question about JRiver media center... user friendly?

Don't use very JRiver to rip very often... Mostly use DBpoweramp. But sometimes, with a tricky disc, JRiver will rip where DB won't. Was never able to figure out how to rip as anything other than .ape until now! Thanks!

 

For basic stuff, JRiver really is the way to go. And the best sound quality player out there probably. I agree that some stuff looks confusing but a lot of that is not really stuff you need if all you want to do is rip and play.

 

Bottom left as opposed to Bottom right. Why whine about your lack of patience?

In any program one would browse the options, it's clearly stated in there and in the ripping pane that POPS open when you choose to rip a disc.....

 

Why whine about you not understanding my issue with the program? Bottom right? Where'd you get that from? Toolbars are on top. Pretty standard for any program.

Jeff

 

As I said - each to their own.

VP

 

Okay! Reinstalled and can't get past Step 1. See image when commercial CD is popped in.



Clicking "Rip CD" starts ripping in unknown format. Moving on to "Take no action"...

Anyway, I can keep going on and on about each step. The OP wanted to know if this program was user friendly.

My opinion is NO.

Jeff

 

Just to see if this program is at least workable (if not user friendly), here is what my screen looks like. Trying to convert my commercially-purchased hi-rez WAV album to FLAC. Clicking the "Convert Format" button does nothing. Literally. Nothing happens.

Other programs do convert WAV lossless to FLAC lossless. Can this program even do that? Not that I'm converting religions here and praying to FLAC, but I want to see if it's even possible!

So far, nothing. Help? Does it convert WAV to FLAC? If so, how?



Jeff

 

There is setup instructions.on the front page.
Take your time.It's worth it.

 

Click Take no Action the first time then to Drives and Devices and click your CD Drive. Then click Rip Tracks, then click Options in the lower left.



Click Encoding and you should see your options. Once you choose, every time you rip a disc it will rip to that format unless you change it. Hope that helps.

 

Thanks for that ... a problem solved the next time i give JRiver a go for ripping some discs.

 

If you're going to do WAV as a file format I'd strongly suggest sticking with JRiver. JRiver is one of the few programs that can tag and manage WAV files. It allows you to add additional metadata to the WAV files and the ability to search and organize your files based on that metadata. If you're doing WAV then JRiver is the best, and almost only, choice.

The program is complex. Almost as complex as an operating system. It does a lot. And is customizable. Which means there needs to be a lot of user controlled settings to control what is customizable. The UI is also over 10 years old. Making use of some older UI guidelines and ideas. If the program was redesigned from scratch today the UI would be done differently. But it is the way it is.

If you're using JRiver for ripping I'd suggest setting the ripping mode to "secure". Secure ripping reads the data on the disc twice to verify that it was read correctly. Which means it is able to detect read errors and better handling ripping scratched discs. Windows Media Player and iTunes and similar ripping programs don't implement a secure mode ripping. JRiver does. Which makes JRiver much better for ripping than those programs.

Go to Tools >> Options >> CD, DVD & BD
Under CD Ripping >> Drive set the copy mode to "secure"

 

I understand the complaints. I appreciate the range of features of JRiver, but its interface is not the most intuitive - there's a lack of consistency - and I don't believe I ever solved a problem through their Wiki. I would pay for a good manual. Their forum is great, however. Every question I have asked has been answered, even when the questioner (me) has felt sounded rather testy.

 

J.River is no better at WAV than any others. Now - as long as you totally commit to J.River as a permanent solution - then yes - your tags will be stored in a "custom" wav header - and will be available in any J.River version going forward. However - most if not all of the custom tags will be lost if you move to another player - simply beccause that player will not be able to read the J.River custom header.

This is the reason that WAV is so testy and totally unusable if you care about your metadata. Mine is priceless and knowing that it will transfer perfectly to every program out that supports FLAC is a primary reason I use it. Plus the fact that FLAC is lossless and storage is half that of a WAV file. Also - it's open source - meaning it will be around for a long time.

VP

 

The WAV files will be tagged and you'll get to organize the library by tags and search the library by tags. That's a huge step up from the alternatives that would have you browse and search your WAV library by directory name and file name.

You'll be able to export the tag data to other programs. One way would be to have JRiver convert the files to FLAC or ALAC. The tags will get transferred to the converted files. Import those files into another program that can read FLAC or ALAC tags and you've just transferred your tags. There's also the possibility that other programs will be updated to read and write tags in WAV files the way JRiver does.

I do consider tags in WAV files to be more risky. There is a higher risk that you'll import a WAV file into some other program strip out the tags because it doesn't know how to deal with them and doesn't even know they're there and need to be preserved. Programs that work with FLAC and ALAC files expect there to be tags in the files and know how to deal with them properly. Programs that deal with WAV files don't know how to deal with them and might lose them. You could lose the tags in your WAV files if you're not careful. But that's what backups are for. JRiver also backups its library database and all the tag info is also in the database file. It is possible to have JRiver Media Center write the database fields back to the WAV files as tags if you need to recover some lost tags. Working with WAV files with tags is higher risk than doing the same with FLAC or ALAC, but the risks are recoverable if you know what's going on.

If you've decided to use WAV instead of FLAC or ALAC then at least use JRiver so you can manage your WAV library the same way people get to manage FLAC or ALAC or MP3. I wouldn't encourage people to go to WAV instead of FLAC or ALAC. But if you must do WAV then at least use a media player that lets you tag them and manage them.

 

Why's that? I was under the impression both are more or less the same.

 

More or less the same in being able to get bitperfect playback working.

For pro and prosumer audio interfaces they expect you to be using ASIO. So the ASIO drivers are likely going to be how the device works best.

Some audiophile DACs include ASIO drivers. If they have bothered to make an ASIO driver they may have put some effort in and done a good job. And it may work better with some software than WASAPI. Though some gamer oriented cards have horrible ASIO drivers.

I like the setup better doing ASIO. I like to have my DAC as a secondary audio device (ie not the primary audio device that plays system sounds). It's easier and more reliable to do that sort of setup doing ASIO than it is with WASAPI. With WASAPI the DAC will sometimes get reset to be the default audio device and I'll have to manually set it back. That doesn't happen when the DAC is configured to only do ASIO and the Windows audio (WASAPI) has been disabled. So I prefer doing ASIO if the DAC has ASIO drivers.

 

New user here. Just purchased it last weekend so I'm still taking baby steps.

So I shouldn't use my DAC (Grant Fidelity TubeDAC11) as my driver choice in version 19? I was using WASAPI until I noticed the Grant as one of the options, so I thought it would be the logical choice.

 

The Grant Fidelity DAC has ASIO drivers available. You can install the ASIO drivers and try it that way. I don't know if the Grant Fidelity will do better with ASIO or WASAPI. Try it and find out. Sometimes better means that it plays without digital glitches (pops or ticks) during playback.

 

Folks,

I'm tempted to give this software a shot on my Mac, but the one thing holding me back is how Jriver handles play counts. I ask mainly because I have two iDevices that rely on smart playlists for syncing and so this data actually affects the content I carry with me. Presently I do most of my home listening using iTunes controlled with Apple's Remote app.

I'm most curious if:

1. Play Count/Last Played info can be imported from iTunes. If so, is there a "user friendly" way to manually sync these histories so they match regularly?
2. Better still, can Jriver write to the iTunes file that tracks play histories so that if I use Jriver as my player then iTunes is updated?

Thanks in advance for any tips.

 

I've been using JRiver as my primary software for about a year now. I think I'm a fairly simple user in comparison to others but I really like its functionality.

One thing I didn't like early on was I could not import play counts (or ratings) and like you I use Smartlists based on play counts. Although you can edit tags in JRiver and vice versa with iTunes and each will be updated (as long as you are using the same library for both softwares) the play counts will not be part of that. I think the issue with basic tags working is that they are embedded with the file whereas the play counts are part of iTunes and JRiver database and not the files themselves.

 

You can configure JRiver to embed the play count in a tag that gets written to each file. By default the playcount in JRiver is kept only in the database and not as a tag in each file. One issue with writing the play count to a tag is that every time you play the file the file will get updated. If you do backups that only backup the files that have changed you're going to end up with backups that take more time because you'll be backing up a lot of changed files.

 

First I did not know you could do that. Second your point is very valid regarding backups and that could be a time and space consuming mess.

 

Thank you both for your quick responses!

Ultimately, I'd like to limit my use of iTunes to syncing my devices and updating podcasts, apps, etc. I toyed with XBMC, but I couldn't figure out how to resolve play count/ratings between programs. I can afford Jriver (and the iOS app) but I'd hate to spend $60 just to find out this core "OCD need" can't be met.

This seems promising. If I'm reading right then I can keep the play count (and ratings?) coordinated between both programs but it's a manual process that, while time-consuming on the computer's end, isn't difficult for me to do once it's set up. I can handle that, though it sounds like I may want to adjust Time Machine's settings... and may finally have to upgrade my RAM. I'm already backing up to a 4tb external so space isn't an issue; on the other hand, my base model 2012 Mac mini can get pretty sluggish.

Can/do both applications use the same library? Certainly, I'd want to be better about backing up that file if two applications are writing to it. You know, I forgot to include "ratings" in my original post. That's actually even more important to how my smart playlists work. (I even rate with half stars thanks to an Apple script.)

 

Yes, I point directly to the same file source as I do for iTunes and I have had no issues at all.

 

How does that keep play counts in sync? Even if JRiver can write the play count to the file, iTunes won't be able to read it.