I am making a further observation upon my earlier statement about how nice it was to flip on commercial-free mood music of an ilk I can listen to while eating meals at no apparent cost. That last bit is wrong, it cost me the price of a Naim Uniti Star, speakers and cables, as well as an iPad to store the Naim app for turning on and off and selecting stations that give you a sample of the sort of music you might like. I have been told that Roon Radio chooses music for you by sampling what you have listened to in the past and applying some algorithm to it to come up with more of the same, but if it is like the Netflix algorithms then all you get is same ol’ same ol’ without choice. Now LPs. When you bought vinyl records in the past, you paid one time for it and then could play and replay it as and when you wished. They never wear out. I have some vinyl records that are older than me (66 years) and still sound great. The problem is the cost of your playback system. When I started buying and playing records I used a console that my parents owned. When I moved onto my own playback system I couldn’t afford more than a couple of hundred dollars. Over the years, in order to improve the quality of sound played back from those ancient grooves, I have spent many times that amount. My current system would retail for a bit over £40K, and I still need to pull the record out, place it on the turntable, lower the arm, and turn the record over, but it is what I want to hear, when I want to hear it, and the sound quality (to me anyway) far exceeds any flac or hi-res streaming heard over my Uniti star (or Mu-So Qb 2nd gen either), but at what cost? So I guess it is a trade off; if I feel lazy and don’t care what specifically is playing, or how much it sounds like the last time I was listening, then streaming is fantastic. And, if I want to do the nostalgia thing and listen to Ella (or Jim Morrison) singing there in front of me in my music room, holding a glass of Scotch and staring into the warm glow of the valves while dressed in T-shirt and shorts, I turn on my hi fi system. Fortunately, since buying the Naim gear, I can do either.
I still have a gen 1 Muso and ND5XS. As the FLAC streams play perfectly on my Windows machine via a browser I can’t get it to work on the Naims.
What is the reason why we can’t have it on gen 1 Naim gear?
Are there workarounds?
Tx,
Kurt
The 1st gen. streamers can’t play the HD stations as they use the slightly unusual stream format of FLAC in an OGG wrapper, which they are unable to support.
That’s a clear answer. Thanks! Besides commercial reasons, I don’t see any reason why they’re making things so complex.
Most (all) radio stations seem to use Ogg containers for their flac files (some experimented with Ogg/vorbis and opus) so maybe streamed radio requires something different to the flac streaming services. Ogg is generally well supported alas not on early Naim. An explanation from the broadcasters why not straight flac would be useful.
That’s also what I read on xiph dot org .
If it’s only to store music, an Ogg container doesn’t make a lot of sense. They even recommend using native flac in this case.
As a recent convert to streaming myself you might consider pluging something like an NDX2 into your hi-fi system for a fairer comparison of the different sources. However I guess you wanted something for occasional listening in a different room
Thanks Steve that’s kind of half an answer. Anything digital seems to be dependent on many different elements provided by many different people all in a state of flux as they indulge in their agile project management. Those of us who have a bought Naim are not so concerned that your radio reaches all and sundry but maybe that’s a major part of your marketing drive. I haven’t heard of Ogg before except in the context of Australian woolly boots and I’m still no wiser as to what it is.
As to the meta data, it seems to provide the name of the piece being played but not the composer. So you don’t know whose piano sonata you’re listening to. This limitation seems quite widespread. In fact it’s impossible to get reliable comprehensive data in any field it seems.
I am wondering if you would know the answer to my question, please, if you don’t would you ask for me?
Was “Naim LP 111”, “The Music Collection Volume 3” LP “Re-mastered for vinyl by Steve Rooke (Abbey Road Studios)” recorded to analogue from a digital master source?
Thanks,
As of this morning I am getting “BBC Radio programs are no longer available on this device. Please contact the device manufacturer for further information.” I am mostly listening to BBC worked service. Will Naim be making BBC available again? Maybe this is specific to the old platform?
Hi,
I think you are tuning to the defunct:
- BBC World Service English News Internet
Go to: - BBC World Service
And then it will work.
Best wishes
Steve Harris
Software Director
Naim Audio Ltd.
I notice BBC Radio 3 has not being working on vtuner since last night, anyone else notice this?
Working fine on Qb1 and Nova here. Have you tried selecting it from the stations list, rather than a preset/favourite, in case that’s linking back to the defunct stream?
Thanks Clare, yep tried that, it’s just the HD version that’s gone, it does say ‘uk only’ on vtuner but it had been working up until yesterday. I’m in Dublin.
Dia dhuit Hollow, BBC have changed URLs for reception outside UK & HD has gone with the changes, so you need to retune in Naim iRadio … Locations>Europe>UK etc.
Go raibh maith agat Micheal! I did try that but no joy unfortunately, I’m currently slumming it with the 128k live stream!
Hi Hollow, I also live outside of the UK and can no longer BBC R3 HD, only the 128k stream…
Looks like BBC is restricting HD streams to us UK license payers… Or it may just be a blip as they switch their systems over!
It does state, within the Naim app, UK only for the HD stream