Which streamer IB?
My understanding is that the new Unitis don’t support some older commands (next track) that may be deprecated which supported gapless - not sure about NDX 2 etc
My ‘streamer’ is Audirvana direct into my DAC (Dave).
All the the new streamers anf Unitis are the same, no Naim app no gapless.
That, or at least the way you have said it, seems to suggest a limitation of the Naim software rather than the UPnP player - though, of course, as always with software either side could argue its the other’s fault unless there is a definitive standard, which I gather there may not be for UPnP servers.
…I really don’t undesrtand why this was never considered an important feature - it’s a must have for many and my primary reason for using Roon.
Presumably the software writers don’t listen to prog rock! (I have always gained the impression that jazz predominates in Naimland, so maybe that explains it…)
It’d be interesting to find a list of gapless albums, and prog might well dominate, but other works including opera/choral music and electronica where tracks should follow with no gaps are jarringly unlistenable with gaps.
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Yes - for me, any failure with gapless play is a complete game stopper. If a fault and fixed virtually instantly then fine, but otherwise I would abandon whatever is the culprit. However, with UPnP it can be difficult to know where the fault actually lies. At least with my use of Audirvana there would be no question as nothing else at play - and fortunately it performs in this mode without a glitch.
Don’t upgrade to a new streamer then or your screwed. Unless the upcoming firmware update sorts the issue out.
If I had one and it didn’t do gapless play of gapless albums it would go back for a refund as not fit for purpose.
It won’t unless you use Naim app. If you use any other controller no dice.
If Naim charged extra for the control app I’d wonder if it was intended to make people want that, however they don’t…
But if it can do gapless with the Naim remote control app, then the issue isn’t anything fundamental in either the UPnP player (Audirvana in that mode currently, given the thread we’re in) or in the Naim streamer software. That would seem to point to either 1) a fault in whatever other control software is in use, or 2) if that other control software works OK with streamers other than Naim, and with a variety of UPnP servers, an incompatibility between said control software and Naim.
The problem I believe is that the current Uniti/Classic streamers do not support the SetNextAvTransportURI command, which some sources say is not recommended or deprecated - trouble is it’s better than nothing if it works!
Page 19 here I think:
It also seems you can pull from a UPnP server fine using the Naim App, but using any other controller which is a push won’t work for gapless. So for Audivarna you would need to be able to pull via Naim app to get gapless, thus making the Audivarna interface redundant as soon as you use it to push you won’t get gapless. Same for BubbleUpnP, Lumin, mconnect and Kazoo apps. I tried them all no gapless where they can all render gapless to other software clients.
So which bit of software is the cause (and on what basis is it a definitive conclusion), or is it an incompatability rather than something faulty?
No idea. Naim have admitted themselves this is the case in the new kit. No idea why but they decided to do things differently in this generation that’s how it is. I’ve tried all above controllers and 3 different servers all the same + Audivarna pushing UpNp for the brief time I got it to see the Atom.
With audirvana 3.5 I was surprised about the sound quality. The stage is much wider and sometimes more information in the heights than directly above the native tidal support of my unitiqute2. It is unimportant if the source material is 16/44 or mqa. the ipad / ipad app A+ is not good… too bad that roon can not stream upnp directly.
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The gapless issue with UPnP servers ‘pushing ‘ to Naim streamers is a real pity, all the more so for anyone streaming online it offers Tidal (including MQA first unfold if wanted), Qobuz and HiResAudio. I hope it gets resolved - though not an issue of course to those of us enjoying its superb sound quality as a renderer.
Having just had a second assessment of Roon, prompted by its undoubted popularity for some users and the clear evidence that it had changed in the two years since I last trialled, I can say that it has reinforced how good Audirvana is. With the recent introduction of the facility to use file location as a sort criterion, Audurvana has fixed the main gripe I used to have with it, and which Roon still has not fixed, allowing my music to fall into place naturally notwithstanding whatever metadata may or may not be set. And having been used to it I hadn’t appreciated before Roon how nice it is to have artists appear in a simple alphabetic list (filterable) allowing very rapid skimming through. Added to that is the remarkable value for money, Audirvana costing only a fraction of Roon!
I thought I’d revisit trying out the UPnP capability of Audirvana (3.5.8) and having done a power cycle on the ND5 XS 2 it now shows up as an output option. It seems happy enough playing everything as before with the benefit of having various libraries all in one place. I’ll keep an eye on it loosing sight of the streamer over UPnP and report back, seems to be ok after a few hours of fiddling anyway.
Gapless?