My unitiserve is 7 years old, so I am thinking of getting a new server like a melco or innuous. However all my files are WAV with the naim metadata saved elsewhere. I could batch convert them all to flac, then copy them to my NAS then the new server, but I was wondering if there was a more efficient way.
Is there a way that a new server could recognise the WAV files and supply the missing metadata? I am sure I read somewhere that it was now possible, maybe using Roon. Anybody know about this?
Thanks in advance.
Good luck I asked this awhile back and have the same issue. I didn’t really get an answer.
Thanks Pete. If I find anything out I will let you know.
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dbPoweramp PerfectTunes claims to be able to do this but I’ve never tried it to find out
Songkong should work I believe from what I have read.
I do not think that there is a more efficient way than converting to flac and you shouldn’t probably expect the tagging of the converted files to be particularly well done.
But it is probably worth biting the bullet and then investing some time in cleaning up the tags of the flac files with a decent metadata editing tools. The good news is that, once you are out of Naim’s proprietary (and rather lousy) metadata system, thngs become very easy and you can really tag your collection in a way that suits your needs. This is only worth if you also use a good UPnP server, however. In my view, MinimServer is the best, especially for classical music.
Songkong and Picard can both auto tag. They work well for popular releases but are not perfect. You can then manually correct with Programs such as mp3tag or tag and rename. Songkong can also be installed on Melco and you can run run it direct on files on the Melco. You can batch convert to flac with dbpoweramp.
I’d suggest you use the desktop client to set the serve to convert to flac. It will trundle away for a couple of days with no intervention from you. If you have set an automatic backup to nas, this will get updated with the flac files. You can then run Asset or Minim on your nas with no need for a new server per se.
I think you can batch convert with the unitiserve, which will populate with the naim metadata?
Just select FLAC on the Unitiserve interface and let it do it itself.
It’ll take some time, but your meta data will then work on other devices.
Yes HH, that was the method I am aware of. Might be the simplest way. However it seemed a bit wasteful to convert to flac then back to wav which is what I was wanting to do.
There is no need to convert back to WAV. Leave them in flac and just set the server to transcode to WAV when you play them. It will sound just the same as if it were in WAV in the first place.
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I would personally convert to flac, but you can convert the wav meta data.
MP3TAG can be told to look at the file names (which are pretty comprehensive on the naim) and convert those to tags.
I would go with the flac though
Not according to Harry!
Can anyone remind me where to find information on how to batch convert using desktop client?
Just get the Unitiserve to do it, and leave it to chew through the files in the background. It will take a while, but it will only take you a few seconds to initiate the process. The file transfer will then be quicker, as the FLAC files will be smaller than the WAVs.
You can apparently do it afterwards with Songkong, but not with a regular file converter.
Roon uses its own metadata by default, so it should be able to work with the Unitiserve WAV files.
If you have a Mac, I can tell you how to do it in N-Serve. Not sure about the DTC.
I have an ipad that runs nserve!
Then you can convert the flac back to WAV using dbpoweramp and you will have the tags in the WAV files.
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You need the OSX version, or the DTC for Windows.