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Author Topic: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz  (Read 3772 times)

Dennis in FL

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Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« on: September 09, 2022, 05:51:13 am »

I worked for General Electric during the Jack Welch era.  One of his edicts was to check out what others were doing and if they had a good idea, steal it!!!  It was called "Best Practices" and we took ideas from Federal Expresss on accounting and quality control (Six Sigma) from Motorola, and many, many more.  Then came the "Work Out" process for analyzing existing products and processes and streamling them by eliminating roadblocks.  There was the similar "Cost Out" to delete excess product costs.   

It was his way of getting rid of the drag of "not invented here" and he was not embarrassed at all to admit what he was doing.

So, in that light, and for suggestings for MC30 and beyond, I'd look at the competition for audio (Roon), video (Channels DVR app on Apple TV & Fire TV),  User interfaces on Tidal, Qobuz, Apple, Roon, Amazon Prime and maybe even help search and documentation ideas from all of the above and Google.  And of course the customer is first and foremost (never ignore).

And after rumaging around, see what they do right (or wrong) and match it.  Or improve it.   

My two cents.



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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #1 on: September 09, 2022, 06:13:19 am »

... I'd look at the competition for audio (Roon), video (Channels DVR app on Apple TV & Fire TV),  User interfaces on Tidal, Qobuz, Apple, Roon, Amazon Prime and maybe even help search and documentation ideas from all of the above and Google.
Where do I start?  I respect your kind intentions, but ...

1.  We're not any of those and they aren't us.   None of them do what we do.

2.  Apple, Amazon, and Google have a lot of dough.

3.  Tidal, Qobuz, and Roon had a fair amount, too.  Tidal and Qobuz have never made a profit.  I don't know if Roon has.  What would Jack Welch have said about that?

JRiver is largely about synergy...

-------------

"The whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

-- Buckminster Fuller

He also said this (from WikiQuotes):

Buckminster Fuller’s Presentation to U.S. Congressional Sub-Committee on World Game

"We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common It has to be everybody or nobody. It is very encouraging therefore that you as representatives of the people see fit to bring us together to consider these matters.

"I have to ask ... are you familiar with the word “synergy”?

"I have been a visitor at 320 universities and colleges around the world and always have asked those university audiences “How many of you are familiar with the word ‘synergy’?” I can say authoritatively that less than 10 percent of university audiences and less than 1 percent of non-university audiences are familiar with the word and meaning of synergy. Synergy is not a popular word. The word synergy is a companion to the word “energy.” Energy and synergy. The prefix “syn” of synthesis meaning “with, to integrate” and the “en” of energy means “separating out ”. Man is very familiar with energy, he has learned to separate out, or isolate certain behaviors of total nature and thus has become familiar with many of the separate natural behaviors such as optics.

"Synergy is to energy as integration is to differentiation. The word “synergy” means “Behavior of whole systems unpredicted by behavior of any of the systems parts.” Nature is comprehensively synergetic. Since synergy is the only word having that meaning and we have proven experimentally that it is not used by the public, we may conclude that society does not understand nature.

"I find all of our world society is operating exclusively in parts. We know this because the word synergy is unknown popularly and it is the only word that means “behavior of wholes unpredicted by behavior of their parts.” This proves that society does not even think that it has a need for such a word. This discloses that society does not think that there are behaviors of wholes unpredicted by the parts. It thinks statistics and probability are all that we need but if “probability” and “statistics” were of any power at all we could not have a stock market or gambling for we would know exactly how things are coming out and no one would bet against the probability.

"Nature is entirely synergetic and because your problems of representing a society ignorant of such fundamentals are greatly increased you need to pay great attention to learning how to comprehend synergy and thereafter how to educate all of humanity in the shortest time how to comprehend and usefully cope with omni-synergetic universe.

"I will give you one very simple example of synergy. All our metallic alloys are synergetic. We will examine chrome-nickel steel. The outstanding characteristic of metallic strength is its ability to cohere in one piece. We test the metals tensile strength per square inch of cross section of the tested sample. The very high number of pounds-per-square-inch tensile strength of chrome-nickel steel has changed our whole economy because it retained its structural integrity at so high a temperature as to make possible the jet engine which has halved the time it takes to fly around the world. The prime constituents are chromium, nickel, and iron. We will take the highest ultimate tensile strength of those three.

"Our school systems are all nonsynergetic. We take the whole child and fractionate the scope of his or her comprehending coordination by putting the children in elementary schools—to become preoccupied with elements or isolated facts only. Thereafter we force them to choose some specialization, forcing them to forget the whole. ... We may well ask how it happened that the entire scheme of advanced education is devoted exclusively to ever narrower specialization. We find that the historical beginnings of schools and tutoring were established, and economically supported by illiterate and vastly ambitious warlords who required a wide variety of brain slaves with which to logistically and ballistically overwhelm those who opposed their expansion of physical conquest. They also simultaneously DIVIDED and CONQUERED any and all "bright ones" who might otherwise rise within their realms to threaten their supremacy. The warlord vitiated their threat by making them all specialists and reserving to himself exclusively the right to think about and act comprehensively. The warlord made all those about him differentiators and reserved the function of integration to himself.

SPACESHIP EARTH:
"Earth is an automated Spaceship speeding rotatively at 66,000 miles per hour around the sun, which in turn, is on its own course at 6.0 kilometers per second within the Galactic Nebula. The awareness of Earth's mobile patterning within the cosmos gives the perspective needed to deal with the overall evolutionary event-patterning aboard our spherical space-vehicle Earth, rather than the minute details. The automated events transpiring aboard Earth lend powerful advantages to those who comprehend the automation and attempt to work with it in the most long-term, humanly advantageous ways rather than ignorantly attempting to control or oppose it. Both Earth's and humanity's automation are biological."

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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #2 on: September 09, 2022, 06:16:05 am »

And then there is the wonderful reward of building something lasting, something of quality.
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scottm_dj

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2023, 08:15:23 pm »

Another +1 for Qobuz integration.   I've read a few of the recent threads on this.  I've been a Q member since It's come to the US & it isn't going anywhere anytime soon so that's not an excuse ti not integrate it..  On a ultra high-quality system like I have, the streaming quality is obvious over the other "contenders"  so I'm another one really hoping it integrates into MC.   If the Android app USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) can do the integration...so can MC.

People talk about ROON on here but it ticks me off it doesn't support SACD image files (not to mention a ridiculous per month cost)... whereas one of MC's best features is it DOES...perfectly (even M-Ch)!   If I could play my 24-192 Qobuz streams through MC, that would cover everything I need.

Any chance now in 2023 of putting this on the road map?
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MikeO

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #4 on: October 31, 2023, 03:22:54 am »

You can add other streaming services to the request as Qobuz is far from universal, It has a quite limited coverage compared with Tidal for example

This has been requested multiple times , I wouldn't hold my breath
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #5 on: October 31, 2023, 03:26:18 am »

+1 for this. Qobuz has a really great classical catalog.
It's got about 400 versions of my favorite works, the Goldberg variations. No other service comes close.
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Awesome Donkey

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2023, 04:54:26 am »

You really should do a search of the forums before posting topics like this, as it was discussed recently (for the 10,000th time).

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,137136.0.html

Yes, that topic applies mainly to Tidal, but if you do a search you'll see other topics asking about other streaming services (including Qobuz) Jim's response has always been the same, they're not going to support them.

I personally don't see it happening any time soon, if ever. In fact I think if it was going to happen it would've already and hell has a better chance at freezing over at this point, especially since JRiver has their Cloudplay feature.
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scottm_dj

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #7 on: October 31, 2023, 07:37:56 am »

You really should do a search of the forums before posting topics like this, as it was discussed recently (for the 10,000th time)

I did do a search but on Qobuz cuz that's all I care about (Tidal lost me with their MQA mess & emphasis on rap garbage) and this was last brought up about 6 months ago... When I tried to reply to the topic it said it was too old and to make another topic. So here you go.  It's worth bringing up every so often because I'm sure a lot of people are (still) clamoring for it!
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #8 on: October 31, 2023, 08:15:36 am »

I'll merge this with another thread here:  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,137286.0.html

You could read my reply there.
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Awesome Donkey

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #9 on: October 31, 2023, 09:26:13 am »

It's worth bringing up every so often because I'm sure a lot of people are (still) clamoring for it!

I don't want to step on any toes or smack any hornet's nests with a tennis racket here, but in my personal opinion, I think it's a waste to keep asking when Jim's answer has been the same for years now. Unless Jim was to say otherwise (in an announcement post on the forums and email newsletter more than likely), it's probably safe to assume they're not changing their stance on streaming services like Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc. and don't plan on supporting them.

In ways, all of this reminds me of Plex and what's been happening with that over the years. Originally Plex started out as a way to manage locally stored media that users had either from ripping their own discs or whatever, and as time passed they've started integrating streaming services and trying to appease the MPAA/RIAA by cracking down on account sharing for example. Since at least the last few years, I've read multiple users of their core user base (which is those who want to manage their own locally stored content) seem to feel like they're being thrown more and more to the wayside in favor of streaming services (that and them not fixing issues like downloads for offline viewing). Plex has competitors like Emby and Media Center too, which focuses on locally stored content (and live TV) and that seems to be their niche and what they're best at.

Maybe Media Center's niche and primary appeal should be exactly that, to those who want to manage their own media locally instead of relying on streaming services (and the various issues that brings like DRM). And I'm going to be honest, I've tried all the music streaming services and all of them leave a lot to be desired for, and I rather maintain my own which is powered at the core by Media Center.

Yes, yes, streaming is probably the 'future' going forward, but personally it's not for me (I feel old now, yikes!). Maybe it's not for you or somebody else you know? As long as there's users who want to handle all their media locally, there's going to be solutions like Media Center.

Apologies for the mini-rant, just my thoughts on the subject. :)
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scottm_dj

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #10 on: October 31, 2023, 09:35:18 am »

Point taken. I just had to address Jim's (original) comment that specifically the Qobuz streaming service was a flash-in-the-pan &  not going to last...which sounded like an excuse not to do it and was poor at best.   It's not going anywhere for awhile, being firmly entrenched in France.

The other stance to keep MC just LOCAL media concentrated is a much better reason (especially since ROON fails miserably with this in my opinion).  But this is simply a feature request for MC... so people can take it or leave it..
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JimH

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Re: Feature request: Qobuz integration revisited
« Reply #11 on: October 31, 2023, 01:39:54 pm »

I just had to address Jim's (original) comment that specifically the Qobuz streaming service was a flash-in-the-pan &  not going to last.
I don't believe I said that.  I did point out that they were in bankruptcy proceedings, but that's no longer true, as far as I know.

My reply above represents my current thinking.  I just don't want to devote significant resources to supporting businesses that are generally weak.

It was a very strange exit for Jay-Z to sell Tidal to Block.  Huh?  Without that sale, they were a financial disaster.  You can read about it if you search for Tidal financials.
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eve

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #12 on: October 31, 2023, 02:27:13 pm »

+1 for this. Qobuz has a really great classical catalog.
It's got about 400 versions of my favorite works, the Goldberg variations. No other service comes close.

Their classical library is completely unparalleled. It's *amazing* for finding the performance / recording of a piece that resonates most with your taste. Qobuz isn't going anywhere, I've been with them since they were primarily France only and cost an arm and a leg for a year (it was *ridiculous*) and I don't know of another streaming service that hits my interests nearly as comprehensively (Deezer is *very* good for picking up the pieces )

Personally, I understand JRiver's hesitance, it's essentially an unrealistic ask and in many respects, runs counter to what JRiver is excellent at.

Looking to Roon for inspiration, similarly is in some ways at odds with JRiver. I *adore* Roon but oh boy, you're never getting JRiver's incredible pane filtering or customizable views in Roon (hell they don't even have a competent API if you just wanted to handle display on your own).

It's a different market.

I'm sure *I* am the odd one out here but I'd like to see less streaming service integration in JRiver, not more (man, if you guys just sold a no library, playback only renderer with all the other stuff stripped out of JRiver, I'd be the first customer).

In the decade+ of JRiver use (god I'm probably getting close to 15 years here and I'm not *that* old), Jim and the team have made incredible strides while respecting the core product. I don't really open a new version of JRiver and find myself lost or thinking that the product itself is becoming oversaturated, trying to fill too many roles. The streaming stuff is well, not for me. However, it's not being shoved in my face or watering down the product I bought.

You look at something like Plex? Complete mess. They're trying to do everything and dilute the product. It's feature creep at its finest. I swore that off like 6 years ago and haven't looked back.

JRiver after all of these years doesn't really disappoint. If my only serious complaint is that they don't offer a player only version, and that there isn't some kind of websocket or MQTT support to announce its state... that's impressive. Unlike Roon, JRiver can be controlled and navigated much more comprehensively. You don't *need* to use their interface to see your library. In Roon? Hahahaha, forget about it. The API they offer is essentially useless for building your own Library display. It's... it's actually insane. I mean I get it, their product is metadata but man.... for having the best commercially available metadata out there, good luck working with it outside of their software (which full disclosure, has insanely terrible performance, both on the server side and even the desktop apps have absolutely bizarre rendering performance).


As a final word. When I set out to replace Emby for my film library navigation and management, I aspired to make myself "Roon" for film. As I actually worked through the project, and started building it out, I realized how little of Roon I wanted. The metadata and global identity? Sure. Big inspiration.
A similar thing happened with Kaleidescape. I had seen their interface in action once or twice and adored the infinite 'grid', yet the more I explored their software the more I realized it was a disaster and that I could easily make something nicer.

I don't sit around thinking I could do better than JRiver. I sit around thinking that I could do better than Roon.


I'm just glad JRiver exists after all these years. They've got some excellent management and very talented people.



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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #13 on: October 31, 2023, 03:47:31 pm »

Their classical library is completely unparalleled. It's *amazing* for finding the performance / recording of a piece that resonates most with your taste. Qobuz isn't going anywhere, I've been with them since they were primarily France only and cost an arm and a leg for a year (it was *ridiculous*) and I don't know of another streaming service that hits my interests nearly as comprehensively (Deezer is *very* good for picking up the pieces )

Personally, I understand JRiver's hesitance, it's essentially an unrealistic ask and in many respects, runs counter to what JRiver is excellent at.

Looking to Roon for inspiration, similarly is in some ways at odds with JRiver. I *adore* Roon but oh boy, you're never getting JRiver's incredible pane filtering or customizable views in Roon (hell they don't even have a competent API if you just wanted to handle display on your own).

It's a different market.

I'm sure *I* am the odd one out here but I'd like to see less streaming service integration in JRiver, not more (man, if you guys just sold a no library, playback only renderer with all the other stuff stripped out of JRiver, I'd be the first customer).

In the decade+ of JRiver use (god I'm probably getting close to 15 years here and I'm not *that* old), Jim and the team have made incredible strides while respecting the core product. I don't really open a new version of JRiver and find myself lost or thinking that the product itself is becoming oversaturated, trying to fill too many roles. The streaming stuff is well, not for me. However, it's not being shoved in my face or watering down the product I bought.

You look at something like Plex? Complete mess. They're trying to do everything and dilute the product. It's feature creep at its finest. I swore that off like 6 years ago and haven't looked back.

It's true that it's hard to be everything to everybody. I personally use all 3 products you cited, JRiver MC (I forgot how many versions I bought over the years), Plex (lifetime subscription) and Roon (currently in my second to last trial day). They each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Plex usually does an acceptable job with video, and its strength is that it has clients for many devices (Android, Chromecasts, Fire TV, Kodi), which is something other solutions generally lack. But I agree it's very bad for classical and library management in general. It doesn't support gapless on Chromecast, either. It works fine over VPN, also.

Roon has essentially no usable manual library management (that I found), the complete opposite of JRiver.
However, Roon + Qobuz + Chromecast audio does an amazing job for classical, and plays everything gapless on my 17 Google devices, something no other software I use has been able to do so far (I understand foobar2000 works, but it doesn't have a 10-30ft remote interface). And Roon is very expensive of course, with a subscription model 3x that of Plex, or very pricey lifetime license at $829 currently. It's hard to justify the price given the library management limitations. And it fails to work under VPN, too. Though they have a separate ARC app that works remotely with additional compression.

MC has the best video rendering without question, and exceptional audio, other than for the lack of gapless support on Chromecast which Roon has. And the library management is the best. MC falls short mostly on its clients. For example, I bought JRiver for Android expecting to be able to connect to my MC library hosted on a LAN PC, but it's not capable of doing that unfortunately. I haven't played any media with it yet.

There will probably never be one product to rule them all, but I do wish some of the best features of Roon (gapless Chromecast playback) and Plex (better remote clients, working over VPN) made it to MC some day. Obviously this is hard to do with the lower license price that MC has. Maybe there could be multiple tiers of licenses, with some new features reserved for the more expensive tier ?? Even if one upgrades MC every year, and not everyone does, a master license upgrade is only about $3-$4 a month.

To get back to Qobuz, one thing it has is the ability to buy tracks, and they can then be downloaded and managed locally in MC, so direct integration with Qobuz isn't strictly required if one buys the tracks. That costs a lot more, though. I'm not going to buy all 400 versions of the Goldbergs as that would cost $4000 - $8000 depending on quality. But I may stream them all one time, and perhaps I'll buy 10-20 of them to add to my local collection. Right now I'm streaming them gaplessly to Chromecast using Roon, at least until my Roon trial runs out. I'm still doing a Qobuz trial also, but will be renewing it regardless of whether I subscribe/purchase Roon.
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eve

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #14 on: October 31, 2023, 04:43:20 pm »


Roon has essentially no usable manual library management (that I found), the complete opposite of JRiver.
However, Roon + Qobuz + Chromecast audio does an amazing job for classical, and plays everything gapless on my 17 Google devices, something no other software I use has been able to do so far (I understand foobar2000 works, but it doesn't have a 10-30ft remote interface). And Roon is very expensive of course, with a subscription model 3x that of Plex, or very pricey lifetime license at $829 currently. It's hard to justify the price given the library management limitations. And it fails to work under VPN, too. Though they have a separate ARC app that works remotely with additional compression.


You're right on the money here about Roon. There isn't any library management really, it's auto matching is top notch however. There's some limited 'prefer file metadata' overrides for specific albums as needed but across upgrades (where I *have* brought all my database stuff over) I've noticed it 'forget' them conveniently. It's a nightmare. I refuse to use ARC or anything so I can't comment there. Also like, not to dunk on them but their database performance is god awful with a large # of tracks (like 800k or something maybe? ) and an absolute ram suck. The funny thing is I use huge ram sucking in memory databases myself and the performance of Roon doesn't nearly correspond to what I'd expect from something modern.
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #15 on: October 31, 2023, 05:22:03 pm »

You're right on the money here about Roon. There isn't any library management really, it's auto matching is top notch however.

Yes, the automatic matching does a decent job, but sometimes you just want to handle something differently.
For example, with the Brilliant Classics 142-disc Bach complete edition, I want to have one playlist for it. It's possible, with work, in JRiver Media Center. I don't see a way to remotely do it in Roon. The problem is that some discs have been released as part of the set and outside the set as well. No automatic recognition can get it right when there is a choice of how to handle a given disc/album.

Quote
There's some limited 'prefer file metadata' overrides for specific albums as needed but across upgrades (where I *have* brought all my database stuff over) I've noticed it 'forget' them conveniently. It's a nightmare.

That's unfortunate.

Quote
I refuse to use ARC or anything so I can't comment there.

It seems to work decently, but it's totally separate from the main app when it really shouldn't have to be. This prevents transferring the playback from one zone (say, a Chromecast) to a mobile device running ARC.

Quote
Also like, not to dunk on them but their database performance is god awful with a large # of tracks (like 800k or something maybe? ) and an absolute ram suck. The funny thing is I use huge ram sucking in memory databases myself and the performance of Roon doesn't nearly correspond to what I'd expect from something modern.

I can't speak to that, my DB is only about 60k tracks. The PC I use running JRiver Media Center Server, Roon Core, Plex Media Server and a Home Assistant VM "only" has 16GB of RAM and hasn't swapped yet. It's a totally silent PC with an AMD X570 chipset / AMD 5700G APU. Passively cooled with a Noctua NH-D15S with the lone fan removed. Same box also has 20TB of flash (5 x 4TB NVMe) in a single stripe. Obviously the video takes much more space than the audio, and the DB requirements for video are much less since there are far fewer files.
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davewave

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #16 on: October 31, 2023, 07:25:45 pm »


Maybe Media Center's niche and primary appeal should be exactly that, to those who want to manage their own media locally instead of relying on streaming services (and the various issues that brings like DRM). And I'm going to be honest, I've tried all the music streaming services and all of them leave a lot to be desired for, and I rather maintain my own which is powered at the core by Media Center.


I think this captures the target market very well.   People who want to manage their own media locally, and importantly often have opinions on which is the best mastering of any given title.   Whereas most people would have no idea that masterings can vary greatly in quality.  So these customers have better than average hearing discernment, and want a tool that can help them and not get in the way.   And in these matters the product is excellent.
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comox

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #17 on: October 31, 2023, 10:37:35 pm »

WWIII seems to be on the way and when it causes the internet to become unreliable I'm going to be very happy to be 100% local with JRiver.

Also a good idea to find a local source of food.
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drmimosa

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #18 on: November 01, 2023, 02:15:51 pm »

One day we will all say "I remember the Internet..."
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davewave

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #19 on: November 02, 2023, 12:24:19 am »

I think your soundtrack should include Talking Heads Life During Wartime
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MikeO

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #20 on: November 02, 2023, 09:05:43 am »

I will come clean , I have been using JRiver since V15 (I think) and still do but 7 years ago I bought an Audioquest DAC which gave me a 60 day demo of Roon , I took it and have had a love hate relationship ever since. I stick on annual subs just in case. I still use MC for all my video needs.

I have repeatedly said (elsewhere) there is no comparison between MC and Roon other than they both play music they really are 2 very different animals,

There are many advantages to Roon and an equal number of disadvantages.

The biggest advantage is the way it seamlessly integrates Qobuz and Tidal , so you effectively have an infinite library at your finger tips any album being treated equally regardless of source . The next is automatic metadata lookup, no more filling in endless tags . I know this curation is a big part of the "hobby" to some folk but it's time consuming and I sometimes think a labour of love

The big disadvantage is a fixed navigation system as opposed to an Expression Language driven series of views as in MC where you can slice and dice your library at will. Things like splitting Classical from Rock is simply not possible as it is in MC. As with any software there are workarounds and personally don't find Roon restricting after using for so long

The real killer is that all the wonderful metadata will poof into smoke if you chose not to pay the subs or , heaven forbid, they go bust. You are only RENTING the metadata. I haven't mentioned cost as to me it's not relevant , any hobby costs.

My answer is simple USE BOTH which is what I do , I still tweak my MC library for accuracy and use JRemote to play big box sets which Roon is particularly poor with.

Before Roon , I used to sit with an iPad navigation on JRemote and an instance of Wikipedia to look up things of interest , Roon just simplifies the job.

I still pay my MC renewal every year and will continue.

I can access my MC server and Tidal in one app from within several apps eg mConnect, Cambridge Audio StreamMagic and the Naim app , but with nothing like the slickness of Roon it means switching between areas of an app.

If MC was to integrate Tidal I would seriously reconsider my position BUT I know Jim's stance , respect it and believe he will not change his mind, he has the wellbeing of the company in mind.

Apologies for a bit of a rant, just my 2p as a long term user of both .

Each to his own
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #21 on: November 02, 2023, 09:37:54 am »

Maybe we should integrate Roon.
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Dennis in FL

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #22 on: November 03, 2023, 01:54:51 pm »

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Dennis in FL

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #23 on: November 03, 2023, 02:07:31 pm »

It seems my suggestion was taken wrong.   I wasn't advocating switching to Roon for instance.   I was saying if there is something they are doing better, steal it.   Maybe even improve on it.   Just the little things. 
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davewave

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #24 on: November 03, 2023, 06:48:53 pm »

Maybe we should integrate Roon.
Funny!
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MikeO

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #25 on: November 04, 2023, 12:43:17 am »

@ Dennis in FL

There are many things in Roon worth stealing , the whole integrated metadata idea for one , I am getting old and decrepit and spending hours at a keyboard "grooming" metadata is not good for my ever worsening neck condition . In this day and age automate it , but that costs .

The integration of streaming services is the cherry on top, looking at your library all albums are treated equally you cannot tell if its local or Tidal , very slick

People moan about the high subscription costs of Roon but I wouldn't mind betting a fair chunk of that is to support 3rd party sources and the cloud infrastructure to run said.

I have no desire to start a war , I have been a loyal MC supporter/user for many years and long may it continue. I use MC routinely for audio and it is absolutely trouble free. Audio has been stable for years literally , I can't recall a support complaint from me in 11 years.

Enjoy the music
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amsco15

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #26 on: November 04, 2023, 09:17:55 am »

FWIW, been an MC user for around 10 years now (maybe more, time is tough to judge these days) and a Roon/Qobuz user for two plus. I started out 70/30 MC v Roon.  Am now 30/70 or less.  I’ll continue to support MC with each update.  I love the program and flexibility it provides to organize my music exactly the way I like.  Guess my point is, it’s nearly impossible for this music lover to ignore the world of high quality streaming.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #27 on: November 04, 2023, 09:27:42 am »

...it’s nearly impossible for this music lover to ignore the world of high quality streaming.
Have you tried Cloudplay?
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davewave

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #28 on: November 04, 2023, 11:12:27 am »

FWIW, been an MC user for around 10 years now (maybe more, time is tough to judge these days) and a Roon/Qobuz user for two plus. I started out 70/30 MC v Roon.  Am now 30/70 or less.  I’ll continue to support MC with each update.  I love the program and flexibility it provides to organize my music exactly the way I like.  Guess my point is, it’s nearly impossible for this music lover to ignore the world of high quality streaming.
Streaming and local music are both in my mix.   Streaming is pretty much required if you like Atmos music.   It is also a great way to hear most of the new boxed sets that are coming out.  $10 a month (or so) vs. buying the latest box at $40-$200.
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Daydream

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #29 on: November 04, 2023, 09:06:07 pm »

In my opinion Roon's strengths are metadata and algorithmically discovering new music from the said metadata. This leaves us with 3 problems in my opinion, that JRiver may want to consider as something worth improving upon:

- metadata. JRiver has YADB but that seems to be (at least in the absence of any published statistics) less capable compared to the likes of MusicBrainz. There are also no guidelines for uploading art (or what is supported), which again falls behind the likes of fanart.tv and AlbumArtExchange. So my question is can JRiver join hands with those services, or, if that is not feasible for some reason, expand the YADB with options for user submissions that would make it rival those other platforms? If you're willing to host music (Cloudplay), can you host more (user submitted) metadata?

- Music discovery. This is very nebulous at the moment if it exists at all. PlayDoctor and the likes are closed source, deal with only what's local + Cloudplay (if I understood it right) so there's no meaningful way to compare. There's definitely no way for music recommendation - to listen, to buy (new releases), to go to a concert nearby - which some of those streaming services that never made a profit do offer. The likes of semi-pointed links to wiki, Amazon and the likes are not it, it's just complimentary stuff. A lot of more integration and automation would be required.

- Music availability. I personally buy stuff on physical media as much as I can. But I have less ways to do that now that in decades past (I'm of the era when we were spending hours in a Tower Records or Virgin Megastores). It doesn't mean I don't stream. It's a tool. If I hear something that I really like, I'll look to buy it on physical media if possible, just as much as I would search the band/artist for their other works. Tools. So. I appreciate Cloudplay as a way JRiver tries to expand what content is available. But I don't really understand it. Not it's logic, nor its endgame. For example "upload mixed playlist not albums". So if me and 10 friends of mine upload each a different track from an 11 tracks album, the whole album is going to be available. Soo... what is the point again? Its endgame... semi-appease the people who keep asking for integrations like in this very thread? There are 100 mil tracks on Spotify and more than half a billion users. Just saying, very different bubbles.

I'm not talking about quality of music (both as selection and format available). I'm talking about big numbers statistics. And algorithms that actually accomplish something useful. I'm sure putting such a 'dry' topic on top wins me the hate of every audiophile everywhere :). But here's how things could work (just an example, not the whole meaning of life):

Build a smartlist where the BPM doesn't vary outside of a defined %, so there are no sudden changes in energy (say from an eurotrance track to a 1960 balad), where all the metadata available in MC, moods, genre, style, year, language, previous listening habits and playcounts, etc can be taken into consideration, with various degrees of variation.

Last time I asked about something like this it was 2011 and you guys sent me to check if Watson was available. I think it is now (looking at my GPU). We need some large datasets to train an ML. :)

The metadata needed for this may not be always free (unless JRiver puts something in place to build its own), but a fee for access to extra stuff would be acceptable, if it doesn't fell into prohibitively expensive territory. There must be people paying for Roon, otherwise they wouldn't exist. I think it's worth a discussion.
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MikeO

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #30 on: November 05, 2023, 01:11:01 am »

"There must be people paying for Roon, otherwise they wouldn't exist. "

Last declared number was "in excess of 250,000 subscribers", peanuts compared with Apple and Spotify

I would be interested how many users migrated to Roon from MC or like me run both in parallel
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EnglishTiger

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #31 on: November 05, 2023, 03:33:10 am »

Last declared number was "in excess of 250,000 subscribers", peanuts compared with Apple and Spotify

Looks like you got that back to front - As of September 2023 Spotify has over 226 million subscribers. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
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MikeO

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #32 on: November 05, 2023, 07:13:34 am »

Confused Roon with 250,000 Spotify 225,000,000.

Roon is peanuts compared to Spotify., few more zeroes.

Apple Music 88 million they claim.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #33 on: November 05, 2023, 08:21:49 am »

In my opinion Roon's strengths are metadata and algorithmically discovering new music from the said metadata. This leaves us with 3 problems in my opinion, that JRiver may want to consider as something worth improving upon:

- metadata. JRiver has YADB but that seems to be (at least in the absence of any published statistics) less capable compared to the likes of MusicBrainz. There are also no guidelines for uploading art (or what is supported), which again falls behind the likes of fanart.tv and AlbumArtExchange. So my question is can JRiver join hands with those services, or, if that is not feasible for some reason, expand the YADB with options for user submissions that would make it rival those other platforms? If you're willing to host music (Cloudplay), can you host more (user submitted) metadata?
JRiver uses other metadata as well.  Have you explored Spotlight?  That displays other albums, similar artists, and Wikipedia bio's.
Quote
- Music discovery. This is very nebulous at the moment if it exists at all. PlayDoctor and the likes are closed source, deal with only what's local + Cloudplay (if I understood it right) so there's no meaningful way to compare.
Are you using Cloudplay?  Play Doctor can draw on it to play some or all from Cloudplay.

And there is a new Search DJ tool that builds on it.
Quote
There's definitely no way for music recommendation - to listen, to buy (new releases), to go to a concert nearby - which some of those streaming services that never made a profit do offer. The likes of semi-pointed links to wiki, Amazon and the likes are not it, it's just complimentary stuff. A lot of more integration and automation would be required.
We do connect to Amazon and you can buy there.  I buy used CD's that way and rip them.
Quote
- Music availability. I personally buy stuff on physical media as much as I can. But I have less ways to do that now that in decades past (I'm of the era when we were spending hours in a Tower Records or Virgin Megastores). It doesn't mean I don't stream. It's a tool. If I hear something that I really like, I'll look to buy it on physical media if possible, just as much as I would search the band/artist for their other works.
I agree.
Quote
Tools. So. I appreciate Cloudplay as a way JRiver tries to expand what content is available. But I don't really understand it.
You have to use it a little before it will make sense.  It's pretty powerful.
Quote
Not it's logic, nor its endgame. For example "upload mixed playlist not albums". So if me and 10 friends of mine upload each a different track from an 11 tracks album, the whole album is going to be available.
The rules we use are those for the streaming radio license.  You might be able to circumvent some, but you'd have to work at it.  Same as other services.

Streaming that is 100% on demand uses a more expensive license.
Quote

Soo... what is the point again? Its endgame... semi-appease the people who keep asking for integrations like in this very thread? There are 100 mil tracks on Spotify and more than half a billion users. Just saying, very different bubbles.
Nobody listens to most of that.  Do the math.  If you listened to a couple hours of music every day, and never repeated the same track, that's less than 15,000 tracks a year.  Cloudplay now has 500,000 tracks.  It's what our users actually listen to.  It's all lossless and some is Hi Rez.
Quote
I'm not talking about quality of music (both as selection and format available). I'm talking about big numbers statistics. And algorithms that actually accomplish something useful. I'm sure putting such a 'dry' topic on top wins me the hate of every audiophile everywhere :). But here's how things could work (just an example, not the whole meaning of life):

Build a smartlist where the BPM doesn't vary outside of a defined %, so there are no sudden changes in energy (say from an eurotrance track to a 1960 balad), where all the metadata available in MC, moods, genre, style, year, language, previous listening habits and playcounts, etc can be taken into consideration, with various degrees of variation.

Last time I asked about something like this it was 2011 and you guys sent me to check if Watson was available. I think it is now (looking at my GPU). We need some large datasets to train an ML. :)

The metadata needed for this may not be always free (unless JRiver puts something in place to build its own), but a fee for access to extra stuff would be acceptable, if it doesn't fell into prohibitively expensive territory. There must be people paying for Roon, otherwise they wouldn't exist. I think it's worth a discussion.
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eve

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #34 on: November 05, 2023, 02:53:15 pm »

"There must be people paying for Roon, otherwise they wouldn't exist. "

Last declared number was "in excess of 250,000 subscribers", peanuts compared with Apple and Spotify

I would be interested how many users migrated to Roon from MC or like me run both in parallel

It's tiny but so is the market. They do really well within that niche. How many people have more than a cursory interest in music and would even consider forking over money on a subscription basis for music software that comes with no music?

JRiver is successful but if you asked a random guy on the street about what media library software they use on their computer (they probably don't even) they'll almost certainly not say 'JRiver' or have any clue what it is. Same for Roon.

The software we use exists within a niche.


I run both in parallel.
MC is my main video playback engine.
Roon + HQP tends to handle music but I'm constantly grumbling about Roon issues / limitations which are impossible to accommodate, whereas, I'm relatively happy with what JRiver does.

What devs actually implement things I've brought up? JRiver. What software have I been essentially satisfied with for nearly 15 years now? JRiver.

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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #35 on: November 05, 2023, 03:11:42 pm »

"There must be people paying for Roon, otherwise they wouldn't exist. "

Last declared number was "in excess of 250,000 subscribers",

To quote Click & Clack of Car Talk, "I call bogus."
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eve

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #36 on: November 05, 2023, 03:23:43 pm »

To quote Click & Clack of Car Talk, "I call bogus."
It doesn't surprise me Jim. The classical music niche they've locked into is kind of under-served and highly opinionated.

Roon is rigid, JRiver isn't. If JRiver doesn't do something I want to do? I can go automate it or integrate something that does what I want.  When ShowTime wasn't serving my needs, I wrote my own queue generator. When I set out to replace Emby for film, I didn't need to throw out JRiver as well, in fact, JRiver integrated perfectly with what I was building.

Roon lacks the facilities to really color outside the lines.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #37 on: November 05, 2023, 03:35:51 pm »

I don't believe there are 250,000 audiophiles in the entire world.
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #38 on: November 05, 2023, 03:39:20 pm »

Cloudplay now has 500,000 tracks.  It's what our users actually listen to.  It's all lossless and some is Hi Rez.

Personally, I have only used Cloudplay a little bit, so I'm probably missing something, but so far it seems like a collection of playlists indexed by the user who uploaded them. I listen mostly (99%) to baroque and classical music, and that's usually entire albums. I almost never listen to individual tracks. I have been trying to find recordings of the Bach's Goldberg variations, my favorite musical works of all-time, on Cloudplay. I was not successful in my search. There are probably over 800 different albums of the Goldbergs on the market on different instrument. I own maybe 80 on CD/SACD and have ripped them to my JRiver MC collection in FLAC and ISO formats. How do I find any of these albums on Cloudplay ?
Same question about how to find other complete Bach albums like the Inventions & Sinfonias, Well-Tempered Clavier, etc.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #39 on: November 05, 2023, 03:40:59 pm »

Try searching for Bach.
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eve

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #40 on: November 05, 2023, 03:48:59 pm »

I don't believe there are 250,000 audiophiles in the entire world.
The number does sound high but we also don't know if a 'subscriber' is someone who is currently active and paying or anyone who has paid for a month within X period of time.
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #41 on: November 05, 2023, 03:55:34 pm »

Try searching for Bach.

Thanks. I found some Bach albums using this search, but I had to click a bunch of users and go browse sometimes several levels deep. And the albums I found weren't the ones I was looking for. Could the search be improved so more complex queries could be written, such as what one can already do within Media Center UI for one's local collection.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #42 on: November 05, 2023, 05:23:00 pm »

Use the search play button to play all the Bach.  Then look in Playing Now to see what's there.

Or try the Search DJ under the Tools Menu.
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #43 on: November 05, 2023, 05:49:47 pm »

Use the search play button to play all the Bach.  Then look in Playing Now to see what's there.

Or try the Search DJ under the Tools Menu.

Thanks. I must be dense because I can't play anything either way. Exact steps I'm using :

1. start MC
2. clicking Cloudplay on the left tab
3. In the search bar near the top, type Bach + Enter
This reduces the number of playlists/users shown in the vertical middle tab
4. Press the Play button on top next to Bach / Search
I get "That search produced no results in your library. Please try again".
5. Go to Tools / Search DJ
6. Check "Include Cloudplay"
7. Click "Play with Play doctor"
Same result as in step 4.
8. Go back to Tools / Search DJ
9. Click "Play"
Same result as in steps 4 & 7.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #44 on: November 05, 2023, 06:11:16 pm »

What is the full version of MC?
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #45 on: November 05, 2023, 06:13:56 pm »

Search DJ
Artist Bach
Include Cloudplay [100%]

I get 97 tracks.

If you will upload a playlist, I'll try it.
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #46 on: November 05, 2023, 06:30:12 pm »

What is the full version of MC?

31.0.80 64-bit .
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #47 on: November 05, 2023, 06:36:47 pm »

Search DJ
Artist Bach
Include Cloudplay [100%]

I get 97 tracks.

Just tried it - I get the same "That search produced no results in your library. Please try again" . Pop-up.

Quote
If you will upload a playlist, I'll try it.

Let me do that.
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JimH

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #48 on: November 05, 2023, 06:38:51 pm »

Check settings.

Tools > Options > Cloudplay
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madbrain

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Re: Jack Welch, Bucky Fuller, and Qobuz
« Reply #49 on: November 05, 2023, 07:14:18 pm »

Check settings.

Tools > Options > Cloudplay

Thanks. I have no restrictions at all(removed all the default ones) and no bit rate limit set there.

Looks like I'm getting 97 results like you now. One of the default restrictions must have been interfering.
Many are not actually by Bach on this list, though.

I just uploaded a playlist (look under user madbrain76) for Bach's Goldberg variations. It doesn't show up in these search results, though. My tracks have the word "Bach" in the track name, as well as the album name.
One oddity is that the playlist is in a different order after upload than the original. Specifically the first 3 tracks - they are supposed to start with the Aria, then variation 1, then variation 2.
But the way it shows on cloudplay is Variation 1 first, then variation 2, then the aria. I have no idea how the track order got changed.

Edit: looks like single albums are not allowed, so I deleted my playlist.
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