I wish I could talk to the developers of the Uniti Core! I’d like to understand the reason for the situation under discussion (of course!). But I’d also like to understand why they have left it with such minimum capabilities. It’s not Roon Ready. It’s not capable of connecting with any subscription service like Tidal or Qobuz et al. It has no capability of internet connection for radio. I didn’t understand those limitations when I invested in the Uniti Core because I knew nothing whatsoever about atreaming. But their absence is the reason I’m turning to Roon. And now that I have, the situation with the metadata is, in a word - infuriating.
What you tell the Core is whether you want it to rip in FLAC or WAV. You can change anytime you want, but the existing rips aren’t converted. It can play lots of digital formats if it finds them in the downloads folder or in a music share.
Best
David
Therein lies the problem.
That is correct. However… It should be plainly stated in the documentation that choosing to rip in WAV has consequences and what those consequences are.
And why has Naim seemingly abandoned the Uniti Core. Was it designed with no upgrade path? But that shouldn’t stop Naim from providing us with tools to convert its proprietary form of WAV to regular WAV (preferred) or to FLAC.
When the Core was announced, I had high hopes for it, seeing it as potentially Naim’s answer to Melco etc, and with a built in renderer potentially my own future replacement for Mac Mini / Audirvana. When it was release and the initial teething problems overcome, it was unclear if the sound quality was up to Melco and Innuos - but the idiosyncrasies Started to become apparent, and it seemed to me to be a bit of an anachronism, and I lost interest: an opportunity wasted. I wonder if they could yet revamp it and make it what it could have been?
I am aware of no changes/upgrades to the Uniti Core, certainly not in the almost two and a half years I’ve owned it. It sure would be nice if it were to be made Roon Ready. That’d immediately add music subscription capability and Roon Radio. I believe it would also force Naim to convert to a standard version of WAV. That’d be enough for me and it doesn’t sound all that major to accomplish, though I’ve really no idea what would be involved. I think mainly software.
I am not sure if my string above works for core if someone shows me what a file name looks like i can probably advise.
Gary,
I have to confess I don’t understand at all what this accomplishes. Does mp3tag recognize Naim’s non-standard metadata? It’s unusual folder management?
Maybe it’d become much clearer if I downloaded mp3tag. But meanwhile, what does the string do?
The string looks at the FILE NAME of the audio file, not the meta data (which does not exist) and converts it into meta data which is then saved in the audio file, allowing other apps to recognise it.
As I say the File Naming of core may differ from previous gen but its easy to adjust the string if I know how a file name is written.
The structure for previous gen, hdx etc was Artist folder/Album Name then Track number - Track Name.
String above extrapolates that to metadata for you.
I did my entire library (from the MQ folder) in like 4 minutes.
If what @garyi is doable it will give Roon a fighting chance of identifying the album. Once it can do that then the rest of the metadata becomes less important as Roon can use its own. Then you could concentrate on any albums Roon doesn’t identify and fix these.
It’s still not perfect as it would be good to have the metadata correct even if you don’t currently need it. i.e. should you move away from Roon it would be good to have a decently curated library.
This is where something like MusicBrainz could help perhaps, as after the rudimentary metadata has been done as you will be lacking genres, performers, conductors etc.
Some people use Bliss which may help with this. I don’t have any experience of this but others may have used it and could chime in?
Thats correct, roon will now read your basic meta data and be able to add its own because they are not blind files
Also I used it to simply then convert those WAVs to Flac using a suitable programme, again now with metadata within the files.
Ooh, it looks like that approach might point towards how to fix my metadata problems, which so far with various tool attempts I found abysmally laborious and gave up. Being on a standard computer filing system, however, I would want to go on path rather than filename, tge fikename being only the track number+name: I’ll have to look into whether Mp3tag can use a similar command for that.
As I say I did my entire library in nearly seconds. I dont trust these tagging programs to much as they tend to crash so did it in batches but was very quick todo.
Of course if you have the older gen hardware I would totally recommend letting it convert to flac for you. I have never heard a difference which is good for me a guess 
in MP3TAG it will show you how it will lay the metadata out based on the string you have entered and in my experience at least the file naming from naim was consistent.
Of course all bets are off in your downloads folder.
And finally I did all this post NS02, it probably will effect how you HDX/Core sees its own ripped files, so I suggest doing it on a backup of a backup.
I’m the last to defend the Core, BUT . . . it’s a server. A review of the Naim website would have told you that it’s a ripper/server.
Look at the use case described on the Naim website:
A discussion with a knowledgeable dealer about what you wanted to accomplish would have not led you down the path you went down, expecting it to be a player instead of a server.
IF Roon can figure out what album it is, it will use its own metadata to produce the right result, including album art.
But actually in last two sentences of your first copied block, Naim themselves in different words say it is a player. What they don’t talk about is it being an online streaming interface - I assume that is what you were meaning?
It doesn’t alter the oddity of their metadata and storage protocols, but I guess they did the way they did because they believe it maximises sound quality, though it somewhat limits its ripping ability to use internally.
It plays what it hath ripped. Whilst there’s always room to try to read between the lines, the dealer would have explained.
And really the OP shouldn’t feel that bad; we all started somewhere, and who amongst us hasn’t purchased something only later to learn that what they really end up wanting is something that does something more or differently?
I don’t feel bad in one respect. I did learn a lot about streaming my music. The Uniti Core does its job well, though I’ve had plenty of mysterious things happen as a result of being a novice but the forum has always bailed me out and I’m very grateful for the good help I’ve had.
But I can’t forgive Naim for adopting a proprietary version of WAV. Even worse, a different format from the UnitiServe. Even worse, Naim offers no conversion capability. It seems to have abandoned the Uniti Core and offers it “as is” for the future.
The use of a proprietary wav/tagging ecosystem has been here since the UnitiServe was launched in May 2011. So a lot of water under the bridge before you bought it. To folks who have no desire to do what you’re trying to do, it’s irrelevant. And may people who own the Core love how it sounds as a server.
The inability to post-haec convert to flac, as the UnitiServe could, this long after launch, indeed is perplexing. Once you decide you want “out” of the Naim ripper ecosystem, you should sell off the Core. The pain of what to do with the ripped library is real, and it does seem that there are some lesser pain workarounds with third-party tagging software.
