Damaged coverart on early Uniti Core/ NDX and how to solve the problem

Hi-Fi Corner
1

Some 6 weeks ago my Uniti Core started to show damaged coverart on my IPad and the NDX 2 front display.
Some covers were shown completely, others just as a fraction of appr. 20 to 60% or not at all.
Restarting the router, switch or Core didn’t solve the problem.
So I decided to call the German Naim office in Hamburg and explained the issues faced during several weeks. Interestingly they couldn’t explain what went wrong but two weeks later they asked me for the Core serial number which is 444691.
It turned out that this is one of the earlier devices which still has a 16GB SD card which contains all cover art. So the explanation for getting this sort of issue is the fact that after several software updates, the information on the SD card gets damaged and on newer Cores the SD card has therefor been abandoned. So the only way is to remove the SD card, as all cover art is also available on the SSD, mounted on the caddy tray.
The following DIY “repair” instruction does not influence your warranty according to NAIM Germany but will help to get the device work properly again:

To remove the SD follow these steps:

  1. Remove caddy tray
  2. Remove the 5 bolts that keep the rear cover plate in position. Attention: There are 3x Torx 10 bolts on the right and 2x Torx 5 (!) on the left.
  3. Remove rear cover plate
  4. Remove SD card, located between USB and Digital coax socket
  5. After removing the SD card (which still might be used for other storage purposes elsewhere) the rear cover has to be put in place again by tightening the 5 bolts in the right order.
    Now the factory settings need to be applied to make the Core run again:
    When turning on the Uniti Core, keep the Power/Standby button pressed, until the white LED above the front USB socket starts to blink. Attention! The music data file will be set back and all favourites and playlists will be erased. So don’t forget to make a copy before starting this process.
    After the Core has been put into factory mode, turn it off again and remove the power line. You may also reset the NAIM app if you want.
    Now restart the Uniti Core and Naim-App to proceed with all settings.
    The storage device will be recognized and you will be asked if the music should be erased or kept on the SSD/HDD. Most likely you want to keep all these files.

Greetings from Switzerland

Meccanoman

2

Thats new info,never realised they had an sd card at all, let alone for cover art.

3

Yes, they had. And when plugging in that SD card into my PC, it showed that the cover art indeed was damaged in the same way as it was visible on NDX 2 and IPad!
However, when using my network and watching the Core’s SSD content on my PC, everything looks just fine. So kudos to the Naim people in Hamburg.

Meccanoman

2 Likes
4

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