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[ttan98]

This my first time here I am not sure whether anyone has covered the same ground as I will explain here.

There are already many stand-alone music server now available(flooding!) in the market ranging from Olive($999) to AudioNec($18,000). I think there is a market for a high quality music server software which can operate on Window based hardware platform which out running Window OS such as XP or win 7.

I think J River is an idea s/w platform that can be adapted to run as a stand-alone program(without the overheads of Win XP or 7), that will produce audiophile quality o/p data stream to an external DAC via the USB port. This s/w would easily sold for $200/pak. Obviously it must be able to communicate with external devices as well e.g. Ipod, etc. I think the difficult is that there are so many drivers which the J River must communicate with e.g. video, CDrom etc.

There are so many users who have at least 1 PC may it be a Desktop or Laptop, and using it as dedicated music server seems obvious esp. for audiophile. It is also a very cheap alternative to buying a commercial music server. I think a dedicated and a stand-alone J River media center will rival these music servers.

Anyone care to comment please feel free to do so.

[MrHaugen]

Good luck with that  How much programming would that would require? To make all the devices and hardware work? LOTS I think. Drivers is the key here, and most of them have to be re written if J River makes a complete J River OS. I don't hate the idea. I would love it for my server, but then again, you would loose some of the familiar and good things that comes with windows. Other programs, file system etc etc.
Also think about all the users that want this to run on a platform they do other stuff on. In other words... Windows or Mac/Linux. You'd need to have two separate apps then. One server OS and one client for all the other users.

Never gonna happen I think. There's just to much hazel compared to have it running on a well known platform.

[JimH]

I like the idea.  We've discussed in the past, but the developers here roll their eyes.  It would be a huge project, requiring at least a million dollars of time.

On the other hand, Linux is free, and if some of the pieces ran under windows and others under Linux (two different machines) it might not be terribly time consuming.

In a way, what we've got with DLNA is a step in that direction.  I believe that most NAS drives, DLNA devices, and newer TV's and Blu-ray players do run Linux.  Maybe a hardware guru can correct me if I'm wrong.

Porting MC to Linux would be another way, but that's also a large project.  Several hundred thousand dollars, at least.

Thanks for the thoughts.  And welcome to the forum, ttan98.

[csimon]

I've thought about a similar thing but been too scared to mention it in case someone hits me! (virtually)

The way I was thinking was a port of the server and database components to Linux, so that JRiver can be installed on NAS's in a similar way to Twonky, Squeezeserver etc, to replace the many dismal attempts at a DLNA server that is bundled with such devices.  This would have the huge advantage of not having to keep a separate power-hungry PC or Mac on all the time.

Bundled and free servers do not have the customisation facilities necessary for "serious" use, only allowing indexing by track artist, album and genre for example.

I'm not sure about such a port being able to render media as the OP has suggested to go the whole hog of competing with high-end music servers to the extent of supporting/providing hardware as well, what I'm suggesting is a DLNA server that simply serves the content directory and files and transcodes as necesssary, and you can mix and match to your own rendering and controlling software/hardware.  If you want a high-end DAC then buy one!  As long as it can act as a DLNA renderer.

I'm not sure how far advanced the DLNA market is yet though, TVs with DLNA built-in are certainly very patchy in their compatibility. And I'm not sure how much audiophile DLNA (non-proprietary) equipment there is as yet.

But JRiver MC has to be the most powerful and easily set-up DLNA server as yet (for example, I found Twonky, Squeeze and XBMC really difficult to set up and understand and they still can't index my collection the way I want it), get in there early lads and allow it to be installed on NAS's!

[ttan98]

Hi,

Thanks for the response, I suppose I am a little ambitious considering the number devices window based platform already supported out there.

Fortunately there is a another solution(not so ambitious yet achieve our aim) is use a cheap hardware platform  and yet powerful enough to get the audiophile sound and media features which already provided by JRiver. It is to use the Netbook platform using JRiver as stand-alone or Linux as the OS which ever is easier yet achieve  what we want. The primary aim to able to compete with the current music server in terms of sound quality, media features and more importantly price.

The Netbook(costs about $400) offers a number of advantages, 1. Cheap, 2. Powerful enough, 3. Already an existing customer base. The total cost including JRiver s/w for the set-up is unlikely to exceed $1,000 that gives JRiver a very good margin. At the same time capable of competing with even the cheapest Olive on the market.

There are a lot more I can add here but you get the drift. I hope JRiver can look into this and more importantly there is money to be made here(this market is increasing) and at the same time the end-users benefit as well i.e. cheaper price for music server and better sound reproduction. In the end everyone benefits.

Cheers have a nice day.

[Alex B]

The primary aim to able to compete with the current music server in terms of sound quality, media features and more importantly price.

Hmm...  Not an "aim" to me. I'd say that it is the other way round. To me the reference is MC. I have used MC (and MJ before MC) for that since early 2002. I have a few "MC + a windows PC" instances as my primary players in a few rooms and one of them serves also as the main file server (i.e. contains the media files after they have been properly prepared and archived.) Practically any PC that has been manufactured after 2000 can play top quality audio (assuming a high quality audio interface is added and its fans are not too noisy). Naturally for things like HD video playback a recent and quite powerful PC is needed. There is nothing wrong in having the server, players and user interfaces running on Windows. A Windows PC can be be quiet, small, stable and even quite energy efficient.

Personally I have never understood this boom of stand-alone boxes. To me this seems like the manufacturers are trying to "reinvent the wheel" that I have been using almost ten years (and still provide less features and usability than what I have had available all this time).

[ajowers]

I believe the most straight forward path is to use Windows Embedded (the latest and greatest which from what I understand is Win 7 technology).  A developer can tailor windows for a target machine with out all the "extra" junk you normally get with windows.  This prepares an environment that is most efficient on that hardware, ie. least memory requirements, lowest disk usage, etc.

With the embedded OS prepared, then install MC15.  The developer can create a virtual computer with everything preconfigured then this disk "image" is cloned to each machine's drive in production.

Windows embedded licenses are much much cheaper than the full blown Win 7 home premium licenses.

A custom OS is just out of the question.  A Linux port is probably going to be a lot of work too.  I see no reason not to take a look at Windows Embedded as opposed to Linux.  Yes your cost may rise $75 (over free Linux) per unit but MC15 would not have to have a single line of code changed.

Just my 2 cents worth.... hope it helps. 

[park]

I also see MC's future being tied intimately with it's media server functionality. Thankfully, the biggest feature improvements in MC15 have all been network related. I was hoping that the developers might try some custom WHS hardware strategy. The WHS is the right platform, with the same approach to storing media centrally that JRiver seem to believe in. All that would be needed would be some time to develop a decent addon to allow management of the media server without the need to remote desktop in to the WHS.

Unfortunately, things don't look too good for WHS's future at the moment. Maybe JRiver should just keep doing what it's doing, and make their product better and better, and let us users figure out the hardware side for ourselves.

Ultimately the MC media server needs to be as "headless" as the physical server that it is running on. This means that we need to be able to customize views, apply cover art, and maybe even be able to use the Library tools to manage our files, all from a client. I am happy that things seem to be pointing in that direction at the moment.