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[wellywu]

I purchased JRiver Media Center 30 64-bit Master License and I installed and licensed it on Zorin OS 16.1 Pro 64-bit based on the older Ubuntu 20.04.3 64-bit LTS GNU/Linux distribution. I have downloaded several newer music albums in the FLAC format and then I transcoded them into Monkey's Audio at the insane compression level and I finally transcoded them to the Opus lossy audio codec at 128.0 kbps bit rate. I imported the Opus music albums that I acquired today into Media Center 30 and it showed up properly and the Opus audio tracks were tagged properly. With previous JRiver Media Center versions such as 29 and earlier, the Opus music albums and tracks could be imported, but they showed up in a long list under various artists and the tags were not properly sorted through. I had to resort to using Musicbrainz Picard to cluster artists and music albums and tag and save those tags beforehand and then I could import them into JRiver Media Center 29 64-bit Master License or earlier versions with proper tagging support.

I thought to share this observation for some people that have repeatedly asked the JRiver developers to support the Opus lossy audio codec including tagging support in previous versions and I want to share with other JRiver customers that it seems that this has been fixed with JRiver Media Center 30 64-bit Master License and this too includes GNU/Linux support as well.

I usually create smart playlists and upload my Monkey's Audio insane audio tracks to JRiver Cloud Play and then I delete all copies of lossless music and keep my Opus lossy audio codec music albums and tracks. I shall continue paying for each major JRiver Media Center version when each one is available for pre-order at a special discounted upgrade price in the foreseeable future. Thank you to the JRiver team for updating Media Center 30 so that Opus lossy audio tracks are imported properly including tagging support. For what it is worth, I use the free and open source Fre-AC or Free Audio Converter to transcode from FLAC to Monkey's Audio and finally to Opus. It seems that I do not need Musicbrainz Picard, but I shall keep it.

[eve]

 I get what you're doing though, as always you should always retain originals.

Opus at low bitrates is fantastic for dialogue heavy stuff. I dunno how I feel about it for music but hey, I'm glad it works. IIRC it was relatively competitive with AAC at higher bitrates (and kind of crushes most competitors at like sub 128kbps).

Always interesting to see how people use JRiver and interact with their music.

[wellywu]

Eve:

I used to keep originals in FLAC and Monkey's Audio for a long period of time and store them on a portable, rugged, hard disk drive with a fairly high capacity. I just got tired of storing the originals as lossless and compressed music. Opus is good enough for my ears. The other thing is that I travel to different locations and it is quite frequent that I am in louder environments so a quiet listening environment becomes difficult to achieve in different places that I visit. I could be at a local coffee shop like Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks or at the library and there are plenty of people talking and background music and my apartment building is next to a major road so there is always traffic not to mention emergency vehicles blare their horns and sirens quite often. I would have to take a walk through a local park to get to a quieter environment and I just do not do that often.

Opus is fine at 128.0 kbps bit rate because the higher bit rates do not sound much better in terms of transparency and I am interested in saving as much available disk space as possible. The same storage products that I have can store roughly nine times more Opus audio tracks. This may not sound Kosher, but I have a two year subscription to Turbobit.net which is a file sharing website. I can visit HD24Bit or Downmagaz to download individual music albums and then use Free Audio Converter and if necessary Musicbrainz Picard to transcode to Monkey's Audio at the insane compression level and upload to JRiver Cloudplay and transcode a final time to Opus and keep the Opus music. Another reason why I chose Opus is because it is designed for high efficiency streaming over different kinds of networks. I remember using older JRiver Media Center 64-bit Master License versions and trying to stream a FLAC music album at 24 bits 48.0 kHz or higher sampling frequencies resulted in delays and pauses and stuttering. I can connect to my JRiver media server and stream almost any Opus audio track smoothly and this goes for my smartphone in which I only get 4.50 GB of 4G LTE data monthly because it is a U.S. government smartphone and plan. I use Resilio-Sync Home Pro to synchronize my confidential data and private media library and choosing Opus to store it on my phone means I can use USB Audio Pro app to play without needing a network connection to enjoy my premium content titles and everything fits on 128.0 GB of internal storage space. I can plug in my 3.5 mm earphones into my smartphone or use my Audioquest Dragonfly Cobalt and a USB Type-C to female Type-A cable and play this method too.

Opus just works for me. I get that level of transparency that I care about without consuming tons of more data and space on my devices and it is better for streaming over the network. Opus is gaining popularity as more hardware devices and software music players and media centers now support Opus. Once I figured out that JRiver Media Center 30 64-bit Master License for GNU/Linux supports tagging for Opus audio tracks, that's good to go for me.