Native FLAC via iRadio?

Streaming Audio
1

Hi all, @Stevesky,

Some time ago Naim announced some high quality streams (Naim Jazz, Radio Paradise, …) in FLAC. Nice, nice! But, unfortunately this does not work on my Gen 1 Muso & NDX streamers as “the format is not supported” I read on the forum.

As a software developer this looked a nice challenge to me!

So, I figured out that this indeed doesn’t’ work:
NDX <-------OGG FLAC--------- NAIM JAZZ FLAC SERVICE
Indeed, after the handshake, the Jazz service starts sending an OGG bit steam the NDX doesn’t like. It’s an OGG stream, represented by the “Content-Type audio/ogg” in the response message to the NDX.

But, an OGG FLAC is nothing more than an OGG envelope with a native FLAC in it. And the NDX understands native FLAC.

So, I programmed a forward proxy I run in the Cloud (you can actually run it anywhere as long as the ports are open), that looks like this:
NDX <----FLAC/WAV—FORWARD PROXY <-----OGG FLAC------- NAIM JAZZ FLAC SERVICE

The NDX connects via a custom radio station in vTuner to my FWD proxy (http url & port). From there I connect to Naim Jazz.
I capture the incoming bit stream and transcode it on the fly to FLAC or WAV (or whatever). At that time I also change the content type in the response message during the handshake process to “Content-Type audio/flac” or “Content-Type audio/wav”, so the NDX understand the incoming stream. This works great with WAV, but not with a FLAC stream?

With WireShark I analyzed the UPnP bit stream as I’ve my entire music collection in FLAC. Indeed, there I can see the DLNA server (AssetUPnP) sends a “Content-Type audio/x-flac” to the server.

I tried x-flac as well in the response stream of my FWD proxy, but no success so far.

So, here my question: What do I’ve to put (as content type) in the response so the NDX (or app) recognizes the incoming stream from a custom iRadio station also as FLAC?

Tx,
Kurt

2

Not a clue what you’re talking about but if you sort it I’ll have one!:joy:

5 Likes
3

The specifics of what you’re doing is outside my paygrade but it seems like you’re doing something similar to what Minimserver (installed on a NAS) does for those of us streaming FLAC radio stations on our legacy streamers.

4

So @kurt presumably you might be able to setup minimserver and trace what it does with Wireshark

5

Actually it looks more like MinimStreamer, but with the sole goal of unpacking the Ogg enveloppe and send the FLAC to the Naim.

I have it working fine as long as I send it as WAV to the Naim. When I send it as FLAC, the Naim doesn’t like it.

But it should work as FLAC works with UPnP (minimserver, Asset etc).

6

Minimstreamer is part of minimserver. Wav sounds better on the legacy streamers so you’re good.

7

Hi Kurt,

Sounds like a nice little project. :sunglasses:

Ping me an email (steve.harris at naimaudio.com) with a url to the service running in the cloud. I’ll run it with napv3 (decoder engine) trace turned on and hopefully it will give the clue needed.

Best

Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.

5 Likes
8

Well, if you want to experience FLAC/WAV quality of FLAC radio stations on Gen 1 devices, try this:
Add a custom radio station in vTuner pointing to following station URL (drop the spaces): “http // 158 . 101 . 168 . 33 : 9000 / blablabla”

The “blablabla” in the URL you replace with what’s below between brackets:

Stations

440Hz-Radio (440hz_radio)
Chill Out Zone Plus (chill_out_zone)
Intense Radio (intense_radio)
Naim Classical (naim_classical)
Naim Jazz (naim_jazz)
Radio Paradise Main Mix (radio_paradise_main)
Radio Paradise Mellow Mix (radio_paradise_mellow)
Radio Paradise World Mix (radio_paradise_world)
Sector 80s (sector80s)
Sector 90s (sector90s)
The Cheese (the_cheese)

Experimental, but running fine on my ND5XS and Muso QB (FW 1.5) (in WAV).

2 Likes
9

don’t forget the colon after the http - i.e. http:

10

Indeed! Apologies for that.

11

Hi Kurt and thanks for the info. I am not sure I understand the forward proxy stuff but it certainly works! On my NDX I have set up Naim Jazz WAV and it streams @ 120k WAV. Also Paradise Radio WAV which streams @ 1411k WAV. The only thing missing is the track playing info. Why is there such a difference in the two Bitrates?

12

Interesting, Naim Classical is also showing 128 k while Chill Out Zone is 1411k

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It all started as a small project/challenge some weeks ago.

I actually capture the Ogg FLAC bitstream and transcode it via ffmpeg to WAV (and hopefully to flac one day) and inject it at the right moment and place in the bitstream returned to the device. That’s roughly what the proxy does.

I don’t touch music itself. So also not the metadata. So, this info is what is returned from the orginal stream.

If you want to get some more accurate information about the stream, than you can use VLC (open source on Windows) with the URLs provided. Doing this you’ll see this for the Naim stream for example:

Capture

And this:
Capture2

If I get flac working, I’ll post it in this thead.

14

Absolutely fascinating! Your example shows Naim_jazz @ 1411k. Why would my NDX show only 128k? Chill Out and Intense Radio show 1411k. The Cheese shows 128k.

15

Wow … if there was a way to allow my 2017 NDS to receive these stations, that’d be great.
I think I’d have some difficulty performing the tasks that are outlined above, but maybe it can be eventually accomplished with a simplified method.
Cheers.

Dave

16

This all looks very exciting, but I seem to be stuck. I added a custom station in vTuner as instructed and got this message:

Your added station Radio Paradise will appear on your Naim Uniti after it is next updated. You may update your Naim Uniti immediately by following the Manual Update instructions that came with your Naim Uniti.

First off, my streamer is an N272 not a Uniti – and what might ‘next updated’ mean in this context? Can the N272 join in the fun?

Thanks in advance – and to OP Kurt for this most excellent tweak / hack.

17

If I can do it then I’m sure you can! It’s quite straight forward and I’m no technophile!

1 Like
18

My NDX updated immediately when the new station was added using the Uniti screen

1 Like
19

I’m having trouble logging on to naim.vtuner, it knows/remembers my NDX MAC address & my email & shows that I am logged in but refuses any password I enter. I send help request to ‘forgot password’ but nothing comes back
Any clues on how to start over ??

20

Sorry, can’t help with that. I used mu normal Naim password