Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wedgeworld1701]

My first post here. I was using itunes 10 on OS X 10.6.8 and I loved it, other than it couldn't play FLAC. I finally had to upgrade to a new OS X, now using El Capitan. I find itunes 12 useless. Also I have FLAC, AIFF, WAV files from HDTracks, Pono Music, 7Digital and HD rips from DVDs and Blu Rays that I own. And over 1400 CDs ripped to my computer in these formats.

I am looking for a good replacement for the itunes 10 I used to love. I did not use it to sync music to devices or stream to things like apple tv. I simply want something to play, rip and convert quality audio on either my El Capitan 2008 Mac Pro or my Yosemite 2013 Mac Pro.

In the future I may connect to a dedicated media player for my stereo but currently I use and Oppo 105D with thumb drives to play media on that stereo.

Any advice is appreciated

thank you
Wedge

[Awesome Donkey]

I am looking for a good replacement for the itunes 10 I used to love. I did not use it to sync music to devices or stream to things like apple tv. I simply want something to play, rip and convert quality audio on either my El Capitan 2008 Mac Pro or my Yosemite 2013 Mac Pro.

Yes, JRiver Media Center would be a good replacement for iTunes in that regard. I'd suggest downloading it and trying it out (it comes with a 30 day free trial).

[blgentry]

Well, asking this question here is kind of like asking a BMW dealership if the BMW is a good choice for you.  The answer is YES, of COURSE sir!

MC is far more capable than iTunes in most respects.  It has more customization, more file type support, more control, more views, and more speed.  ITunes tends to be more 'automatic' in some respects.  It's also better integrated into the Apple world in that it supports AirPlay and other Apple specific stuff.  Cosmetically, iTunes is more "natively Mac" than MC.

I would never, ever switch back to iTunes.  I find it's interface to be horrible and they change it every year!  They take away features just when you were getting used to them.  MC, by contrast, keeps the basics the same, year after year after year.  So you never lose your investment in learning with MC.  New stuff is added, but they make big changes very slowly and infrequently.  The basics are always the same.

I think MC is clearly the best overall media manager and player available for the Mac.  My opinion only.

Brian.

[wedgeworld1701]

Yes, JRiver Media Center would be a good replacement for iTunes in that regard. I'd suggest downloading it and trying it out (it comes with a 30 day free trial).

A good suggestion.
Thank you
wedge

[wedgeworld1701]

Well, asking this question here is kind of like asking a BMW dealership if the BMW is a good choice for you.  The answer is YES, of COURSE sir!
I would never, ever switch back to iTunes.  I find it's interface to be horrible and they change it every year!  They take away features just when you were getting used to them. 
Brian.

My guess was that there are people here who used to use itunes. Honestly, I loved itunes 10, but the best features of 10 are all gone. Just confusing. I liked the Pono music player but then that stopped working since I guess it was linked to their site in some way. And as much as I like Apple for computers, I'm not a fan of how they change all their software. Final Cut Pro to Final Cut X, Dropping support for Quictime VR that I developed for my web sites....etc. Just like I have to find a replacement for Adobe now that you can't buy a stand alone upgrade. Living in the past on my 2008 machine!

But thank you as your comments are helpful.
Going to try the Trial and only keep itunes if I have to sync to something. Good thing Adobe can still download pics off my phone.
thanks
-wedge

[blgentry]

MC is rather different than iTunes and rather different than most players.  Please come back here and ask questions as things progress and you want more information.  Read through the Wiki also.  There's a lot of good info there.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Category:Frequently_Asked_Questions

Some things in MC aren't super obvious.  Many times this is a difference in how the problem or task is approached.  You'll figure a lot of that out by reading posts here in the forum, the wiki, and of course asking your own questions.

Good luck!

Brian.

[leezer3]

The Pono player was a JRiver white-label product, based upon MC22.
Some migration thoughts here, although they may be a little put of date.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,108680.0.html

If you liked that, MC will be very similar.

[wedgeworld1701]

The Pono player was a JRiver white-label product, based upon MC22.
Some migration thoughts here, although they may be a little put of date.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,108680.0.html

If you liked that, MC will be very similar.

Thanks

[wedgeworld1701]

MC is rather different than iTunes and rather different than most players.  Please come back here and ask questions as things progress and you want more information.  Read through the Wiki also.  There's a lot of good info there.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Category:Frequently_Asked_Questions

Some things in MC aren't super obvious.  Many times this is a difference in how the problem or task is approached.  You'll figure a lot of that out by reading posts here in the forum, the wiki, and of course asking your own questions.

Good luck!

Brian.

Thanks Brian!

[wedgeworld1701]

I've been on JRiver for a few months now. To be honest, as a Mac user, I find it very Mac unfriendly. By that I mean keyboard commands that are usually used for most Apple and Thrid party software on a Mac are not in JRiver causing my, by habit, to consistently make mistakes (like hitting the delete key to delete a song from a playlist, it is in the drop down menu but I keep messing up my whole view by hitting that key).

So, not here to complain, wanted to know if there was a good part of the forum to mention things that might be nice additions.

I struggle finding things in forums, probably my wording so I find the wrong info.

 I love a lot of what JRiver can do and does, just not how it works in workflow.

Recently discovered you can make the very old itunes 10 work on Mac OS X 10.11.6.
Might use JRiver to do my FLAC to ALAC, AIFF and WAV conversions and try that out.

But I'm still trying to get used to it. I do very much like that it plays FLAC.

[JimH]

Could you make one or two specific suggestions?

[wedgeworld1701]

Could you make one or two specific suggestions?

Sure.
1. It would be nice if a song could be deleted from library or playlist by hitting one of the two DELETE keys. This is instead of using the drop down menu. Hitting the DELETE key on a Mac in JRiver takes you back a level. So if you hit delete on a song in a playlist you suddenly jump to the WELCOME TO JRiver page

2. I often like to change the tags (Artist, album, year, track number etc) all at once for a whole album. One of the few things I like in itunes is that you can select all the  tracks in an album, hit COMMAND I (Basically GET INFO) and open up a screen to update all the tags for the whole album at once. Unless I'm missing something JRiver allows you to update one thing at a time, for example you can change or add "artist" to many songs at once, or "album" to all the songs in an album but not "artist" and "album".

I'll note some of the others as they come up. I often forget to write them down as they happen. These are the ones I use the most often as imported files sometimes don't have the tags they had in other software and I often delete songs from playlists.

I love all the features the software has, though it hangs often on my Mac Pro, music keeps playing but nothing responds. No keyboard or mouse response, but the computer and other applications are fine (64GB of memory, 2 SSD drives OS X 10.11).

Thanks

[JimH]

2. I often like to change the tags (Artist, album, year, track number etc) all at once for a whole album. One of the few things I like in itunes is that you can select all the  tracks in an album, hit COMMAND I (Basically GET INFO) and open up a screen to update all the tags for the whole album at once. Unless I'm missing something JRiver allows you to update one thing at a time, for example you can change or add "artist" to many songs at once, or "album" to all the songs in an album but not "artist" and "album".

You can copy tags from one file (ctrl-C) and paste them to many (ctrl-shift V) if you select them first.

If you want to change the same tags for many files, select them first.

[wedgeworld1701]

You can copy tags from one file (ctrl-C) and paste them to many (ctrl-shift V) if you select them first.

If you want to change the same tags for many files, select them first.

Tried it and it worked. Thank you.

Also notice that mouse clicking has to be very specifically placed in JRiver. Sometimes I can't get things to take the click.
Sometimes have trouble moving the application around, like I can't grab it with the mouse if I'm not in exactly the right space.

I'll keep trying to work on it. I really need to read up more. I struggle to get my collection to sort they way I'm used to. I assume it is simple and I just have not read the right instructions. I like the whole collection to sort by Artist first (A -Z) then that artists albums in order by year, then the next artist and so on. I'm doing something wrong.