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[Mr Swordfish]

I've been fighting with Media Center Syncing for several months now, and I just can't seem to get it to work.

At this point, I am syncing to a folder on the same hard drive as the media files. (Leaving the transfer to the device as another problem to solve)

I rip a new CD.

I add it to a playlist.

I go to the Options menu on the device and tell Media Center to sync the playlist I added the CD to.

I click on "sync now"

And Media Center tells me that the device is fully synchronized.

But the files have not bee copied over to the local directory and the playlist .m3u file has not been updated to include the new CD.

Is there some magic incantation that I need to invoke to make JRiver Sync work like it's supposed to?

[Mr Swordfish]

Here's the most recent log file if that helps.

[Mr Swordfish]

A possible issue might be that when I map a local folder as a device and go to Options -> Files, Paths and more  there is no checkbox for Write Custom Playlist Files like there is for an actual physical device.

Conjecture: since I can't tell it to write playlist files it doesn't, and when it goes to sync it looks at the playlist file that has not changed and fails to copy the newly added audio files.  Not sure if this is right, but the lack of that checkbox seems to be a bug.

[Mr Swordfish]

Coming back the following day, I now see the files in Windows Explorer.  Not sure what changed, but they are there now.

Unfortunately, the player (Sony Walkman NW-A306) doesn't recognize the newly synced files.

And the reason for that is it doesn't support .ogg files, so it ignores them.  Prior to moving to JRiver, I used iTunes AAC at 256k VBR to rip, and the .m4a files worked in but MC and the player. Since MC doesn't seem to rip AAC, I've been  ripping with Vorbus, but those .ogg files won't work on the player.


I either need to re-rip the most recent CDs, convert them in place, or set MC to convert on export.  I just need to figure out which file format to settle on.  The spec for my player is here:  https://helpguide.sony.net/dmp/1301/v1/en/contents/TP1000752534.html   

Suggestions for formats that are compatible with both MC and the player cheerfully accepted.  Thanks.

[Mr Swordfish]

Question for the development team:

I'm using the native (software) player on the Walkman,  The D-A audio conversion might be done by the player software (JRiver for Android, Rocket Player, Google's native player, etc.), or these apps could just ship it off to the "hardware" for conversion.  Which approach is more common?

I'm assuming the latter, which means that the supported formats in the list at https://helpguide.sony.net/dmp/1301/v1/en/contents/TP1000752534.html   is dispositive, i.e. by using a different software player I still wouldn't be able to play unsupported formats.

[Mr Swordfish]

Question for the development team:

I'm using the native (software) player on the Walkman,  The D-A audio conversion might be done by the player software (JRiver for Android, Rocket Player, Google's native player, etc.), or these apps could just ship it off to the "hardware" for conversion.  Which approach is more common?

I'm assuming the latter, which means that the supported formats in the list at https://helpguide.sony.net/dmp/1301/v1/en/contents/TP1000752534.html   is dispositive, i.e. by using a different software player I still wouldn't be able to play unsupported formats.

So, the answer seems to be that the Sony supplied player uses the dedicated DAC chips and the other players just use the "standard" Android OS and whatever DAC hardware is on the device.  I say this because the Sony player won't play .ogg files while the other players will.

Unfortunately, I can't get any other player to work reliably on this device - Rocket Player worked for a day or two then crapped out and a month later and a bunch of emails with their support team can't bring it back to life.  JRiver for Android only sees about 10% of the playlists I have for whatever reason. And the native google player (Youtube) is just a clusterfuck when it comes to playing local files.

I have about 80 albums in .ogg format that the Sony player won't recognize, and re-ripping them seems easier than continuing to fight with Rocket or JRiver for Android.  And the dedicated DAC seems to sound better than the standard Android DAC, so that seems to be the way forward for now.

[blgentry]

MC can convert most formats back and forth.  You can do this with the Convert Format function.  Or with a handheld sync.

There are many other stand alone tools that will convert from one audio format to another.  If you can convert to FLAC, that appears to be the gold standard for compatibility, and it is lossless so you won't lose any quality in the process.

That would seem to be easier than re-ripping 80 albums.

Best of luck,
Brian.

[Mr Swordfish]

MC can convert most formats back and forth.  You can do this with the Convert Format function.  Or with a handheld sync.

There are many other stand alone tools that will convert from one audio format to another.  If you can convert to FLAC, that appears to be the gold standard for compatibility, and it is lossless so you won't lose any quality in the process.

That would seem to be easier than re-ripping 80 albums.

Best of luck,
Brian.

Agreed that simply converting in place would be easier than re-ripping. But a) I don't want to do down a generation by converting to a second lossy format and b) converting to FLAC will just make the files bigger without the increase in quality you normally get with FLAC.

Now that I'm no longer limited to 160G of handheld storage I'm planning on standardizing to FLAC, and probably re-ripping a lot of the existing .m4a files at some point.

Plus, of the 80 albums in .ogg, I can probably live without half of them, or live with a lossy on lossy version.  So, I may use your approach for some of them.

[blgentry]

I never got into OGG.  I think I mistakenly thought it used lossless compression.  Reading the wikipedia article, I now see that OGG is a container for different codecs and the most popular one, Vorbis, is lossy.  So I see why my suggestion wasn't very helpful.

I hope that culling through those albums helps you rediscover some things you enjoy.  Maybe you'll want to re-rip the ones you really like as a lossless.

Take care,
Brian.