Like my heading says, "Where's the book?"
From what I've read here in the forums, there is no longer a formal user manual for JRiver. There used to be one written by an technical writer employed by JRiver, but apparently it was too difficult to try to maintain accuracy of the manual because the software changes so often. So now, the Wiki is the closest thing to a reference manual. It's got a lot of information in it. You CERTAINLY have a point about it being difficult to know exactly where to start. The links at Getting Started are pretty good, as long as you are patient.
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Getting_StartedJRIver is a REALLY big program that's very, very powerful. As such, it's difficult to understand more than a little bit of it when you first start using it. JRiver, in my humble opinion, is for Power Users. People that expect more from a player and are willing to do the configuration and work necessary to *get* more out of it. Maybe I'm wrong,, but that's my opinion.
and can't even figure out how to import my files on any/all my computers, much less rip my 3000 cd's to FLAC files upon importation.
If the links posted above about doing your import don't help, post back here with questions and we should be able to get you going. Importing is really quite easy once you know where to configure it. It's very automatic. Ripping, I haven't done much of with JRiver, but the wiki should guide you. I use a third party tool for ripping, but I've been admonished in the past for mentioning it, so I won't.
Oh, & I don't want to have to use iTunes in any way shape or form. Hate the way it changes formats to mp crappy 3s. I'd just as soon remove it from the mac but Apple have made that virtually impossible.
1. I'm pretty sure you can remove itunes from your mac if you want to. Just drag it to the trash. But you really don't need to, as itunes won't really do anything unless you tell it to. I'd suggest changing the default action for inserting a CD. Go to System Preferences > CDs & DVDs > When you insert a music CD . Change that to "ignore", so it won't fire up itunes any time you put an Audio CD into the drive.
2. Itunes doesn't convert files to MP3. If you import files, it might move them around (which is annoying as hell), but it doesn't convert them. It *does* use lossy AAC compression by default when ripping CDs. That's configurable too. But you don't need to, because you aren't ever going to use itunes again (we hope!).
3. Once you start using JRiver to play music, you can forget itunes ever existed on your mac and be happy.
If you have other questions, post here, or start a new thread on a specific topic. People here are fairly helpful. We should be able to at *least* get your existing music collection playing and get you started on ripping CDs.
Best of luck in the mean time.
Brian.
