From memory it took my UnitiServe half a day to convert about 600 CD rips and downloads from WAV to FLAC. I set it going overnight and the next day it was done. I will admit, I didn’t sleep too well that night, but all went well.
Thanks, so I’ll need alcohol 
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From memory, I tried the conversion on a few individual albums first to give me the confidence to do a complete library conversion.
There are lots of people playing WAV. The issue here is the way the Serve does its rips. It doesn’t embed metadata in the music files, but instead puts them in a container that sits alongside. That’s why another upnp server can’t see the metadata. The conversion to flac changes the files from WAV to flac and embeds the metadata at the same time, so it becomes visible to upnp servers such as Asset or MinimServer.
You could always solve the problem by buying a UnitiCore and loading the Unitiserve backup into that. The Core does handle the US metadata properly whether it’s in flac or Wav.
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Most of my files are Wav. The only flac ones are when a download wasn’t available as Wav.
Best
David
My UnitServe converts from FLAC to WAV during playback. The SQ is identical to native WAV. My QNAP with Asset installed performs the same conversion. So in effect I have a FLAC and WAV library, depending on whether I enable this conversion.
I’m a little confused we all spend time money and effort to make sure we get the best sound possible out of our respective systems. I’ve always been under the impression that a WAV file is superior to a flac, a WAV file is bigger therefore doesn’t that mean more information more detail?
In the interest of accuracy for Peter’s deliberations, it doesn’t convert on playback, rather it transcodes. You hace only a flac library, with the ability to listen to then in WAV.
No, they are both lossless and contain the same data. Flac is compressed, but that’s not the same as being lossy. Once transcoded to WAV, the flac is the same as a native WAV. It’s just much easier to work with the metadata in a flac file.
Do a google search on “naim Songkong”. The top result for me explains how to get around the wav file issue for the Melco servers without too much hassle.
Has anyone tried this and found it doesn’t work? Cause if it does the US Wav file issue becomes a non-issue…
And there’s the rub. If you stick with WAV rips on the UnitiServe you are locked into Naim servers. IMV, Naim make the very best hifi boxes but there are better servers out there. After all, Naim make hifi, not computers.
That’s ok but won’t converting them to flac lose some data. WAV files are bigger than flac so there has to to be some loss. Playing them back as WAV won’t resort them to there original size.
See my reply above.
I’ll check in the morning and get back to you. It’s no big deal to convert them (apparently) but I just want to be 100% sure. Out of interest is metadata a problem with the Core and WAV files? And if so is WAV still Naim preferred format.
But we know the UnitiServe WAV to FLAC conversion actually works, so hardly a nonsense. It is also something end users can do themselves easily.
If you want to risk relying on another solution which may or may not work on various servers, then fine.
I converted all my WAV albums on my US to FLAC about 18 months ago. As per above I set to transcode on fly to WAV when playing back. Absolutely no audible difference whatsoever! Additional benefit of being able to fit far more albums on the 2TB hard drive!
Sorry, I’m not sure about the Core.
The Core and Unitiserve handle WAV data in exactly the same way except that the Core doesn’t allow transcoding on the fly whereas the US does. Yes Wav is still Naim’s preferred format but the new streamers are more powerful and so flac is going to sound pretty much like Wav.
All the various lossless audio file formats such as WAV, FLAC, ALAC or AIFF are containers for music encoded PCM.
An uncompressed FLAC file is the same size as a WAV
FLAC file size is normally reduced with its file compression function & is used for saving storage space. (Think of it like a .zip file)
When playing, the encoded (compressed) data stream is decoded back into the original uncompressed PCM.