Now that the Core is no longer manufactured, there will no doubt come a time when it can’t be repaired either. I am wondering what I may have to do when this day finally comes. I would presumably need to get an NAS and use my backup storage to move the files on to it. But is this a simple operation, or do I need to account for the fact that the Core has separate directories for CD rips and downloaded files? In other words, does the meta data move seamlessly when moving those directories? Anything else I should be aware of?
Of course, I have had my Core for about 5 years now, and there is no reason to think it couldn’t put in another decade or more, so I am probably overthinking all this!
If your files are flac, then it is straightforward to use a NAS instead of the Core.
But if your files are WAV, then the metadata will be a major problem and you would need to either re-rip the CDs or use special software to sort the metadata out.
Most downloads are flac, so it’s the CDs that you have ripped that may present a problem. The Core rips into flac or Wav, depending which it is told to use when it is setup.
Having the files in different folders for rips and downloads is no problem at all!
Ripping to FLAC is wise for precisely this reason. I would set up the Core automatic backup to a NAS, then when it dies or you sell it you already have a fully functioning alternative rather than having to wait until you have replaced hardware, restored from backup etc.
Maybe replace with a similar product, such as the excellent Innous streamer / servers. ( Note : Next generation of Innous products - just arriving - may require a disc reader or ripper )
Move all the files across.
Carry on.
Albeit, with Innous “Sense” UI, instead of Naim App. IMHO Sense is so much easier, ( than the Naim App.).
I have been told that locally streaming .WAV is better than .FLAC as .WAV is uncompressed and therefore imposes less of a computing load onto the streamer. But I don’t have both local .FLAC and .WAV files of the same album, so I haven’t been able to verify this claim with my own two ears. FWIW.
WAV and FLAC streams are both received uncompressed at the streamer.
FLAC is uncompressed as it’s unpacked (read) from the NAS, the streamer has no function in that process.
The very slight extra process load on the streamer using FLAC and WAV is the conversion to PCM, both go thru this process but as WAV is practically pure PCM it has slightly less process load.
Interesting, I can feel the difference with my NDX2 even though I would admit it’s small (but still significant in the highs and airiness, at least for me). My files are almost all WAVs for this reason but I could happily live with FLACs too.
Some servers can convert on the fly, so that you can store FLACs and send them to your streamer as WAV. This solves the issue of metadata compatibility. Unfortunately Naim removed this function from their servers when they released the Core, but others such as Asset or Minimserver can do it.
I use JRiver and it can do that conversion on the fly indeed. To be honest I’ve never compared it to the direct use of WAVs, in theory there should be no difference.
I must admit I haven’t followed the whole thread, but I have working metadata on my WAVs. I guess it’s just a Naim issue.
It’s just that Naim has a proprietary way of saving the metadata with WAVs (originally this was for the usual “sounds better” reason). That works just fine in the Naim ecosystem. They haven’t changed it so as to maintain backward compatibility, but if you try to move away from Naim then it needs special measures to convert the metadata into a format that other things can read.
I have finally been able to listen to the difference between .WAV and .FLAC over several days and got my wife to do a blind test for me (to make sure I am not delusional). Turns out with Presto, if you buy a digital album, you can download both the .WAV and .FLAC versions, so that was easy. My two tests were orchestral (Bach suites for orchestra) and piano quintets (Fauré). The conclusion is the .WAV is better and it is quite noticeably better (not that .FLAC is bad, of course, it’s excellent), so noticeable that I would not want to buy .FLAC albums despite the hard disk space save. Instantaneous preference in an A/B test by my wife too, who didn’t know what the difference was and which A/B was what (or even that it involved two different file formats. As you can see from my profile I am a NDX2 guy, although with the XPS-DR and Chord Qutest as DAC; I stream from my Mac Studio (might invest in a dedicated Mac mini to act as server to avoid interference from whatever is running on my Mac Studio, but not sure if it makes a difference!). For whatever it is worth.
It makes no sense but my dealer agrees and does all his lp dubs in 196/24 wav. I have done comparisons - albeit only a few - and wav sounds better. I don’t understand it but i agree.
In that case you could run a UPnP server on a basic Synology or QNAP NAS which would be cheaper, and almost certainly electrically quieter than any Mac. Choose a server which can convert FLAC to WAV on the fly and you get the benefit of smaller lossless files to download and store, while still serving your preferred WAVs to the streamer.
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