Topic: What is the best way to learn JRiver? (Read 9086 times)

Alobar · « **on:** August 13, 2015, 11:03:55 am »

It has been a year since I chucked Itunes and went with JRiver 20 and now just upgraded to 21. What I have found is an application with amazing depth, but also one that I sense am barely scratching the surface as to what it could be doing for me. Programs like this remind me of navigating new cities where one first learns the main arteries then the boulevards and then streets etc. A road map is very helpful! When I self taught Cad I had the help of books and tutorials which got me a lot further than I ever could have. JRiver needs a book! It feels like the bell curve is too steep without something more than this forum where half the time I find myself lost reading about things, features etc that I don't understand.

So what is the best way to learn JRiver? I have made inroads over the past year, the music sounds awesome with it! Just want to use it more fully.

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** August 13, 2015, 11:28:29 am »

There is a link in my signature below called "Getting Started". You may already be beyond that, but check to see if you can learn anything.

Then post what you're interested in. MC is a big city.

ferday · « **Reply #2 on:** August 13, 2015, 11:38:37 am »

just decide what you want MC to do. Then search some old threads and try to figure it out, then post a thread where you're stuck. If you study the answers you get I promise you'll learn, you already taught yourself CaD!

thanks to blgentry I learned Regex recently, all from one post. I learned expression language from one MrC post years ago. (Ok still working on mastering both ha ha). Mwillems taught me room correction through MC. (and many, many more helpful folk over the years). The willingness of people to donate time and test ideas is really amazing here, and the best ones will get you started but leave the work to you which is a great learning experience

BryanC · « **Reply #3 on:** August 13, 2015, 11:56:37 am »

Quote

What is the best way to learn JRiver?

Patience. Don't ever be in a hurry if you are trying to perform something complex. It can easily take me an hour to set up a new view based on expressions, rules, and regex and I'm pretty familiar with all of those tools.

CountryBumkin · « **Reply #4 on:** August 13, 2015, 12:15:25 pm »

Quote from: Alobar on August 13, 2015, 11:03:55 am

JRiver needs a book! It feels like the bell curve is too steep without something more than this forum where half the time I find myself lost reading about things, features etc that I don't understand.

So what is the best way to learn JRiver? I have made inroads over the past year, the music sounds awesome with it! Just want to use it more fully.

If JRiver had a book it would be the size of "War and Peace" with chapters being rewritten every couple of months.

fitbrit · « **Reply #5 on:** August 13, 2015, 12:30:32 pm »

But a book might be nice! Now that developement of MC20 is over, there could be a book for that. It would always have ti be one version behind, but it might be feasible for an enterprising soul to compile.

Alobar · « **Reply #6 on:** August 13, 2015, 01:34:17 pm »

Thanks for your replies everyone. I know that books on software are out of fashion but still I would buy one that really dived into the capabilities of JRiver.

My BIL who has a small high end audio business out of his home doesn't use his computer to play music. Just CD's everywhere. He has shown interest in MC when he comes and visits here and I try to expound on the advantages such as outstanding audio playback, smart playlists and theater view but I know there is much more that I am missing.

I don't seem to search well in forums and then when I do I get distracted with threads that are fascinating but over my head with the lingo and such. Part of my problem is impatience I know. That and I don't seem to have lots of time on my hands to learn. However that is set to change someday and I intend to delve into it much more at some point.

Alobar · « **Reply #7 on:** August 13, 2015, 01:45:31 pm »

One idea I liked is what the software I now use for Cad did for years. When I switched from Autocad to Turbocad years back they had the "Tip of the day" which was always there greeting me when I launched the program. It was set up so one could view the next tip and those after if you wanted. I have to say I learned a LOT about Turbocad just from that feature that I might never have known about otherwise. I think newbies like me using MC would benefit from this.

BryanC · « **Reply #8 on:** August 13, 2015, 01:55:23 pm »

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Category:Frequently_Asked_Questions

Alobar · « **Reply #9 on:** August 13, 2015, 02:16:23 pm »

Quote from: BryanC on August 13, 2015, 01:55:23 pm

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Category:Frequently_Asked_Questions

Thanks!

~OHM~ · « **Reply #10 on:** August 13, 2015, 02:27:43 pm »

Quote from: ferday on August 13, 2015, 11:38:37 am

I learned expression language from one MrC post years ago.

The willingness of people to donate time and test ideas is really amazing here, and the best ones will get you started but leave the work to you which is a great learning experience

ah the expression language....that one MrC was indeed a wizard, way back in 18 he made a expression so I could get the actual cd count as i still had wmc going and there was a huge deficit in MC. That little expression still serves me today as i saved it in a text file. Other than that and a few tweaks I have for the show display and alternet display is all i have done with it.

~OHM~ · « **Reply #11 on:** August 13, 2015, 02:31:34 pm »

Quote from: ferday on August 13, 2015, 11:38:37 am

just decide what you want MC to do. Then search some old threads and try to figure it out, then post a thread where you're stuck. If you study the answers you get I promise you'll learn, you already taught yourself CaD!

thanks to blgentry I learned Regex recently, all from one post.

Yes indeed blgentry is very knowledgeable and helpful. I also want to congratulate blgentry on his promotion to a Beta Team Member

blgentry · « **Reply #12 on:** August 13, 2015, 02:33:10 pm »

Other than the forum, the WIki is the biggest single repository of JRiver knowledge. It's a work in progress and you won't always find all of the details, but there's definitely a lot of good info there.

My suggestion is similar to another person in this thread: Give yourself a JRiver assignment or two. Find something you want to change in JRiver, or accomplish in JRiver, and go research it on the wiki. You'll almost certainly learn something in the process.

Alternatively, I'm going to give you three areas that I think are important that you can probably learn a lot about via a combination of experimentation, the wiki and the forum:

1. Playing Now. What ways can you add and remove songs from it? What happens to Playing Now when I double click a song in an album? Can I change what happens? (Yes go find the options.) How can you rearrange Playing Now? Bonus: How can you move a file from the bottom of a huge Playing Now list to nearer to the current play position? How do the Playing Now preset keys (labeled 1 through 12) work? There's more, but that's a good start.
2. The Rename, Move, and Copy Tool. It has 4 major sections, which can be used in various combinations. Typical task: How do I change all of my songs from drive C: to drive M: ? The Wiki has a really good article on this.
3. Tagging Pane. Bring up the Tagging Pane with <right click> Tag. Or Alt-Enter. What happens when I highlight a whole album and select Tag? How do I show more or less tags (look in the upper left corner)? What is Album Artist used for? Do I have some albums that I should be using Album Artist to fix?

Hopefully that will give you some interesting things to research and learn. Feel free to start new threads on anything that you are stuck on or need good advice about. Good learning!

Brian.

mattkhan · « **Reply #13 on:** August 13, 2015, 03:37:52 pm »

FWIW the difficulty with a task oriented approach to learning more about jriver is that it can be rather difficult to know what it is possible to achieve & if you don't know what is possible then it's hard to set yourself tasks. Similarly wikis are invariably places where you can find great info if you know what info you're looking for.

To that end I think the wiki would benefit from some sort of "learning trail" that guides new users through some particular use cases & how they can configure jriver to achieve certain goals & that should conclude with something like blgentry just posted (to provide a launchpad for more advanced tweaking & food for thought).

jaxtherogue · « **Reply #14 on:** August 13, 2015, 04:39:42 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on August 13, 2015, 03:37:52 pm

FWIW the difficulty with a task oriented approach to learning more about jriver is that it can be rather difficult to know what it is possible to achieve & if you don't know what is possible then it's hard to set yourself tasks. Similarly wikis are invariably places where you can find great info if you know what info you're looking for.

To that end I think the wiki would benefit from some sort of "learning trail" that guides new users through some particular use cases & how they can configure jriver to achieve certain goals & that should conclude with something like blgentry just posted (to provide a launchpad for more advanced tweaking & food for thought).

I second this. I was so boxed in by other managers that at first I couldn't come up with things I wanted MC to do. Frequently browsing the forums helps a lot in that regard, as does browsing through the wiki.

Alobar · « **Reply #15 on:** August 13, 2015, 04:59:44 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on August 13, 2015, 03:37:52 pm

FWIW the difficulty with a task oriented approach to learning more about jriver is that it can be rather difficult to know what it is possible to achieve & if you don't know what is possible then it's hard to set yourself tasks. Similarly wikis are invariably places where you can find great info if you know what info you're looking for.

To that end I think the wiki would benefit from some sort of "learning trail" that guides new users through some particular use cases & how they can configure jriver to achieve certain goals & that should conclude with something like blgentry just posted (to provide a launchpad for more advanced tweaking & food for thought).

Yes I came over from Itunes after trying a few others that didn't do anything but play music, sort of. Maybe it is a lack of imagination on my part but like you say, I don't yet really know what is possible.

Maybe a better thread topic would be asking the question, What sorts of things do you do with MC? And then have users give a brief explanation of how it was achieved. That I think would be a great help in getting new users past the steepest part of the bell.

Alobar · « **Reply #16 on:** August 13, 2015, 05:01:01 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on August 13, 2015, 02:33:10 pm

Other than the forum, the WIki is the biggest single repository of JRiver knowledge. It's a work in progress and you won't always find all of the details, but there's definitely a lot of good info there.

My suggestion is similar to another person in this thread: Give yourself a JRiver assignment or two. Find something you want to change in JRiver, or accomplish in JRiver, and go research it on the wiki. You'll almost certainly learn something in the process.

Alternatively, I'm going to give you three areas that I think are important that you can probably learn a lot about via a combination of experimentation, the wiki and the forum:

1. Playing Now. What ways can you add and remove songs from it? What happens to Playing Now when I double click a song in an album? Can I change what happens? (Yes go find the options.) How can you rearrange Playing Now? Bonus: How can you move a file from the bottom of a huge Playing Now list to nearer to the current play position? How do the Playing Now preset keys (labeled 1 through 12) work? There's more, but that's a good start.
2. The Rename, Move, and Copy Tool. It has 4 major sections, which can be used in various combinations. Typical task: How do I change all of my songs from drive C: to drive M: ? The Wiki has a really good article on this.
3. Tagging Pane. Bring up the Tagging Pane with <right click> Tag. Or Alt-Enter. What happens when I highlight a whole album and select Tag? How do I show more or less tags (look in the upper left corner)? What is Album Artist used for? Do I have some albums that I should be using Album Artist to fix?

Hopefully that will give you some interesting things to research and learn. Feel free to start new threads on anything that you are stuck on or need good advice about. Good learning!

Brian.

Thanks for this Brian. I am going to try these suggestions when I have some free time.

blgentry · « **Reply #17 on:** August 13, 2015, 06:27:27 pm »

Thanks Ferday and Tao. It's really nice to hear that my efforts here are appreciated.

Brian.

mwillems · « **Reply #18 on:** August 13, 2015, 06:54:22 pm »

Quote from: mattkhan on August 13, 2015, 03:37:52 pm

FWIW the difficulty with a task oriented approach to learning more about jriver is that it can be rather difficult to know what it is possible to achieve & if you don't know what is possible then it's hard to set yourself tasks. Similarly wikis are invariably places where you can find great info if you know what info you're looking for.

My problem is even one step before not knowing what is possible: sometimes I don't even realize I want something!

I can't count the number of times I read someone describe how to do something and went through the following sequence:

1) "What? Why would you even want to do that? I don't understand."
2) "Wait. What are those settings? I've never seen those before."
3) Looks at the wiki, discovers that this use of JRiver is undocumented
4) Dials it into JRiver out of morbid curiosity.
5) "Huh I wasn't expecting that..."
6) Minutes pass
7) "How did I ever live without this, this is so much easier!"

Honestly I've learned more just reading the forums than I ever have from the wiki or from playing with the program. If you know what you want to do and are patient, you'll figure out how to do it. But the unknown pleasures/easter eggs will only come from watching other people try to bend the program to their will and seeing what snaps back!

dmac6419 · « **Reply #19 on:** August 16, 2015, 09:19:53 pm »

By using it and discovering all the thing it can do

khenyth · « **Reply #20 on:** August 16, 2015, 11:06:37 pm »

Quote from: Alobar on August 13, 2015, 04:59:44 pm

Yes I came over from ITunes after trying a few others that didn't do anything but play music, sort of. Maybe it is a lack of imagination on my part but like you say, I don't yet really know what is possible.

Maybe a better thread topic would be asking the question, What sorts of things do you do with MC? And then have users give a brief explanation of how it was achieved. That I think would be a great help in getting new users past the steepest part of the bell.

What can you do with MC? You can make your CD's sound like vinyl. You can accomplish this by ripping the CD and playing it back as a 24-bit WAV file.

lisbethfox · « **Reply #21 on:** August 17, 2015, 04:23:07 am »

Quote from: khenyth on August 16, 2015, 11:06:37 pm

What can you do with MC? You can make your CD's sound like vinyl. You can accomplish this by ripping the CD and playing it back as a 24-bit WAV file.

You realize the maximum bitdepth / possible dynamic range on vinyl is like 12 bits? Vinyl often sounds 'better' but its because of superior mastering + your gear. Oh and its also alot less accurate.

Alobar · « **Reply #22 on:** August 17, 2015, 09:36:38 am »

I haven't listened to vinyl since the mid 80's when I bought my first cd player. I have always however been looking for a better way to sit down and listen to a variety of music without juggling lp's, either vinyl or cd. I had an Accutrack turntable that could be programmed to play songs on one side of a vinyl album in a certain order but that was more or less worthless. I did have a 10 " Teac to tape a music selection for a party but that was a pain as well. The first cd player I bought could hold 5 cds on a big rotating platter that was programmable and thought I was in heaven for convenience and certainly sound quality and was till apple came out with the 99 cent song and the pod. For a while I was willing to put up with 128kbps audio until I got my old Kenwood amp and JBL speakers back and listened to the disappointing sound. Now I am back to buying cd's and thanks to a decent sounding DAC and JRiver am finally able to realize fully what I have been searching for all these decades! The thing is that it is capable of so much more than I ever could have imagined and I want to use more of its capabilities. My old system with all new interconnects and speaker wire, listening to lossless cd quality music through MC has never sounded better! I have a couple old turntables and my old reel to reel in the basement where it will remain. Sound quality trumps nostalgia every time for me!

khenyth · « **Reply #23 on:** August 17, 2015, 12:16:47 pm »

If you rip your CD's to 24-bit, 176,400 Hz, WAV files and listen to them on MC they sound wonderful. I can't explain why - try it and see. Here are the steps to follow:
First, rip the CD at read speed 2-4X (Tools/Options/CD,DVD/General/CD-Ripping/ReadSpeed). Save the file to your hard drive as an uncompressed wave (Tools/Options/Encoding/Encoder).
Then, convert and save the rip as a 24-bit, 176,400-Hz, uncompressed wave file:
1. Select the files to be converted.
2. Select (Tools/AdvancedTools/ConvertFormat)
3. Under (ConvertFormat/ConvertFileTo) select <Uncompressed Wave> on the drop down menu
4. Under Convert Format, select (Options/AudioConverter/Audio/ApplyDSP/OutputFormat/Output/176,000Hz)
5. Under Convert Format, select (Options/AudioConverter/Audio/BitDepth/24-bit)
6. Click <OK> to save changes.
7. Under Convert Format, click <Convert>

Alobar · « **Reply #24 on:** August 17, 2015, 12:20:15 pm »

Quote from: khenyth on August 17, 2015, 12:16:47 pm

If you rip your CD's to 24-bit, 176,400 Hz, WAV files and listen to them on MC they sound wonderful. I can't explain why - try it and see. Here are the steps to follow:
First, rip the CD at read speed 2-4X (Tools/Options/CD,DVD/General/CD-Ripping/ReadSpeed). Save the file to your hard drive as an uncompressed wave (Tools/Options/Encoding/Encoder).
Then, convert and save the rip as a 24-bit, 176,400-Hz, uncompressed wave file:
1. Select the files to be converted.
2. Select (Tools/AdvancedTools/ConvertFormat)
3. Under (ConvertFormat/ConvertFileTo) select <Uncompressed Wave> on the drop down menu
4. Under Convert Format, select (Options/AudioConverter/Audio/ApplyDSP/OutputFormat/Output/176,000Hz)
5. Under Convert Format, select (Options/AudioConverter/Audio/BitDepth/24-bit)
6. Click <OK> to save changes.
7. Under Convert Format, click <Convert>

Thanks!

blgentry · « **Reply #25 on:** August 17, 2015, 12:26:56 pm »

Quote from: khenyth on August 17, 2015, 12:16:47 pm

If you rip your CD's to 24-bit, 176,400 Hz, WAV files and listen to them on MC they sound wonderful. I can't explain why - try it and see. Here are the steps to follow:
First, rip the CD at read speed 2-4X (Tools/Options/CD,DVD/General/CD-Ripping/ReadSpeed). Save the file to your hard drive as an uncompressed wave (Tools/Options/Encoding/Encoder).
Then, convert and save the rip as a 24-bit, 176,400-Hz, uncompressed wave file:

There is no reason to do this. If you really want to send the files to your DAC as 176400 sample rate, use the Output Format in the DSP Studio to upsample 44.1kHz to 176.4kHz. If your DAC uses a 24 bit input (which it almost certainly does), then JRiver is going to convert to 24 bit anyway.

It's also much easier to use the output format to test different upsampling rates than it is to externally convert the entire file.

Brian.

rudyrednose · « **Reply #26 on:** August 17, 2015, 02:20:01 pm »

This is a great thread !
I have a friend that I have been trying for ages to convert to MC (even before MC15). He is finally fed up with iTunes

I will send him this URL and he probably will recognize himself

khenyth · « **Reply #27 on:** August 17, 2015, 02:45:23 pm »

Re: Upconverting CD's to make them sound like vinyl - There are probably many ways to do this. The point is that CD's sound hugely better as WAV files on MC than as CD's on your CD player. It doesn't make sense, but it works. Please try it and let me know what you think. Ken

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Author Topic: What is the best way to learn JRiver? (Read 9086 times)