FWIW 400 quid (minimum) to repair a unitiserve is not money well spent anyway. Aside from a nice looking case there is no reason I can think of to pay out that sort of money.
Itās Pete not Paul and he has now taken over at Acoustica on Geoffās retirement. I believe he does live your way and I am sure he will be happy to help with this particularly as you are a previous customer. I have had nothing but great service from Acoustica over the years and I donāt expect it will change now.
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Agreed. He actually seems a bit nicer than Geoff!
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Agree, top bloke. Friendly, helpful and paid three visits to my house last year with really heavy active speakers even though itās more than 30 miles from the shop.
Roger
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Well perhaps. ATC have a direct-to-factory service and repair system for customers in the UK. But you have to send them the appropriate form first and I suspect their dealer network was a lot sparser than Naimās, at least until recently.
Roger
So where has Devil_20 gone advice has been posted 
Iām still here. Iām working from home so started at 8am this morning. Had an hour and a half for lunch and needed to go out and do stuff and finished at about 7pm and had to get dinner so Iāve only just read the replies. I thought Iād already said what Iām going to do anyway. Iām going to take it to HoL in Manchester on a future trip down there.
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And this is why Iāve been a bit pissed off with all the hoops I have to jump through. Time, money and travel on top of the Ā£400 to repair. I was choking on the Ā£400 tbf (I think that might not include VAT), because the unit repaired probably wouldnāt be worth much more. The only reason it would be worth repairing for me is to recover the music on it, and thatās not guaranteed, so I was taking that gamble. My own fault for not backing it up suppose.
Yep. Me too. Iāve used them several times over the last 10 years or so. If I was getting an expensive amp repaired Iād be taking it to a main dealership like Acoustica or HoL but for this Unitiserve itās marginal if itās actually worth repairing. See comment above.
Good for you.
Well not LInn, thatās for certain. However, the prices Naim charge for repairs then why wouldnāt they want to repair it. Itās well worth their while.
Well itās up to you at the end of the day but if this is the second failure in 2 years then I am sure that Acoustica will challenge it with Naim on your behalf. That is what the dealer network is for and in my experience it works pretty well.
In any event a brief phone call to Acoustica to investigate the possibilities wonāt hurt. As you say Naim should have service records for the unit.
Yes I agree. I should at least get the dealer onside before it goes in for repair. In the past Iāve only sent stuff in for service. This is the only Naim unit Iāve had to send in for repair. As it happens, service and repair costs are the same and approaching the net value of the unit itself. If I can recover the music on it Iāll be happy to pay but on the converse if they canāt then Iām going to be left feeling I should have written it off as un-economical to repair. Iāll let you know the outcome if youāre interested.
Iām not familiar with the US, so maybe a stupid point to make. What are the files stored on inside the US? Is it a proprietary Naim hard disk? If itās a bog standard computer hard disk then it should be straightforward to retrieve the files for a lot less than 400 quid.
Yes let us know how you get on.
Itās a bog standard computer hard disk I think but not user replaceable like the Core.
I think most on here would agree that the Unitiserve was not Naimās finest hour. Indeed if there was a poll on the worst Naim product ever it would be difficult to think of a real competitor.
Thatās a good question. Iāve had a look inside the unit when I was replacing the CMOS battery, in the vain hope that that may have caused the unit not to boot. I can confirm itās a bog standard hard disk drive and the file format wonāt be Naim proprietary either. The only thing is the disk is bonded at various points to the chassis to stop mechanical vibration. Removing it wouldnāt be difficult but it would be obvious and it maybe that Naim wouldnāt want to touch it in that situation. I did notice when ripping the odd disk it did sound a bit laboured at times so it may be that the drive is compromised mechanically rather than the data on it being corrupted. Possibly both. If it was a horse it would be put down. I donāt know if the drive is PATA or SATA but it may be possible to connect into the drive in situ. Thanks for the suggestion. Itās all packed up ready to go but I might dig it out and have another look inside it.
Naim can usually recover the music data when they service a Unitiserve, but you should be backing up your data in any case, so restoring it after a drive failure shouldnāt be an issue.
You clearly havenāt experienced the NV-I!!
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Files ripped from CDs by the Serve are indeed in a proprietary format. The individual tracks have no or little metadata if they are in wav - the metadata is stored in a carrier with each album folder - so if you are able to get them out they wonāt be in albums and it will be a total nightmare to sort them out.
If Naim can retrieve them, get the repaired Serve to convert them to flac and then backup to a nas. These flac files can then be served from the nas using Asset or whatever.
If you still have the CDs an option is to re-rip them using a new ripper or your computer.
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Quite - brilliant when working. Buggy piece of crap otherwise.
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