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 âhatâ 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 werenât aware. I found out last week when Qobuz no longer appeared in My Apps. (Itâs 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 Logitechâs 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 âseenâ 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
The easiest solution for the limited indexing cabilities problem of the Uniti Atom seems to me to ârationâ the music data base on the USB stick linked to the Atom.
I keep the music on the USB-linked stick to ~800 albums, which the indexing can just about cope with. This means, as soon as I download new music I have to decide which existing album to delete. In a way a painful, but also in other ways salutary exerciseâŚ
Iâm using a 2 TB LaCie Portable SSD with a USB A - USB C into my NSC 222 in server mode, so I have my music in two locations, it seems to be working fine.
I donât fancy re ripping all my CDs again and once a month I use rsync on my Synology and to transfer new files to the SSD.