Yes agreed. I totally get a core for someone who wants a one stop shop and doesn’t have much computer experience. But it would make no sense with an nd555 to do anything other than run Ethernet from the core.
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Thanks for the replies. You’ll never guess the culprit of my problem….
My bloody 3 year old pulled out one of my Chord Music links on my speakers!! Now it’s back in - and I was fully of expletives - it sounds as I expected. Very high standard!
Question is now, how do I delete album duplicates, and if an album cover comes up but there are no track names beneath, please see picture, does that mean the files are not copied across?
Please see picture. See one versus the other.
Jon
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Good question! I can remember which laptop we used (MacBook Pro from when they still had a CD drive. I really don’t remember what software we used - I was guided through the process by (a) my girlfriend who had already ripped CDs to her non-Core NAS, (b) a friend who does a lot of this sort of thing and (c) the internet. Sorry, but it was in about 2017…
No worries Nick! I ripped all my cds back in 2013 and gradually bought fewer cds as I preferred vinyl. I think I last ripped a cd before lockdown! The gold standard is one of the accurate rip style packages that validate the ripped disk checksums against a crowdsourced database. Using something like itunes does risk a poor error ridden rip. I assume core uses a similar data base validation technique and then it will at least get a result as good as say the accurate rip software, though of course not better. Take care.
Use Ethernet, with a good switch and a linear power supply on the switch. Use a good power lead on the Core. Rip to WAV, or download in WAV. Or get a decent record player 
You got to love kids!
I wouldn’t bother messing around with new power cables for the Core. If you are in UK you get a Powerline Lite in the box with it and that works fine.
To delete a duplicate album, you tap on the album you want to delete, now you have a list of tracks. Look for the three dots icon in the top right of the screen and tap that. Delete this album is the bottom option.
If there is nothing written under the album picture, then you probably need to edit the metadata. You do that by clicking on the album in question, and going to the same three dot icon, tap on it and select edit metadata. You can add the album name and so on there. Don’t forget to tap save in the top left hand corner before you exit or you will lose your edits,
Agree totally, except the wav bit 
if your upnp server transcodes flac to pcm (eg roon, asset etc) then flac is just a more convenient file container to store files.
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UPnP servers, including Asset, serve files in the format on which they are stored, so the streamer will receive it as WAV, FLAC or whatever.
(The exception to this is that some servers, such as Asset and the 1st gen Naim servers, can transcode on the fly, allowing you to store in FLAC and serve as WAV.)
The early Naim streamers sounded slightly better when they received a WAV stream rather than FLAC, although the difference was very small to my ears. These streamers had a slightly increased workload unpacking FLAC which is apparently why they sound better with WAV.
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iTunes is not great for SQ-agreed! I think we have had comparable experiences here.
I ripped about 600 CDs to the Core before shipping it and the other boxes listed to Tasmania - much cheaper than buying new kit there. I was worried about signal quality / reliability when streaming to the middle of nowhere, but so far that has never been an actual problem.
If I ever notice any SQ difference between stream and rip on that system, I just look for a different streaming version, so the Core mainly gets used for the small number of CDs that are not available streaming.
At home in Wimbledon I have CDS2, NDX2/XPSDR, 52, 300DR and LP12. The LP12 is still the best source - with the best vinyl and best recordings. The CDS2 gets used least because Tidal and Qobuz now offer me almost all the music I have on CD, and a bit of care in picking which stream option to use delivers SQ that I really can’t distinguish from my CD.
As with clocks on CD players, cables and support-gadgetry, there seems to be lots of potential here for ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ effects, but all items are not equal when actually listening (whether we can explain why or not). After all, some of us remember being told c.40 years ago (with apparently good science behind it) that CD offered “perfect sound forever”, which it didn’t.
Imho, all that we can do when picking boxes is to try to let our ears decide without lots of bias - and then stop listening to the hifi and get back to listening to the music.
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Sure unless you switch on the transcoding in asset of course. In roon the stream is automatically converted to pcm. I convinced myself I heard a slight improvement from flac to native pcm so years ago (even before roon) I started switching on transcoding.
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Yes there are still some qobuz tracks that sound worse than the 90s cds I have even when they are streamed at hi res! But increasingly fewer thank goodness, My vinyl versions are almost always better still. Enjoy!
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For me Roon sounds consistently a bit worse than a UPnP stream. You might think that the fact that it provides the streamer with PCM data that doesn’t have to be processed from FLAC or WAV would give it an advantage, but it seems not to be the case. I found that using BubbleUPnP Server improved the sound, but that sends FLAC or WAV over UPnP.
How did you send a pcm stream without using Roon?
Asset had the ability to send it is either pcm or wav if i recall. Roon to linn is now fully RAAT by the way. Linn say that the streams are identical and that there is no way one sounds better than the other. But you may have experienced different. I couldn’t hear a difference when I compared.
I believe the differences between WAV, FLAC etc were related to the early Naim streamers.
The theory is that WAV requires less processor power to unpac to PCM than does FLAC.
I can hear a very slight difference with my NDX, hence I have Asset set FLAC to “play as” WAV
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So if the Core is cold will the rip not be as good as if it’s warm, or is it a playback issue?
I use Exact Audio Copy (on a Windows PC) and I find the rips are pretty much perfect. Then MP3tag to edit the metadata as necessary.
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Yes I have used that in the past. Its very good. Probably half my cd collection was ripped using it.
Ripping a cd is not really like recording it onto tape.
A cd is actually a poor vehicle for storing digital information as dirt and scratches on the cd surface can make it difficult to read the information (its all 0s and 1s - not an audio signal). Cd players used to have lots of error correction built in because it was rare for the transport to get a clean read from the disk.
Dvd/bluray drives in computers have lots of error checking that software like eac and acurate rip can utilise to double and triple check that the read from cd disk is accurate. Accurate rip added an extra layer of validation. If 100 people with their own copies of the cd and their own dvd/bluray drives each rip a track and get the same checksum in the file thats ripped, then they are very very likely to be both identical and accurate.
I don’t know how core rips cds. But it must be using the above techniques if it is creating an accurate rip. Don’t believe anyone who says it creates a ‘better rip’ than an accurate rip validated from a laptop or pc using the above software.
Hope that helps.
My ears are old and tired but plugging in the 82/HC/250 after several months away suggested that a being ON for a few hours was an audible help.
By contrast, the Core was plugged in later, after using ND5XS2 only the previous day. I couldn’t hear any difference at all in replay as it warmed.
YMMV.