Issues with Node2i as local music streamer
Answered
Hi all,
New here having just made my purchase. I wanted to love the Node2i, as lots of other people do, but I'm not quite there yet. Since I've spent a lot in the past on my music library I didn't wish to keep spending more on a service like Tidal - instead, I thought, keep my HQ music locally and use the 2i as a device to navigate it - a bit like Tidal, but I own it! Does it work? Well, yes and no.
Here are my questions and comments on the 2i as a local streamer (software updated as of 2 days ago on device and controllers), if anyone can weigh in on any of this, I'll be most grateful for your opinions and answers.
- I have maybe 1000 albums, so I wanted to split them by genre to make navigation easier. To this end I created multiple folders and divided my music into them. In 'Folder' view however, the media is grouped in 'list' format so is unpleasant to navigate, so this feature seems useless to me. Is there any way to see my album artwork when using 'folders'?
- In the windows app, I change album navigation to be sorted by Artist A-Z rather than album title A-Z (the logical approach in my view). When I move elsewhere in the app though then go back to view albums, the sorting has defaulted back to Album A-Z. Am I missing something? In the IOS app, media stays sortied by Artist name, as it should, so it seems like a bug.
- In the IOS app (Iphone XS, latest SW), I can't add anything to a playlist. I pick 'add to playlist' , and the 'select playlist' screen pops but none of my playlists show - so my only option is 'cancel'. Again - am I missing something? Works fine in the Windows app, so seems like a bug.
- I need to remove the drive again to check my work, but I went painstakingly through and ensured that every album had a sub 600K 'cover' image in the folder, and I still have probably over 10% with no artwork displayed some of which say the image is too large. (I've rescanned, optimised etc). As I say I need to check my work but I would have thought my error rate might be closer to 2 or 3% than 10-15%. Have others found that their artwork weirldly isnt showing despite meeting the criteria, and does anyone have any advice?
- Finally, I'm using a cheapish HDD plugged in the back. I understand NAS is better for this purpose but there's cost and complexity to doing this, and I hadn;t thought it necessary for my purposes. I'm not big on playlists anyway, my plan was just to remove the drive and add any new music every few months, then rebuild the index. I've found performance is fairly slow on my drive, though it's quoted transfer rate is 5GB/s, which seems like it should be fast enough. I have around 1000 albums. If I quickly scan to say, letter 'P', I will have a 5-10 second wait for the albums to be listed, then a few seconds more for the artwork to show. Is this an expected wait time, or will it improve if I was to look into NAS, or a faster drive? It's a bit of a dog to use ATM, unless you use the search function - but flicking through the albums is half the fun.
Appreciate your time looking through my questions. I do like the device but it's just not quite working for me in the way I like, and I'm wondering if I would actually have been better with something like a Raspberry Pi4 or Nvidia Shield plus a separate DAC to navigate my local library. Seems like offline play is very much a secondary function for this device.
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Official comment
Phew! loads going on in your post, probably best to address one issue at a time and see how you get on. I have a large library and use it extensively and could not consider it as secondary rather primarily supported over music services.
Using a USB device is not recommended for large libraries as you have discovered, as a removable device the index / catalogue is deleted when the drive is removed hence Bluesound has to recreate it every time it’s plugged back in. Your router may actually support sharing a USB device which is a cheap way of getting a NAS, so have a Google. Alternatively WD sell rectified devices cheap.
Folder view / Genres - best way is to use Genre view. However your music needs to be tagged correctly... See below
Tags / Album artwork - I use a program called Bliss, with correct tagging and artwork added your life will be much easier. Bliss can sort out your artwork, genre tags and move your music into a correct folder structure (artist\albumnane. Artwork can be added manually but you need to make sure there is only one artwork copy and not imbedded.
I would strongly recommend getting a NAS / share on a router as a starting point. -
Thanks for this Seppi, very useful. Are you a Bluesound employee?
Alas, my router has no USB input, so I guess I'm looking at either a new router or a NAS, which bumps up the cost a bit. I'm not sure if I need it though - I've seen prior that it's recommended, however I plan to write to the drive only occasionally, and it doesnt take days to rebuild the index. The main thing I could see a NAS potentially helping with is speed of access - loading artwork etc. Is this the case? I'm still remotely accessing a drive on the network but maybe the way a NAS organises its files allows for quicker loading?
Thanks for the recommend on Bliss, I will check it out. I can't use the genre view currently as there are about 200 genres listed (some of which are in Russian!)
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Hi, I am just a user like yourself, ironically my profile shows me as new here as not posted until recently but support cases show as 7 years old. I was very active on the older Bluesound discussion forum which does not see much traffic now.
With lots of Genres it’s best to consolidate them, again it’s a job for Bliss. Would however strongly recommend backing up or having a copy of your music files before letting Bliss loose. There are other solutions but I am happy with what I use.
I use a Bluesound Vault now for music storage / CD ripping and playback of music is pretty much instant, it’s was the same when using an older WD NAS.
Artwork as you know needs to be under 600k but also best not to be excessively large in physical resolution, the two go hand in hand as reducing the resolution reduces the physical size. I keep everything at 600x600 but have larger original artwork stashed away in case it’s needed in the future.
From Bluesound “The Cover.jpg file will now supersede all other options including embedded artwork to allow for easier changes in folder artwork”
A NAS reindexes faster, have a look at this support document for the differences.
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Seppi, thanks so much for your input. I'm using Bliss now and it's largely been doing the trick re missing artwork and getting my files into a few genres for ease, so hopefully this will work well in the Blusound app.
One day I plan to get a NAS drive, it would be useful for a few things but I just dont have a spare £200 ATM to invest (I couldnt really afford the Node 2i in any case!)
One hiccup I've run into with the Bliss SW is that with about 40 albums left, when I try to pick one of the genres I've set ('Pop' or 'Metal'), the change always fails with a message EG
Failed to update GENRE in Deafheaven - New Bermuda (2015) BBM-CDRIP\05 Deafheaven - New Bermuda - Gifts for the Earth.mp3 to metal: Genre 'metal' is not a valid ID3v1 genre
Though according to my research Metal or Pop should be fine to have as genres...
Did you ever come across this with Bliss? I can raise a case with the guy who made it too, so I'll try that next. Thanks again for your advice Seppi.
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Hi, glad to hear you are getting somewhere. WD recertified UK store is the budget way to get a NAS, just checked and a My Cloud Expert 4TB is £85 although not in stock. The My Cloud Home 2TB is £96. I always buy the rectified devices as they are cheap and would have been though stringent quality checks, they always look brand new. Recently bought an external RAID device for backups from the store.
Bliss, sorry not had that issue, drop Dan (the author) an email, I am sure he will be able to help as he has helped me a few times in the past.
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Thanks for this Seppi. I'll go wait for one of the expert drives to become available as the home ones apparently have a slightly dodgy app you have to use for transfers. Thanks again.
Not sure if BS support post on here or if I'll need to raise a support case re the IOS and Windows app issues I've discovered...
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One thing I learned from WD is don’t use any of their apps and you will be fine 😂 Seriously though you don’t need anything extra to copy to and from a NAS once it’s been configured and mine can be done from a web interface.
Best to log a support ticket just go into the app and select Help...Send Support Request
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