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[Tyak]

Hi - brand new user here.   

I'm a new JRiver user due to the Catalina upgrade.  I use a Mac but have all my music in FLAC, and for the last 10-15 years have used the tool Max to rip from CD to FLAC.  Sadly Max hasn't been updated in ten years, and it's 32-bit, so when I upgrade to Catalina it'll be dead.

I have an external CD player attached to my Mac.

In firing up JRiver for the first time, I've stumbled across being able to play the CD I have in the CD player.....but I can't figure out how to see and cue up the whole album.

More importantly, my (hopefully simple) question is this:

  - All I want to do is have JRiver read the CD and rip to FLAC in a destination of my choosing.

I've played around for half an hour and just can't find how to do this.

Thanks,
Tyak

[JimH]

You should see a CD icon for ripping in the Action Window (lower left corner).

[Tyak]

Thanks for replying.  I do not see a CD icon.  When I expand the Action Window I see Sync Handheld, Build Playlist and Tag only.  Is that where it's supposed to be?  Does the fact that I am using an external CD drive mean that I need to do something else?

[blgentry]

Hmm, that's odd.  I just checked MC and I do have a "rip disc" selection in the "Action Window" at the lower left.

When I first tried it, it didn't work.  But that turns out to be because OSX was set to open a different program when I inserted a CD.  You might check OSX Preferences under CDs and DVDs and see what the "insert Music CD" action is set to.  I set it to "ignore".  After that, MC saw my CD when I inserted it.

I use an external optical drive too.  This IMac does not have a built in optical drive at all.

Brian.

[Tyak]

Ok, so I looked at those preferences Brian.  But first - here's what else I'm seeing using this app:


When starting JRiver, the JRiver icon bounces in the dock, alongside another app that opens called PackageInstaller which is active.  It continues to bounce until I click on PackageInstaller, which then quits and JRiver starts.

I have Preferences > CDs & DVD’s set to Ignore on all insert events, and yet I still see nothing in the lower left Action Window of JRiver indicating that it can see my CD drive.  I tried selecting opening JRiver upon inserting a music CD and that does nothing.


So I have to go click Playing Now in JRiver to get a split window, then File > Open Media File > select drive > highlight all tracks and move them to the bottom half of the Player window in JRiver, and then hit Cancel to avoid playing anything.  And then the CD gets ejected.  So I push the CD back in, and now I can select the files to convert manually.

This is all a bit manual and clunky, to be honest.

And here I notice that the metadata on the CD is partially missing - track name is OK but there’s no artist, album or anything else.

I then highlight and select all tracks manually > right click > Library Tools > Convert Format

The Convert Format window appears in the bottom left, and I can select options etc.  Here, at this point, is there a way to enter the correct metadata?  Without the artist and album name, the files just get dropped into my root folder and I have to (a) move them and then (b) edit all the metadata in a different tool.


TL;DR  JRiver not recognizing my CD;  thus no means to grab the tracks other than a kludgey manual process which is messy.  And I don't see where to correct the blank metadata.

[blgentry]

Let's begin with what you described about launching MC.  That thing with "Package installer" isn't normal for MC startup.  I kinda think you might be running the MC installer and not MC itself.

When you download MC it will be a DMG file.  When you double click on that, the DMG will "mount" (kind of like a virtual disk drive).  In the window that opens you'll see an MC icon and the Applications icon.  To install it, you just drag MC into the applications folder.  WHen it's done, MC will be in Applications and it's ready to run from Applications.  Now, eject the DMG.  It will show as a mounted disk in Finder.  Just press the eject button next to it's name and it will disappear.

To run MC, go to Applications, find Media Center and double click it. 

Once MC is running correctly, I hope the CD drive thing will sort itself out. 

Good luck.

Brian.

[Tyak]

Thanks for your continued help.  Pretty sure it's installed ok (I'm not a Mac novice).  I'm starting the app (and I'll correctly call it MC from now on, like you) by running it (Media Center 19) from Applications.

Does JRiver allow me to easily uninstall and reinstall MC?

Edited to add:  I deleted the app and re-installed from my downloaded dmg.  Behaves the same way.

Edited to add 2:  Looking at About MC, I appear to have Media Center 19.0.163.  Yet the download links seem to suggest I should be on v25.  Do I have the wrong version?

Edited to add 3:  it's like you're watching my dumb mistakes.  I must have downloaded from a stale link.  I now have MC25 and sure enough I can see a Rip Disc option.  Going to play with that now.

[Tyak]

Alright, I'm on v25 and things are still a little messy.

I see Rip Disc.  I've previously adjusted File Locations etc.

I started ripping.  Things appear to be going well.

But twice now the CD is ejected before all the tracks are ripped, and I get an error saying "Read track failed.  Parameter is out of range". 

Everything seems fine other than the CD getting ejected.

[blgentry]

I'm happy to hear that you got a modern version of MC and mostly have it working. 

I don't use MC to rip CDs; I use a different application that I've been using for several years now.  That symptom of "parameter out of range" sounds familiar.  But doing a web search for that I didn't turn up anything that seems directly related.  I'm not sure what's going on.

Maybe Bob or another employee of JRiver can help point you in the right direction.

Brian.

[Tyak]

OK - I'll wait to hear from one of those guys.

Out of interest - you're on a Mac yes?  Are you ripping to FLAC, and if so what app are you using?  And did you upgrade to Catalina?

Thanks again.

[blgentry]

I'm on a Mac and have been using MC since version 20 on a Mac.  I'm currently using Sierra (10.12).  I should upgrade to something newer, but I won't go to Catalina for a while.  Not until Catalina has been out for a while longer and I personally consider it to be more stable and ready for my use.  I do this with pretty much all versions of OSX.

For ripping CDs, I've been using XLD for quite some time.

Brian.

[Tyak]

Ha - I've been using XLD for years too, but only for importing into iTunes to get music onto my iPhone.  I used Max for ripping as mentioned above, which will not work on Catalina. 

I was thinking I could use a slicker tool (like, hopefully, MC when I get it working) and keep XLD for importing into iTunes, so that I don't need to fiddle with XLD's parameters every time I use it.  Hopefully this latest MC issue is easily fixed.