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[mckennascole]

This is one of the two frustrating things in MC. The development seems to be focused on TV playing but simple audio file playing is still not well-polished in my experience. Playing order should be easier to sort. When you don't have a playlist file or a cuesheet that already organizes the order, you have to find and click "update order" from the player pull-down menu on the upper section after selecting, say, the "track" column on the playlist to be able to play in that colums order...very counter-intuitive..unusual for the whole concept... I guess

[Arindelle]

don't think I understand you. What do mean by simple audio file playing. Provided you have not set playback to shuffle, its a "View" based database, that defaults to track order by album.   If you set up your sort orders in your view, it will normally create a sequence order on how you set up your views, or it will default to Disc#/Track NUmber, grouped by Album if you haven't set up sort orders.

You actually have a lot of choices for playback compared to other players. Don't see why you mess with the Player Window at all though, as you can set up presets, I'd think you'd choose what you want to hear from a View ... not necessarily a playlist, although they are realy easy to set up on a fly (and cue files?? why even use them).

Maybe you can give an example or provide a screenshot. I'm sure I'm missing something. Are you not using Views to play your music? Are you clicking from Win explorer (not really the best use of it IMO)  or some external front-end?

PS - I agree with you about to much focus on TV though 

[CountryBumkin]

PS - I agree with you about to much focus on TV though 

Noooo - TV needs TLC too.

[Arindelle]

Noooo - TV needs TLC too.

he he I KNEW that would get a reaction! 

[blgentry]

Do you perhaps have one of the shuffle modes turned on?  Player > Shuffle > (check here. should be off)

Otherwise, like Ariendelle said, I'm not seeing any strange sorting behavior.  All of my albums get added to playing now in Disc # / Track # order, exactly as you'd expect.

Brian.

[mckennascole]

don't think I understand you. What do mean by simple audio file playing. Provided you have not set playback to shuffle, its a "View" based database, that defaults to track order by album.   If you set up your sort orders in your view, it will normally create a sequence order on how you set up your views, or it will default to Disc#/Track NUmber, grouped by Album if you haven't set up sort orders.

You actually have a lot of choices for playback compared to other players. Don't see why you mess with the Player Window at all though, as you can set up presets, I'd think you'd choose what you want to hear from a View ... not necessarily a playlist, although they are realy easy to set up on a fly (and cue files?? why even use them).

Maybe you can give an example or provide a screenshot. I'm sure I'm missing something. Are you not using Views to play your music? Are you clicking from Win explorer (not really the best use of it IMO)  or some external front-end?

PS - I agree with you about to much focus on TV though 

Say, you have an album folder with properly tagged tracks. What happens when you drag to your player?

[Arindelle]

Say, you have an album folder with properly tagged tracks. What happens when you drag to your player?

Just tried that, and if I drag the folder it queues in correct track order.  The tracks have already been imported into the library, is there a chance that yours haven't been imported? Or they are not set to import on play?

Side note though - this is a pretty strange way of using JRiver. It a database. Why go through windows, when you have JRiver as a front end? Maybe that's why you find it inconvenient?

[mckennascole]

Just tried that, and if I drag the folder it queues in correct track order.  The tracks have already been imported into the library, is there a chance that yours haven't been imported? Or they are not set to import on play?

Side note though - this is a pretty strange way of using JRiver. It a database. Why go through windows, when you have JRiver as a front end? Maybe that's why you find it inconvenient?

Actually, it is not. All the people I know who listen to classical music extensively utilizes this way. We purchase a lot of recordings, rip, try, compare, delete or add or process any other process...import is not a regular option for managing 20000+ recordings.
Anyway, the issue was not if it was acceptable way of listening or not. Common sense dictates when you drag and drop it should use the sort column that you select...so I guess I'm missing a setting...thanks for your comments

[DJLegba]

I just experimented with this and when I drag a list of files to the player JRiver uses the folder sort. Normally your computer will sort files by name, so dragging the folder to JRiver causes the files to populate the playlist sorted by name, which is probably not what you want. However, if you you change the Windows or Mac setting to sort the folder by file date, you'll get the tracks in disc order because that's how they were created during the rip. When the folder is sorted by date, dragging it into JRiver causes the playlist to be populated in disc order. At least that's what happens on my Windows computer.

I listen to a lot of classical music and JRiver has been a godsend. Before JRiver I spent a lot time looking for the physical disc I knew I had, because I couldn't remember how I'd filed it. JRiver solves a huge problem for classical music libraries. But if you really don't want to import your collection, reconfigure your ripping process to start the file name with the track number, as has been suggested. Then you don't have to change the operating system's default of "sort by name".

[blgentry]

Actually, it is not. All the people I know who listen to classical music extensively utilizes this way. We purchase a lot of recordings, rip, try, compare, delete or add or process any other process...import is not a regular option for managing 20000+ recordings.

Actually, I think you might be missing some perspective on this.  MC handles 200,000 to 500,000 files routinely in a lot of people's libraries.  It's 100% expected that you will import every track in your system and use MC to browse it.  When you do it this way, you have 100% access to the tags, which enable simple functions like playing all tracks in order.  "It just works".  If you decide you don't want to keep an album or some tracks, it's very easy to delete them right from MC, which optionally deletes them from your hard disk also.

Once you get used to the idea that METADATA drives your views of music and not FILENAMES, things get a lot easier and a lot more convenient.  Lots of people use MC to browse classical in particular, because the metadata is so rich and there are so many ways of organizing it.  This is where MC excels:  The ability to organize however you want, even if that organizational method (or methods) might not be supported by a similar file based system.

You might consider that you are inherently limiting yourself by focusing on the file system alone.  You're ignoring at least half of what makes MC such a great library manager.

Good luck.

Brian.

[AndrewFG]

I just experimented with this and when I drag a list of files to the player JRiver uses the folder sort. Normally your computer will sort files by name, so dragging the folder to JRiver causes the files to populate the playlist sorted by name, which is probably not what you want. However, if you you change the Windows or Mac setting to sort the folder by file date, you'll get the tracks in disc order because that's how they were created during the rip. When the folder is sorted by date, dragging it into JRiver causes the playlist to be populated in disc order. At least that's what happens on my Windows computer.

Are you dragging the tracks from the music CD directly into MC to play them? If so, then obviously none of your tracks will have actual metadata associated with them, not even the track name or track number. So I guess that they would indeed play in a non determinate sequence. Probably depending on how long MC takes to rip each track.

If that is indeed what you are doing, I would strongly support other poster's suggestions that you properly rip the CD and let MC apply tags on the tracks, and then play them. That way you get to hear the tracks as you want, PLUS you then have the tracks on your HDD ready for the next play, and PLUS you have all the meta data applied..

 

[Arindelle]

Actually, it is not. All the people I know who listen to classical music extensively utilizes this way. We purchase a lot of recordings, rip, try, compare, delete or add or process any other process...import is not a regular option for managing 20000+ recordings.
Anyway, the issue was not if it was acceptable way of listening or not. Common sense dictates when you drag and drop it should use the sort column that you select...so I guess I'm missing a setting...thanks for your comments

You are right, the issue is not what is acceptable listening. Although you and the people you know might handle a lot of music, you are not the only ones. Importing in JRiver is the fastest importing of any player out there. Even on a slow NAS. If you are doing this professionally in some way, you can create a temporary area to cull or "sandbox". If you have hundreds of CDs on the fly to zap through daily, I am pretty sure that listening and comparing them after import would turn out to be faster,  ... the importing would be finished before you had a chance to browse through one cd in explorer .. you might be surprised at the benefits you maybe are missing out on, by adapting it to your workflow. Just force manual imports.  So I believe it can indeed be a "regular" option, especially for large quantities of music. If you rip 200cds, the import of 199 of them would be done before your last cd was processed. Your choice of course.

[mckennascole]

I guess you all are missing the point but thanks again for your time. I went for another player which is a lot more user-friendly with similar capabilities except the TV for a power user who spent all the awake hours since the invention of digital audio..(awaiting your "perspectives" on "power user"). Cheers.