Why, after spending a substantial sum of money on a Naim Uniti Atom do I need to then subscribe to Roon or Audirvāna to enjoy a “Better” operating system? Why does Focal-Naim not make their own Remote app as good as or preferably better than these alternatives? Frankly, although optional, these feel like rip-off apps! Shouldn’t be necessary for maximum enjoyment of an already excellent pice of equipment, but both Roon and Audirvāna make the Naim app look rather second rate.
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Welcome… the Naim app is designed to get the best SQ performance for Naim equipment … it does this by working in a way that is optimal for Naim products with UPnP. You can use other applications with Naim products for UPnP, but they won’t be working optimally for Naim.
Your point about the look of applications… I guess that is subjective. I like the simplified look of the Naim application, and sometimes I avoid the Naim application altogether and simply use the Zigbee… but the app does well at what it does best… get the best performance from your Naim… but perhaps doesn’t have the bells and whistles for those that like to fiddle away on their devices… I suppose Naim had to prioritise where to put the product dev resources… sound performance or application design.
Naim does support Roon… but critically the implementation doesn’t sound quite as good as UPnP in my opinion… but still excellent. I happen to like Roon’s indexing and global cross referencing approach … it allows immersive listening sessions following musical journeys… but that is a key part of what Roon is about delivering. You can always buy or subscribe to that product service if wanted as an option… but not everyone is going to want that.
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You don’t ‘need’ to subscribe to anything. The Naim app has always seemed perfectly fine to me and I’ve been using it for well over 10 years. If you do t think it’s good enough then you can use Roon, but it’s entirely optional.
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I agree. The Naim app is perfectly fine. I use Roon because I appreciate the way that it integrates my library with the streaming services That is a personal preference and it is certainly not essential.
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Please explain this statement? How did you come to this conclusion?
I use Roon with my NDS, taking the output from Roon and feeding it into my Naim product as a UPnP stream. When playing from the same file in the local library, there is no, zero, different here between playback in the UPnP Render, being initiated by the UPnP controller offered by the Naim app and a UPnP feed coming from the ‘Roon → UPnP’ Bridge.
Also there are many ND555, NDX2 users out there using their Naim equipment with Roon, using the ‘RoonReady’ implementation - what evidence do you have that this playback method is of a lesser SQ than using UPnP?
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There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that Roon doesn’t sound as good as UPnP. As a forum user I can’t imagine that you’ve missed these comments.
As far as your NDS is concerned you’re using UPnP, not Roon. Perhaps that makes a difference?
It was this statement, we need to understand - it is fact?
Plus for the rest of the Naim users that do have ‘RoonReady’ equipment, is ‘anecdotal evidence’ good enough to have it stated as fact that ‘the Naim app is designed to get the best SQ performance for Naim equipment’
In the Naim listening ‘Reference’ room on reference systems used to validate firmware releases etc., has there an evaluation of a RoonReady playback vs UPnP stream from a UnitiCore, so this level of statement provided here is underpinned by the manufacturer?
It’s Simon’s blanket statement for all Naim streamers and Roon. And on the other hand, he says Naim made improvements in latest streamers. There’s no statement on this, or proof, it’s just people’s opinion as with everything.
Let’s not be too demanding here. It would be good if @Simon-in-Suffolk could expand on what’s meant by the last sentence of the first paragraph of the post. Certainly the app and the software are developed together, so it’s easy to see how they should work best together, though there is functional best and operational best. I don’t feel it’s for Naim to provide definitive statements here; users can easily trial Roon and decide for themselves what advantages or disadvantages it has in relation to uPnP.
It wasn’t me that said “ the Naim app is designed to get the best SQ performance for Naim equipment” and in my experience it isn’t. The best performance I get has been from using BubbleUPnP Server on a Synology NAS. This sounds significantly better that native Naim app controlled streams using Tidal, Qobuz and local UPnP streams on 1st and 2nd gen streamers. Unfortunately Roon, as an alternative ‘proxy server’ sounds consistently a little worse than the Naim app.
How Naim have tested this I have no idea. As far as I’m aware in their own demo room and at shows they use a Core as UPnP server. Obviously someone there will have used Roon, but I’m not aware of them having mentioned its SQ performance.
So if I had upgraded, at considerable expense, from an NDS to ND555, or NDX to NDX2 etc to be able to use a Naim streamer in a Roon environment, with the ‘RoonReady’ certified implementation with the new streamers, I would be pretty disappointed if these statements made here are true.
Furthermore, I have long been asking about the RoonReady implementation and whether a UPnP stream is in fact better than the RAAT-based playback route - but nothing coming from Naim, regarding their views, feelings or opinions or any test/listening results.
So not sure these seemingly factual statements should be here, from a trusted, respected forum member.
I think we need some clarity here from Naim themselves on the RoonReady implementation vs UPnP, to avoid these statements going further.
However, like you @ChrisSU I have found that the ‘workaround’ solutions work perfectly with my Naim NDS streamer. After all, it is still a UPnP feed, the Naim app is just the UPnP Controller, for the UPnP Renderer to request the content from the UPnP server, so has no influence on the SQ.
I also consider that I have the best of both worlds, the ability to use Roon for music discovery, management and playback with a UPnP feed to my NDS (the feed is directed to the UPnP Renderer and not requested).
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Roon is an unecessary expense which does little that Lyrion Music Server can’t do for free. 
Roon is superb, however I have multiple outputs in the house, the entire family uses it. It requires minimal effort from me and everyone can play music from any hifi in the house.
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I’ve never bought roon. I did buy asset upnp but that was my choice and not necessarily a necessity. There is also the option of having your music on an external usb drive. Tidal connect/qobuz/Air play/spotify all work. So I wouldn’t say naim is lacking in software it matches a lot of other manufacturers when it comes to features.
Hi Simon, the Naim implementation of UPnP uses the the Naim app to spool the media indexes into an index cache on the streamer, using the media indexes identified by the Naim app in communication with the UPnP server. The streamer in then retrieves the media using those indexes from the server media cache. Think of it like a kind of closed loop triangle
This allows playlists, albums or such like to be queued and spooled and controlled by the streamer.
This mechanism also helps gapless playout without relying on non standardised aspects of UPnP to push media haplessly. Another key aspect is that it allows the streamer to optimise how its media cache of content and to forward load content. This keeps networking TCP traffic overheads minimised - as we tend to see bursts of media loading on the line being fetched by the streamer from the UPnP server into the media cache as initially instructed by the Naim App as opposed to a more gradual constant stream. This was so I was advised an improvement with the later gen streamers over the initial gen streamers such as the NDX and NDS
Alternatively none Naim apps can instruct the UPnP sever to push content from the server to the streamer in a continuous stream. This will also work on Naim streamers but is less optimised in the Naim setup as the flow initiation is controlled by the server and the media index lists would then either reside on the UPnP server or possibly non Naim application. The Naim application doesn’t support this approach with UPnP.
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I have often read that the art of control apps is to minimise unnecessary network traffic. I won’t comment on this as I am no IT expert. I use a pair of computers for streaming, one for control and the other for audio. About one year ago I changed my control app from BubbleUPnP to JPLAY iOS. I have found that while BubbleUPnP was more stable, JPLAY iOS sounds better.
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With which streamer? I found Bubble UPnP sounded pretty good on the first gen streamers… particularly for playing cloud streaming services like Qobuz or Tidal… but I never used JPLAY
Hopefully I have explained above - its essentially the difference between media push by server, or pull from streamer using a list of server indexes held in the streamer as loaded by the Naim app (using indexes the Naim app has retrieved from the server). I understand this pull method was optimised using the larger media cache in the second gen and later streamers to optimise or drive consistent SQ with UPnP. This was according to discussions I had back in the day with Mr Harris when I was sharing network logs with him whilst he was developing parts of the next gen streamers and subjectively I agreed with him and his team with my ears… but ultimately this comes down to being a qualitative assessment rather quantitive assessment when it comes to SQ… ie it is ultimately subjective…
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Isn’t this how UPnP operates? With the UPnP Controller passes responsibility to the UPnP Renderer which then controls the stream from the UPnP server?
I have gapless playback with Roon and the SonoreUPnP Bridge. I don’t have with the native ‘squeeze2upnp’ application running on a RPi2, but that may have the operating capability to do this. It runs Asset UPnP server well though, and the NDS works well with Asset UPnP.
If Naim had implement custom extensions to UPnP, it would only work with their own UPnP server in the Unitiserve and UnitiCore, but many people run Asset, Minim server, including yourself.
And again, I can see that on the UPnP server on the Network I/O traces in iStat, but had those with SqueezeLMS and a Squeezebox 3, which was all pre-Naim streamers for me, circa 2010/2011, which were UPnP driven.
Yes, I have that with the SonoreUPnP Bridge, which takes a Squeezebox based output from Roon and pushes it as a UPnP stream to the NDS.
I also see the traffic bursts ahead of the next track, exactly like with the UPnP Controller, Renderer and Server approach.
The Roon guys, the original Sooloos team hate UPnP, as a protocol and made sure to overcome the weaknesses in the RAAT protocol definition. So ideally this should be better and more advanced than UPnP. Have Naim only performed a basic implementation of RAAT support to gain the ‘RoonReady’ certification?
Still not sure whether the UPnP Controller, the Naim App is having any part in the playback process between UPnP Renderer and UPnP Server, and why there is better SQ when the Naim App is used.
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