Why does Naim neglect its Uniti Core?

[Echolane]

For those of you who say there’s no way Naim should spend any time upgrading the Uniti Core, I disagree. Doesn’t Naim owe anything to the folks who paid quite a lot of money to buy their product? I use it regularly and face its limitations on an almost daily basis.

Of course, as luck would have it, my music of choice is opera and classical which means I and others with similar tastes are in an even smaller subset of Uniti Core users. Still, I put my trust in the product when I paid a considerable chunk of my hard earned money for this Naim product. Everyone seems to think it’s a well made product, that it sounds great, looks great, works reliably, so why has it turned out to be an orphan product?

Is there an address to send a wish list of improvements for the Uniti Core?

Here’s my partial wish list:

Better support for classical music.

Improve the search function. I can rarely find what I’m searching for and I am an obsessive metadata caretaker.

In particular with respect to search, I would like to see a way to capture multiple composers for a CD so that one can successfully search for music by composer. The title could still mimic the exact title, but there would be multiple fields available to capture composer so one could capture each composer in a search. Many CDs have multiple composers. I’d like to be able to search for each composer.

Instead of a string of artists, each artist should have its own field, so a search would turn up any artist captured as metadata.

Also with respect to search, I can’t figure out how their programmers wrote out the records for each CD. The way it’s organized makes no sense. I’d find a better way to organize the data files. That would probably aid the search function.

A method to merge multiple CD sets

A field for Conductor

A field for identifying the recording (ASIN #?)

Adopt a standardized non-proprietary form of WAV and provide a conversion.

Provide conversion between WAV and FLAC and vice versa.

What am I missing?

[S.C]

They are, of course…just that, like many of the tracks on that album, strongly feature other artists…which is why I often use it as an example album of how poorly the Core a)applies metadata (if it’s a Core Rip), b)edits metadata (either download or a rip) and c)presents metadata fields to the App and Streamer…

The ‘TrackArtist’ tag field is for that very purpose, so will tag any other additional artist(s) per track featuring on the album, but still allow the ‘AlbumArtist’ tag to remain the prominent hierarchical tag for the album, thus the album appears under Daft Punk when browsing, as it should, but also displays the additional artists as well as allowing searches for those artists to return results for the album/track….
If you look at the iTunes screen grab, you can see a properly executed metadata presentation of the album…
It’s a very basic tag field, along with the likes of DiscNumber, Date, AlbumArtist, Album, TrackTitle etc etc – I think they are all grouped as ‘1st level’ tags…And we’re not even talking anything remotely further such as Composer, Conductor, Movement, Lyricist, Description, Media, Publisher et al …and then there’s all the ‘sorting’ tag field options as well…Other UPnP servers such as Minimserver or Asset offer incredible levels of customisation and sorting of files, using the various tag fields and ‘serving’ the files in almost any desired way i.e want to append ‘HD’ text to any album title you have that is above 16/44, no problem, done…!

Naim’s Core offers very little scope to access/edit the majority of these tag fields, it’s basically just the basic Album/Artist/Track/Genre and then the Artwork. You can’t even add and, therefore display/browse, ‘Date’ (though as I said before, even if you do add this Date tag via an external tagging solution, the Naim App doesn’t honour it anyway!)…

Yes, as per your HDTracks download you can similarly amend the track title (which is obviously possible via the Core & App) to reflect a featured artist, but I find it rather clumsy, personally…
But there’s very little possibility for any of the other tags to be used in the correct way…
Of course, you can always edit your album track tag to reflect all you want to display e.g:
Lose Yourself To Dance–2013–Feat. Pharrell Williams–Nile Rodgers/Pharrell Williams–ColumbiaAU–HD–24/96 …Nice!

Here’s random Access displayed in Metadatics, the tag fields that iTunes pulled in shown on the right:

But if you want to add some additional fields and sorting options:

or even more perhaps…?

Anyway, the basic point is that the Core and it’s own Edit function for the Rips is rather, well, basic…
Of course, any user added files and downloads go into the Downloads folder, where the Core’s Edit functionality via the App can’t be used anyway, forcing you to use a more comprehensive tagging software solution…Which is fine (Naim support, when I was in contact with them re choice of internal SSD, actually advised me, without any prompting, to rip straight to an external store anyway for the very reason of easier metadata editing, which is what I believe @IainO said he does above…) but you then hit the next issue in Naim’s UPnP platform, as even with an extensively tagged/embedded file sitting on the Core, it’s hit and miss what and how that will be displayed and potentially used in the App – as we all know, you can’t even list Albums by Date in the App, only A-Z, so even if the Date tag field is embedded, it sits there in the dark…!
Same with my example screenshots yesterday – you can have Random Access listed as a Daft Punk album OR lumped into a Various Artist album, there’s no way to correctly honour and present the AlbumArtist and TrackArtist tags for a more sophisticated result …(I believe, from conversations I had a while back with Simonc at MininmServer that this is the fault of the Naim App)…

A lot of this is fairly basic and imo could easily be improved and exist with a little work on the OS…It has very little to do with Naim ‘developing’ the Core and/or spending huge sums of money on a product they may/may not see a future in…It’s not hardware, it’s not even an ‘upgrade’, it’s just a OS update, something akin to going from v2.9 to v3.0. Surely just a handful of days for one of the Software guys at HQ if he was given the task (though of course this then triggers listening tests re firmware, phafing around with the Beta group, blah blah…), but you get the point…

Plenty of users seem to chime in and say they’re happy with the Core for it’s easy use and good SQ and looks etc. That’s great. I agree. I think it’s a really good Naim box, just so frustratingly held short of being a great device by its OS.

SC

[S.C]

@Pete_the_painter

I could probably fix that easily by using my app.

Actually, you couldn’t. Can only use the App’s Edit Metadata option on the Core’s own ripped files in the main store. Any user added files, whether 16/44 or above, will be in the Downloads folder or external Shares, which the App cannot edit directly. Another curious OS/UI decision re Core & App.

SC

[Pete_the_painter]

I’m not saying it couldn’t be improved and not being able to edit in the download has always been a pain.

Guess different folks have different requirements. It seems that classical music meta data has always been an issue I don’t have a lot and there’s always issues with the data.

[ChrisBell]

I don’t see what’s the problem with the Core? It rips CD’s and plays them back. Mine works great, but I don’t use it much as streaming takes up the majority of my digital playback.

I demo’d the Melco and its ripper a few years back. Total disaster, both the sound quality and UI. The Core destroyed it. The dealer was so appalled by the contrast he dropped Melco.

Enjoy the Core for what it is. I don’t see myself purchasing or ripping another CD ever.

[Mike_S]

@S.C

Here’s random Access displayed in Metadatics

I use Metadatics, mostly to sort out downloads from Bandcamp, which never seem to come through nicely for metadata. But weirdly, I’ve never been able to find the instructions for using Metadatics, so have just wandered through how to use it and are probably missing half that fancy stuff.

[S.C]

Yeah, one of those bits of software that’s doesn’t have masses of instruction…I think it does have a help section though and links through to some articles and basic explanations…?
As you say, I tend to just wade through and play around in such situations….

If you point it at some files, click the MusicBrainz icon and initiate a lookup, it will often pull in an extensive amount of tag fields…click OK and they will be applied to your files, then Save. Of course, you can edit/add/tweak to your liking as well.

SC