The Naim Metadata Problem

Naim Audio produce many high-end audio systems, this includes the Uniti Core Music Server and its predecessor the Unitiserve Music Server.

When used to rip a CD to Wav format, both looks up metadata from the All Music Guide or Cddb but then the metadata is stored within separate files instead of within the Wav file.

This is not a problem as long as the music is played via Naim but if the files are copied elsewhere and the files served using a different system then no metadata would show up for the Wav files, this occurs even if the metadata files are copied as well since only Naim can read these metadata files.

Naim Metadata Solution

Naim Uniti stores its metadata within a meta.naim file.

Naim Unitiserve stores metadata within amginfo.xml and cddb.txt files, any user edits are stored in a useredits.xml file

With the Naim Import Metadata task it can read all these files and then the metadata is now automatically embedded into the Wav files themselves, this can now be read and used by most applications and players. Because the files are local and no searching on the Internet is required this process is extremely fast.

All the information from the metadata files is parsed, not just the basics like the artist, album and track title but other roles such as producers and engineers. For classical music the conductor, composer and performers are also added. Artwork is also embedded into the Wav file itself.

Of course you can also augment this metadata by using the standard SongKong functionality to lookup metadata such as 1000px artwork from MusicBrainz and Discogs as well.

Wav Format

Wav did not used to have good metadata support but Wav now supports metadata using the ID3 format, the same flexible format supported by Mp3 and Aiff. This format is well understood and is more powerful then the metadata format used by Flac, so now you can can have the ultimate audio format and the ultimate metadata format. We also write the basic metadata to the Wav Info chunk as well for applications that support Wav Info but not Wav ID3. For example MinimServer only supports Wav ID3 and Twonky only supports Wav Info.