Naim Uniti 2, assistance please
Discussion
I want to move into the world of digital music and transfer my considerable collection of CDs onto hard drive. At present I have a Meridian CD player and amplifier together with Pro Ac speakers. I have identified the Naim Uniti 2 as a good replacement for the exisiting Meridian equipment; it has good reviews and appears quite easy to use. My question is what is thought to be the best way to rip, store and stream my music that will work well with the Naim. Should I get a dedicated laptop or perhaps just a storage device to work with my PC. Sorry if I sound a bit dim but the truth is that in these matters I am so please be patient with a retired city banker. I've failed to find a dealer in my area of North Essex/Suffolk who seems to have the requisite knowledge, can anyone help with a recommendation or is there someone on this forum in the business who can assist.
Many thanks for any help
Tim
Many thanks for any help
Tim
timhum said:
... My question is what is thought to be the best way to rip, store and stream my music that will work well with the Naim. Should I get a dedicated laptop or perhaps just a storage device to work with my PC...
There are comapnies that will do the ripping for you but it costs about £1 per disc so not cheap (but neither is a Naim!)If you were going to do it yourself then DBPoweramp is probably most people's ripping program of choice and will also allow you to tag it all, get cover art, etc. iTunes & Windows Media Player would also do, but you can do a search and see which fits your needs the best. I used EAC which was probably the best at the time (but not the most user friendly) but this is a ripping program only, so you would need a tagging program and a converter as well (I use mp3tag and Foobar2000).
Whatever you do, make sure you do your initial rips losslessly, into something like FLAC or Apple Lossless (whatever your chosen device will handle) and then you will always have master versions that can be converted to other formats without any problems (lossy rips don't convert well and will not sound as good through decent equipment.)
As far as storage goes, converting your CDs to a digital library is a pretty thankless task that takes up a lot of time. It is the sort of thing that should be done once: I would buy a twin drive nas (netgear, synology, QNAP, etc) and connect the Naim via Ethernet. The two drives will give you two copies of your music (protecting if one drive fails), and you should also take at least one other copy and keep it at a friend's house a reasonable distance from your house. This will protect against fire, flood or theft at your house, and should prevent you from needing to start again. (It took me about 6 weeks to do mine!)
I know this is a bit general but if you need anything else just ask.
Hope this helps,
Mike...
Mike's advice is all good.
Another option, instead of using a NAS to store the music on is to use a laptop or a PC, and output direct from that into a USB DAC and then into your existing pre-amp, so you don't need the Naim box. You can then easily use Spotify or any other audio streaming app. as well. You can get perfectly good USB DACs for very small amounts of money. If you use a laptop or PC, you need to get one that's quiet and also need to think about backups, per Mike's advice.
The most time consuming thing is going to be ripping your CDs and building the library. DBpoweramp seems to be the most popular non-proprietary application, the other obvious choice is iTunes if you're already bought into the Apple ecosystem at all. Either way, you definitely want to rip lossless, either to FLAC or ALAC format.
I ripped 400 or so CDs a couple of years ago over Christmas. It was a pain in the arse to do, but I've listened to music a lot more since I did it, and so overall it was definitely worth the effort.
Another option, instead of using a NAS to store the music on is to use a laptop or a PC, and output direct from that into a USB DAC and then into your existing pre-amp, so you don't need the Naim box. You can then easily use Spotify or any other audio streaming app. as well. You can get perfectly good USB DACs for very small amounts of money. If you use a laptop or PC, you need to get one that's quiet and also need to think about backups, per Mike's advice.
The most time consuming thing is going to be ripping your CDs and building the library. DBpoweramp seems to be the most popular non-proprietary application, the other obvious choice is iTunes if you're already bought into the Apple ecosystem at all. Either way, you definitely want to rip lossless, either to FLAC or ALAC format.
I ripped 400 or so CDs a couple of years ago over Christmas. It was a pain in the arse to do, but I've listened to music a lot more since I did it, and so overall it was definitely worth the effort.
I've got an NDX which is very similar in operation to the Uniti, and I've tried quite a few solutions.
I didn't want to put in a NAS box, as I wanted a dedicated ripping / serving solution. I also wanted to use iTunes to manage my music library. This led me to an older Mac Mini (an Intel model with a build in CD / DVD drive) and I put a 1TB internal drive in it. I set iTunes to auto rip and eject any CD it was fed and set about ripping my library using AIFF. I then went through a whole host of software to serve the library to the NDX. I settled on some software called Playback which is pointed to the directory the iTunes library lives in, and it works like a charm. All NDX functionality is perfect and the Naim n-stream app works great too, plus it displays all the album artwork correctly. To back up the library, I use an Airport Extreme with an external drive plugged in to it, and use Time Machine. The Mac Mini runs without a keyboard, mouse or screen - it's just a box I feed new CD's to once in a while but it needs no other attention.
Alternatively, you could download a free media server distribution called Vortexbox and install it on a dedicated PC. This will do the same as my Apple based solution but rips to FLAC. It's relatively set and forget, and if I was starting from scratch I'd certainly give it more consideration, though not being able to manage the library through iTunes would annoy me a little - I like being able to select a whole album in iTunes and globally change tags / artist data etc.
There are quite a few ways to do this and everyone that's done it will have their own preferred method. Although I'm a techie by trade, I wanted a non-tech solution. You do need to make sure you've got a backup of your library somewhere else - even if your drives are protected in a RAID array, that's not going to help you if you have a flood or you lose the whole device. Having another backup stored elsewhere is a very sensible idea.
Hope this helps
Phil.
I didn't want to put in a NAS box, as I wanted a dedicated ripping / serving solution. I also wanted to use iTunes to manage my music library. This led me to an older Mac Mini (an Intel model with a build in CD / DVD drive) and I put a 1TB internal drive in it. I set iTunes to auto rip and eject any CD it was fed and set about ripping my library using AIFF. I then went through a whole host of software to serve the library to the NDX. I settled on some software called Playback which is pointed to the directory the iTunes library lives in, and it works like a charm. All NDX functionality is perfect and the Naim n-stream app works great too, plus it displays all the album artwork correctly. To back up the library, I use an Airport Extreme with an external drive plugged in to it, and use Time Machine. The Mac Mini runs without a keyboard, mouse or screen - it's just a box I feed new CD's to once in a while but it needs no other attention.
Alternatively, you could download a free media server distribution called Vortexbox and install it on a dedicated PC. This will do the same as my Apple based solution but rips to FLAC. It's relatively set and forget, and if I was starting from scratch I'd certainly give it more consideration, though not being able to manage the library through iTunes would annoy me a little - I like being able to select a whole album in iTunes and globally change tags / artist data etc.
There are quite a few ways to do this and everyone that's done it will have their own preferred method. Although I'm a techie by trade, I wanted a non-tech solution. You do need to make sure you've got a backup of your library somewhere else - even if your drives are protected in a RAID array, that's not going to help you if you have a flood or you lose the whole device. Having another backup stored elsewhere is a very sensible idea.
Hope this helps
Phil.
Thanks for everyone's help, I've now got sorted.
I went to visit Signals, they were so helpful with plenty of time for me and loads of easy to understand advice; thanks very much Alastair and Andy at Signals. Eventually I choose a Naim SuperUniti partnered with a Naim Unitiserve. The equipment was delivered and set up by them yesterday. The quality and sound is excellent and its just so much fun to use, especially paired with an Ipod mini to control it all. Busy ripping music now and probably for many days more.
Tim
I went to visit Signals, they were so helpful with plenty of time for me and loads of easy to understand advice; thanks very much Alastair and Andy at Signals. Eventually I choose a Naim SuperUniti partnered with a Naim Unitiserve. The equipment was delivered and set up by them yesterday. The quality and sound is excellent and its just so much fun to use, especially paired with an Ipod mini to control it all. Busy ripping music now and probably for many days more.Tim
I too have been musing over music streaming options - all of my CD's are now ripped to a NAS using Apple Lossless - I was looking at the Sonos Connect amp as it's quite a bit cheaper but would it sound much worse than a Naim Uniti Qute 2 ?
I think the sound is dependant on the quality of the rip, the format used and then the playback device.
I use exact audio copy (eac) to rip as thus compares the quality of the rip with an online database of other peoples rips of album using checksums, as there is no error correction as far as I know on audio CDs.
There are plenty of lossless formats for storage, I use flac.
It's then just a question of the playback device which is personal preference.
Whether you the ripping 'quality' using eac makes much difference is hard to tell, I get maybe 1 track in 30 that reports an error and needs to be reripped.
I use exact audio copy (eac) to rip as thus compares the quality of the rip with an online database of other peoples rips of album using checksums, as there is no error correction as far as I know on audio CDs.
There are plenty of lossless formats for storage, I use flac.
It's then just a question of the playback device which is personal preference.
Whether you the ripping 'quality' using eac makes much difference is hard to tell, I get maybe 1 track in 30 that reports an error and needs to be reripped.
I too have just made the giant leap into streaming/DAC etc.
One big mistake I made was to post on dedicated hifi forums looking for help in getting my head around it. Some good lads giving some cracking advice but some people who just get plain nasty if you mention you're about to put a lappy and DAC on the top tier of your rack
So, after 3 weeks of swotting up on FLAC-ing, FLIC-ing , FLOK-ing ,ASIO-ing and WAVING my muddled mind now has a slight grasp on this.
I'm no hifi buff but enjoy a decent sound, I simply read an article by chance about Streaming/DAC/Computer music and thought it rude not to give it a whirl.
Spoke to my local Naim man, with a view to trading in my stuff for the Naim DAC V1, which in turn would have meant me junking my existing amp for the NAP 100.
It would have been a cost effective move really taking into consideration the p/x on my own stuff. However I decided to learn a bit more first, thankfully.
So last week, as a throw away item really and just something to play with I purchased a sub £100 DAC USB and a new laptop (which I needed anyway)
I signed up for Spotify Premium and sampled my first bit of 320kbps streaming........bloody brilliant, especially throwing it through the DAC as opposed to the 3.5 jack on the lappy/Nexus/Archos players.
Almost as good as CD quality, almost.
I was then urged to try ripping. This bit confused me as I thought ripping was old hat, ie what I used to do 15 years back when I'd copy a CD for use in the car.
How wrong I was.
NoW I understand FLAC,Lossless and all I ripped a few tracks off CD's I know and like well. I used JRiver and ripped to FLAC.
I was simply blown away (much to the disgust of the hifi buffs), the 100 quid DAC/lappy combo blitzed the Naim CD player and a friends 4k player, this he freely admitted and is now a convert.
I was still scratching my head though, what does converting to lossless do? I reckoned it "stretched" the CD and added bits in that the original copy never played.
How wrong and nuptified I was eh? A lossless rip should be identical to the CD.
So what's making it so good. It simply has to be the DAC I've now decided.
So why does a sub £100 DAC batter the DACs installed in expensive CD players?
I'm still struggling with this new concept but I'm a believer now.
I'll carry on learning with my budget DAC but will certainly be upgrading to a decent one shortly.
If mine can achieve this, what would a 2 or 3k DAC do? Not that I'll spend that much on one anyway.
Yep, this to me is a whole new and very interesting world.
Good luck to the OP as well, hope you enjoy your lovely new system and keep us posted on your thoughts.
One big mistake I made was to post on dedicated hifi forums looking for help in getting my head around it. Some good lads giving some cracking advice but some people who just get plain nasty if you mention you're about to put a lappy and DAC on the top tier of your rack
So, after 3 weeks of swotting up on FLAC-ing, FLIC-ing , FLOK-ing ,ASIO-ing and WAVING my muddled mind now has a slight grasp on this.
I'm no hifi buff but enjoy a decent sound, I simply read an article by chance about Streaming/DAC/Computer music and thought it rude not to give it a whirl.
Spoke to my local Naim man, with a view to trading in my stuff for the Naim DAC V1, which in turn would have meant me junking my existing amp for the NAP 100.
It would have been a cost effective move really taking into consideration the p/x on my own stuff. However I decided to learn a bit more first, thankfully.
So last week, as a throw away item really and just something to play with I purchased a sub £100 DAC USB and a new laptop (which I needed anyway)
I signed up for Spotify Premium and sampled my first bit of 320kbps streaming........bloody brilliant, especially throwing it through the DAC as opposed to the 3.5 jack on the lappy/Nexus/Archos players.
Almost as good as CD quality, almost.
I was then urged to try ripping. This bit confused me as I thought ripping was old hat, ie what I used to do 15 years back when I'd copy a CD for use in the car.
How wrong I was.
NoW I understand FLAC,Lossless and all I ripped a few tracks off CD's I know and like well. I used JRiver and ripped to FLAC.
I was simply blown away (much to the disgust of the hifi buffs), the 100 quid DAC/lappy combo blitzed the Naim CD player and a friends 4k player, this he freely admitted and is now a convert.
I was still scratching my head though, what does converting to lossless do? I reckoned it "stretched" the CD and added bits in that the original copy never played.
How wrong and nuptified I was eh? A lossless rip should be identical to the CD.
So what's making it so good. It simply has to be the DAC I've now decided.
So why does a sub £100 DAC batter the DACs installed in expensive CD players?
I'm still struggling with this new concept but I'm a believer now.
I'll carry on learning with my budget DAC but will certainly be upgrading to a decent one shortly.
If mine can achieve this, what would a 2 or 3k DAC do? Not that I'll spend that much on one anyway.
Yep, this to me is a whole new and very interesting world.
Good luck to the OP as well, hope you enjoy your lovely new system and keep us posted on your thoughts.
Edited by kenny.R400 on Tuesday 18th February 15:01
scoobysnax124 said:
I too have been musing over music streaming options - all of my CD's are now ripped to a NAS using Apple Lossless - I was looking at the Sonos Connect amp as it's quite a bit cheaper but would it sound much worse than a Naim Uniti Qute 2 ?
As good as the Naim probably is, its compromised in the streaming and control. No Android controller and limited music service streaming compatibility.At that price I would be tempted by going Sonos Connect, separate DAC and separate amp. of course thats not quite as sexy as a one box design by Naim. Alternatively Sonos Connect and separate amp, with DAC as a future upgrade.
Many audio nuts may even have decent amps available anyway, and the second hand market is quite vibrant with quality items at relatively bargain prices
I'm not a fan of the Connect:amp as a concept - you are effectively paying £100 more than a Connect for an amp stage, and thats peanuts.
Edited by sparkyhx on Tuesday 18th February 21:28
kenny.R400 said:
Feckin' love it mate, very cool
Thanks Kenny - imho laptops are absolutely fine if you work around their limitations. Use an asynchronous USB to SPDIF converter to limit timing errors, then feed the DAC stage optically. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_isolationUsed that way a laptop provides a battery powered, low jitter, digital source with a big colour display; it also has no electrical connection to the rest of the system.
Doesn't cost too much and doubles up as a laptop too.
Edited by Crackie on Wednesday 19th February 15:21
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