I have not found anything better! I’ve implemented it via Daphile, playing music off ripped CDs, Qobuz, local radio and now Radio Paradise. All streaming to my Squeezebox devices and my MuSo 2 via the upnpbridge plugin. Sweet!
Enjoy the music and thanks for the Radio Paradise tip.
OK, that’s fine. The only difference I can see between the JB and RP streams is JB is (currently) 96k/16 bit while RP is 44.1k/16 bit. I’m struggling to see what is different in your environment that might break the setup that works for most and I wondered if you might have an old firmware that was perhaps not handling the unusual 96/16 format. Sounds like it must be another issue if you are on 4.7.
See how you get on with the changes suggested above. From the developer’s postings in the MinimServer forum it seems those are the recommended settings for streaming Internet radio to Naim streamers, although I prefer the simple flac:wav transcode as that is how I want my locally stored FLAC files streamed and I don’t want to mess that up.
@Clarkie, @mike33, I ran LMS with several Squeezeboxes for many years before committing to a Naim streamer. In many ways it was far ahead of its time and is still pretty bulletproof.
Thanks again. Here’s the link to the 4.7 firmware update. Not sure what would be causing issues here.
https://www.naimaudio.com/news/26298/classic-uniti-and-streamer-firmware-update-470
I’ll try your recommended fixes when I get home tonight.
Ok, just changing the transcode to *:L16 fixed it. I didn’t have to modify the text of the m3u file.
Thanks but what does that mean? Does it change the sound quality of the RP FLAC stations? It doesn’t sound like it but I can’t be sure. I still use Asset for my QNAP library.
Ok, I leave the house for an hour and when I return it’s no longer working for any radio station so I change it back to flac:wav and now it works for all the stations.
Didn’t someone say the JB Radio 2 FLAC sounds better than the RP FLAC? I agree with that assessment, JBR2 sounds really nice. And I guess it should at 96k/3072k/s.
Aha! I had the same problem with the Apple pages app automatically saving text files to .rtf
Now receiving RP & JB streams. Many thanks, chaps.
However, I don’t see any title info in the Naim (Android) app. My NAC 272 is on 4.6 firmware. Might 4.7 be the solution here?
No, that won’t help. I have the relevant webpage open on my iPad to see what’s playing.
Well it was good while it lasted. JB Radio 2 FLAC isn’t working again.
Thanks for the info Gavin. I should probably do the 4.7 firmware update anyway.
Seems we need a lot of separate devices to listen to the radio these days : )
@ElMarko I get better results listening to RP / JB via Bubble UPnP. Maybe worth a try? Accessing via the Naim app works for me sometimes, but other times it stalls or doesn’t connect at all.
I wasn’t aware we could use Bubble UPnP for the flac radio stations. I’m not at home currently, would I use the same playlist but through the Kazoo app?
Sorry, I’m not familiar with Kazoo. What I meant was using Bubble UPnP instead of the Naim app. Minimserver / streamer is still required.
i.e. Minimserver & Bubble UPnP server running on my NAS; radio playlists accessed via ‘Library > Minimserver’ using the Bubble Android app.
IMO the RP FLAC stream isn’t a big jump from 320 AAC. But hi-res JB2 definitely puts a smile on my face.
Thanks, yeah, I’m on a Mac so I have to use Kazoo with bubble server. I can see the Minimserver in the upnp so I can access the playlist there, both RPs work but the JBR2 still doesn’t. I’m going to try to repeat my steps from the other night and see if I can get a repeat. Something changed when I set the transcode to :*L16 but it didn’t last.
Edit - I tried the FLAC:L16 transcode and it’s working now. knocks on wood. Do these transcodes change sound quality at all? It doesn’t seem like it.
Transcodes between lossless formats won’t affect sound quality. There won’t be any track info in these flac streams, you will need to use the web site to see what’s playing as Gavin says.
Interesting that the SuperUniti seems unable to handle the stream transcoded to wav but is ok with pcm. Any idea why, @Stevesky?
The flac:wav transcode worked for the RP FLAC streams but not the JBR2 FLAC streams. And the flac:L16 works for all of them.
The JBR2 FLAC sounds so good. The 96K must make a big diff.
It looks like multi room with a first gen Muso doesn’t work with the JBR 2 station, is that because of the 96K? It works with the RP FLAC stations. Weird.
It certainly sounds impressive but I’d like to know how it’s generated. It’s unlikely to be HD source files all round given the range of content? Perhaps some volume (loudness) and upsampling?
Hi @Adrian_P
Re: transcoding a realtime radio stream to wav and it not playing on SuperUniti
I suspect this is down to that a wav file is intended to have a given length, primarily it has a header at the start of it that declares the format, then the samples start at a given offset and there are n samples.
From some of the screenshots it indicates that the server is declaring a huge stream size to work around this (aka how much radio can one person listen to), but this might be hitting a 32bit limit inside the Streaming cores wav decoder. It’s unchartered lands for that platform.
On the L8/L16/L24/L32 formats there are no headers and the streamer just has to assume the length/format of the stream match the meta that is passed in at upnp play time.
Best regards
Steve Harris
Software Director
I think you are on to it. I believe they are upsampling and sound shaping. They appear to be doing a good job at it. No ads, no DJ. I wonder how long this station (JB Radio 2) will last, who’s paying the bills?
Yes, it definitely sounds…BIG. Great to have the option, I hope it continues as well.
This has been an interesting thread and investigation into radio streaming with MinimStreamer. I have been using MinimStreamer for years now to transcode my locally ripped FLAC files to WAV on the fly. To do this, I had set the stream.transcode property to flac:wav.
When I recently added the lossless radio streams from Radio Paradise and JBRadio2 everything worked without me needing to change anything on the transcoding side. This was good for me as I didn’t want to mess up transcoding of my local files to WAV and I didn’t have any issues streaming lossless radio to my NDS, Qute2 or Qb.
Digging into this a little deeper in trying to understand @ElMarko’s problems with JBRadio on the SuperUniti I saw that the Minim author recommends transcoding to LPCM for Internet radio, no doubt for the reasons clarified by @stevesky – thanks Steve.
Although I wasn’t having problems with my existing settings, armed with this new information I did a few tests at the weekend and have now made some changes. My M3U file now looks like this:
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,[RP] Radio Paradise FLAC
http://stream.radioparadise.com/flac
#EXTINF:-1,[RPMellow] Radio Paradise Mellow Mix FLAC
http://stream.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac
#EXTINF:-1,[JBRadio2] JB Radio2 FLAC
http://199.189.87.9:10999/flac
Note that I have removed the stream type specifiers from the square brackets – this means that the streams are ‘unspecified’.
My stream.transcode property is now set to flac:wav, *:L16. The * here does not mean ‘all types’, but matches unspecified types. L16 is 16-bit signed linear PCM. The setting therefore achieves my goal of having locally stored FLAC files transcoded to WAV (which works because of the precise match) while the unspecified radio streams get transcoded to 16-bit PCM.
It might be worth trying this on your SuperUniti @ElMarko. I don’t know if you also use Minim to serve local files but with your current transcode setting all FLAC files (including local files) will be transcoded to 16-bit PCM which means any hires 24-bit files you have will be downsampled to 16-bit. It might also affect your ability to use the seek slider to fast forward or rewind tracks as they are playing.