For me a higher priority is Tidal hi-res functionality!
I would be using the Sounds app and casting it to my streamer using Airplay in any case, which is much more versatile than BBC radio within the Naim app, so my view is that itās not really an issue.
If it was a high res station broadcasting quality music with alternatives only available in lower quality I might feel differently, but thatās not the case here.
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Iāve just joined the Forum to find out what is happening with loss of BBC internet radio on my NAIM devices and am pleased to hear that I am not alone. It went down on all 3 of my NAIM streamers at around 0900 this morning. This has happened a few times this year, following the big outage for a few days over Christmas 2023. I hope NAIM are working hard to resolve it. It would be nice to hear from them so we can understand: what is causing it? what are they doing to stop it happening? A permanent resolution is required, otherwise the credibility of the system will suffer. If it is caused by vTuner alone then I wonder if Naim can switch to another supplier?
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Mineās back now !
Ditto, fingers crossed.
Yes all that has been discussed endlessly here. Naim knows what we all think, as you presumably know from reading the back threads?
Yes, the live BBC Radio appears to be working again. However, the list of programmes on the āOn Demandā list appears to be reducing rather than being refreshed by new programmes. I enjoy the back catalogue of programmes transmitted on Radio 4 Extra and recently havenāt been able to find those from the past week on the list on the Naim app. I have to use BBC Sounds on my iPad and use Apple Play to send them to my ND5 SX2.
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Hi all,
VTuner had a code issue that broke all token accessed BBC streams after the BBC discontinued BBC Radio 4 LW from their catalogue. This was fixed late yesterday. Apologies for the downtime.
BBC Ondemand - BBC have discontinued this for 3rd parties, so Ondemand will only be accessible from the BBC Sounds and similar BBC distribution points. VTuner should really remove this section, but while it stays the content available will slowly go as it times out.
Regards
Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.
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Isnāt the key thing here that the BBC is encouraging and supporting online radio streams through their BBC Sounds applications going forward (according to the BBC) and donāt encourage their APIs for third party developers. Now clearly these can be reverse engineered and appear on resources such on GitHub.com ā¦ but are subject to change and outage, and yes specific live only streams are made available to BBC accredited aggregators etc at this time. However the better and more sustainable approach surely is to focus on the BBC sounds app and link via AirPlay, casting or even embedding (that would be cool) and have full access to the BBC realtime and historic content?
I find the bbc Sounds quality is pretty poor compared to the url stream.
Depends on were you areā¦ in the UK itās the same actual stream once it is connected. So perhaps points to a less capable renderer you are using for Sounds.
ICY has been deprecated by the BBC, and the recommended stream formats now are DASH and HLS, and Naim supports at least one of these codecs/containers.
The focus on Sounds seems to be very much about āvalue for the licence fee payerā
A lot of broadcasters prefer to drive customers to their own apps (listener metrics/advertising/controlling user experience etc), but it often doesnāt help the home audio listener.
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playing direct from a streamer Ivtuner/airable etc) typically gives best quality, but areas like metadata and reliability can suffer when a 3rd party radio directory is involved,
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play via Airplay, and Apple will sample rate convert the audio, plus the phone/ipad has to be left on acting as a radio player. About 4hrs and be running to get the charger.
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play via Chromecast and there is still a sample rate converter in the mix, but at least the stream is playing on the streamer rather than the phone and beaming across, Downside is that often not enough audio buffered (so can dropout) and Googlecast doesnāt like to do anything fast and can be a bit quirky with some apps.
On Naim products we aim to support all options, but real-world most customers play direct from the streamer when listening to radio.
Best
Steve
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Steve - sure thanks - I was just thinking of the direction of the BBC with online streaming and their strategy - which does appear centred around the Sounds App so as to reduce their support costs around for 3rd party accessā¦ and less about supporting direct streams going forward, other than in perhaps the most basic sense - I guess you have to make a choice as Naim - but some sort of embedded Sounds player looks interesting, perhaps on an Android OS or browser type setup in the streamer (this way I would envisage sample rate casting conversion would be avoided)ā¦ and increasingly live linear streaming is not where the innovation seems to lie with the Beeb it appearsā¦
I think most non-techy types just want to select a BBC station on their hifi and listen to it, rather than messing around with airplay.
That doesnāt seem all that unreasonable to me either. Both my Auralic and Linn streamers seem to manage it without suffering frequent outages.
Roger
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Yeah I agree, hence the suggestion of an embedded appā¦ so you can get the programming other than the linear programmes which is a big part of BBC web radio. Most non tech types want access to content without having to think about its constraints.
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The problem is that many national broadcasters is doing the same with there own app similar to bbc sounds. Supporting this directly if possible would make life even harder for Naim than it is now with vtuner.
Indeed hence having an embedded android type OS could be beneficial with a locked down browser - a bit like some SmartTVs etcā¦
I guess although its called online or web radio - it increasingly is less about linear radio and more about providing non linear programming as well as pod casts if that takes your fancy etc for many media suppliers - the times are a changing ā¦ and as such bespoking an environment for each broadcaster is unsustainableā¦ and underneath the covers they increasingly use CDNs like traditional music streamers do.
Ultimately however its a prod dev choice, budgets and likely market returns.
If you want podcasts, then the simplest route is to chromecast Pocket Casts to your Naim device. Built-in services are usually a pale imitation of the original source, just check out how awful BBC Sounds is implemented on Sonos 
Is there a reason why Naim cannot directly access the āmusic/radioā stream directly? Licencing perhaps?
(just curious)
B&O ditched Tune-in and set up their own service - B&O Radio, so I dont see why it cant be done, perhaps thatās what theyāre doing - hopefully!