I have been running MC19 since it first came out, never had problems until a few weeks ago.
I started to notice that there was long pauses between tracks at times and that using the pause/stop/track change in JRemote would sometimes not do anything until a couple minutes after pressing the function. It seemed like the problem slowly got worse and worse so I finally decided it was time for a fresh operating system install.
The problems I mentioned above were happening on windows 7. I decided to completely format my drive and install windows server 2012.
After installing the basic audio drivers I needed I went ahead and installed MC19, entered my key, set all my options up and configured the media server and I thought I was in the clear. Sure enough the same problem had followed me to a new windows install, only it seemed much worse than before.
Before I go any further I should probably describe my setup. I have a fileserver that houses all my harddrives and is running JRiver with my main library. From there I have three other computers all also running JRiver as media/library servers, but they automatically load the library from the fileserver to use as their main libraries. From there I use either JRemote on my phone or tablet to control playback at any of those 3 computers or I will just use the actual JRiver GUI on one of the computers.
I should also mention, after first installing MC19 on the new operating system and seeing that I was having the same problems I completely uninstalled it and downloaded the trial of MC20 to try, all the same issues as I describe above and below.
I'm now back on MC19 and have been trying to troubleshoot for days and made little progress.
The one thing I've noticed with task manager and process explorer is that a couple minutes after loading JRiver (either just the server, program, or both), the CPU load jumps up to around 50% and just stays there. It does this regardless if I am playing music or not. Even if it is a fresh boot and I have not loaded a single song in yet, after a few minutes it jumps up and stays there.
If I have the actual interface open, the program freezes/hangs, sometimes never recovering. Sometimes music is still playing when this happens. When music is playing, songs always play through right until the end, they have never stopped or hiccupped mid playback. It is only after the song finished that it generally take awhile for another to load.
I've noticed playback is SLIGHTLY less troublesome if I boot media server on startup and do not open the actual program. However after one or two songs it eventually starts with the long delays between tracks and the long delays between manual track changes or pause/stop. Even with just the media server running, MediaCenter19.exe is at 50% CPU.
Im actually sitting here typing this up listening to music and I had a flawless track change (not something that happens often unless it's a fresh boot), quickly flipped to process explorer and noticed 20% CPU load which then dropped to nothing, 10 seconds later though up to 50% (song has finished now, stuck at 50% load, no new track has loaded yet).
I've run diagnostics on my samsung SSD and everything came back perfect.
I have 2x2GB stick of ram. I tried both sticks running solo in both ram slots thinking maybe it was bad ram and nothing.
I've installed other media programs to playback the exact same tracks over the network and not a hint of any problems after hours of playback.
I also tried streaming those same songs in JRiver just using the file->open and browsing to the music instead of playing them through the library, same thing.
I thought it was a network issue but it doesn't make sense. I can stream for hours with other music playback software with no problem, and like I said earlier, once a song actually starts playing with MC19, it plays through, any sort of network issue would most likely result in a skip. I cannot see a network causing a 2-5 minute delay between tracks, it doesn't make much sense.