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[archfrog]

Hi,

I just bought JRiver Media Center a few days ago for use with my Denon PMA-50 on a Windows 10 PC.  As far as I know, this is the only way to get full support for the hardware features of my PMA-50.

To be honest, I find JMC bloated beyond belief.  I know most of you probably value each and every setting and option and feature in the program, but all I need is a high-quality SACD/DSF/DSD and 24/192 FLAC player.  I am aware of Foobar2000 but it doesn't seem to support native playback of DSD files on my PMA-50.  I want those files sent to my PMA-50, not converted on the PC itself.  The PMA-50 supports DSD natively and there's no reason to bypass this feature.

I was wondering if it would make sense for JRiver to make a simple music player who had only a few basic features (not even a File Open menu!):

1. Shell/Play item(s).
2. Shell/Queue item(s).

And then a tiny program window, perhaps like Windows Media Player/Ctrl-3, that shows the artist name, album name, track name and decoding info such as "DSD 2.8" or "FLAC 24/192".

The program could be sold for $19.95 or something, for those of us who are without any interest in advanced media library managers and video playback and all those extras that make little sense in my world.

I always organize my music as folders on my harddisk (Artist/Album/Track) and don't want no program to interfere with this organization and definitely don't want it to download all sorts of trash like covers and the like.

No playlists, no multimedia library support, no excess features.  All it should do is to play music, using the optimal settings for the DAC/PowerDAC, and nothing else. Perhaps I am using JMC incorrectly, but it seems to me that I have to manually switch output mode to DSD in the DSP Studio when I want to play DSD files.  When I then play a FLAC file, I have to switch back or playback becomes corrupt.  I think JCM should do that automatically, looking at the file type and selecting the most optimal mode for the available hardware.

I hope I'm not starting a war or am going to get bashed beyond belief.  I just want a simple yet sophisticated program to play my high quality music with.  I don't care about pictures and movies, and I definitely am not the least interested in maintaining a huge library of covers and all that stuff.  My music doesn't get any better because there are pretty pictures associated with it.


Cheers,
Archfrog

[glynor]

Perhaps I am using JMC incorrectly, but it seems to me that I have to manually switch output mode to DSD in the DSP Studio when I want to play DSD files.  When I then play a FLAC file, I have to switch back or playback becomes corrupt.  I think JCM should do that automatically, looking at the file type and selecting the most optimal mode for the available hardware.

It does and you do have it set up incorrectly.

The Output Format DSD setting should generally not be used, unless you have a DSD-only DAC, where you need MC to convert all file formats to DSD. That setting re-encodes audio to DSD as part of output (hence the labels in the DSP dialog).

If you want it to send DSD to your DAC and let it decode the files, then you need to enable DSD Bitstreaming:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DSD

If you are enabling it in Output Format, then it has been:
* MC decodes the DSD files on the fly to PCM
* The Output Format DSP re-encodes the files to DSD
* Your DAC decodes the DSD files and plays them.

Which is ridiculous and counter-productive.

[archfrog]

Thanks for you reply.  I don't know what went wrong in my end, but my setup is (now) as you say.  Now it works as it should when I switch forth and back between DSD and FLAC.

[astromo]

To be honest, I find JMC bloated beyond belief.

You're entitled to your opinion. Personally, I disagree. I started out wanting an audio solution to my media concerns and then expanded my thinking given the capability of the software at my doorstep. I'm glad that my decision had a healthy dose of serendipity mixed in.

Take a look at the Wiki, especially:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Simplified_Interface
You're not the 1st person to want a minimalist offering. The beauty of MC is that it has so many ways that the user can customise it.

If you haven't already, there's a wealth of info here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Audio_Setup
That's a good one to tap into and there are a number of threads to chase down.


All the best .. 

[blgentry]

First of all, welcome here, and I hope you end up enjoying JRiver Media Center.  It's arguably the most powerful, most capable, longest developed media player on any platform.  Period.  It definitely has a LOT of features and the interface is complex compared to a simple media player.

To use a car analogy, the product you are asking for is a go-kart.  The product you have purchased is a high end Porsche.  They both have their uses and their target customers.  There's nothing wrong with either one.  But asking for one to be transformed into another doesn't make much sense does it?  If you want a go-kart, they are definitely available.  Do a search for "simple windows DSD player" and you'll find several.

Again, I'm not trying to discourage you from using JRiver MC.  In my opinion it's the best and you should get to know it and embrace it's great features and powerful interface!  Again to use a car analogy:  You'll gave to get used to turning a key instead of pushing the big red button to start the car.  There are a lot of controls like the air conditioner, the windshield wipers, the fancy 12 speed automatic transmission, and man even the seats have 5 controls!  But once you learn to operate these controls, I think you'll like driving your Porsche a LOT more than driving your go-kart.

A lot of the power of a modern music player is in it's meta data and the presentation of that data.  As you said, seeing pretty album covers and a well organized, easy to use presentation doesn't make the music sound ANY better.  But boy does it make navigating a large collection MUCH nicer and much easier to find what you want.  The file system is a decent organization tool.  In fact, file system organization is the BASIS of a well organized library.  But it's not the END of the process.  It's the foundation.  If you ignore the library features of modern players, you ignore more than half of what makes them so nice to use.

Finally, the sophisticated Queue (Playing Now) of JRiver is definitely worth getting to know.  The Playing Now queue is where a lot of the flexibility and power of it's playback lies.  If you know how to use it, you can very quickly build yourself a queue of music for an evening, or even several and tweak it and modify it as you go if you so choose.  It's powerful *and* flexible.  It's worth learning.

Just my opinion.

Brian.

[Awesome Donkey]

Try enabling Audio Only Mode (it's in the View menu) to disable undesired features like video and images.

[archfrog]

Thanks guys for your input.

Clearly, JMC can do what I want.  I'll play around with it some more even though I reverted to using Foobar2000 earlier tonight (it serves my purposes for now).  Having paid for JMC, I obviously want to use it.  Also, I do believe that JMC is a substantially better product than most other players out there.  I looked at something called JPlay, which might serve my purposes better but the price and the UI were prohibitive.

Next step is to find a way to make a backup of the dozen or so settings I had to tweak to get to where you're pointing me: Audio-only, DSD-playback enabled, but I'm sure there's a way to do that somehow; I have the lingering idea that I stumbled across such a feature somewhere.

As for the media library thingy, I simply don't agree.  I guess it depends on whether you're a graphical or logical thinker; I remember all my artists and albums and most tracks from their names, not from pictures, so pictures won't help me, even though they likely do help most people.

Please consider my ignorant idea obsolete (!) and caused by sheer overload by the massive number of settings in JMC.


Thanks again,
archfrog

[blgentry]

Next step is to find a way to make a backup of the dozen or so settings I had to tweak to get to where you're pointing me: Audio-only, DSD-playback enabled, but I'm sure there's a way to do that somehow; I have the lingering idea that I stumbled across such a feature somewhere.

If you are asking how to back up your settings, you can use the Library Backup tool:  File > Library > Back Up Library .  It backs up settings and library metadata.  When you restore (if you decide to restore) you can choose to restore just the settings, just the metadata, or both.

As for the media library thingy, I simply don't agree.  I guess it depends on whether you're a graphical or logical thinker; I remember all my artists and albums and most tracks from their names, not from pictures, so pictures won't help me, even though they likely do help most people.

The album cover "pictures" are optional.  They are one style of view and are not required.  MC will not try to download album art for you unless you ask it to.  It's not invasive like itunes.  Itunes moves your files and things like that by default.  MC does NOT move files and it doesn't download album art unless you explicitly tell it to.  So you can import some or all of your songs into MC and not have to worry that anything bad is going to happen.  I was a little bit reluctant to Import my songs at first too, because I was used to the crazy stuff that itunes does and I didn't want my files to be moved or altered.  MC is very "safe" for your song files by default.  It will only change things if you tell it to.

You can use MC to show all of your songs as column based lists.  This makes finding what you want very easy.  Coupled with the search box, it becomes a very, very rapid way of finding exactly what you want and adding it to your Playing Now.  In MC the way you see your songs is by the left side Navigation area.  Click in Audio and you'll see several Views listed.  Try the one labeled "Panes".  It's a list based on columns, and it has scroll areas at the top called Panes that let you narrow down your selection by Artist, Album, Genre, etc.  It's convenient and fast and fairly similar to the file system actually; it's just more flexible and faster.  You can change the scroll areas up to if you want to customize them.

I hope this helps you along in learning the basics of MC.  Enjoy. 

Brian.

[jaxtherogue]

As for the media library thingy, I simply don't agree.  I guess it depends on whether you're a graphical or logical thinker; I remember all my artists and albums and most tracks from their names, not from pictures, so pictures won't help me, even though they likely do help most people.

I like to have the album art as part of my library as the bulk of my spending and at home listening is on vinyl where the album cover retains some power, but the real point of the library database for me is not the album art, it's about finding music the music I want. I may know the artist name, album name, track name maybe even the label; but do I remember who played bass on that album or produced it? Maybe for a few but not for all. Or if I want a playlist of music from the Canterbury scene am I really going to remember every track out of a library of 60,000+ songs which fit the bill? Likely not.  The Library lets me find tracks based on almost any conceivable data point and create playlists based on details you simply can't reflect in a sensible way with a simple folder/file structure. Maybe that level of detail isn't important for you but I wanted to make it clear that the album art is just 1 data point among a great many the Library aspect of MC can help you use to grapple with your music collection.

Contrary to your point, the Library enables a multitude of logical approaches to managing your music and not the one you might be locked into by relying soloing on the physical organization on disk.  Drop the graphical element from your mind if you don't want it- but think of all of the other possibilities!

[dmac6419]

My Asus plays 24/192 right out of the box, without the Yamaha or Sony receiver or the Presonus audio interface 24/96, so why would you spend $500 bucks on a whatcha ma call it and bash someone's software? Foobar is free and if your smart enuff you can make it pretty.  That being said JRiver is in a league of its own.

[AlexS]

I think you guys would make a lot more money doing a free version without time limitation. Give it bare minimum of features, no more features than MS windows media player.

People are looking for media center replacements, they are likely to want free apps, and they will probably end up considering buying for extended features if a free app is placed in front of their noses.

Most people I know who use windows have never heard of jriver, you should correct this.

[mwillems]

I think you guys would make a lot more money doing a free version without time limitation. Give it bare minimum of features, no more features than MS windows media player.

People are looking for media center replacements, they are likely to want free apps, and they will probably end up considering buying for extended features if a free app is placed in front of their noses.

Most people I know who use windows have never heard of jriver, you should correct this.

This already exists more or less in the form of media jukebox: http://www.jriver.com/mj/

[glynor]

I think you guys would make a lot more money doing a free version without time limitation. Give it bare minimum of features, no more features than MS windows media player.

This has been tried. mwillems pointed to the last version. It did not have a significant impact on sales (may have actually made them worse).

The freemium approach doesn't make sense for any business that can't eventually reach millions of users.

[AlexS]

That may be, but there are a lot of people looking for media center replacements with Windows 10 flying around right now. If they don't know your product they won't buy your product. Most don't even look beyond their noses.
The only reason I found out about JRiver myself is that I did a google after having enough of the M$ media center.... realising development on it had totally ground to a halt.

[Awesome Donkey]

There's way too many free Windows Media Center replacements out there like Kodi already - I'd say the market is saturated.

[AlexS]

I think a lot of people don't even know that they need a good media player