New Naim Internet Radio - Feedback & Requests - Part 14

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 December Update can be read here:

3 Likes


love this station…all lossless

2 Likes

Hi, do you have a url for that?

Hi @Stevesky

I’ve been happily using the new radio functionality in my car (thanks to the team, btw, for bringing radio to mobile - great stuff). I’ve noticed a couple of differences between streams in the mobile radio app and equivalent streams in the remote (streamer) app section, specifically for BBC Radio 6 Music.

There are two stream selections for Radio 6 in both the streamer and radio/mobile app sections:

Radio/mobile: (1) HLS 128 kb/s and (2) HD variant: HLS 320 kb/s.

— each selection plays as expected and displays the relevant info eg. when selecting HD, it shows “BBC Radio 6 Music HD” and 320 kb/s.

Streamer: (1) 128 kbps and (2) HD variant: 320 kbps

When (1) is played, it shows as “BBC Radio 6 Music” and displays AAC with ~96-102 kb/s .

When the HD stream (2) is played, it shows exactly the same as (1), in terms of what is being played (no “HD” indicator) and with the same rates.

In both cases of the streamer links there is a very brief flash of “32-bit, 48kHz” before displaying the AAC info.

I seem able to get the HD stream on mobile, but not on the streamer-side of the catalog. Wondering why that might be? Also, any differences in the streams between mobile (HLS) and streamer (AAC?)?

Many thanks.

I started using the radio feature on my NDS yesterday to listen BBC R3 Unwind. I have come across two issues this morning:
First, it starts and then stops; and
Second, multi room does not appear to work.

If this is a known issue I apologise; however, if it is a peculiarity associated with legacy streamers will it be addressed?

I should add it worked well on a UQ yesterday, but multiroom did not work. Today, it worked well on the NDS first thing, but not when I returned from walking the dog.

Lossless…..and no banal chatter :+1:

JB RADIO - Web Player

1 Like

Best radio station, I have found. :blush:

@Stevesky Is it possible to use NDS and my paid stream of The Jazz Groove if I update my NDS to the latest sw getting the new radio support you released recently? It’s the new radio platform as running on my NSS 333 where this work if I understand correctly?

@Stevesky Hello Steve many thanks for your work on the Naim radio service.

With the old platform I used customized url to play stations so I’ll be happy if you can add a station for me.

It’s a French label record based in Lyon Ultimae records that have a radio player propulsed by oem

The logo station

https://www.oem-radio.org/ultimae-radio-app-icon-512-bg181818/

And I used this url to stream

https://ultimae-bofaradio.radioca.st/listen.pls?sid=1

http://ultimae-bofaradio.radioca.st/listen.pls?sid=1

https://ultimae-bofaradio.radioca.st

Many thanks kind regards

@Stevesky Hi, I see that you have in the past corrected the two hour delay for radio stations.

Is it possible to do this correction for Rás 1 and Rás 2 in Iceland?

Hi @patrickd

Station now added to system:

Best

Steve

Hi @nokkvip

I think this is from where the product being used is based on the older streamer platform (muso1/green screen streamers and similar) and the HD variant of the radio stream is trying to be played.

In this stations case the HD stream uses modern features like ability to rewind the live broadcast by x minutes, but this confuses the older products. On the new products it will correctly play from the “'live” end of the stream.

We do however supply the legacy stream for older products which works as intended but is lower quality (AAC 128 vs AAC320).

So the only solution is to use the ‘SD’ legacy stream for the older products.

Regards

Steve

Hi @Blackbird

On the older platform products (green screen streamers, muso1) custom URL’s can’t be added, while on the newer products custom URL’s can.

Although both platforms run from the same radio system, the older platform has technical limitations. It was a case we didn’t want radio to just stop working on those products, but then again we didn’t want to cripple progress on new products by older products we made 10years ago holding us back. So the key differences are:

New platform:

  • Ability to add custom radio URL’s.
  • lossless radio streams
  • MPEG DASH playback
  • Opus streams
  • XPeri extended metadata
  • Support for latest specification HLS streams (older platform may fail to play or plays a timeshifted part of the stream). These are often marked as “HD’ variants in the system. We aim to still supply the “SD” variants that the older VTuner system used to use.
  • Search feature. (older platform is browse only)

Best

Steve

2 Likes

They have a sister station with similar stream URL etc

Hi @PaulWebster

Here we go:

Best

Steve

@Stevesky Happy New Year! Do you know if a 320kbps stream of ‘NPO Blend’ exists? Most of the other NPO stations have a 320kbps stream.

Hi @whatu1tme2b

NPO Blend = There is a small technicality on that one. NPO Blend is geoblocked to Netherlands only and the server we use to do authentication to get the authenticated streams is in France. To get Blend we need a server in the Netherlands.

So summary, not at the moment, but in the future we might be able to get this one working.

Best

Steve

Oh, strange that that limitation is there for NPO Blend, but not for other NPO stations. Anyway, thanks a lot for you answer and hopefully it will get fixed in the future.