Not strictly as the title suggests as I’ve been streaming for several years but always from ripped cd’s on my Unitiserve.
However, following a power cut/surge/spike or whatever it was last night, my US will not restart. All I get is the flashing Naim sign. I’ve followed most of the advice on here such as powering down the whole system and restarting one component at a time, leaving it off for several hours before switching back on etc but to no avail.
Unless someone can come up with something else it looks like it will need to go back to Naim for repair.
I know equipment needs to be shut down correctly but surely it needs to be resilient to events out of our control, especially when you consider both the purchase cost and the repair cost.
Anyway, what’s done is done and I’ll be without the US for several weeks no doubt which leads me onto what do I do in the meantime.
Spotify or TIDAL seem to be the options for me (NAC 272/250 DR) so I’d be grateful for an idiot’s guide as to how they are set up and feed into the 272. Do you have separate apps or are they controlled from the Naim app? Where are the downloaded tracks stored - on my mac or in the cloud? From the limited research I’ve done TIDAL seems to be the best for SQ but would Spotify be adequate until the US is repaired?
I’m sorry for my lack of knowledge/understanding but I rather hoped my music collection stored on the US would be all I needed.
Presumably when the US is repaired I can carry on as before but it does worry me if this is likely to happen again. Is the equipment so fragile? Would the Core be a better upgrade or will that suffer the same fate - or maybe a different make altogether?
Hi, do you have a backup of your Unitiserve? Like any storage device, it should be backed up, as nothing is totally immune to damage, theft etc. If you have an automated Unitiserve backup, it will be on a NAS, and if you run a server on that, you can carry on listening to your music while the US is being fixed. Personally, I would not buy a Core to replace a Unitiserve.
If you want to try Tidal or Spotify, they have free trial periods (usually 1 month, sometimes more when you buy a streamer that supports it.) Sign up on their website, then for Tidal, use the same user name and password in the Naim app. Note that the music is not stored locally, you stream it from Tidal servers.
Using Spotify or Tidal is like listening to the radio. It’s not stored anywhere.
The Unitiserve rips to wav and stores the metadata separately from the actual music. So if you back the serve wav files up to a nas, they will not be playable from the nas, well they will but not as whole albums. The answer is to get the serve to convert to flac, back up the flac to a nas. This will let you play from the nas if needed. You simply install a Upnp server such as Asset on the nas. It needs to be a nas that can run the server. You then set the Unitiserve to transcode flac to wav on playback.
Once on the nas you don’t actually need the Serve at all, so long as you’ve converted the wav to flac as above.
Many thanks as always to everyone for the help and advice. Obviously I need a NAS. Has anyone any particular recommendations are are they all similar?
Get a good QNAP or Synology. They will both run Asset happily. Mine is a QNAP TS 253A. It’s a few years old now. Get some WD Red drives.
If it’s just for music use, I would get a single drive NAS of the same capacity as the Unitiserve. There are plenty to choose from, but QNAP and Synology are widely used and well supported, so probably best to go for one of them.
Setting up the automatic backup for the US might involve a bit of head scratching if you’re not used to it, but once done, it’s fully automated.
First, I guess you need to get your Unitiserve fixed and hope that the files are still intact.
My nas has two drives, each a copy of the other. If one fails I can add another without turning it off and the files will be copied. It’s not a proper backup of course - for that you need something separate. With the QNAP I can connect a USB drive, press a little button and it does a backup.
Spoke to Jonathan at Naim Support who thinks the most likely cause may be that the BIOS battery needs replacing.
He says they normally last between 2-4 years. I’ve had my US for 5 years and although it was in storage for 18 months or so due to a house move, it would suggest it’s battery life was almost up anyway. It’s going to a dealer tomorrow for them to check, so fingers crossed that this is the fault - if not it’s in the right place to be returned to Naim.
However, it has served as a warning to get a NAS pronto for back up - many thanks for the suggestions.
Just remember to tell the US to convert everything to flac and rip to flac going forward. It’s accessed via the DTC. Then back up, which may be challenging…
The dealer should be able to replace the battery themselves. It’s trivial to do. If they send it back to Naim you will get a full service which is very expensive.
Best
David
Hi David - yes I agree - they’ll only send it back to Naim if it still doesn’t work after the battery has been replaced.
They will need to reset the CMOS to Naim defaults as well as changing the battery, but presumably they know how to do that. It’s very easy.
Best
David
Thanks David, I’ll mention that too.
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