It sounds so simple, maybe I’m just a luddite…I can’t browse my album collection by artist and see the albums with their artwork in one list. Imagine a record shop with dividers showing the artist (no picture necessary) and within the divider all the albums are available with their lovely artwork.
I am using the Naim app, a Synology NAS running MinimServer, and my CDs are ripped to flac using dBpoweramp. Interestingly, Windows Media Player shows exactly what I want (see screenshot below), but I want my controller to be a mobile device, so either iOS or Android.
Check out roon, you might find it’s close to the “record shop” experience you’re missing.
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Yes like Perizoqui says above, check out Roon. I’d argue its your own “personal record shop” because you can customize it to your liking. I have a “Classical” section, a “Jazz” section and “90’s” section. lol. You can filter by file type as well. One of my favorite features is to arrange file types. I’d suggest the free trial to see how you get along with it.
My music is stored genre-artist/composer (laterr is for classical) then album. When I had an ND5XS it could readily browse the file structure, exactly like a record store - other than it was all text, not sleeve images. Is it that that is missing?
With Audirvana, my present library software and player, I can see a list of artists or composers, select one and all the album images appear - but the trouble is it is metadata rather than file structure based, with the result that some albums are invisible, some in the wrong place etc… When I trialled Roon, admittedly 20 months ago now, it was much the same. Why, oh why, can’t they implement simple file structure based solutions, with metadata providing supplementary info? Do that and show the album cover images from the same locations and all would be great!
Naim app for iOS, with MinimServer should give you exactly what you are after.
Could you please post some shots from the Naim app interface and show what available metadata sorting options you see?
If you use MinimServer and select an artist, the first entry that you get should be “n albums” where “n” is the number of albums associated with the selected artist.
If you tap “n albums” you get a list of the artist’s albums with their artwork, title, etc. Just as in a record shop.
This is at least what I see in my control points (BubbleUPnP, Linn Kazoo) and it should be the same in every control point.
Yes, but using this method means that I have to navigate past 2 screens that don’t have pictures only boring folder icons i.e. the list of artists and then the list that contains “n albums”.
I can’t for the life of me understand what the objection to the Naim app working with the UnitiServe or a NAS and Minimserve is. I have mine set up to Artist category only, which I browse alphabetically. My collection consists of approx. 800 artists, just under 3,500 albums. I don’t normally need to browse by genre, as about 80% of my collection falls into the rock or metal categories, and I can pretty much remember by name all my folk, jazz, pop etc.
I guess life could be much more difficult with bigger collections or those comprising mainly of classical recordings, where you might wish to browse by conductor or orchestra rather than composer, but I imagine such instances are very much in the minority?
Generally because the Naim app is very unreliable and not the best in class.
Which version of the app are you referring to?
Hi Adam, your post was very encouraging! I started experimenting with the MinimServer properties in MinimWatch installed on my PC and changed the tagOptions property from Album.sortTags=(Album,Artist) to Album.sortTags=(Artist,Album). This was mostly successful, in my “n albums” folder if I don’t use the A-Z option, I now see my music grouped by artist and album within artist. The only trouble is the album name appears in bold instead of the artist name. Can I achieve my ideal goal of a list of music grouped by artist (in bold) and with the albums’ artwork?
Hi nbpf, your post was helpful too. The trouble with the default settings is that I got the list sequenced by album name instead of by artist name. so not like a record shop.
In your experience, I assume you mean? I use the Apple version on my iPads and iPhone, and have found it to be rock solid over the last 4 years. Given the thousands of Naim users that have visited and viewed this and the previous version of the forum, I can only recall the same old 20 or 30 banging on about the app. As usual, the silent majority just get on and happily use it. I put this into the same category as those who complain about the internet connectivity of the MuSo and Uniti ranges. They are either very unlucky, or there is an issue with their setup that they blame on the equipment or software. We all know the old saying about workmen…!
The problem the OP is addressing has nothing to do with the Naim app. It is a problem of MinimServer configuration and the most suitable place to get a qualified advice is probably the MinimServer forum.
I think this down to the MinimServer configuration.
I’d suggest contacting Simon Nash (the developer of MinimServer) - he is the most helpful chap.
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Thanks, nbpf and Adam - I have posted the question with an updated title on MinimServer forum.
Here is an example of the record store experience you get when you use roon. This is a sorted by Artist , Album view with Focus reset to off, running on my Roon remote Android app on a Google Pixel Slate tablet.
Anything picked here will command the Roon core in my Study to stream to any of my Roon end-points - in this case a Naim Uniti Nova.
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OP, is this what you’re after? This is album view, but with the albums arranged by artist & then within each artist, in chronological order.
Obviously you can choose whether to display a list or a grid yourself.
If is what you want, IIRC what I entered into tagOptions in MinimWatch was this:
Album.sortTags={Artist, +Date, #AudioQuality}
Edit, just to show list view in case it’s clearer:
