Cautionary reminder for Uniti Serve owners

Streaming Audio
1

Following a 60s power cut, my Uniti Serve has failed. I had the unit from new and suffered an early failure (fixed under warranty) so I was well aware it isn’t the most robust piece of kit.

Despite several power down cycles, the drive continues to flash and my dealer confirmed it required a return to Salisbury - likely to be £600+.

Happily I have a NAS back up of my downloads while the rips I have lost are almost exclusively available via streaming. I have decided against the repair and sold the unit for spares for a modest but welcome price.

Posting as a reminder to current users to save in FLAC and keep doing those backups!

3 Likes
2

I would like to know what a 60s power cut is, were uServes around then?

Also presumably you are going to look at other solutions rather than give naim 600 for a uServe?

3

I got confused as well Gary, then I realised it was 60 seconds. :grinning:

1 Like
4

It was indeed a sixty second power cut. Sorry for confusion!

I will continue to use Qobuz and one of my download back ups is on a NAS that I can access via my ND5 XS2.

5

Same happened to me at the very start of this year.
I paid less than that to go back to Naim. Thankfully all music was saved and it had a full service with some capacitors replaced.
Hopefully will last another 10+ years.

6

With a UnitiServe it is not a question of if, but when. I have converted all my music files to Flac on it, backed up onto a QNAP NAS, ready for the fateful day.

Mine’s been back to Salisbury twice but has been rock solid for years since.

D’oh, why did I say that!

I speak to it very nicely each day, in the hope of good behaviour going forward.

3 Likes
7

Nigel you prompt me to give this serious consideration. US SSD with wav files stored on QNAP (itself subject to a bacup). No probs so far, so I must not tempt fate.
Do you have a pointer as to how to do the wav to flac conversion? I have used XLD on iMac - is that one option or is it better to login in to the US? Long time since I set up the US!

8

As my US is the HDD version I did the WAV to Flac conversion on the US and then backed up those Flac files on my QNAP.

There was a recent thread on here on converting WAV to Flac on a US but not sure if that applies to the SSD version.

I am sure there are those who are more technical than me on here who might chime in.

1 Like
9

You need to convert to FLAC on the Unitiserve. It’s easy enough, just a little slow. Nearly all other converters will not incorporate the metadata into the FLAC file, so you will be left with the music files intact, but no artwork or other metadata to browse by.

10

I’ve retired mine it’s in a box in the linen press, I lived in fear for the last 2 years. Mine did restart after the odd blackout but it was no longer willing to rip CDs.

11

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.