To be clear, @AndyGe has been in touch with Naim support, who recommended he get an NAS after his repeated difficulties with attaching a USB stick and/or SSD drive.
My recommendation was to simply attach a drive or a high capacity USB stick to his computer, thus avoiding the need for a separate NAS. This has worked for me for many years, both before and after purchasing Naim streamers.
Of course, this would require the purchase of media server software. I have been happy with JRiver (other than some hiccups with album covers), but I know there are other options - indeed I tried the free version of Minim and it seemed to work.
Thanks again for your suggestions allround.
Note that my aim - guided by my experience with other streamers over the past 15 years - was to avoid using the computer with suitable media software (which would require switching on the computer every time one wants to listen to music in another room) or acquisition of a NAS device etc etc.
I intimated in my last post that it has now finally been possible to - indeed - access my whole music library (~1200 albums, 130 Gb) on a USB linked carrier (1 Tb capacity) in “server” mode, BUT - and this I had not expected - the indexing process took several hours (I waited for 5hr) instead of several minutes!!!
The only problem remaining is that when accessed by the remote controller (in “USB” mode) only half the music library is shown. Accessed by a tablet via the NaimFocal app, both modes, “server” and “USB”, show the whole collection.
So the suggestion would be that Naim might consider adding to its stipulations and recommendations as to how to access music libraries via USB-linked sticks/drives something like the following: “… music library indexing time required by the appliance for larger libraries on USB-linked carriers (more than several hundred albums with extensive metadata) may require several hours (3+) waiting in “server” mode…” Nobody made this suggestion to me…
IIRC Andy this has been covered a number of times in threads and posts here on the forum, regarding time taken to index. Again iirc, the conclusion has been that the streamers are not designed with extensive processing power, which would be the remit of any storage device with its own processor, which is why the NAS is perhaps being suggested.
With NAS, US or Core there is no issue, (or computer with storage), simply that it does require another box, which it is understandable isn’t always desirable, but simplicity sometimes comes with an overhead.
It would require a search here, but I seem to think that there have been posts suggesting re-indexing on other storage devices can take many hours.
Correct. And apparently the USB drive will be re-indexed every time it’s unplugged, for example to add discs to it (you can’t add over the network as you can with a NAS or the UnitiCore).
Thank you David, you did spring to mind, but aware of your recent other posts, didn’t wish to intrude so hoping that the relative improves and recovers, ATB.
It was my understanding from the former post that Naim did suggest to you that you use an NAS.
As for turning a computer off and on, I am retired and at home frequently during the day, so I leave my computer on from morning to night. The screen, however, set to go into sleep mode after 5 minutes.
When you mention “the remote controller (in ‘USB’ mode),” are you referring to the remote that came with the unit? To be honest, when I opened the box I tested the remote to confirm it was functional and then left it in a drawer. I took it out once, and I’m darned if I know how to access a USB device with it. I even posted that as a question here and was told that you can’t. So back in the drawer it went.
However, as I mentioned above, when using the app, and my 1TB drive, the list populates very quickly, and I don’t notice any omissions. My music 1TB music library is all located in a single tree using the following organization music\[genre]\[album artist]\[album]\[file name], where I have modified the file name to begin with the track number. This mimics the way I generally choose music in an indexed list.
When I first tried this it did indeed re-index every time, but more recently it hasn’t always done a full re-index and the files have been browsable straight away. I wonder if this has been improved by firmware update.
Chris how the very latest streamers act, may possibly not be the same for the Uniti streamers, with I think their different firmware. My NSC222 is on version 5.0* likely the same as your NSS333, while my Nova and ND are on version 3.* - I’ve used 3.*, for reasons you and @davidhendon will appreciate.
I’ve mostly used a USB drive on my Atom, but the 333 certainly doesn’t seem to scan any faster, and I haven’t noticed any differences in the way the server input performs.
jegreenwood: What I meant was that I did not see anywhere the suggestion to wait for a multi-hour period in order to allow the appliance with attached usb carrier to undergo indexing ….
But I realise now there has been another blog on this forum where a closely related issue has been discussed in 2021. I missed that…
I have a drive with over 500 albums, mostly FLAC CD rips, which takes about 20 minutes to scan. I suspect it a larger collection takes hours it’s either close to the limit the streamer can handle, or possibly there is an issue with the format that makes it harder to scan the metadata.
Question: as much as I remember, I have to select front/back port, when accessing drives via the USB option - I’ve used the app only, so far…
Is there a chance, you only access 1 of your 2 drives via the remote? (I never so far tried attaching 2 drives, and what happens then.)
As I mentioned above, my Nova scanned close to 2,000 albums, taking up about 90% of a 1TB drive, in roughly 90 minutes, maybe a little longer. A few thoughts.
My drive was organized strictly in the manner I described above.
Files were either FLAC or ALAC
Is the Nova’s indexing capability superior to that of an Atom?
Finally, if indexing is a non-starter, why not just use the USB option? It appears that using the App works with that choice. And actually it’s always an option simply by choosing the USB input with the App.
USB playback is limited in functionality. As much as I remember, the whole management of a playqueue is missing. So it’s okay for playing a whole album, but less so for mixing playlists, etc. And you cannot browse by different meta data.
Still, sometimes when I want to listen to something quickly, I plug in my drive amd select something via the USB input - after that, usually the indexing for my drive has been done and I switch to the other view.
I think you are correct. But I very rarely create playlists from my own collection. Most of my playlist - and I don’t have very many - are sourced from Tidal and now Qobuz.
However @AndyGe seemed open to the idea of using USB playback.
My digital recordings currently number some 1440 tracks with a total playing time of just under 4 days. This does not include classical recordings which I maintain in another top level folder and taken all together these occupy some 340 GBytes duplicated in multiple locations.
The files are tagged and folder structured by artist and album but I prefer to use m3u playlists, one line per track. This gives me the ability to play randomly across the entire library collection allowing the player(s) to shuffle the playlists as a whole. For me USB storage is now a last resort but I do keep a copy using USB storage on my router for backup only.
I keep a Logitech (software) media server running throughout the day which I can access via a UPnP/DLNA bridge plug in on various players including the Naim QB. But in some cases ( including the QB) playlists with more than 500 entries give problems so I trisect my master playlist on the server for these. The server has a 1TB M.2 drive and idles at about 3 watts. There are many hardware alternatives which now support very fast storage mediums and have the computing power to act as servers. Even the latest generation of Raspberry Pi can take M.2 storage with the addition of a “hat” although personally I use a Windows 11 Intel device combined with a very special USB DAC.
This (free) LMS software very neatly separates storage , controllers, and players so I can use any device on my network provided it can handle 24 bit wav files ( and others) mostly sampled at 192 KHz.
Where I need a reduced format ( car for example ) I use Foobar 2000 to convert the files retaining the same folder structure and metadata.
Now the Lyrion Media Server. I mention this in case you weren’t aware. I found out last week when Qobuz no longer appeared in My Apps. (It’s back after I made the proper adjustments.)
It appears Logitech is terminating its architectural support, which they kept available for about 10 years after they stopped making Squeezeboxes. The great group of programmers who kept updating the LMS during those 10 years seem to be stepping into Logitech’s role, but there are changes to be made on the user side.
I use the ChromeCast plug-in to let LMS stream to my ChromeCast ready players (e.g. the Audio pucks). I had a lot of trouble getting that to work reliably. In the end it was an issue with my set-up, which caused various intermittent problems. All fine, now. But because of that experience I avoided using the UPnP/DLNA plug-in. Have you found it to be reliable?
I will have to do some more work on this. Having turned off the Server function, I subsequently updated my USB hard drive, but when I plugged it back in, it was not ‘seen’ by my Nova in the Music Server input, thought it was there under the USB rear input. Once I gave it time to update, I found that the album art was not displaying and on playback, it occasionally stopped, eventually stopping altogether. However, I then turned on the Server mode, whereupon, after a short time, the disc was seen again through the Server input, including the album art and it played without problem, even when I subsequently turned off the Server mode.
I will repeat this process to confirm this outcome, but it looks as though the Server input mode can be turned off later on.
i think there is a general limit of 500 in many aspects of naim streaming software - 500 tracks per playlist, 500 playlists so probably 500 albums
but as you say - you have a workaround