Being a simple man…I have both Flac & Wav files on my Nova yet only Flac files bring up the cover art, so if Wav files also contain the cover art how do I get it to show on the Nova screen?
First, a simple, standalone .wav file will not show cover art. Beyond that…a bit out of my depth, but here’s a guess. I’m told that Naim’s Unit Star creates-and displays-.wav metadata in a non-standard format. It may be, therefore, the Naim equipment only displays this metadata-including the cover art-when created in Naim’s idiosyncratic format. How were your .wav files created? Do you know whether they in fact are associated with metadata? Were they created with some kind of ripping tool that also added metadata? Again, if all you have is a file with a .wav extension, it will not show cover art.
Naim have a weird way of ripping & playing WAV, it’s not the WAV as such. What did you rip on?
If I buy a WAV file from any vendor or rip a CD to WAV using dBpoweramp, when played on my Naim NDX, I see all the cover art.
So I ask agin, what did you rip it on?
Don’t overthink this! As long as your rips are lossless, it doesn’t matter a jot whether they are in FLAC or WAV because you can, if you ever change your mind, simply transcode the files from one format to the other without affecting the actual music data.
I would recommend FLAC because of the smaller file size. If you have the patience, make a copy on a computer, convert it to WAV, and see if it sounds any different.
FLAC WAV AIFF AAC MP3 ? Best is analog! 
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I think the confusion here relates to what exactly is a wav file.
Wav is a MS Windows file of the format xxxx.wav; eg: shelovesmeyayyayyay.wav. All xxxx.wav files are the same, whether they’re created on Naim equipment or anything else. This is the music. On the other hand, when you buy a WAV file from a vendor or rip from a CD, you get a xxxx.wav file AND metadata incl, e.g., title, performer, composer, label, tracts, etc., AND cover art. So when Mike B. Says “WAV has cover art”, he’s talking about the latter. When I say “standalone .wav files do not contain cover art”, I’m talking about the former. So the question, pslosarc (and so sorry to get so weedy), is what, exactly, do you have?
And that can be done in bulk, e.g. using dBPoweramp’s batch convert.
All I can say is, it’s going to take a looooonnnnnggg time to rip 9,000 songs. 
I’m a Mac guy I’ve ripped everything to ALAC or AIFF. Using either dbPoweramp, or XLD. Everything local is played off my Synology NAS using Minimserver. Sounds fine, no issues. Is there a better solution, I don’t think so? But I could be wrong.
Most likely your WAV files do not contain album art…
You can fix your missing album art by adding it to every track with tagging software. However, in your case in may be more convenient to just copy the relevant album art in each folder that contains the WAV files. Make sure your album art is in jpg format. The name of the film must be folder.jpg (this is critical, e.g. folder.jpeg is not recognized!). Furthermore the size of the album artwork (expressed in no. of pixels x no. of pixels) is limited. If you stick to, if I remember well, 2300 x 2300 at maximum, you are ok.
Please note these are my experiences with Nova and Core. Important for Core users: The info above can be applied in the Downloads folder. You should NEVER touch the Music folder as you can/will break the system. Instead upload album art via the Naim app on your iOS, iPadOS or Android device.
Sorry, this is not true. WAV files can definitely contain album artwork (via ID3v2.3 tag) and my Nova is displaying it during playback.
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My understanding of the difference in sound quality is that it’s nothing to do with the file itself, more to do with noise generated by the processing required to decompress FLAC, whereas WAV is not compressed to start with. Depending on the electronics and/or where in the chain the decompression takes place, that noise may or may not be audible. From what I have gathered from the forum (not from experience), it seems older generations of electronics were either more susceptible to or generated more processing noise whereas it is much less (if at all) noticeable with the newer equipment.
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WAV sounds better to me in my system than FLAC. I think it’s what Naim recommend so assume that has some merit.
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Uniticore apparently ( from a topic in the profile).
Dbpoweramp ripped on a MacBook Pro…so my Nova should display album art, no? But it doesn’t. Is there a quick fix here without “metadata retaging” which sounds like a cumbersome exercise for 2000+ songs?
So if FLAC is compressed, how / why do melco offer the option of ripping into FLAC uncompressed?
Initially the dealer recommended setting the rips to WAV on my Star. So I have ripped all my CDs to WAV. I have not had any issue playing them on other devices or programs. Copied them across to my Roon Core and they work and on my other laptop I can play them on every player I tried. Luckily I am not seeing this issue.
Wav for me on my system on my Innuos
Rips, seem to sound more natural more musical
Sorry all on CD 
What I mean is that while of course they will play, because of the way Naim does the metadata the tracks won’t be grouped into albums, so are hard to play. Maybe Roon sorts this out, I don’t know.
By getting the Naim server to convert the WAV to flac, the metadata is embedded into the files and everything works as it should.
It’s all at the periphery of my understanding, and all I can say is that I find flac much easier to look after than WAV, that transcoded flacs sound as good as native WAV, and that WAV, whether transcoded or native, sounds better than flac on my old platform Naim boxes.
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