Hi everybody,
Has anyone else noticed that when streaming JB Radio 2 Flac HiDef radio stream, that only the song title is displayed, when using the Naim app. The artist is never displayed for all songs. Has anyone else streamed the Flac stream , without using the Naim app. The only stream I can find with Roon, provides no metadata at all.
I emailed JB Radio 2 enquiring about the anomaly, the following is the reply, -
If anyone on the forum could shed any light on this, it would be greatly appreciated. Alternatively calling Naim HQ @Naim.Marketing and @Stevesky.
Thanking all in anticipation of replies.
Update: I highlighted this problem to Roon yesterday evening. Very happy to report this morning, that I had a email in my inbox, reporting they had fixed the problem.
Currently, listening to JB Radio-2 Flac stream with song title and artist metadata working correctly.
Come on Naim, @Naim.Marketing let’s see what you can do
Forgot to mention, Roon went above and beyond by also displaying the metadata for which album the track is from, as well. Many thanks to Roon development team and especially BrianW for sorting this out. I hope Naim can also resolve this too.
We’ve taken a look and although the product gets the metadata and decodes it fine, the limitation is in the apps. However, this is a bit of moving target of non standards.
Primarily traditional live radio streams come down to the station name and then a single line of metadata. In that metadata the broadcaster can put what ever they fancy. Consider it like FM with RDS.
JBRadio are actually transmitting metadata data like they’re playing discrete tracks on a playlist and hence doesn’t fit a typical radio stream any more… more a live playlist stream in a Ogg/Flac stream.
I’ll raise a Jira to our apps team to review, but based on JBRadio is a very volatile station on if its working and what they do, so it won’t be that high up on priority list. It can be a slippery slide on chasing non-standards as well, as every broadcast station (that is not a radio station!) can end up making up their own rules.
Thank you, Steve for a reply.
Do Roon use a different decoding engine compared to Naim, or do they just have more personnel, to be able to quickly rectify this. As the stream from JB Radio is a non standard, I can only presume that for Naim, it is like trying to hit a moving target from a firing position, that is moving at a variable speed.
Life was so much easier, when learning radio and TV theory.
In our case the product extracts the metadata, but apps wise we have dedicated per source screens - so internet radio. Currently the internet radio screen has no concept of discrete track/album/artist metadata for a radio stream, as in practice apart from JBRadio2 it doesn’t exist as a standard in the world of iRadio. Observe bigger players like Radio Paradise who have wisely merged the metadata server side into the single recognised metadata entry for compliance.
I can’t talk for Roon, but changing stuff with no test plan is typically asking for a future of compliance pain to support all the one off logic that can build up over the years.
So overall, we will consider it, but so far unless this becomes accepted by a critical mass of stations, it’s chasing the whims of a hobby station that considers this stream as engineering grade.
This issue with JB Radio 2 has come up several times, and I don’t think you can blame the Naim App this time…
Indeed, I get very similar effect when using Moode Audio on my RPi, with the added fun that playback stops completely after the current track has finished playing…
I was not blaming Naim for this. I was trying to get a handle on what was going on, as it seemed at odds as compared to other HiDef radio stations. If you are a Roon user, you will see that they have presently managed to enable that all the relevant metadata is displayed for JB Radio-2, if you or anyone else is interested. You are welcome
