More > JRiver Media Center 21 for Linux
Simplest version for PC that plays well with JRiver MC ?
Awesome Donkey:
Ubuntu 16.04 depreciating fglrx is due to AMD not supporting X.Org Server 1.18 in the proprietary driver. They're working on the AMDGPU hybrid driver, which should be out at some point this year (with GCN 1.2+ support at first, GCN 1.0-1.1 at some point in the future). And it isn't just Ubuntu that's affected by this, either.
If you have a pre-GCN AMD card, your only choice is the open-source drivers.
mwillems:
--- Quote from: kstuart on June 06, 2016, 04:40:06 pm ---More evidence that Linux has the same ridiculous issues as Windows:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalyst-fglrx-driver-16-04
--- End quote ---
Actually this is another key difference between the platforms, but is one that cuts in Windows favor. Discrete graphics cards work better on windows, and AMD in particular is reknowned for their miserable Linux support with their proprietary drivers. Nvidia cards are generally well supported on linux with the proprietary driver, but the performance is still incrementally worse than on windows. Intel has published actual opensource graphics drivers and their igpus perform about as well on Linux as Windows.
In any case losing the proprietary driver isn't the end of the world as there are community written open source drivers for amd and nvidia as well, but while they generally support a wider range of chips than the proprietary drivers (older chip support hangs around longer in the open source drivers), they've historically been much lower performance.
So windows has a performance advantage; there are non-proprietary options on Linux, which is nice, but the best you can hope for is similar or slightly worse performance than windows (with Intel hardware, or nvidia hardware with the proprietary driver). AMD has been (for years) the worst case for Linux graphics among the major manufacturers in terms of performance and official driver support.
kstuart:
And it also shows that just getting rid of one giant corporation that does not act for the benefit of users - MS - still leaves you with several other giant corporations involved (in this case, AMD).
So, also on the subject of hardware drivers...
My inspiration for this project was two-fold -
One - to see the current state of the art in Unix desktops (at least in terms of Windows-like ones, I still haven't gotten around to the Debian/Gnome Live DVD). I found Linux Lite 3.0 which provides an automated install easier than any Windows install (including shrinking disk partitions automatically), and provides virtually every capability found on Windows for almost all consumers. I installed LL 3.0 on an old laptop with XP, and it works very nicely now, and I plan to leave it that way.
Two - to investigate the conventional wisdom that "Linux sounds better than Windows".
So, I installed MC21 on LL 3.0 - which installed exactly according to the 16.04 LTS instructions. I spent some time tweaking the settings for best results. I listened to my usual test tracks on MC21 Windows, then on Linux and then on Windows again.
While MC21 Linux sounded good, and did nothing apparent wrong, nevertheless it is pretty clear that my MC21 Windows setup has significantly more realistic instrumental tone and more low level detail.
I can only attribute this to hardware audio drivers. While Schiit has been lobbying for MS to include USB2.0 Audio drivers, it may be that the drivers they developed with Cmedia are actually better than what MS or others might come up with.
This situation may be why Computer Audiophile still uses Windows - and JRiver MC for Windows - on their music servers.
Awesome Donkey:
Drivers shouldn't make any difference with audio quality, actually. One could argue on Windows that the drivers bring ASIO and WASAPI support, thus bypassing DirectSound and the system mixer. But on Linux with MC, by default, ALSA is used which bypasses any system mixing as well (though Pulseaudio is also an option). On my PC with three operating systems (Windows, OS X and Arch Linux) all three sound the same in MC, which is a good thing. :D
Just make sure you're using the right ALSA device in MC and avoid using Pulseaudio.
--- Quote from: kstuart on June 07, 2016, 09:43:00 pm ---I found Linux Lite 3.0 which provides an automated install easier than any Windows install (including shrinking disk partitions automatically)
--- End quote ---
Sounds like it's using the Ubuntu installer, which Mint uses as well. Yeah, it works pretty great.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version