Am I the only one that finds Apple Airplay2 really unstable? I am using it with Apple Music to try to give me multiroom control. I have a large library of about 27,000 tracks which might be contributing to the problem. It often fails to load the library (the circle gets to about 80% and then fails) and even when it does it then often loses it. I don’t have other network issues. It’s a shame because it’s a nice idea and really good when it does work.
I use airplay for Apple Music to my NDX2 and it is completely flawless. Infact it’s more stable for me than the Naim app itself.
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I can’t say I’ve had any problems using Airplay. Having said that, I can’t say I would want to use it with a large library, assuming you mean a locally stored library. Naim (and most other) streamers are designed to use UPnP servers for that.
On which system are you actually storing/hosting the library? A Mac, a PC, a NAS?
And on which device do you use which app to access the library? This seems to be the place where loading fails?
The actual playback devices are rather “dumb” with AirPlay and will just play, what they are served. (Apart from potential volume and minimal playback control they can send back to the source.)
I am using a NAS to store the library and an iPad (have tried both an older iPad Pro with a bigger memory and a brand new 2021 iPad with 64GB of memory [but nothing else on it]) to access. I am Home Sharing using iTunes (latest version) and Windows 10 on my PC and Apple Music on the iPads.
I have both ALAC and MP3 versions of my library. The MP3 version seems much more stable (but not completely without crashes). I have just made up a 3 artist, 22 album ALAC library which so far is faultless. Apple claim you can have up to a 100,000 tracks in a library and my main library has about 27,000 tracks.
Aha; okay. So the NAS is running an iTunes server?
I have a meager 10k tracks in a local Music (former: iTunes) library on a Mac (with fast SSD and all). Absolutely no lags there, but it’s not comparable to your case.
I recently had a reference to a PC/iTunes installation (with more tracks than mine, older PC), which was really struggling with the library, until I replaced the HDD with an SSD.
I can only speculate about potential performance issues. Could be the NAS struggling (with CPU, RAM, or the disks), something slowing down the network, or even the clients struggling with synchronizing the large library.
I guess this would need a more thorough description & investigation into your setup, the specs of involved devices, and seeing, how it all behaves.
I don’t use remote libraries, and the local one is perfectly fast. When using the “Remote” app on my iOS devices, it takes a bit to load the (meta-data of the) library from the Mac. But that’s different protocol again.
Any chance trying the “Remote” app, e.g. against the iTunes on Windows? - I used the Remote app for multi-room control long before there was AirPlay 2, since iTunes (and only iTunes) could already send AirPlay (1) to multiple devices; hence Remote was giving me more options, than running a personal-sharing version of the iTunes library to the iOS devices.
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