Distributor Latham Audio has announced that Naim has launched its own web radio aggregator, offering various advantages.
A web radio aggregator is a service that maintains an accurate database of radio stations along with their direct links. Once you select a station on a device like a web radio or media player, the correct stream URL is retrieved from that database. Simple enough, but past experience has shown that aggregators can sometimes cause issues—like sudden, unwanted price hikes—which force the radio manufacturer to quickly find an alternative. Until that happens, users might lose access to internet radio entirely, which isn’t exactly convenient.
No longer reliant on a third party
According to Dutch distributor Latham Audio, Naim has now decided to create its own aggregator for its products: “We know many of our users enjoy using our products to get the most out of their music collections, but sometimes it’s nice to hand over the reins and discover new music. From our first network player, we’ve provided our customers with a comprehensive Internet Radio solution in collaboration with an external partner. However, as of today, we’re launching our own in-house Internet Radio solution. Working with Xperi and the Naim R&D team, we’ve brought the iRadio service in-house, allowing us to make adjustments and enhancements ourselves, rather than relying on a third party.”
Additional benefits
Besides reducing reliance on an external provider, Naim’s own service offers other benefits: “This step ensures improved stability, but also opens the door to further enhancements in our Internet Radio Service, such as:
- More than 45,000 radio stations to choose from
- Extensive metadata including artist, track, and album info for many stations
- Focus on high-quality audio streams with the use of HLS streams for optimal sound quality
- Improved station discoverability
- High-resolution album artwork
- Automated station scanning—regular checks on station functionality, with fixes where needed
- Amazon AWS servers with global coverage
- Separate listing of lossless-quality radio stations
- Station podcasts (where available)”
Naim app will notify you when it’s ready
The Focal & Naim app will notify users when their presets and favorites need to be re-saved to switch to the new server. The latest update not only improves Internet Radio but also enhances audio streaming performance. Tidal’s new 24-bit 192 kHz streaming service—TIDAL MAX—is now available through the Focal & Naim app and TIDAL Connect. “The new software will automatically be available via the Focal & Naim app for 2nd generation Uniti Mu-so, ND555, NDX 2, ND5 XS2, and the New Classic Series,” Naim adds.