New Naim Internet Radio - Feedback & Requests - Part 2

Continuing from Part 1, here;

A repeat of the opening post:

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. Thanks.

3 Likes

Hello, I recently updated my Qb 2nd gen to this latest firmware and sadly have been experiencing playback issues and missing radio stations.

“issues with a station. Eg, wrong meta / won’t play and so on.” I listen on a daily basis to Radio Classique 99.5 Montreal, Qc which worked perfectly fine before. Now the stream cuts after a few minutes and stops on its own.

I also listened a lot to the 1920s radio network which I can’t find anymore.

Just bringing back these two to a functioning order would be very much appreciated!

Cheers to all the music lovers!

Hi @Mugatu

Re:Radio Classique

I assume it’s one of these two from Canada

If so, they are both on their ‘hd’ stream (320K). To hopefully help your issue reported the standard res variant stream is now exposed. Re-browse to the station in the directory and it will offer both.

Regarding metadata can you clarify in more detail what is wrong and on what station.

Re: 1920’s network

Maybe you are discussing the USA based station?

If not, give more details and we’ll add it.

Best

Steve

Hi all,

November Update

It’s now just about 1 month since we launched the new internet radio service. May I thank you all for all your feedback on this. Overall things are now running smoothly and we’re in the comfortable position of just handling the odd station that is missing / adding in new stations / maintaining existing.

Here a summary of new stations and brands in the system over October:

Virgin Radio, FR (France)
Full network added as a brand. Not sure how we missed that one.

Frisk Radio, UK
Full network of stations added. Main channel upgraded to 320K MP3 from 64K AAC.

Polskie Radio, Poland
Due to the never ending efforts of one customer, best quality streams (192K AAC), correct artwork and station names have been resolved. Excellent work Thomasz

MPB Radio, Ireland
Full network added. This is a Netherlands based company taking their chances on the Irish DAB network.

Best Net Radio, USA
One of the internet genre playlist brands. We’ve filled in as many streams as we can.

Caprice Radio, Russia
Again another genre playlist brand. Around 200 streams now available. All in 320Kbit

Celtic Radio, Canada
Full network added and grouped as a brand

MusicOnly, Austra
Full network added and grouped as a brand

Classical KDFC and KUSC, USA
Full network of stations added and grouped in a brand

Gold, New Zealand
Synchronized to their latest network state of play. With Gold Sport and Gold.

# Anima Amoris, Russia
Added full network of online stations.

KIIS network, Australia
Restructured to match their new backend using LiSTnR

2MBS and 3MBS network, Australia
Ondemand / podcast view added.

Otherwise stats are:

  • 770 new stations added in October
  • 551 modified in October
  • 212 deleted due to dead stations
  • 48022 stations in database as of today

Peak usage was Saturday 26th Oct, where in one minute over 21000 radio browse requests were done, and we handled over 12 million radio transactions in one day worldwide :slight_smile: Safe to say internet radio is a popular service with customers.

Finally, we are considering your various suggestions, and various ones will be appearing on the system over the coming months.

Best regards

Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.

8 Likes

Any further progress with Groove Salad…?

I wasn’t initially getting any drop outs or issues, which I put down to being on +8 GMT time zone and so not experiencing the same bottleneck that seemed to be reported in UK/EU….however, this last week, it hasn’t been great, play stopping at least once or twice a day….In fact, is doing it right now!
Sometimes comes back on its own accord, other times I have to flick over to another station and then back again to Soma, and playback resumes……

SC

1 Like

hI @S.C

Yes and no.

We have a new beta going out where we’ve increased buffering and made the streamer more aggressive on getting the buffer to full. Have been running it here and have still seen dropouts as there is simply too much congestion between their servers and EU customers are certain times of the day. There is a vast amount buffered as well (over 30secs of audio).

That Groove Salad HLS lossless stream in considered experimental so its a case of if it works then it works, if it doesn’t then use the 320K variant which is still pretty good quality.

Best

Steve

1 Like

I appreciate the speedy response.

Selecting the 320kbps stream of Radio Classique 99.5, I get interruptions after a few minutes and eventually, the stream stops on its own.
Using the 128K stream, I have not experienced any cuts after an hour or so.

Regarding the 1920 radio station, there seems to be another stream that has exactly the same name “The 1920s Radio Network” but the icon is different, it does not have a red background. The one you show seems to be a talking radio but the one I am looking for was music from that era. From memory, the background color of the stations icon was in the olive color (I regretfully removed it from my favorites after the firmware upgrade so I cannot share a picture).

Have a good day

Hi @Mugatu

Here is a search from VTuner.com of all stations mentioning 1920 in their title:

I’ve also done a search on Airable + Tunein to see if anything looks a likely candidate.

Any hint of what it might of been and we’ll hunt it down.

Best

Steve

I presume this service is not accessible using older hardware like the 172 until a firmware upgrade becomes available?

Correct. No ETA on that yet.

Requires far more work from naim as the older devices are not over the air upgrade, so the dealer network might need prepped to support (as in people could take device to dealer to have FW installed).

I bet there are plenty of dealers out there now who don’t have a clue.

3 Likes

Yes that’s likely an issue, it’s been some time since 4.8 came out for legacy streamers and some newer “lifestyle” dealers may well never have upgraded a gen1 device.

Thank you for your search. I went and tried these streams but I cannot find the one I have in mind. I will keep looking and update any findings here.

Also, I have been experiencing cuts on the lower quality stream of Radio Classique 99.5 too. Tidal still works without problem and I did not have cuts on Radio Classique before the changes (just to rule out network issues).

Best regards,

Mugatu

I’m hoping that’s not going to be the case, as the dealer ‘network’ where I am now in WA is next to non existent….

I’m interested to know what going to happen with the UnitiServe (plus HDX etc) and its iRadio functionality…?..Presumably this will stop working when the vTuner service ceases so it’s going to need to be upgraded, I’m presuming, to the new Naim service along with the rest of the 1st gen streamers etc……The last US update some time back was 1.7c I think (which corrected an issue with one of the lookup providers – not much has changed then! :flushed:) and which was applied via CD and had to be obtained via dealers (I had to have one posted out from the UK!)…are we going to have to go through that again?

I have a unused, basically new US-SSD (now use the Core) but I had thoughts to make use of the US in a nice little shoebox system along with a DAC-V1 and NAP100…the ‘serve’s radio functionality or lack of of wouldn’t be the end of the world but it would be nice to have it working ideally….

SC

@S.C @Magnolia @Stevesky
It seem that groove salad HD is playing hiccup-less more or less now. Also received email from somaFM that they updated their streams, may be that helped as well?

Is this also your experience?

Citation email somaFM (18-11-24);
PS- We launched a new web player last week, and did some compatibility updates yesterday. It supports modern web standards, uses high quality AAC streams (instead of MP3), and works across mobile and desktop devices.

1 Like

Am playing the HD stream just now, past 15mins or so has been fine…

The last couple of weeks it hasn’t been good at all, regular drop outs and blank pauses, then would reengage after a while…which was strange, as initially (when the new Naim service started) it was fine and I didn’t have any of the early reported dropouts that were happening in Europe…
I was on the cusp of removing the HD stream from my saved favourites and reluctantly use the 320 feed as @Stevesky recently suggested, but I’ll see how the hi-def goes now you have reported there’s been changes at Soma’s server end……

Thanks
SC

Update: well, Groove Salad had been playing perfect for near on 4hrs, no drop outs at all….

But, in the last 10mins or so it’s gone bad again…constantly stuttering and occasionally dropping out…

I did wonder if they had throttled back the resolution a bit as it’s rarely above 1000kb/s now, which it almost always used to be and whether that was contributing to the better feed……But, seemingly not.

Almost time to change channel if it stays like this…:confused:

SC

Hi @Frank2

In the October part1 of the internet radio feedback thread you reported issues with NPO, NL.

We have just updated the system to use NPO’s latest streams as they have updated their backend system. The standard def still uses the legacy icecast mp3 streams

The ‘HD’ streams are HLS container format, so chopped into lots of 8 second chunks. But also at a more ear friendly 320K AAC bitrate.

Can you give them a go and see if things are any better.

Best

Steve

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your reaction. I hope it will improve the listening experience.

After I contacted you, I asked my internetprovider to check my internet connection. Last week I received a new Sagemcom docsis 3.1 WiFi 6 modem. My internetprovider found some issues with my old modem. Until now all is working fine!

I’m very happy with the way my Uniti Nova performs at the moment. Thanks for your help!

Greetings from Holland,

Frank2