I have a Nova and love it but I’m not too keen on the Naim App (android version), thus I prefer using the Logitech Media Server interface on a PC or the Squeeze Control app on my phone and tablet.
I find the Naim app slow and it often doesn’t find my servers (LMS, Plex and ReadyNas), it takes several attempts to bring them back, plus LMS has a lot more functionalities. Indexing is also great compared to the Naim app.
I have about 1 TB of music (mainly Flac) stored on a Netgear ReadyNas.
I use either Nova Chromecast or Nova UPnP from the players available in LMS (I still have the good old SB Touch and Duet in other rooms), with no transcoding at source; apart from the lack of gapless playback is there any loss of audio quality compared to when using the Naim app?
My ears don’t hear any differences but I am just curious to know if at a technical level there are advantages when using the Naim app, also which is the better option between Chromecast and UPnP (the latter seems a tad quicker when starting playback)?
thanks for reading.
I have read posts on this forum from Naim staff (@Naim.Marketing - was it you?) containing criticism of the ChromeCast architecture. I started there with my Naim streamers, as I have a ChromeCast Audio and some Google Nest products on my network. But I am now running two parallel systems: UPnP/DLNA for my Naim streamers and LMS/ChromeCast plug-in/iPeng for my Squeezeboxes and Google products.
If you stay with LMS/ChromeCast plug-in you might want to turn on Transcoding and Flow (sending a continuous stream instead of tracks). I had to do this for another reason, but it turned out that a side effect was to provide gapless playback. As I listen mostly to classical, this was a major plus.
My uncle also has Asset and LMS sitting side by side accessing the same music library and that works very well. The ReadyNas is a great bit of kit which he used to use but it is quite slow; he now has a two bay Synology server and that is perfect for the job and not terribly expensive
If your Naim streamer is having problems seeing your UPnP servers there is a problem somewhere which you should try to diagnose. They should appear in the Server input without delay. Possibly this is a network discovery issue, maybe related to your router or the hardware that runs your servers.
One thing my brother and I both noticed when we compared LMS/ChromeCast with the JRiver server. The volume was significantly higher using JRiver. Not sure what, if any, conclusion to draw. I don’t use the JRiver server normally; I was confirming my brother’s experience.
I just remembered this one and I knew to search for (at)Stevesky and Chromecast, so that was easy. I guess a search with the other Naim staff names + Chromecast might turn up others.
Don’t know if the volume difference means anything. I usually believe I hear that playing via Naim app is a tiny bit louder than Roon, but I don’t know for sure if it’s true and certainly not if it means anything (except that you’d have to adjust for volume if comparing Q)
What’s the benefit of turning on Transcoding, wouldn’t be better to passthrough audio and get the Nova to transcode? I understand that Flow will send all tracks as a single stream thus playing gapless but the downside is losing metadata, the Nova showing only ‘Streaming from LMS’ with no artwork, not a big deal for some but I like to see the album art and track info on the display.
In your original post, you mentioned the lack of gapless playback. Turning on Transcode and Flow provides gapless playback. As I am a listen mostly to classical, that outweighs the loss of album art. Also, track information remains available in the web browser and on iPeng.