Star Atom compatibility

[Drstephen]

I have both a Uniti Star and a Uniti Atom. I have a lot of CDs which I rip on the Star and store on a USB Hard drive plugged in the back.

If I make a copy of the HDD attached to the Star can I plug it straight into the back of the Atom or do I need to reorganize the folders that the music files sit in so the Atom can see them?

Apologies if this question has been answered elsewhere

[S.C]

This actually came up a couple of days ago in another thread about the Star….

As confirmed by @davidhendon , no other Naim device will ‘see’ the USB device as created by the Star and that you are saving your files on, its specific to the Star’s use…I didn’t actually know this (don’t have a Star) and that even the Core wouldn’t read the drive, which surprised me….
Only way you could ‘re-use’ these same files would be to transfer the files that are in there (via PC/Mac) onto another USB HDD and then use that on your Atom…No problem there, though arguably the USB interface isn’t the most fluid way of navigating and playing files etc……

Perhaps a better alternative, would be this: I believe the Star has a ‘Server Mode’ in its settings on the App (Not 100% certain, but fairly sure it will, as the Atom/Nova do etc)….If you turn this on, it effectively will ‘share’ your Star across your network via UPnP…on your Atom, under the Servers input source, you should see your Star….this will allow you to play music from your Star from connected devices included your external USB….

Hope this helps,

Welcome to the Naim Community by the way!

SC

[paulbysea]

You can set the Star to server mode and the Atom will be able to see the USB harddrive if they are on the same network.
If they are not on the same network, navigate to the MQ or downloads folder on the Star’s USB hardrive on a PC or Mac then copy all the files across to your other drive and plug it into the Atom.

[davidhendon]

The Star doesn’t have a downloads folder I think…

[paulbysea]

It does on mine.

[davidhendon]

Ok, fair enough!

[paulbysea]

You do have to copy downloads to it when the USB drive is plugged into a PC or Mac. I normally just use FLACs for this as often the WAV files aren’t liked by the Star. I tend to create a new folder for each album I download because the Star can be fussy about some FLACS, copy all the tracks across to the new folder and then copy this onto my SSD. Also you sometimes have to resize the cover artwork down to 1500 by 1500 as the Star doesn’t like it bigger than that. It was a bit of a palaver working this out initially and I only do it this way because I have never worked out how to copy to the Star via the network, so unsure if that is possible. Maybe someone more technical would know.

[Drstephen]

Thanks for the suggestions. I should have added that the Atom and the Star are 80 miles apart so the network solution won’t work.

I was planning to copy the Star hard drive to a backup drive using a PC and then plug it into the Atom. I’m mainly worried that in addition to copying the music files I’ll need to fiddle with folders they are in to allow the Atom to “see” them

[paulbysea]

Just copy the files from the Star folders to the root folder on the USB drive and the Atom should be able to see them. This is what I have done so my 332 has the files stored locally rather than on the Star.

[ChrisSU]

The issue is that when you set up a music store folder for the Star, it’s only readable by the Star. If you connect it to another streamer it can’t be read. So as Paul says above, just connect the drive to a computer and copy the sub-folders to another USB drive and this should work fine in Atom.