I have a SuperUniti, a Synology NAS with my music stored on it, and then I manage my music library on my PC using either FooBar 2000 or MediaMonkey.
I organize using genre and rating, and then I create smart playlists to search for a particular combo, for example “5* Classic Rock”.
Is there a way to access these playlists live in the Naim app (i.e. without needing a manual export to update them each time), and also is there a way to be able to rate songs through the app and have them reflected back into the playlists? For example if I’m listening to a new album and I like a song, I could tag it 5* while listening and then it would get included in the relevant smart playlists.
This is my first post so thanks v much for helping!
How do you play your files on your SU? What upnp software do you have on your NAS? Asset or Minim?
How are the smart playlists stored on your PC? Are there specific files?
My playlists are .m3u files stored on my NAS and I point Asset to them, but I have to manually create them - no sense of smartness there!
Lots of questions that might give us some pointers, but my overall suspicion is that you can’t do what you want (but there’s plenty of folks on here more knowledgeable than me).
Currently I’m using Synology’s Media Server and I play files on the SU through the app via UPnP streaming. The file ratings aren’t view-able there though, and I just tested Minim and Asset (which requires purchase after a trial period it looks like) and I couldn’t see the ratings via those services either.
The smart playlists are on the PC at the moment, but they could easily be recreated on the NAS (Media Server has a smart playlists) or in the Naim App and accessed that way. But I can’t see the music file ratings via the UPnP services, which would prevent the smart playlists from picking up the right files. I could export a static version of the playlists from the PC into .m3u files on the NAS but that’s a manual process and would need to be done every time I change a rating or add new music, which is what I’m trying to solve for.
And next level stuff - if I could also set the rating on the Naim app while listening and have it reflected back up the chain that would also be amazing!
The Asset browsing tree is pretty flexible, so you may be able to set up something that allows you to select the rating level and then the genre or vice versa. The online documentation might give a clue as to whether rating is useable as a browse category.
You definitely won’t be able to change the rating from within the Naim app and have that fed up the chain.
Just checked, and you can use Rating in the browse tree for Asset. I suspect this is only in the full paid-for version. You got therefore set up your browse tree to allow you to select everything that has a rating of five stars. You could combine that with genre too to allow the next step to select Rock.
It’s not expensive to buy Asset - £30ish. Give the full version a go. There’s still a chance you might not like how it’s implemented.
Ah thank you, I found it under dynamic browsing. I must have missed that before. It’s a bit weird in that if I look at an album, the songs don’t have the ratings listed there. But the rating folder under dynamic browsing filters them correctly, so it’s definitely reading the ratings from the files. I wonder why it doesn’t transmit them for the songs…?
Do you know if it’s possible to create or use smart playlists in Asset? The smart playlists I setup filter based on “genre contains XXX” and a rating (e.g. I can pick up “Soft Rock” and “Folk Rock” in the same playlist).
I think the browsing route will allow you to pick up all tracks with a 5-star rating. You could then filter that further by picking a genre, but I don’t think it can do two genres. It’s a route down a tree.
FYI I ended up using Synology’s standard built-in media server and saving .m3u files to a folder for it to read. I use FooBar to manage my music library and it’s a couple of clicks to save all playlists down (Shift+Click on File in the top menu and there is a “Save all playlists…” option). I’m usually in FooBar tagging new music anyway and my smart playlists are setup there, so it’s not too much of a hassle. Hope this helps!