Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[krmasson]

Hello everybody,

I am experiencing a strange issue with JRiver 20.0.30 (Win32).  I recently bought 3 CD tracks, from the same album, one as FLAC, and the 2 others (unadvertently) as WMA losless, which my Naim Unti is unable to read, because it does not support this format (the Flac reads well).
I then reloaded the files as FLAC, and reimported them into JRiver.

But it appears that the Naim player is unable to read them from JRiver (JRiver working as UPnP server). I suspected some "memory cache" effect, since the tracks had already been imported, and tried about everything: re-tagging the tracks, renaming the folder, renaming the files before reimporting, nothing helped, still "Can't play, skipping to next track".

I have to precise that the same files, put on a USB key and directly plugged on the Naim, are perfectly well played.

When I set the JRiver audio options to "convert format only if necessary"/PCM 16 bits, the stuff works, more or less: I first get a "unsupported format" message, and a few seconds after that, the file plays well, recognized as 16 bit WMA by the player (since it has been converted).

When I push the files from JRiver to the Naim (JRiver begin the controller), the files play, more or less, after a slight delay.

16 bit/44khz Flac files, about 480kbits/s. I have about 100 other flac files from the same provider (Qobuz), which play w/o problems. And, again, the files are perfectly read when put on a USB key that I plug in the Uniti.

Any thoughts about that ?

CM

[krmasson]

[Was: Unable to play file first imported as WMA, and reimported as FLAC]
[MC 20.0.30 Windows 7]

Hello again,
the issue seems to be a more general one as previously stated.

I have about 15000 CD tracks, which were previously encoded as WMA lossless, and that I recently converted to FLAC with MediaCenter (default compression, 6 if I remember well).

Since then, I bought about 200 new tracks, all in FLAC format, either bought on Internet, either ripped from new CDs.

I have absolutely no problem with the 15000 converted flac files, either when loaded from JRiver (acting as UPnP server), either pushed by MC (acting as controller) to my Naim Uniti (keeping original format, no transformation).

But I experience some problems w/ my recent tracks:
3 of them (probably no more) play well when pushed from MC to the Naim, but the Naim is absolutely unable to read them from the server.
About a dozen (at least) others (all from a unique album) are well read from MS as server, but MC has hard times sending them to the Naim: sometimes the tarck does not start, sometimes it does. Sometimes it stops playing after one minute ("something went wrong, double check your network configuration..").

Of course, all files, when copied on a USB key plugged in the Naim, play perfectly.

As a result, it seems to me that MC 20 has a problem to play some flac files through a network (when MC plays the files through the optical audio output, all goes well).

It is not (IMHA):
- a computer problem: the PC is dedicated to the music, 1% proc busy, 1 Gb memory still available
- a network problem : 1% of bandwith busy, all devices connected by cable
- an issue with file bandwith: files with lower (300kbps) or much higher (2000kbps) files play well.

It seems that the issue does not appear with ripped CD, but my sample is maybe to small to be sure.

I have been unable to find what make these particular files special.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

CM

[CountryBumkin]

Perhaps check the file attributes with MediaInfo https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo and see if there is something different between the files that play and those that don't (bitrate, etc.)

[JimH]

[Was: Unable to play file first imported as WMA, and reimported as FLAC]
[MC 20.0.30 Windows 7]

If you're actually using 20.0.30, please update.  20.0.132 is current.

[krmasson]

Perhaps check the file attributes with MediaInfo https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo and see if there is something different between the files that play and those that don't (bitrate, etc.)

As written above, I have already checked: the problematic files range from 480 to 700 kbps, but some files about 300kbps or 2000 kbps play well.

Thx

[CountryBumkin]

Okay. Sorry - if a post is longer than three paragraphs my brain goes to sleep.
I'm sure someone with more knowledge on the Audio side of MC will come along shortly.
Have a nice day.

[krmasson]

No problem.
I nevertheless downloaded MediaInfo and checked my files: nothing obvious.

[JimH]

Maybe the files that won't play are multi-channel.

[krmasson]

No, they are mono-channel, and embed only one stream.

[krmasson]

Getting crazyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy with this stuff.

I decided to solve it the hard way and converted the dozen files to (uncompressed) WAV.
2 tracks of 1st album works now well. Will never know what happened. Life is like that.

But the other 8 files of the other album still do not play: they start, and stop after a few seconds.

I noticed that the Folder.jpg (also embedded in the tracks) has an unusual size : about 2,5Mb and 1500x1500 px. Same is true for the first album.

I found another 3rd album with a big picture (1500px), and it also does not play. The limit seems to be around 1500px (1400px being fine), and to not depend on the physical size of the image file.

I have reduced the image size by two, and retagged my files, but it still does not work: maybe the software has a cache of previously used files, and things will go better if I play many other tracks in the meantime?

Does the hypothesis about image size seem plausible, or am I saying sth. stupid?

Regards
CM


 

[blgentry]

Let's try to eliminate DLNA/Networking from the problem.

Do your problem files (the original FLAC versions) play on the JRiver machine to a local sound device?  (Sound card or directly attached DAC)

Brian.

[krmasson]

Do your problem files (the original FLAC versions) play on the JRiver machine to a local sound device?  (Sound card or directly attached DAC)

Yes, it works perfectly, and that is the way I have used JRiver during 3 years. Never had a problem. It is only recently (about 6 months) that I started to push files to the DLNA player, because I find very convenient to have the name/number of the track displayed by the player.

I forgot to mention, the files are tagged in Russian (the physical file name is still in Latin), but I have a few other files tagged in Russian, which play well, and the files I discovered yesterday are tagged in Latin alphabet.

[JimH]

Try making a copy of one of the problem files, then remove the tags and the cover art and see if it plays.

This seems like a problem with the device you're playing to.

[krmasson]

Will try at home tonight (GMT+2), so do not expect an answer before 15 hours.
How to I remove the cover art?

What puzzles me is that the files are well played when read from a USB key plugged on the player: so, for me, their format is correct.

Thanks for your help.

[krmasson]

Work in progress...

I got the stuff to work by removing all tags, apart from album name and track numbers.

It seems that removing only the cover art is not enough (not completely sure to have well removed it the first time, MC seems to keep some "memory" of previous tags, and I had to remove the folder - autoimport -repopulate the folder -autoimport to get clean views).

I will now try to remove the tags one at once.

It seems that the issue arises only when I select many files at once. If I select only one, it seems to usually work.

This is not related to the flac "disable set/next support".

Will continue the experiments in 10 days, after having returned from holidays.

Regards
CM