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[Sashaaa]

Hey! I've just installed media center 29 on my m1 max Mac and it's got me pretty excited due to it's extensive feature set and completeness that I don't see in any other music player for macos. Currently for reference, I have been running foobar2000 in a parallels vm for quite a while now. This is mainly because I hadn't been able to find a good alternative. I had a bunch of issues at first but most of them I've been able to figure out by searching through the forum.

However, I still have 4 main questions that I haven't been able to figure out.

1. While I know how to enable the volume leveling option, I am looking to see if I can add a little bit of extra gain (roughly 2db's) while it is enabled because it's a bit quiet for my tastes.
1a. Also, is there a way to get JRiver to just use the replaygain tags I already have? I know it's not as perfect as the EBU128 metering, but it'd be nice to have consistency with other players.

2. I had told media center to find lyrics for all of my tracks when I re-imported my library, and for some reason doing so screwed up a bunch of tags for some of the albums in my library not related to lyrics. For example, on my 16bit Flac's for The Low End Theory, it changed the date tag to 1991 on all the tracks with lyrics, and kept the previous tag that was there which was 1991-09-24. And it did something similar with my Bob Dylan SACD Rips, except sometimes also changing the Album Artist tag to "Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan" when it was previously just "Bob Dylan". I disabled "Update tags when file info changes" after this, but then it wouldn't write the Lyrics tag anymore, so I was wondering if it'd be possible to specifiy which tag fields that JRiver can touch and which ones it can't.

3. For some reason one of the albums in my library won't show it's cover even though it shows in all other media players I use. I have a hunch it might be the title of the album, which is ///Codename: Dustsucker as the slashes can cause issues. I tried doing Add From File, Quick Find in File, Save Cover Art To Location, and Rebuild Thumbnail all in the cover art section but to no avail.

4. Yes I know this has been asked before, but it's really the main thing that makes me still currently run Foobar2000 in a VM (and is what's stopping my other mac friends from using this software too). Is there any updates on the infamous choppy scrolling on mac's? It'd be really amazing to have this fixed because this is pretty much the only fully featured media player I've been able to find for Mac's, and this is the main thing that holds it back. (Maybe there's a skin that works better on mac's?)

Thanks for reading, hope these can get figured out!

[LilyAarseth]

For the first one you can enable "adaptive volume" and "peak level normalize" inside the DSP Studio. It works at the same time with "Volume Levelling"

#4 If I understand you correctly, you can use a third party tool like "mac mouse fix" to get the same smooth scrolling as official mac mouses and trackpads.

[blgentry]

1.  As Lily said, Adaptive Volume, Peak Level Normalize, will add back a little bit of gain.  If that's not enough, you can easily add however much gain you want using DSP Studio > Parametric EQ > Adjust The Volume.  Set it to 2, or 3, or however many dB you want.

1A.  I believe Volume Leveling will respect the existing Replay Gain tags.  However, if you run MC's Analyze Audio routine, it will write BOTH kinds of tags:  EBU128 *and* Replay Gain.  That way you can still use these files with your existing players, and with MC.

Brian.

[blgentry]

2.  MC should only write the tags that are in its database.  So, it should not make up tags or pull them from somewhere else unless you told it to look up tags.  I don't use the Lyrics feature, so maybe it has some association with looking up other tags as well?  I sure hope not.

As for writing tags, you can control exactly which tags are written to your files, but you should do some experiments to verify for each tag you are interested in.  Just to be sure.  Control this with:

Tools > Options > Library & Folders > manage library fields > (select tag) > Save in file tags > (check or uncheck)

Brian.

[blgentry]

3.  "Special" characters in file names are never fun.  Slashes and backlashes have several different meanings that might be confusing MC.  There are several choices here for how to get the album art associated.

A.  Use copy and paste.  You can copy an image.  Or you can copy a URL to an image.  Then use Cover Art > Paste From Clipboard
B.  Make a copy of your cover art file and name it "Folder.jpg".  Then do quick find and MC should find it.
C.  I REALLY like the idea of putting cover art INSIDE the file tags.  So there's no extra file to manage.  Instead the cover art is inside every song file associated with that album.  Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > Also store image in the file's tag > (checked)

Brian.

[blgentry]

4.  I am not aware of a "fix" for this behavior.  You get used to it pretty quickly.  I don't really see it much any more.  But I agree:  It's ugly and it seems like it would have been fixed before now.

This is a case of deciding what is important to you.  MC has a lot of pluses:  It's one of the best library/tag editors/managers that exists.  You can really get control of your collection with MC.  The views are outstanding and extremely configurable.  The expression language lets you do a lot of interesting things.  Backups and restores and built in and work just about perfectly.  The Rename, Move, and Copy Files tool is incredibly powerful and useful.  It can really help you organize your files on disk in the way you want them.

Some of these things might seal the deal for you.  Or not.  I can't imagine running a windows program in a VM for music management.  But that's just me.  Foobar might do everything you want.

We hope you stay with MC.  Welcome.

Brian.

[Grundgütigster]

3.
I don't know how Foobar works, but MC reads the file's tags to extract and show all the information in MC. So you can name the file whatever you like and can get rid of the special characters.

I store my music on a NAS that runs a Linux system and file names with "?" show up very cryptic in the Mac's Finder.

[Sashaaa]

1.  As Lily said, Adaptive Volume, Peak Level Normalize, will add back a little bit of gain.  If that's not enough, you can easily add however much gain you want using DSP Studio > Parametric EQ > Adjust The Volume.  Set it to 2, or 3, or however many dB you want.

1A.  I believe Volume Leveling will respect the existing Replay Gain tags.  However, if you run MC's Analyze Audio routine, it will write BOTH kinds of tags:  EBU128 *and* Replay Gain.  That way you can still use these files with your existing players, and with MC.

Brian.

Oh gotcha, that makes sense, I'll use that from now on with MC.

2.  MC should only write the tags that are in its database.  So, it should not make up tags or pull them from somewhere else unless you told it to look up tags.  I don't use the Lyrics feature, so maybe it has some association with looking up other tags as well?  I sure hope not.

As for writing tags, you can control exactly which tags are written to your files, but you should do some experiments to verify for each tag you are interested in.  Just to be sure.  Control this with:

Tools > Options > Library & Folders > manage library fields > (select tag) > Save in file tags > (check or uncheck)

Brian.

I think it must've been the lyrics feature that caused the tag's to get messed up. I only selected options that were available by default when first opening the app. Must be a bug. Regardless, from now on I'll just make sure those boxes are unchecked in my settings and hopefully that should fix things!

3.  "Special" characters in file names are never fun.  Slashes and backlashes have several different meanings that might be confusing MC.  There are several choices here for how to get the album art associated.

A.  Use copy and paste.  You can copy an image.  Or you can copy a URL to an image.  Then use Cover Art > Paste From Clipboard
B.  Make a copy of your cover art file and name it "Folder.jpg".  Then do quick find and MC should find it.
C.  I REALLY like the idea of putting cover art INSIDE the file tags.  So there's no extra file to manage.  Instead the cover art is inside every song file associated with that album.  Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > Also store image in the file's tag > (checked)

Brian.

Yep! They do always tend to cause issues. My trial for Media Center has ran out, but I will buy a license and try the things written here.

4.  I am not aware of a "fix" for this behavior.  You get used to it pretty quickly.  I don't really see it much any more.  But I agree:  It's ugly and it seems like it would have been fixed before now.

This is a case of deciding what is important to you.  MC has a lot of pluses:  It's one of the best library/tag editors/managers that exists.  You can really get control of your collection with MC.  The views are outstanding and extremely configurable.  The expression language lets you do a lot of interesting things.  Backups and restores and built in and work just about perfectly.  The Rename, Move, and Copy Files tool is incredibly powerful and useful.  It can really help you organize your files on disk in the way you want them.

Some of these things might seal the deal for you.  Or not.  I can't imagine running a windows program in a VM for music management.  But that's just me.  Foobar might do everything you want.

We hope you stay with MC.  Welcome.

Brian.

Yeah I mean, I think there are a lot of upsides to the software, and I think I'll definitely leave it on my machine (especially if I end up ever using a linux box again). I've been super busy so haven't had time to mess with it again (which is also why this response is super late), but I'm on a big break now so I should have more time to try stuff. Honestly, the sluggish animation is what takes me away from making this my main player. It makes navigating my library a bit of a chore when it's already quite large. Of course some might be able to deal with this better than I am, but it is what it is. It is a really great, complete, piece of software and I think I'll keep it around for just that reason. I just really, hope it gets fixed some day.

Thanks for the responses by the way despite my (very) late response!

[blgentry]

Glad to hear you are going to use MC going forward.

Honestly, the sluggish animation is what takes me away from making this my main player. It makes navigating my library a bit of a chore when it's already quite large.

Hmm.  I guess everyone is different.  For me it scrolls album covers really fast; just in a slightly ugly way.  If you really want to rapidly find something, searching is extremely fast.  It's one of the features that makes MC so nice for me.  The main search box searches on album, artist, song title, and several other things, all simultaneously and all very quickly.

You might also experiment with some PANES views.  These can allow you to drill down through your collection pretty rapidly as well.  Did you know Panes views can be heavily customized?  You can change around the columns in the panes up top, add, remove, etc.  You can even do really customized stuff with Panes if you need to go further.

Please come back and ask questions if you need some info or help.  Welcome to JRiver Media Center. 

Brian.

[bob]

I love the panes views, especially for my classical collection.

[Sashaaa]

Glad to hear you are going to use MC going forward.

Hmm.  I guess everyone is different.  For me it scrolls album covers really fast; just in a slightly ugly way.  If you really want to rapidly find something, searching is extremely fast.  It's one of the features that makes MC so nice for me.  The main search box searches on album, artist, song title, and several other things, all simultaneously and all very quickly.

You might also experiment with some PANES views.  These can allow you to drill down through your collection pretty rapidly as well.  Did you know Panes views can be heavily customized?  You can change around the columns in the panes up top, add, remove, etc.  You can even do really customized stuff with Panes if you need to go further.

Please come back and ask questions if you need some info or help.  Welcome to JRiver Media Center. 

Brian.

Hmm, the view seems to be pretty slow for me. I actually use a 4k tv at 100% scaling, and in full screen it's extra slow. It just depends on how big I have the window. The main search box though is in fact awesome and I've already been using it quite a bit.

Also yeah, the panes actually seem like something that's perfect for me, coming from someone who loves the super text based foobar type look. I'm gonna start to try to customize them as that really does seem up my alley!

There actually is an issue that I have been having since I got my license again that's pretty odd, for some reason when playing back DSD files there seems to be extra treble that isn't originally there. I am playing them converted to 88khz pcm, so maybe it has something to do with that. It almost sounds like playing back a pre-emphasized CD without de-emphasizing it. To make sure it wasn't just my ears, I converted the files to 24bit 88khz flac's and played them back via MC and it definitely confirmed what I was hearing. Any idea's on what could be causing this?

Thanks so much for the warm welcome!

[Sashaaa]

3.  "Special" characters in file names are never fun.  Slashes and backlashes have several different meanings that might be confusing MC.  There are several choices here for how to get the album art associated.

A.  Use copy and paste.  You can copy an image.  Or you can copy a URL to an image.  Then use Cover Art > Paste From Clipboard
B.  Make a copy of your cover art file and name it "Folder.jpg".  Then do quick find and MC should find it.
C.  I REALLY like the idea of putting cover art INSIDE the file tags.  So there's no extra file to manage.  Instead the cover art is inside every song file associated with that album.  Tools > Options > File Location > Cover Art > Also store image in the file's tag > (checked)

Brian.

I already store the cover art in all my tags for convenience, and I tried the other solutions just now, unfortunately to no avail.

[blgentry]

Hmm, the view seems to be pretty slow for me. I actually use a 4k tv at 100% scaling, and in full screen it's extra slow.

I'm guessing you are using the scroll wheel on your mouse?  That tends to be extremely pokey (slow) with the default settings.  You can adjust the "scroll speed" in the System Preferences > Mouse to make that faster.  But it's a balancing act between that and how the scroll speed affects other applications.

I have a Logitech M720, which has a scroll wheel that can "free spin".  The harder you flick it, the faster it rolls.  With that mouse wheel, scrolling through MC's list of album covers is extremely fast.  But if I make the scroll wheel ratchet (not free spin), then it gets SO SLOW to scroll covers.

You might try using the scroll bar instead.  That tends to work better for me.  Or use the PageUp and PageDown keyboard keys (assuming your keyboard has them).  Those work pretty fast also, especially when you hold them down.

Also yeah, the panes actually seem like something that's perfect for me, coming from someone who loves the super text based foobar type look. I'm gonna start to try to customize them as that really does seem up my alley!

I've attached a screen shot of one of my Panes views so you can get an idea of the level of customization you can do with Panes.  They really are neat.

There actually is an issue that I have been having since I got my license again that's pretty odd, for some reason when playing back DSD files there seems to be extra treble that isn't originally there.

I don't have a clue.  Perhaps someone else has something to say on this.

Good luck.
Brian.

[blgentry]

I already store the cover art in all my tags for convenience, and I tried the other solutions just now, unfortunately to no avail.

This thread is getting a little crowded.  Maybe you can open a new forum topic detailing your issue with Cover Art?  I'm guessing it's something simple since I've never had an issue with cover art and MC.

Brian.

[Sashaaa]

This thread is getting a little crowded.  Maybe you can open a new forum topic detailing your issue with Cover Art?  I'm guessing it's something simple since I've never had an issue with cover art and MC.

Brian.

Yeah I figured, I'll likely do the same with the DSD file issue I'm having as well. Thanks for the other responses too! I'm starting to customize the panes view. I already like how I'm able to sort through my collection by the number of channels, as I have a lot of surround sound music and it's nice to be able to just look at what's in surround vs stereo.