Hints and Tips for UnitiServe new starters

Posted by: MartinCA on 18 September 2011

As per the thread Bart started in HiFi corner, the UnitiServe seems to be brilliantly easy to set up for most (though not all) of us. But there are lots of things to learn about how to get the best out of it.

So I thought it might be useful to try and capture some Q&As for it in a single thread.

My Userve feeds into an NDAC/XPS. It is connected to a NAS via a Gigabit switch. On the NAS I have a mix of MP3 from a variety of sources, ALAC ripped by iTunes, downloaded 24 bit music, and WAV ripped by EAC. It's picked all this up successfully, and I am building up the US ripped collection too. Sound quality is excellent across the board.

For me, my current issues are:

my iphone with NStream has lost its connection to the UnitiServe. I can restore it by rebooting everything, but have other people experienced this and is there an easier fix?
My existing music (mostly MP3) often has album art stored with the music - the US doesn't pick this up, and largely fails to look up the cover art online - although when ripping it seems to find > 90%. Is there a way to fix this (other than manually picking up the artwork for each album using the App)?
A question: does the library for non-US ripped music doesn't seem to automatically update itself as you edit file properties - I have to use the App to refresh the library - is that correct?

I've got a couple more questions, but I'll check out the details of those before posting them.

If anyone has questions or answers in terms of getting to terms with the UServe - please feel free to add them!

Posted on: 28 September 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Tog, I think your analogy is rather good. Irrespective of operating systems, which in your analogy is probably akin to the tyres you use on your vehicle :-).

To me the advantage of your land rover (especially the Asset variety with which I am familiar with) is that it can transcode - very important for Naim currently, individually configurable.for different uPNP streamers on your network - key for sharing your music on your network with low capacity wireless portable units preferring mp3 and your Naim preferring full blooded wav files ( this is also of benefit if you want to use standardised approaches such as ISO/IEC 29341 (UPnP) and don't want to have to buy into proprietary systems such as Apple's streaming way with it's enforced resampling and lack of control) and finally allows for customising your database and meta data to allow you to decide how to structure and index your music and discs, again of great benefit for the larger collection user who doesn't really want to flick through a 'computerised telephone directory'.
Simon

Posted on: 29 September 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Phil, perhaps you can comment? Many Naim users on this forum post about DHCP issues with their streamers. The UPnP Device Architecture at both 1.0 and 1.5 (RFC 3927) uses a technique of AutoIP (link local addresses) where if DHCP is not available or not functioning correctly or for other issues. Would it not make sense for Naim to look at this certainly for NDX and Unitiserve for example? As we know the use of static addresses on an edge subnet for general hosts is not good practice and can lead to problems if not accurately administered.
Interested in your thoughts and if it's been discounted would be interesting to understand the rationale.
Cheers
Simon

Posted on: 29 September 2011 by Phil Harris

Originally Posted by Simon-in-Suffolk:

Hi Simon,

Just trying to understand what the question is that you are asking and how it relates to the discussion above as I'm a little concerned that you may be about to panic a bunch of forum members unnecessarily by throwing this query in here and making things seem more complicated than they are in reality.

RFC3927 only applies in a situation where the customer has no DHCP server on their network (or the DHCP server is unavailable) which - as things have panned out over the years - is generally not the case and, given that the normal setup for any domestic broadband connection is to have an ADSL or cable "router" with integrated DHCP server, makes it a little academic.

We do support AutoIP on our servers for when there is no DHCP server present but, as the primary use for our servers when there is no DHCP server present would be on a NaimNet system, the AutoIP range used for our servers is 10.15.y.z / 255.0.0.0 (which is the default NaimNet range).

I am interested in your statement "the use of static addresses on an edge subnet for general hosts is not good practice and can lead to problems if not accurately administered" ... (unless your point is the "if not correctly administered"). There is no issue that I am aware with using static IP addresses on any of the accepted non-routable ranges as long as they are correctly configured - this means that if you are setting a static IP address on a device then that address must be *OUTSIDE* your routers DHCP range and not used by anything else on your network already.

If you reserve an IP address on your network using your routers IP reservation faclity then that's not an issue but of course should you reboot that device and your routers DHCP server is unavailable at that time then you fall into an AutoIP situation but that's something of an edge case in itself and taking an AutoIP address (as per RFC3927) would not necessarily result in a system that would have all devices visible on the network when you throw Windows PCs and iPads/iPhones into the mix.

Do you have any other reasons to support the use of AutoIP over DHCP? As I say - I'm not sure where you are heading with this query so if I haven't answered the question you were asking then please let me know...

Cheers

Phil

Posted on: 29 September 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi Phil, certainly not wanting to panic anyone, I was wanting to present a simple view without neccessarily adding some of the idiosyncrasies of home networks such as DHCP which we might take for granted but for others it's a complexity. So yes I was interested if Naim had discounted AutoiP, which of course allows hosts to self assign with out the need of DHCP sitting on the network. Your reply perhaps infers yes, because some Apple devices don't currently support AutoIP, and therefore perhaps the benefit of simplification would be too limited.
Ie for example an NDX and a Unitiserve to connect via simple switch and be plug and play. Of course if you look at the RFC DHCP has precedence if available. I raise the matter purely out of curiosity of consumer plug and playability, of which clearly you have the upper hand as I am more focussed on the enterprise / commercial network solutions for devices.
Given Naim's view of simplification as with the Unitiserve, it seemed a possible progression?
Almost certainly when IPV6 rolls out/becomes adopted in consumer land link level addressing will probably become the norm for the consumer doing away with DHCP on the home LAN and should make things simpler.
Of course there are no issues with statics on an edge network, but it is best practice on dynamic or user hosts to use dynamic addressing to make administration easier as you say Ie best practice is infrastructure statics, and user hosts dynamic addressing (DHCP, BootP, AutoIp etc) for ease of administration purposes,. On a tiny consumer LAN it becomes a mute point perhaps. But again interested.
Should this be another thread possibly but it seemed appropriate here, but happy to move. I guess it's a challenge when we have a one size fits all forum ;-)
Thanks
Simon

Posted on: 29 September 2011 by Bart

As a new customer of Naim and new owner of a UnitiServe I can say categorically that no one should panic!

My uServe has been nothing but plug and play easy to set up and maintain. I find Apple's products (my home network is via Airport Extreme and Time Capsule) to be particularly robust for home network use, and my uServe has been on the same ip address despite not having it assigned one. I could always move to assigning it a static ip address but won't do so if I don't "need" to.

Cheers to Naim!

Posted on: 29 September 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Bart, that's great news. It sounds like with those devices you already have yourself a nice little network already.
:-)
Simon

Posted on: 30 September 2011 by MartinCA

Originally Posted by Bart:

As a new customer of Naim and new owner of a UnitiServe I can say categorically that no one should panic!

Cheers to Naim!

HI - I'm with you on this. Obviously, I have now gone to a static IP addess and it is all working fine. I suspect the problem I had was to do with putting the NAS and US on their own fast switch, connected to the router. That was all plug and play. It was all much eaier than I expected and MUCH MUCH easier than the struggles I had when I first tried connecting the Hifi to iTunes via Airport Express, which took a lot more fiddling with settings. And everytime iTunes was upgraded it seemed to go wrong.

Posted on: 01 October 2011 by sundar

Hi everyone Just ordered my userve to go with ndac/xps2 My questions are Can I use powerline Ethernet connection as my router is very far from my system Can the cd ripper be used as a cd player if needed Thanks for any suggestions

Posted on: 01 October 2011 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi sundar, if you do a search on the forum this has been discussed many times befoe. In short Powerline over Ethernet works but it's bandwidth is relatively low by modern standards and its duplexity is similar to a wireless link and so may struggle with network load and hidef streaming as several have reported. Simple network and low def streaming should be fine.

The other issue is depending on how natural or revealing your hifi system is, Powerline over Ethernet floods your mains with exceedingly high level of RF energy (ie your house will broadband transmit) and this interference can rob so much what a quality Naim system can otherwise give you.

Having said that although I and countless others have experienced that, others ate fortunate not be able hear such distortions ( we are all different on what our brains filter out) so your mileage might vary.

The effect of broadband RF contamination/distortion tends to increase the noise floor, and subtle details are lost. In bad instances intermod distortions can be audibly heard and can make audio sound un natural, sharp or tiresome with the reduction of spatial information.

Once RF energy has infected your system matters like interconnects, connectors and impedance mismatches start to have a bigger audible play on system performance, because RF energy starts to reflect backwards and forwards at various points. These can affect the negative feedback of line amplifiers etc.
Simon

Posted on: 01 October 2011 by MartinCA

Originally Posted by sundar:

In answer to your second question - yes. You can easily toggle the US between ripping or playing CDs from the n-Serve app on the iPhone or on the browser/app on the PC/MAC. But when I've got through ripping my CDs I'll probably leave mine set to play. When playing CDs it sounds great through the nDAC. The only thing I miss is having basic CD controls on the US itself.

On Powerline - its like Simon says! I used Powerline for a while and it worked without any technical problem. Subjectively I didn't felt that it lost some SQ compared to ethernet cables - but I didn't do any proper listening tests. I just decided to eliminate a possible source of SQ loss by running an ethernet cable around the outside of the house instead between my router and a switch which sits by the HiFi with a NAS, which all cost very little relative to the aggragate cost of a nDAC, XPS and US. And that has worked perfectly so I've no regrets.

Posted on: 01 October 2011 by sundar

Thanks for the replies guys I get the point I will try my router in a new place or run a cat5 to living room I am replacing my cd5/flatcap with userve soon as the order is going through Thanks again Regards Sundar