question about JRiver media center... user friendly?

Unlike many of you, I'm a bit slow when it comes to using fancy software. I like to keep it simple and just wondering if I'll easily be able to play files from my computer and separate hard drive easily by using JRiver media center. I've heard that sound quality is superior to things like winamp or other players and that's really important to me but I'm not as interested in playing with files, meta-tagging, etc... Just want to be able to click on the folder that says "Van Halen" and then click on "Fair Warning 192/24 and bam, I'm playing music from computer into DAC and out through system. Is that the case? Thanks everyone!

 

I run JRiver on my old XP computer that outputs via USB to a Music Fidelity M1DAC. You tell it where your music files are during initial setup. It searches that folder for any additions on startup. Click on Audio and it shows you album art by artist or album (your choice). Click on the artwork and it shows you all the songs. From here, you may click play all or choose what song you want. You may also create play lists from all your music. I really like it.

 

Thanks... I rip or download all my stuff as WAV files... Not sure why since everyone says FLAC is just as good but I think the issue is that I don't get the album covers with WAV. Wondering if JRiver will actually be able to add album covers with Wav

 

You should think very carefully about making ANY long term commitment to WAV...since its almost guaranteed that your metadata (Album covers included) will be compromised (severely) if you ever decide to take those files to another player in the future.

There is a reason FLAC is king and it's because of it's outstanding metadata support , lossless playback and almost zero risk of ever losing any key data. It's open source, files can be transfeered to different players with no loss of metadata and very well supported. WAV is bulky, has no real tag support and is pointless since FLAC is lossless anyway.

There isn't a single reason that I can think of to ever use WAV files - unless burning space (and don't forget the same waste during backups) and running risks of losing important metadata are important to you.

We run 5 instances of J.River here and all of them are stellar using FLAC. Have never seen a more dependable format or player .

VP

 

I know a lot of people say that but everything I have on my computer (rips and downloads from HDTracks) were inputted as wav files. Can I convert to flac or is too late to get the metadata, album covers etc..

 

In J.River - it's no problem at all to convert to FLAC and it should pick up whatever meta data is currently available. But...

What software are you using right now? Sounds like you are "thinking" about moving over to J.River - meaning you are using something else right now? If you are using some other app - cannot really say what's possible to "get" for "metadata" as WAV files have very little support for anything.

Meaning - even if you were to get J.River going and tried to convert - J.River can only transfer what it knows about a given wav file. But because wav tag support is pretty much useless - there may be nothing much inside your files from HD Tracks or wherever to "get". Know what I mean?

If it were me - regardless of the state of the metadata - I would get J.River going and get crackin on the conversions - and then tag the new FLACs fresh if need be. Anything is better than sitting on a pile of wavs forever.

VP

 

If you are just playing music, what is the difference between Media Center and Jukebox?

 

Jukebox was a long long time ago I believe....maybe v12 or so. We are on v19 now.

VP

 

JRiver is easy to use - once it is all set up and you have learnt how to use it! Isn't that always the way?

JRiver offers many options and that's why it appears so complicated but there's plenty of guidance about and an active forum if you have problems.

I use only WAV files and am not bothered about album covers etc.. Now I just turn on my PC, open JRiver, select 'Artist' or 'Album' or 'Playlists', select track and away I go. There is also 'Shuffle' which plays random tracks from albums, artists, playlists or your whole library. This last option is the most interesting as you come across tracks you don't usually listen too.

Do it!

 

JRiver imports the music files into its own library management database. The library management depends on having tags and metadata for the files. If the files have no tags and no metadata then the database features of JRiver Media Center will not be very user friendly at all.

If the files are organized in folders with artist names, album names, and track names it may be possible to scrape that info into JRiver Media Center. Doing so is likely to be a bit complex. If the needed data can be scraped from the folder names then JRiver Media Center use that info to organize the library and the library features should work. But it's a bit of an "if". Depends on how well the needed data can be scraped from the folder names and depends on how "geeky" you are in getting the needed data properly scraped and entered into the library database.

The major foundation on what JRiver is built on is having a library database with metadata and properly tagged files. It is possible to navigate file folders within JRiver Media Center to select a particular folder to play. But operating in that way is not taking advantage of the library features of the program and will feel clumsy compared to using JRiver Media Center with a properly tagged and managed library of music files.

If your method of operation is to drag folders into the media player and have them play then Foobar will be better suited for that style of use. Foobar can be configured to display a directory tree structure where you can select the folder you want to play from within Foobar. You'll be navigating the directory tree to find what to play and to select what to play. Foobar is happy to operate like that. More happy than JRiver Media Center in operating like that (though JRiver Media Center can operate like that if you want it to).

 

Thanks for the details.. Since I'm definitely heading in the direction of a computer based music library, I think I'll need to just brave it and see how I like it. Btw, do you agree that sound quality from JRiver is superior.. That's where it seems to me a player is just a player and that it's the DAC that makes the difference... and the rest of the system obviously.

 

I rip my cd's in wav using JRiver and get the tags and album covers just fine.That's what I play from my computer.I convert to flac for my phone.

 

Yes, I read that JRiver tags Wav... I've been using DBpoweramp which I don't think does.

 

JRiver does strive for the best audio quality it can, within reason. It does bit-perfect playback. If it needs to do processing the processing path is 64 bit floating point. If things are bit-perfect there will be no changes to the bits that are sent to the DAC (though 16 bit source may be sent to the DAC at 24 bit or 32 bit even in bit perfect playback). JRiver also does its best to support the quirks of various DACs to get them to behave (avoiding clicks, pauses, and other quirks during playback). JRiver Media Center has a button on the toolbar that glows blue when playback is bit perfect. If you get that button to glow you're good.

I consider the DAC to be much more important for sound quality than the software player, as long as the software player is able to do bit perfect. Still, the player needs to be good and needs to be able to properly handle WASAPI and ASIO and also be able to do gapless playback (gapless is very important for classical).

If you've ripped your music using dBpoweramp the WAV files probably have tags, and JRiver will probably read those tags when the files are imported. It's not possible to say for sure because WAV tagging is inconsistent and haphazard in support. But there's a good chance you've got tags and JRiver will read them.

Before trying JRiver Media Center I would suggest making sure you have a backup of your music files. Just in case that something happens while you're experimenting with the new player. Protection against potential accidents like accidentally deleting a file or accidentally deleting a tag or accidentally writing an unwanted tag to every file in the library or any other similar oops. If you do accidentally overwrite or delete a tag you can use ctrl-z to undo. This is the same advice I'd give when trying any new media player. Make sure you have a current backup of your music library files just in case the new player messes things up.

 

Thanks for all this info... Started using JRiver last night and very impressed. Quick A/B test seemed to indicate that JRiver did sound better than winamp but I'll do more of that today to confirm. I have a few questions maybe you can help with..

1.) I'm using ASIO because JRiver found that I'm using a Meridian Director and suggested ASIO... Do you suggest I stick with ASIO?
2) JRiver imported all the stuff on my computer and tagged it with album cover, genre etc. You mention in the above post that I should back stuff up. Seems though that while JRiver did import it didn't move anything. Stuff is still pulled by JRIVER from whatever file location the music is located so I think I'm safe there. Question though- I can't seem to find a way for JRIVER to locate all the stuff on the separate hard drive I own, my primary music storage unit. Last night I had to drag stuff from the hard drive to JRIVER and then hit the import button for JRIVER to catalog it. Isn't there a way to have JRIVER find all the stuff on that hard drive and just "import all"
3) Are there any functions of JRIVER that aren't default settings that you suggest I implement. I changed the cross fade function to allow a second between songs but haven't felt comfortable making any other adjustments.

Thanks!

 

If your DAC has an ASIO driver it is usually better to use ASIO instead of WASAPI.

The reason for the backup suggestion is so you can explore around in the program going "what does this do" or "what happens if I do this" without worrying if something will be destructive that changes or deletes a file. It's just to be safe.

To add a folder location to the library go to:
Tools >> Options >> Library & Folder >> Configure auto-import
Add your music folders there.

My preference is to have all playback be gapless. No crossfades.
I believe the default behavior for a fresh install is to do crossfades for playlists and do gapless when playing sequential album tracks. You can change the crossfade or gapless options to what suits you.

There's lots of settings and options in the program. The defaults are generally going to suit most people. Play around and explore.

 

"What does this do?" and "what happens if I do this?" are two of the scariest questions in the world. Thanks for the tips!

 

I'm ripping a CD now with EAC as WAV, it retrieved and named tracks and also retrieved CD album cover art, also asked if I wanted the lyrics but I declined on those.

I really don't think the issue is with WAV itself, but with many of the software players.
Foobar is displaying it all, and that's all I need...


Works consistently for me using the combo of EAC and Foobar.
If you need to add CD art to previously ripped albums, just find it on the net and add it to the folder where the tracks are.

 

I hate irony, now I'm now having issues displaying cover art, but I think it has to do with windows permissions.

Was fine before I mentioned it on-line, coincidence of course

Was permissions, working again.

 

Figured out how to get JRiver to import from my external hard drive and mostly did fine. However some albums, because of the way I renamed them originally went into an unassigned file. Trying to figure out how to fix that. Any suggestions?

 

The issue is with WAV itself, its just that some software players work around the issue with WAV files by storing the tags in their own separate database. i.e. the tags are not tied to the song file but the software player.

The downside to this is that if you ever elect to change your software player, or your software players database becomes corrupt, you loose all the tags, some software players can recreate some of the tags based on file and folder structure names but not all all players and those that do cannot recreate all tags.
By having the tags embedded in the music file itself as FLAC, and ALAC can, the music file contains all the tags embedded right in the music file itself and is not dependent on any particular software player.

Here is an example, suppose you decide to get a portable music player, and the player you purchase is not directly supported by JRiver or whatever software player you use on your computer is or you simply prefer using your file manager such as Windows Explorer, or the Mac's Finder to copy and paste the files and folders of WAV files on to your mounted music players drive. The tags managed within your software's database would not be transferred to your media player.

 

I'm still amazed people even take a chance with their WAV-based libraries.

 

Sorry guys, I disagree.

I won't be changing software players, and I have zero interest in portable players or the use of them. Also Foobar is not naming these from a database but reading them directly. I wouldn't install JRiver on my PC, it is full of functions that I would never need or use, so It's just bloatware to me.

Eric, I'm not taking chances, as I am vinyl based and digital is only for light entertainment Digital files are only a bunch of ones and zeros to myself and are expendable, I only value hard copy in any format.

For others this might be different, but I'm not speaking for anyone but myself and pertaining to my usage.

 

I've just seen too many people over the years end up with a digital library full of Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, etc.

 

That's because they didn't tag them when ripping... Or they are using some software that doesn't see the tags.
It's not the end of the world if they are not named, for myself at least.