'Noon folks,
I just took delivery of my Uniti Core a few days ago, after a long wait. It's feeding my Atom and I'm so far very pleased with the sound.
So far I've been able to import music from My Synology NAS to the internal storage of my Core (took 5 long days to do so, but hey it could have been even longer to import 2 TB of music through Wifi), set up a back up schedule and processed a first back up of the music files on that same NAS within a dedicated folder (Nas drive\Shared files\Naim back up\back up\downloads)
I'm still experimenting a little bit as for the possibilities the Core offers, hence my 2 questions:
1. Is there a reason why I could not alter the metadata of some albums and for instance : create an artwork for albums with missing artwork ? I read everywhere on the forum the way to do that from within the naim app. However, when I select a specific album, tapping the "..." I cannot see any "edit metadata submenu". So should I toggle on some specific option within the app to be able to do so? Or is that option available only for ripped CDs? Because 99% of my library in the Core was not ripped but directly imported from my NAS as my music was aldready stored there.
And I have about 500 albums with no artwork (that's the Core's count when selecting "albums with no artwork" from the app). So why could be the reason for not being able to even see the "edit metadata" sub-menu within the app then ?
2. I've made a back up from my Core to the NAS and then set up a monthly back up of the Core to the NAS. However, when I then went to specified folder I figured that some album were missing there. I then went back to the internal storage of the Core to find out that those same albums were not imported to the internal storage. and yet, when I initally imported my music files to the Core, I made sure that I did pick the Whole Library , without selecting specific albums.
I know the Core is compatible and able to "read" virtually any available music format and my library is mostly WAV, Apple Losseless, FLAC and MP3. So nothing the Core could not handle if trusting the specs sheet.
I then realised that some of my music files are stored the following way: Artist/Album/files, but within that same artist folder I also may have Artist/Studio albums/Albums 1/Songs AND Artist/Live albums/Live album "X"/song A etc.
Could that be the reason for the Core to be confused while importing the files, or could it have indexed such files otherwise?
Any help appreciated, I'd like to make sure what's on my Core is the exact replica of the music on the NAS Drive.
3. I've got a last question that might sound silly to some but I'd like to make sure I understood how the unit work to use it properly. For the time being, I'm using the internal storage of the Core to stream to Atom. So the Music Store is set on the Internal HDD.
However, I read that the Core is able to stream from a NAS drive, without the need to store the music internally. How could I do that? Is it possible to have several music stores ? i.e. having both the internal storage + the music folder on my NAS drive ?
Posted on: 05 December 2018 by David Hendon
You can have only one music store where the Core stores it’s own rips, and that is normally, but doesn’t have to be, the internal HDD. But you can have many music shares and in terms of playing back through the app, they (store and shares) all work the same way.
You must edit metadata in rips made by the Core with the Naim app, but for other music which isn’t ripped with a Naim server you can’t edit the metadata with the app. But you can edit it with a separate program running on a PC.
You don’t have to choose within the app where you stream from. You look at the screens of all albums wherever they are, choose the one you want to play and the Core knows where to get it from, inside the Core or in a NAS or wherever.
I suspect sorting out your concerns about importing and backup will take a few postings. But basically in the music store there are two folders, downloads and music. Within the music folder there are LQ, MQ and HQ sub-folders. The Core puts its own rips into the music/MQ folder and everything else, for example imports, is put into the downloads folder. The backup will just copy all of that, so you need to look into both backup folders to find everything that has been backed up.
I’m happy to try to answer other questions!
best
David
Posted on: 06 December 2018 by Rich 1
I have to agree within the context of your existing system prior to the purchase of the Core that Hungry is again correct unless you're considering some very expensive upgrades in the near future.
Although I'm a Core lover above a domestic NAS, I to have both and consider the Core music better than the Qnap TS251 NAS on my 272 / 250DR setup. Ideally you need to have a home demo pitching your NAS against a Core because although I can reliably hear a difference to the good of the music others cannot, no difference, don't buy!
Why does this damn phone change font halfway through a note? Rich
Posted on: 17 December 2018 by Bouba
Very helpful David, I'll try this tonight once I get home. I did remember that some of the covers files are named after the relevant artist or album's name.
Aside from this, I still don't understand though why my Core will sometimes unexpectedely wake up from stand-by mode, on its own without any interacting with it ? It's directly wired to a Time capsule on my network. I did not try to move it to another location as I wanted it to be on my hifi stands (my ISP box is located somewhere else in the room) So I don't know wheteher that explain that weird behavior, but it will wake up from stand-by maybe once or twice a day then goes back to stand-by again once the auto-standby time is reached?
Do other Core owners here experience the same?
Posted on: 17 December 2018 by Bouba
If the TC is indeed the culprit here, that'd be a pity: I have 2 of these: 1 is the main router in bridge mode, connected through WAN to my ISP modem and creating a separate network. That TC also serves as a back-up of my Macs at home using Time machine. The 2nd TC extend that network and also hosts the iTunes libraries of the macs (in an effort to spare storage on the macs themselves). The Core is wired to that 2nd TC and stream wirelessly to the Atom on the same network (so I only have 1 network, not 2). When setting up the Core, I chose only the NAS drives (also on the same network through Wifi) to be scanned.
I don't want to part with the TC as I've been using them with no issues for 5 years now, until I saw this issue. I don't have any other router/wifi network extender on hands to perform a test and determine whether the TC is causing these randoms wakes or not.
Not really what I'd qualify as a really bad thing (i.e. the Core otherwise is working perfectly and my Atom can spot it anytime I want it to stream from the core) but It'd just be better if I could avoid wasting power having the unit waking up when not desired.
