 45 and 46 of the great DG recordings set. Or some other collection that is totally unhelpful in a streaming context. So you have to edit the album name and cover art straight away or you may lose them forever, although the "New CDs" menu option is helpful in finding stuff you just ripped which has vanished from sight in album view and can't be found by a search.

Another problem is a CD that has multiple composers on it. This ends up with the artist name "various". There is no way to put the Haydn bits with other Haydn recordings and the Bach bits with other Bach recordings for example.  Not a specifically Core issue but the composer name can take various formats. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus, WA Mozart etc. And discs in a multidisc set can appear in the wrong order in the app because someone put an extra space or other non-significant character in one of the album titles or lists them as (CD1) and [CD 2] for example.

Finally my own experience is that with newly released classical CDs, the rip will often be unknown album and unknown artist with no metadata at all. Sometimes this will be sorted in the next month but mostly it isn't. So you have to check each rip to see whether you need to put some identifying edit on it before ripping the next one. I tend to get the album art right immediately and then if necessary start the tedious bit of putting track details in another time when I've given the CD publisher time to remember they need to update their metadata submissions.

Many of these problems are not Naim's doing at all, but the Core metadata handling has been poorly designed in a classical music context and the in-app editing provided by Naim, which is the only editing allowed for rips, does not always allow the user adequately to sort it out.

best

David