Naim Core multi volume issue?

Thank you for your reply. I am not sure what "album top r/h “…” means. I have never seen this. I know how to edit metadata if that is what you mean and normally label multi CD box sets with “CD 1” then “CD 2” and so on. And that sometimes works and sometimes appears to not work. But I am now not sure that part or all of the problem is that when I search for the box set sometimes I get one CD only appearing as a search result and using another search I get 3 of the 10 CDs. Often I never get them all to show up. Leaving me wondering if the CDs are there in fact or conversely, were written over. The search for CDs by artist or album seems to never result in the full listing of CDs appearing. For instance even searching for Miles Davis doesn’t give me all the CDs I inputted by him. Or apparently not. I surely don’t get them all in one simple search by artist name. This confusion is what causes me to wonder what happened to some of the CDs I spent months inputting into Core (some 2000 jazz CDs). So the assumption by me that some box set CDs are missing may be my ignorance of how to search or it may be a Core quirk or fault. Any data to enlighten me and others would be appreciated.

There are only a small number if online databases available to CD rippers to obtain metadata, such as Rovi or Gracenote. Generally you get whatever metadata the database holds. The limitation with the Core is that it only displays a small number of metadata fields, and in the case of the Composer field, it doesn’t allow you to edit, so you are stuck with whatever Rovi gives you.
There is no other CD ripping software I’m aware of that has these limitations. Why Naim chose to hobble the Core in this way is a mystery. Even its predecessor, the Unitiserve, wasn’t quite this limited, although it, too, was basic compared to other rippers.

If this doesn’t meet your needs, either use a different ripper, or as discussed above, use a non-Naim metadata editor.

So within Albums select an album - screen shot below shows the option box after the “…” icon has been pressed; this in the iOS app.

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I think by ‘select album top r/h’ he actually means, select an album and then from the menu top right (three dots), select edit metadata. Unfortunately I think you do need to check the metadata for each disc as you rip it. Then you can check consistency on the naming protocols across all the CDs in a set. If you aren’t getting all albums, say by Miles Davis, through a search have you tried looking under Artist/Miles Davis to see what appears there. I have to say that I tend to look under album or artist rather than use search. One of the problems with box sets, I think, is that companies often put together sets of individual CDs, and sometimes the metadata search identifies them as part of a set and sometimes as a standalone CD/album as they were originally released.

The other issue that I am unclear about is where best to edit metadata. I have a Naim streamer and can edit on the streamer or the Core via the app, but it’s not clear whether editing on the streamer is the same so I tend to do it directly on the Core. The other user error which I made to begin with was making changes and forgetting to Save, which was puzzling until I realised why things were not appearing as expected.

As for covers, I do find Discogs the best source - it should be fine for Jazz, I’m less confident about Classical. If you choose Change cover under Edit metadata you can select Discogs. If you find the correct album, click to bring up the artwork, if you then click on it again Discogs should give you the option of ‘Copy’. Do that and then go back to the Naim app, at that point you should get a small window asking permission to paste, agree and then the artwork is directly copied into the metadata. Then don’t forget to ‘Save’ at top left. This is all on an iPad so it might not be quite the same away from Apple.

I’ve not tried Bing but I have always found the artwork I wanted in Discogs, with the added advantage that it doesn’t need to be saved anywhere. Open the cover artwork on Discogs, use the copy function there, return to the Naim app where you should get the option to paste the artwork, then Save.

I do occasionally end up importing an image from Discogs, but often these need to be cropped to tidy up the edges.

The advantage I’ve found with saving the image to my iPad is that I can quickly upload to Core from there, thereby ensuring the same image across a whole set.

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It makes absolutely no difference at all!

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Clive, I generally save to photos as to me it is the easiest way of updating artwork.

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There is an issue of occasionally overwriting on sets or similar albums. I have encountered it 3 times:

  1. Grateful Dead Dicks Picks. Some of these multi cd sets load fine. Others overwrite. I have no idea why.
  2. Bix Bederbecke. I have a 9 cd set made in Italy that overwrites.
  3. Beethoven 9 Furtwangler Beyreuth. I have the Emi which actually is the dress rehearsal, and another one from another label which is the actual performance. They overwrite.

Solution in all 3 cases was to load on my computer, get the metadata the way i wanted it, and copy to the Core Downloads file.

I do not know why this sometimes happens. Most of the multi cd sets load fine but there is an easy workaround when they don’t.

Sorry, slight aside, just testing and the profanity filter allows dicks through, but not the singular or possessive.

Yes thank you sound-hound I get that and have been using it.

Thank you all for your input. For now I am staying in Core until in the future I have time to study and become more sophisticated in dealing with Core. But for now, within Core, if you append to a title given to one by Rovi or whatever, CD 1, CD 2 to distinguish CD titles in a box set, are you making it so that the software will now not overwrite the CDs being input because of this slight change to the title? Or is this irrelevant and only useful to disintguish the CDs visually from each other in the box. Or does it work sometimes and sometimes not?

Secondly I still don’t get why searching for a jazz artist (under artist) does not list all the CDs I inputted for months of that artist. I have to do fancy footwork finding all of them, if even I find them. I have some 2000 jazz cds input on Core but not easy to find all the CDs inputted. When things calm down here a bit with work I’ll do a precise study and search of an artist and report back.

99% of normal problems in Core are solved by turning it off completely for a bit or sometimes longer but not this one of searching. Is anyone else running into this or is it my lack of knowledge, I hope.

The best way to understand what you wish to do, is to do an edit and review the results. You can always re-rip the cd if you want to go back to the default metadata. Any rips edited, will remain edited, provided as posted earlier, they are saved.

Artists - same issue as all the others - if the metadata varies, you will only get a response to the exact artist name you use. All this has been posted before on the forum. As regards turning off and on, I have never had to do this ever, since no problem has occurred.

Appreciate the frustration, bear in mind everyone has a different way of thinking and searching. The Core isn’t perfect, but ime does all it should, except for the limitations others have highlighted.

Ultimately, if you require a greater ability to drill down, then something like Roon may suit your needs. No experience here, but plenty of posts on the forum will show on search. Again, how you search will vary the answers, since again it is a database retrieval - until AI is widely available, trying different combos will return different answers.

It’s irrelevant to the Core as it uses the code number it reads from the CD.

Yes ok. I will watch out. Likely it’s because the artist name is slightly different in some cases. You can edit this and it will stay edited.

I it certainly true that if you want to fully restart the Core, which can certainly fix some problems, you have to take the mains power off it. In my experience it needs only to be off for a few seconds, so everything discharges. I usually count to ten and then put it on again. But I have done this only a handful of times that I have had the Core since it was released, if you take out the extra times it did something weird during beta testing of firmware updates.

And apart from my turn the power off comment I agree with what @sound-hound says above.

Thank you David and Sound-Hound. Just for the record I’m not frustrated deeply by this. Just wanting to figure it out. I will do an artist search sometime soon and be precise and see if something is really missing or I’m just confused or uncomfortable with how Core lays out the results in sections some of which have 4 or so CDs grouped into one square display. I feel that could be vastly simplified for the user but so be it. I think we’'l get to the bottom of it. I’ll try to get to the search soon. Thank you again all who took the time to help me out. I will say generally the Core sounds excellent to me which is most important.

It’s worth remembering that most of the time the metadata service identifies the artist by first name then last name. Hence, instead of Evans, Bill (which is how I file my CDs and vinyl collection), you’ll see this on Core as Bill Evans. I have several of his albums, some of which are filed under Bill Evans Trio. Sometimes I forget this and wonder where a particular album has gone! I do keep meaning to change them all to simply Bill Evans. I wonder if this could be what you’re experiencing.

I also have several copies of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Hence, if I look in Album view I’ll see several albums all entitled Das Rheingold [CD 1] for instance. Fortunately these are differentiated by Conductor (Artist field) and cover art. I think this could have been one area where I had some metadata fun too. Nothing insurmountable though. You can look at metadata responses from all available suppliers too in the metadata editor on Core.

Always posting a pic is enormously useful - at a guess you have selected the square view against the list view - look on r/h side when you have filter available - two options.

Edit - it is tricky to remember the defaults, since many of us just create the views and search as it suits us, so best, try it and see. Compromises exist but how cds / sets are compiled determine what the core stores on ripping.

Thank you Clive and very helpful and that’s what I’ve run into or observed as well during my short search this morning. More to come. And thank you Sound-Hound. Yes, I know you can display in blocks or lists. But no matter which I am in, Core bunches search results in one listing or group such as 3 - 4 albums on one line or in one square. Doesn’t matter now that I know this. Don’t know why Core does this but no harm once I realized what I was looking at. More to come as I dig in. I think the answer is to know how to do differently worded searches both in artist and in album. Oh, and David H., as far as Core turn off I found one time when I would hit play on an album it would not play. Turned off Core for 10 minutes then back on. Still would not play a thing. Turned it off over night as was going to bed anyway. In the morning turned Core on, perfect and has been since. Maybe sometimes it takes longer than 5 minutes. It sure worked this one time which I know is unusual as normally 3-5 minutes is enough.

David and all, I have recently (last week) encountered a problem with the Naim Core I can’t solve by the usual power off method. When in play, the Naim software stops playing as if nothing is connected. Pushing the play button is unresponsive. Nothing occurs. If I turn off the Naim Core for long enough, hours, it will temporarily play for 1 - 2 minutes when back on and then goes unresponsive with no music heard. Further I tried a factory reset 3 times which did nothing to alleviate the problem. However, I may be doing the factory reset incorrectly as when it asks if I wish to delete the music I say no. And there is no indexing as mentioned in earlier discussions of factory reset. But maybe I should somehow wipe out the whole store and restore from my external backup. I also reloaded the Naim app to no avail aa well as unplugged it from the internet. I am not skilled at this so we may have human error. But this problem is all new and the only problem I have not been able to solve by a full power off. I am willing and wish to wipe it all out and start over using my external backup to reload the music if that will help. Fresh start would be good. Any help before I have my dealer deal with it would be appreciated.

How are you doing the factory reset? A factory reset doesn’t do anything to the music stored on your music store, which is usually an internal hard disc or SSD. So if it’s asking about deleting files, you are doing something other than a factory reset,

In any case I doubt a factory reset would help. It’s very rarely necessary.

This sounds more like a failure of whatever is your music store. If it’s a hard disc then I would replace it without further ado and restore from your back up. If it’s an SSD then failure is much less likely, but still possible. How full is your music store? If it’s more than 90% full then you need to put a larger one in - the Core gets a bit odd and unpredictable when its music store is getting too full.

Anyway I’ll keep an eye on this thread and try to help.