I’ve had my Uniti Atom for a few months now and I’ve enjoyed streaming for the first time (via Qobuz), and feeding it from my Linn CD player. I’d now like to try storing music on an external SSD hard drive, which will be connected to the Atom via the rear USB socket, but am slightly unsure how to go about it.
Am I right in thinking that I need to rip my CDs and/or download albums to my iMac initially, and then transfer the files to the SSD?
Do I need any special software to do this?
Should I structure/organise the files on the SSD in any particular way so that the Atom can navigate them?
I’d be grateful for any comments or advice as it will be a new venture for me and I’m not particularly technically minded. TIA
You need to connect the drive to a computer first to add files to it, as this cannot be done when it is connected to the Atom.
The drive should first be formatted. Naim recommend using NTFS, HFS or FAT. Most drives will already be in a suitable format when you buy them, so you may well be able to miss this step, but do check before you add a large number of albums, or you might have to start again.
If you need to rip CDs have a look at DBpoweramp, it’s a great bit of ripping software.
Mount the USB drive in the front or rear port on the Atom. Then go to the Server input (not the USB input!) and you should see the files listed under Local Music.
Adding files in a structured folder system is unnecessary as the Atom will use metadata in the files to list them by album, artist, genre etc. and to show album artwork.
Hi Martin. I used dbpoweramp to rip all (well most) of my cd’s to a file on my laptop first. Then copied the whole file to a new ssd which I plugged into the back of my Nova. I don’t know how many cd’s you have but it’s a pretty tedious process! Very satisfying when finally completed though. Various programmes are available but I can certainly recommend dbpoweramp. Happy ripping and, eventually, listening!
As Explorer says, the process is tedious. If you upgrade to the paid version of DbP it supports multiple rips. When I did my collection (about 1000 CDs), this allowed me to rip 4 CDs at a time (two laptops with built in CD drives, and each with an external drive too). Shortened the ripping process by weeks.
Somewhere after you’re 100th rip you will start questioning your sanity and tell yourself “never again” . This leads to 2 points:
A). Rip to FLAC (or other lossless format), and
B) make sure you make a back up of your rips, and store the back up offsite (I’ve one in the office and one at the folks).
From the lossless files you can convert to anything (if you want more compressed versions for phone or car etc ), and the back up means you shouldn’t have to do that many rips in the future (just new titles if you keep buying CDs)
If the Atom is like the Star you have to have to configure the SSD to be a Music Store. You can do,this through manage music in the App.
The music will then be catalogued under Artist etc in local Music.
Otherwise I believe you will just have a list of folders to trawl through.
You configure a Music Store on the Star because it has a CD ripper. For the Atom you just put the album on a USB drive which it will scan automatically.
. This leads to 2 points:
