Thanks allround for your contributions, folks.
As to ChrisSU: your info re UPnP server is interesting indeed. Can I infer from what you say that the problem my Atom UPnP server has with indexing my music db (to recap ~1000 folders=artists, ~1600 files=albums, ~12000 tunes, altogether ~130Gbytes) is UNLIKELY to be related to my folder/file system(s), but rather to the number of tunes they harbor? Just to be crystal clear…
Jegreenwood - sorry those are the numbers of my musical db which I had explained in my earlier mssage of 5 days ago…
Hi, the largest sized music collection I’ve put on a USB drive is about 600 albums in lossless FLAC or WAV. The streamer took a little while to scan them initially, but after that they were fine. How many more files than that you could add I wouldn’t know, but perhaps you have crossed that threshold?
At 130GB for 1600 albums I presume your files are not lossless, although I guess there will be just as much metadata to scan.
I presume you had plenty of spare storage space left? Drives often misbehave if they are close to the limit.
How long did you wait after connecting the USB drive to the Atom? It does take a bit of time to scan that many albums, so make sure the process is complete or you will find that some material is missing.
If none of the above resolves your issue, you may just have to accept that a separate UPnP server is a better solution. You can run this software on a computer you already own, or buy a basic Synology or QNAP NAS and use that for both storage and running a server.
Another thought - did you use your Brennan to rip CDs? I have a friend who did this a few years ago, and they worked fine if he played them on the Brennan, but he could never get them to run reliably on any other hardware. Eventually he gave up and bought an Apple Music subscription instead.
I misunderstood. I was looking for Naim’s guidance on the maximum number of folders/files that can be handled by the Atom’s internal server. And by the Nova’s if there’s a difference.
I know that Naim recommends a maximum drive size of 1 TB, which would suggest far more 1600 albums. But it occurs to me that the 1TB capacity only relates to the drive as a file system.
I just checked my external drive, it’s currently 370 artists (folders), with 900+ albums (sub-folders), and about 12.5k tracks/files (many, but not all, have embedded “cover pictures” to load). It’s 300+GBytes, but for indexing I’d suspect the number of files/tracks to load to the DB to be the issue.
Thinking of it: could the amount and size of cover pictures have an influence? (I don’t remember of they all get pre-loaded or are loaded on-demand when browsing the library.)
Works on my Nova (and previously on Atom, it should not have grown very much). Takes some time (some 10s of minutes? Did not check lately and subjective time is always longer, when you wait for something.) on indexing when added - if it’s urgent, I start playing via the USB input and switch to the server view later.
Did you try the USB-input? (Instead of local server.) Here you should at least see, that the drive is correctly detected, and access to the file system / folders works as intended.
PS: I have “server mode” off - it’s not needed to play music on the device itself. (It may be useful, if you do playback on other devices using the Atom/Nova/… as a UPnP source of music.)
Storage :
Store up to 20,000 tracks to a local USB connected storage device and serve to a network-connected player.
External portable SSD – max. 1TB
USB sticks – max. 128 GB.
Dear Naim enthusiasts: Thanks - again - for all your thoughts and suggestions! Yes - I think you are correct, ChrisSU, that I am over the limit with 1600 albums (indeed MP3, 12 years ago there was no alternative to MP3, and then I gave all my CDs and LPs away, so I am stuck with that format). After the Atom was switched on, and the 1TB SSD attached, I waited for 60 min for the indexing to be completed, in vain. Now I have my collection on two 128 Gb sticks (each with 65Gb music) and that seems to work fine as indexing goes, and I start getting used to my collection on 2 sticks. I am also getting round to thinking that working predominantly in “USB” rather than “Server” mode is not so bad.
As to ripping using the Brennan or Cocktail Audio, I did that 10-12 yrs ago, not since then. Music ripped on the Brennan was playable ubiquitously, so no problem there. Thanks again.
Seems to me that if you use USB mode you should be able to get far more files on an SSD than you have. I have a 1TB SSD with about 30,000 tracks. I just played around with it, and my Muso played all of the 20 tracks that I randomly selected but 1. After some troubleshooting, I determined the 1 track that didn’t play would play properly after I changed the file names for the tracks on that album. I failed to identify the offending character.
I tried what you propose PhilippVH (thank you!), I plugged in USB sticks on both sides, one at the front and one at the back. The result: the same as when I attach the whole collection on one SSD to pone USB port. Same problems in indexing.
To the best of my knowledge you get a 30 day trial period with JRiver. So you can use that time to sort your files, which may facilitate indexing. Alternatively, JRiver is a DLNA/UPnP server, so you can use it in that manner as well. Right now JRiver is managing 50,000 files, without issues. By the way, the files are simply on an external (self-powered) hard drive, not an NAS. The database is on my C:Drive.
(I see that MP3Tag also has an expression language, but that struck me as requiring a longer learning curve. I’m sure other apps have similar features.)
Here’s a screenshot of a bulk change in file location. In this case I am eliminating one level (genre) from my file locations. Were I to hit OK JRiver would move all these (and hundreds more not visible on the screen.
It occurred to me that the second expression won’t quite get the job done for people like me that treat a double album as a single album with two discs. I would either have to add the disc number to the file name or break my two disc set into two subdirectories. Either would be quite simple in JRiver. Although I would certainly want a back-up if things went wrong.
For a little while now I have been using. 1TB external disk drive plugged into the rear of my Nova and have not encountered any issues, however, it is about 80% full, so thinking ahead, I may need to move to a 2TB drive (SSD), so would be interested to hear if anyone is using this size drive?
Not after reading the above posts.
I did have it on, not knowing exactly what it meant and assuming that I was streaming my music, I needed it on, but I have now turned it off in the interests of heat and power consumption.
I have now played around extensively with the different options as to how to play music from a music carrier (SSD or stick) plugged into my Atom via USB. There are indeed some rather puzzling weaknesses of the indexing system, in addition to (or apart from) the maximal limits of numbers of albums (~800, I would say) and/or tunes (around 8000 to 9000 tunes, I would say, irrespective of the data size, which in my case is less than 200Gb), as discussed exhaustively above.
Eg, the appliance refuses consistently to play certain albums when selected via the “Server” option (i.e. Naim UPnP), although these very albums are indeed accessible and played without any problem when one calls them up via the “USP” option. Somewhat odd and disappointing, I’d say.
I now realise that the Atom, perhaps the whole Uniti range, in terms of software capabilities, is less designed for punters (like me) with moderate to large music libraries (on suitable carriers) collected over many years, but rather for those HiFi enthusiasts who either are primarily interested in streaming services and internet radio transmitters, or have a NAS storage appliance up and running to support their own music collection.
Before I decided to purchase the Atom, I had my doubts whether it was really the right appliance for my requirements. So I took my SSD to dealers, first in Europe, then later in the UK, where they demonstrated the “USB option” of playing my USB drive on the Atom. But these dealers were somewhat less knowledgeable as to the (more attractive) UPnP (Server) option, the exact implications of which at the time - I must say - escaped me. I cannot criticise these dealers for not knowing details of such intricate nature, but I would think Naim may perhaps be wise in considering to clearly stipulate in their appliance desciptions that as far as music libraries on USB carriers are concerned,
indexing (particularly via the “server” option) on the Atom is restricted to small music libraries (less than ~800 albums).
I have a vague recollection of using USB mode when I first got it, and indexing of tracks seemed odd. Server mode was fine. But it was probably 6 or 7 years ago (whenever Atom first came out) so can’t remember exactly why I preferred the server mode
