Hi…quite new to streaming. So far I’ve ripped all my CDs to a portable hard drive using flac with dBPoweramp and I’m using Asset to access the music through my Mac which is where I have my portable hard drive plugged into.
All plays back fine. Just investigating the Naim App a bit more deeply I see in the ‘Additional’ tab there’s a ‘Stream As’ option where I choose between mp3, LPCM and Wave.
Only just discovered this. I just assumed I was streaming using flac. What setting should I choose in this ‘Stream As’ tab? I’m a bit confused. If I choose for instance Wave, how do I get it back to flac? Or have I totally misunderstood something? Some help here with this would be great. Thanks.
Which naim component is this with, nd5xs2?
Your server software would normally control the streamed format, you should choose wave to get the best, which works regardless of the actual file format. ie keep flac files but stream as wave.
Hi. So when I open the Naim app… I click on Servers then I click the Asset UPnP icon. Then there is an ‘Additional’ icon in the shape of a star… click on the Additional icon. This will take you to a lot of options…one of which is Steam As. Click on that and you will hopefully see the options I talk about. Clicking on each one doesn’t seem to do anything but I’m not sure what they are for? As I say…my files are ripped to flac
Sort of…those icons are a reflection of how you have set up Asset. In Asset you define what’s known as a browse tree (you maybe seeing the default browse tree, not sure) . The browse tree determines what you will see in the Naim app after you select Asset as the server. Try modifying your Asset browse tree and see how it changes what you see in the Naim app.
You can remove any of those options in the advanced settings.
Remember Asset is not just for Naim streamers… so it could be a usable option on other streamers.
The full menu app screen as published with Asset contains a load of icons (browse paths) you probably will never use, I edit it to simple, & only the browse paths I use. I also reduce the icon size so as all is visible on the one screen.
Ah…right. I’ll be honest. I’ve never tampered with the browse tree. Yes…I’ve deleted the ‘Stream As’ from the drop down menu in Asset and has removed it from the Naim App. Many thanks indeed sir.
I do have Asset on my NAS, but mostly use MinimServer, so you’d be best getting the info from an Asset expert, perhaps on the Asset part of the dBpoweramp forum. But I’ll have a go!
Asset offers the possibility of decoding the audio before it is sent to the player. This allows use of renderers that do not support a format directly and can send audio to the player as mp3, or as PCM, either linear or wave. So I suspect the “stream as” option is there to implement this functionality. If so, it certainly isn’t needed for Naim players with say FLAC. Just choose a FLAC track and it will play in that format on your streamer unless you’ve set it to transcode. You should be able to confirm this on the app.
I get a bit confused with editing tags in dBPoweramp and Asset. I’ve deleted a few tags in dBPoweramp but I guess I need to delete tags in Asset to stop them showing up on the app?
So I guess I can edit tags in dBPoweramp as to what metadata is kept…but when it comes to the actual Naim App then editing Asset is what I need to do to delete certain icons that I don’t require?
They are related to a certain degree. Metadata is really important if you want a consistent and quality browsing experience. dBPoweramp has a great suite of tools to help you. Try and decide what Metadata you want and then make those fields consistent across your rips. You can then use Asset to create views based on your metadata…that may be a bit beyond where you are but give it some thought and do some searches.
For example, when I rip my CDs I check what the dynamic range is of the tracks I have ripped as an album and add that to the metadata of the ripped tracks using the “mood” tag but I could use another tag if I wanted. I then create a view in the browse tree in Asset for “mood” which then enables me to browse all my ripped music based dynamic range…you can play around and create some unusual views if you want. However, you have to write the metadata to your rips and it’s best to do that as few a times as possilbe particulaly if you have a large collection.
