Good morning
I recently purchased a second hand unitiserve for ripping my cd collection. That aspect works fine but the online lookup for metadata results in an error notification. Using the nserve app am able to ‘see’ the ripped cds. On the settings page the server is recognised and is allocated an I.P. address. Am using a virgin hub 5 as my router. Tried turning off its firewall but still no luck.
server version 1.7cRC1. Tried ‘change cover’. That brings up various album art on google but no way I can find of adding it.
all very frustating
any ideas?
thanks
Roger
When you say ripping ‘works fine’ what exactly do you mean? Is it just ripping the CD but adding no artist, track title etc? Presumably you have it connected to the network with a cable.
One tip I’d give is to rip to Flac, not WAV. That way - once it’s all working as it should - you’ll get embedded metadata.
Unitiserve gets little in the way of metadata these days. I forget the reason why, but a search in the forum will likely bring it up. As I recall, Naim can’t fix it though unfortunately.
But n-serve should still work as an editor. It’s so long since I used it, I forget how you use it to edit metadata and covers, but it does work with 1.7c so with some experimenting you should be able to do it. You can’t edit a Unitiserve rip with the main Naim app though, unless it’s been moved to a UnitiCore.
Following on from what David wrote, the Serve is an antiquated beast, and if you have only ripped a few CDs, I’d try and return it on the basis that it doesn’t work as expected.
If you want a Naim solution, the Core will do the job, other ripper / servers such as Innuos are good alternatives, or you can rip on a computer and store the music on a nas. All of these are up to date and supported, and will give much more functionality.
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Thanks for the comments. The unitiserve came with some 300cds already ripped with all the album art so assumed must be an easy fix. Fairly cheap too with a teddy pardo supply. An odd fault given it can access the internet given it will show the results of a google search but chooses to show ‘online lookup failure’ Oh well not too concerned as the rips do show the name and track details just not the album cover.
There was no problem getting album art from Rovi until a few months ago (as per my previous comments). I think the Rovi API changed and so Unitiserve doesn’t work with Rovi any more.
But as I said before, you should be able to modify or add the artwork using n-serve. I don’t think the issue is an internet access failure, especially as you can get metadata ok. Maybe someone who has or had recently a Unitiserve (or a similar legacy server) can comment, eg @Clive? How do you change or add album artwork using n-serve Clive?
I rarely rip CDs these days, but I can still edit album art using the N-Serve app on iOS. When you see an image you want to use, press and hold your finger on the image until it offers you the option to ‘Use Image’.
Occasionally I’ve found that this doesn’t work, but if you choose ‘Open’ then select the image from the next page it generally works.
Remember that the US doesn’t like large artwork files. The limit is 1280 x 1280 so check that you are not attempting to select anything bigger than that.
I had my UServe go back for a service just earlier in this year. Some recaps and a disc refresh.
When left on for some time my n-Serve settings section in the app shows it is “not connected” under Select Server - yet is still fully functional.
I have found when ripping in this state I have had more issues.
A hard shut down along with a router reboot always gets the green light of a strong connection.
My rips in this state are about 80 % correct in the data and album art.
But no biggy for me. A nice cup of tea, some reading glasses to read the small print and a few minutes to sort it all out per rip using the n-Serve app.
Yet, when there has been a total balls up on the written data recovered. The robots working on what should have been have often for me proved interesting looking alternatives when rewriting.
Further to what @ChrisSU has said, another approach is to perform a normal album art search on Google (as if you were looking for an image to post on the now playing thread) and once you’ve found a good one, save this to your iPad / iPhone. Then when editing the album art in n-serve, select your own photo store, select the relevant image and add. This is pretty much the same as the Naim app with a Naim Uniti Core. Another option I’ve had to use on a few occasions when there’s no appropriate image found by Google or Bing (they occasionally deliver different results BTW), is to photograph the image on the CD booklet, edit the image to get it square and with sharp edges etc. and add this from your photo store. Using n-serve is really quite easy and possibly even easier than the Naim app approach with the Core.
Hi David, I’ve tried to add something to Chris’s answer, above, but it’s been a while since I’ve used n-serve and although it is a separate app, it’s really easy to use and not dissimilar to the Naim app with the Core, although you have to go through a couple of extra steps with the Core, which gives the edge to n-serve in my recollection.
Thanks guys
as suggested the tip of edit, then change cover, then web search, then on the image you want ‘use image’ works most of the time
all sorted now
Roger
sorry typo
edit album then change cover etc
working my way through my collection now
Roger
Yep. That is definitely what you have to do. I kind of assumed that!
Sorry David
I am a bit of a dinosaur working with software
DOH!
Roger
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I remember being told by a psychologist once (in one of those workplace management team building things) that I should remember that people (like me) who make unchecked assumptions often discover later that they are wrong. She is still right about that!
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