My apologies if this has been covered elsewhere but I couldn’t see an obvious thread.
I have playlists in the Naim App (on an iPad) which have streamed music stored on my old PC (Windows 7) reasonably well over the last 7 years or so using Asset UPnP (ver. 4) as the server. I have recently set up a new PC (Win 10) and copied the music files to it and installed Asset (now ver. 7.4).
However, I am unable to stream the playlists. When I try, I get the message “the track is not available as the server is offline”. The server is in fact online, and the music files can be played through Asset’s file structures but not through the playlists. The PCs, Naim Uniti and router are all ethernet connected.
If I start the old PC, the playlists can be played. This led me to think that the IP address of the old PC might be embedded in the playlist tracks, and changing the IP address of the new PC to that of the old might solve the problem. But, I dismissed this because when I changed my ISP a year ago the new router would have brought a new IP address to the old PC putting it out of sync with the playlist tracks which were created much earlier under a different ISP.
Has anyone experienced this problem when moving to a new PC?
Any help appreciated. The idea of rebuilding the playlists is daunting.
Playlists created in the Naim app are stored within the app on the device that runs it. It will not see these playlist tracks as the same if they are accessed from a different library or drive, even if the files are of the same origin.
Creating and managing playlists on the server rather than within the Naim app is generally a more versatile option as they will be usable on any device.
It’s possible that all your playlists are pointing to the wrong folder location. When you moved to a new PC, did you keep your music in exactly the same folder?
If yes, then please can you pasts a few lines of one of your playlists here (open in Notepad), and tell us where your new music is now stored, then we can take it from there
Thanks for your quick replies, ChrisSU and GadgetMan.
ChrisSU. I take your point about playlists on the server. That will have to be a longer term project.
Are you saying that any change in the location of the music files will render Naim playlists as unusable? If so, that’s a huge indictment of the app and I’ll have to bring forward my “longer term project”.
GadgetMan. Yes, I did tidy up the music folder structure when copying the music files to the new PC, although I was careful to point Asset to the changed folders. I’ll recreate the old structure for some of the playlist tracks and see if that makes a difference. If not, I’ll post on what you say in your second para.
Thanks for your help so far both, much appreciated.
In my experience I’m afraid the answer is yes. It used to be possible to view the contents of the app, including its playlists, in iTunes which was used as an iOS app backup, but as far as I’m aware there is no longer any way to do this and use it to extract a playlist.
This may mean that you have no choice but to abandon your Naim app playlists and start again in Asset. I don’t know how easy that is in practice. I use a Unitiserve as UPnP server, and it’s very quick and easy to create and add to a playlist on the same device that runs the Naim app. Other Asset users may have some ideas on this.
Chris and I are going down different threads here. I’ve assumed your playlist are actually physically on your PC being presented to the Naim app via Asset. If they have been created within the Naim App, then as Chris says, you are stuck
Despite using the Naim app for several years, I was not aware that it was unsuitable as a long term home for playlists. Very disappointing. Naim ought to provide some guidance on this.
So, based on your comments I’ve decided to recreate the playlists on my PC.
Paul_C, thanks for your help as an Asset user. However, I’m confused about the file structure I need to use. I’ve had a go at creating a test playlist using Music Playlist Creator. It is in a sub-folder and, as you suggest, Asset can’t find it. Can you explain what file structure is required, please? Not being able to have different playlists under a Playlist folder seems clumsy. How do you get around this?
As you can see the MusicRAWPlaylists playlist folder is separate to my music folder.
All my playlists are in in my MusicRAWPlaylists folder (no extra subfolder), and they link to the Music via a relative path (e.g. …/MusicRAW meaning go up one folder, then down into MusicRAW folder), e.g.
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:188,Sugar Foot Stomp - Fletcher Henderson And His Orchestra
../MusicRAW/Various Artists/Peppermint Candy CD2/15-Sugar Foot Stomp-Fletcher Henderson And His Orchestra.flac
#EXTINF:149,Georgia Swing - Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
../MusicRAW/Various Artists/Peppermint Candy CD1/22-Georgia Swing-Jelly Roll Mortons Red Hot Peppers.flac
Many thanks for your help GadgetMan. Following your advice for Asset playlist folders, I can now get Asset to see and play a test playlist created using Music Playlist Creator. I didn’t have to manually create any relative file paths. A relief because that was stretching my technical abilities and would be unmanageable for a large track collection. Presumably there is some automated way of handling this.
My issues are now with Music Playlist Creator. I’m struggling to get the manual creation of new playlists to work. My test playlist was created using its automatic playlist creation function.
If anyone knows of a better alternative, or any guidance on using Music Playlist Creator, your help would be appreciated, or direct me to the appropriate thread.
Sorry never used that, let’s hope someone can help. My playlist process is quite complex, because I use my iTunes Playlists, then export them, then run a big Shell Script I wrote on them to put them into an Asset Friendly playlist, and a Naim USB flash drive friendly playlist. Because I just keep MP3’s in iTunes (smaller files to upload to iPhone), the script needs to find a Flac equivalent from my Music Store, and replace it. The main advantage is that iTunes playlists can be smart e.g. I have a playlist for 1920’s music/1930’s music etc.
Oh, a tip - when amending playlists in Asset, I find you need to restart Asset to ensure it picks up the change correctly.
My Asset 7.4 is linked to a playlist folder on the PC/NAS in the normal way.
All my playlists were in that folder.
I had some radio playlists which I grouped in a sub-folder for convenience. This had worked under Asset 7.0 but they disappeared under Asset 7.4. But OK when I moved them from the sub-folder to the folder (confirmed as change by Asset).
As an alternative I therefore created a separate radio playlists folder and attached to Asset as a second playlist folder. All OK.
You can have as many playlists in the folder as you wish.
After a bit of trial and error, I’ve ended up with a similar structure to your own, with individual playlists in a main Playlist folder.
I’m currently recreating my Naim App playlists on the PC. I’ve been using Playlist Creator which I’ve found easy to use and appears to carry the metadata and images well. I’ve then been copying these playlists into new upnp playlists in the Naim App (on my iPad) to make them easier to use for the rest of the family and to be able to amend/change the playlist on the fly without affecting the original playlist. Hope that makes sense.
However, in the new Naim App playlists, I seem to have lost the “Play from this track” functionality which was in my old Naim App playlists. This allowed the playlist to be started at different points and was very useful.
Any thoughts on this? Also, do you use any third party playlist creation software?
I use Playlist Creator 3.6.2
I found it many years ago when I started streaming and it is a simple .exe file that does the job.
It has not been updated for years.
It has a small bug if you add a whole album with over 9 or 10 tracks it sometimes puts the last track at the beginning but this can easily be adjusted.
I can start the playlist anywhere from the asset playlists on my Linn streamer so I think this is a Naim app issue.
