New Naim Internet Radio - Feedback & Requests - Part 10

Streaming Audio
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A repeat of the opening post from Part 1:

At Naim, we understand that while many people use our products to get the best listening experience from their own music collection; sometimes you simply want to put the radio on and let someone else choose. We’ve offered a comprehensive internet radio solution for some time, and we are now delighted to announce the launch of our own in-house internet radio solution.

In a collaboration between XPeri and our team here at Naim, we have brought the internet radio server in-house to be maintained internally, as opposed to relying on a third party as with the previous server. This will improve reliability and has opened up a host of improvements to the service, detailed below:

- A selection of over 45,000 stations worldwide
- Advanced metadata feeds for artist, track and album info on many stations
- Focus on high-quality audio streams
- Improved station categorisation
- High-resolution station artwork
- Automated station scanning
- Station podcasts (where available)

The Focal & Naim app will identify any favourites and presets that should be resaved to use the new server.

These updates are not only improving the internet radio server but improving our streaming capabilities too. TIDAL’s new 24-bit, 192 kHz streaming tier, TIDAL Max, is now available through both the Focal & Naim app and TIDAL Connect.

In a significant update for our Chinese customers, Q-Play is now supported in Naim products. QQ Music is one of the largest music streaming services in China, and users are now able to select their Naim streamer from within the QQ Music app for a seamless listening experience.

Regards,
Naim Audio – Software team

With the launch of Naim’s new Internet Radio service (see above), I’ve created this dedicated thread where information can be posted relating to the service and members can post feedback and requests for the team at HQ.

Examples of how this thread can be used;

  • Announcements on key new stations / station rebrands etc. For example recently a big change in UK for Bauer Media and Global. Scala radio rebrands to Magic Classical and about 16 other new or existing stations changing.
  • request stations that we don’t have.
  • issues with a station. Eg, wrong meta / won’t play and so on.
  • notifications of any downtime on either our system in a given region, or a dependent system like the xperi live radio meta.
  • Search issues. We have the station but its hard to find as needs more tags.
  • feature requests / feedback / general radio gossip

Please ensure posts here are ONLY feedback re. the new Naim radio service or station requests. Thanks.

The latest August Update can be read here;

New Naim Internet Radio - Feedback & Requests - Part 9
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@Stevesky Is there any news on this issue in the Android app?

It would be very helpful to have stream quality information when browsing internet radio stations.

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@Stevesky Do Naim have the mount point URL’s for the UK BBC radio stations, 1,2,3,4,5, Xtra, etc?

And if so, are you allowed to publish them?

ATB, J

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Hi @Osiris

As we have an official distribution license agreement for BBC streams, our backend system is allocated unique URL’s that rotate so they have a limited usage life. Our server system ensures that the URL’s are always have life on them, so we can’t supply URL’s as within 24hrs they’ll be dead (+ would conflict with the agreement).

There are 3rd party systems that are running on reverse engineered BBC sounds website and BBC Sounds app URL’s, and some Google searching will let you find them. The BBC are slowly but surely tightening up on things and blocking these unlicensed routes. The main reason for licensing is to ensure that the distribution outlet represents the BBC to their guidelines and standards.

Best

Steve

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Hi @whatu1tme2b

It has been fed back to the team. They are working in that general area (I can’t say what they’re doing at this stage) but it should all get sorted out as these units of work get rolled out.

Best

Steve

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Very much as I have discovered.

Thanks @Stevesky .

ATB, J

8

Hi,

As of 15th August we are experiencing issues with the XPeri metadata service as used on the radio system. Security certificates are failing and it’s causing lengthy timeouts and unreliable operation.

From 21:00 UK time we’re disabling XPeri extended metadata from the system until their system is functioning to spec again.

Hopefully service will be restored by Monday, but we’ll keep you updated

If your streamer seems unhappy / not operating as normal, switching off from the mains, waiting 20seconds and restarting is recommended as this issue has really annoyed various components in the system.

With regards

Steve

1 Like
BBC stopped working on Muso and QB today
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Hi all,

Update: 16/08 09:00 UK time.

The XPeri servers appear to be working reliably again, but we’re going to monitor it over the weekend and if all seems stable we’ll reconnect it back to the Naim radio system on Monday.

This means there will be no extended metadata delivered to the apps over 16th and 17th August from XPeri.

Regards

Steve

4 Likes
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Radio Paradise and Naim Radio working fine for me this morning

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Learned something new today. I thought the artist, track title and image was transmitted by the station. But it seems these are retrieved from XPeri.

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Hi @whatu1tme2b

The metadata situation is a bit more complex:

  • on some stations (typically ones in HLS containers) have no metadata embedded in the audio stream, so metadata has to be bolted on as an extra.

  • On others they have shoutcast or icecast data, which is data interlaced in the audio stream, but it’s just text, no artwork,

XPeri receive the metadata via various methods and then enhance it by looking it up in their meta database, which then gives artworks and maps it to rovi album/artist/track ID’s etc.

On the Naim side we multiplex it all together and treat xperi with highest priority, unless we put a rule in (normally when xperi have messed up on a meta feed mapping).,

Simple as that…. :zany_face:

Best

Steve

6 Likes
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Ha ha…thanks for the info. Nothing is ever easy, is it? More respect to Naim for creating their own internet radio aggregation service.

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Hi all,

The Xperi extended metadata service has been reconnected back in and is operating as intended.

Regards

Steve

4 Likes
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Hi all,

Service improvement:
ABC, Australia

ABC have just rolled out some improved streams for all their network. The Naim Radio solution now uses these improved streams.

All stations are now using ADTS AAC encoding, which means they use data more wisely and it can peak to brief higher data rates for improved fidelity on more complex material.

  • ABC Regional stations (eg. ABC Sidney) now run at an average 64kbit AAC with data rates peaking to 94kbit. This used to be 48kbit. For some reason ABC Gold Coast has been blessed with national rates of averaging around 216kbit/sec.

  • ABC National (Triple J, Double J etc) and DAB+ channels (ABC Country etc) are averaging around 216kbit/sec with a max payload bitrate of 238kbit. This used to be 192kbit.

There was a brief bit of downtime on Double J, NSW for about 8 hours during the switch over, due to a config issue ABC’s side:

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Note: on the Naim app it initially reports rates in a very conservative nature for variable rate streams, so they will show as 64kbit and 192kbit accordingly on the Now Playing screen, but in the background its around 25% up on data to play with.

Best regards

Steve

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Hello

Could You add the service Calm Radio for those,as me, that pay this service? Thank You.

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Hi @Sympa

We have considered this one in the past but the business case just didn’t add up.

The preview/free channels are in the system and their most popular channel (jazz guitar) only gets around 10 unique listeners a week. Other channels it’s typically less than 6. This is from a unique customer dataset of well over 100000, so <0.01% customers are using Calm. Software engineering wise typically it costs a min of £75K to engineer in and roll out a basic new service across a product range, so for such low demand we’d be making a massive loss. Streaming services have pretty much taken most of the market share for premium ‘playlist’ centric’ radio services.

We do however support their service via Chromecast or Airplay via their app. Example:

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Apologies to bore you with all the stats, but it does justify why some services appear and others don’t.

With regards

Steve

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I understand. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thank You for quickly answer.

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Hello!

Another question:

Are there the new Naim Radio in the Naim muso QB 2?

My question because I have a Little Bluesound speaker and I hate TuneIn . I want to change this speaker.

As I have a Naim uniti nova Power édition in the salon, it would be good to have a QB 2 in my bedroom.

Thanx.

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Hi @Sympa

Yes, its available in muso qb2.

Best

Steve

1 Like