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[DrKNo]

Hello everyone,

I'm a dj using another program (serato DJ) for live musik, and JRiver for music organization and home use. One problem that I have is that jriver overwrites BPM values during audio analysis. This is actually a very bad scenario for DJs, because DJ software requires very accurate, often manually set values for a lot of functionality. I f I assume a track to be correctly set, but it isn't actually, this causes all sorts of erratic behaviour like misplaced loops, badly timed effects etc.
Also, JRiver BPM analysis isn't that accurate, at least not in comparison to DJ software (which would be out of scope for JRiver anyway)

Could I please get a switch to shut of bpm analysis completely, or at least to never overwrite bpm?

I actually recommend JRiver to all my colleagues, because it saves me hours each months in regard to managing tracks. When i warn them to not analyze their audio though because it overwrites there old values, the usual reaction is just "meh, not worth the risk". This bugs me especially because jriver is so unintrusive in every other aspect. Thanks for listening!

[6233638]

+1
 
Improvements to the BPM analysis would also be welcome.
Perhaps you could suggest some of the better software to compare results?

[DrKNo]

Accurate BPM Detection is not a solved problem as far as I know, there will always be errors. A complete integration would also include normalization options for the user (e.g. a selectable band of detected bpm e.g. (70-139) outside of which values are doubled or halved and some more. I don't know how much of a benefit that would be for the average user. If the dev team is really interested in a comparison, Serato DJ produces pretty accurate results even for complicated patterns, and you can download the offline player for free. You can't do much with it without the hardware, but it will let you analyze bpm.

Edit: In case I'm being unclear (english is not my first language): A better detection will not solve the problem of overwriting bpm values, since professional DJs will fine tune them by hand anyway. If the dev team would want to implement a better engine though, Reference programs could include: MixedInKey, Serato DJ, Traktor, and possibly Ableton Live Suite

[Matt]

Could I please get a switch to shut of bpm analysis completely, or at least to never overwrite bpm?

Next build:
Changed: BPM analysis of Analyze Audio won't overwrite an existing BPM value.

[DrKNo]

Thank you Matt!
Also, I just saw a DJ posted a nearly identical post on the MC19 board a few days ago. sorry I duplicated.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=91412.0

[jaynyc]

2 follow on questions:

1.  as of 1/24/15, will JRiver v20 *not* overwrite the BPM field if value already exists?
2.  is there a way to disable BPM detection when JRiver does audio analysis?

[6233638]

Just did a test and it still seems to overwrite the BPM tag in 20.0.62
It doesn't update the value with Media Center's analysis - even if you manually run analysis a second time - but does truncate any pre-existing BPM tags to an integer value.
EDIT: Looking over the ID3 tag spec, BPM should be an integer value. Perhaps rounding would be better than truncating?
 
Aphex Twin's Syro is a recent(ish) example of this, since exact BPM values are included.
It's also interesting to see how MC's analysis compares to the supplied values. Some of the tracks are pretty close, others are wildly off.