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[JoanRivers]

I'm a newie to this stuff and wouldn't mind knowing the following:

1 - How straightforward is ripping CDs with the product? In general, is it easy to discover how to do stuff with the product? E.g. via You Tube or whatnot.

Ripping is not implemented yet. I'm sure this is on the todo list as it is part of the program's core features.

2 - Is it possible to create multiple playlists without having duplicate data on your hard drive? E.g. rip a CD by an artist and maybe create a playlist of songs you like by that artist as well as a playlist including songs from that playlist but including songs from other artists or whatnot?

Yes. You can create default playlists, add songs to them as much as you like. This just creates links to existing songs and won't duplicate tracks on your harddisk or anything. Then there are smartlists, which are dynamic playlists based on a set of rules that you create. For instance, you can create a smartlist on genre containing the word "blues", and it will include anything from rock/blues to blues-rock etc. Adding new files to MC that fit the rule will be automatically added.
Licenses are separate.

3 - Also important to me, am wondering if access to your music is limited to the operating system you installed. E.g. if you use both Windows and Linux, do you have to buy the product for each OS? If not, can you access one OS' database from the other? Or do you need to rip CDs for each OS you have?

You can backup your library (the database and program settings) and import them in the other. It's a little bit tricky as Linux accesses files differently, windows uses drive letter and backslashes, while Linux doesn't use drives but mount points and uses forward slashes. These references in the library are easily fixed however using the programs' search and replace feature.

You also won't have to rerip, but again this can be a little tricky. If your music files are on the Windows partition, you may have to do some extra work from Linux to access the Windows partition. This will depend on the choice of your distribution (some might include the packages required and even mount the windows partitions automatically, while in others you have to install the packages yourself and mount the partitions).

4 - What about free/Linux alternatives? Like I said, I'm a newie to this stuff and wouldn't really want a system which isn't intuitive and bogs you down in reading manuals. What are good alternatives which match that if JRiver doesn't? XBMC? Audacity? I suppose the other main paid alternative contender is Foobar2000, right? Pros/cons for that and JRiver?

Foobar is Windows only and is free. Audacity is more for recording and editing, not playback. XBMC is meant for home theater systems and not an alternative for JRiver on Linux, it may be considered an alternative for Theater View, a feature from JRiver MC on Windows. Theater View is not yet available for MC on Linux.

As far as I'm concerned there are no real alternatives on Linux. Maybe Amarok. For playback there is Clementine that I remember, some others that I don't remember because they are not really worth remembering. Of course there's VLC which can be nice for quick playback of videofiles.

MC is much more than any of these. The management features (tagging, moving, renaming, converting) are second to none, playback quality is world class, DSP Studio is awesome.

4. try banshee if you just want a media player without the bells and whistles. it looks like itunes and functions like itunes. but it's not as good as jriver's mediacenter in my opinion.

Thank you.

[InflatableMouse]

I'm a newie to this stuff and wouldn't mind knowing the following:

1 - How straightforward is ripping CDs with the product? In general, is it easy to discover how to do stuff with the product? E.g. via You Tube or whatnot.

Ripping is not implemented yet. I'm sure this is on the todo list as it is part of the program's core features.

2 - Is it possible to create multiple playlists without having duplicate data on your hard drive? E.g. rip a CD by an artist and maybe create a playlist of songs you like by that artist as well as a playlist including songs from that playlist but including songs from other artists or whatnot?

Yes. You can create default playlists, add songs to them as much as you like. This just creates links to existing songs and won't duplicate tracks on your harddisk or anything. Then there are smartlists, which are dynamic playlists based on a set of rules that you create. For instance, you can create a smartlist on genre containing the word "blues", and it will include anything from rock/blues to blues-rock etc. Adding new files to MC that fit the rule will be automatically added.

3 - Also important to me, am wondering if access to your music is limited to the operating system you installed. E.g. if you use both Windows and Linux, do you have to buy the product for each OS? If not, can you access one OS' database from the other? Or do you need to rip CDs for each OS you have?

Licenses are separate.

You can backup your library (the database and program settings) and import them in the other. It's a little bit tricky as Linux accesses files differently, windows uses drive letter and backslashes, while Linux doesn't use drives but mount points and uses forward slashes. These references in the library are easily fixed however using the programs' search and replace feature.

You also won't have to rerip, but again this can be a little tricky. If your music files are on the Windows partition, you may have to do some extra work from Linux to access the Windows partition. This will depend on the choice of your distribution (some might include the packages required and even mount the windows partitions automatically, while in others you have to install the packages yourself and mount the partitions).

4 - What about free/Linux alternatives? Like I said, I'm a newie to this stuff and wouldn't really want a system which isn't intuitive and bogs you down in reading manuals. What are good alternatives which match that if JRiver doesn't? XBMC? Audacity? I suppose the other main paid alternative contender is Foobar2000, right? Pros/cons for that and JRiver?

Thank you.

Foobar is Windows only and is free. Audacity is more for recording and editing, not playback. XBMC is meant for home theater systems and not an alternative for JRiver on Linux, it may be considered an alternative for Theater View, a feature from JRiver MC on Windows. Theater View is not yet available for MC on Linux.

As far as I'm concerned there are no real alternatives on Linux. Maybe Amarok. For playback there is Clementine that I remember, some others that I don't remember because they are not really worth remembering. Of course there's VLC which can be nice for quick playback of videofiles.

MC is much more than any of these. The management features (tagging, moving, renaming, converting) are second to none, playback quality is world class, DSP Studio is awesome.

Last but not least. MC for Linux is under heavy development, it is beta. Its not as stable as the Windows version in my experience. I get an occasional crash now and then and it has a few quirks here and there that the developers are still ironing out. I don't mind and I think its good for daily use.

[aoqw76]

I use JRiver windows and JRiver linux in parallel.
I rip on windows, and the files are saved to a mapped drive that is on my linux computer (samba shares)
The linux version is running permanently, and will automatically see and import any new tracks that appear.
When I rip on windows, I use a temp library setup just for that purpose. After ripping, I switch to sharing the main library on the linux version. Therefore all the pcs in the house (there are 3 running windows) all see exactly the same music, and are always in sync. (and our ipads also share the linux library).
This setup works perfectly for me. My linux box also runs crashplan so my music library is always backed up to another local drive + crashplan cloud.
I don't use all the features of the linux version. But for my purposes, it is stable. I have cron jobs that autorestart if it does crash (which has hardly ever been required but it's there as a backup when I'm not at home to do this myself) and autoupdate when a new version is uploaded by the developers.
I have used other media players on linux: amarok and banshee. Banshee was probably my favourite of the 2, but in all honesty mediacenter surpasses it. The main thing for me is the media server built in, which means I have one library which everything shares. If I had just one computer, then it would probably be running windows with jriver. But for multiple computers, then the linux / windows mix for me works brilliantly.
So my answers are:
1. ripping. easy. insert cd and click rip, that's about it, once you've set up the drive where you want the files to do etc. I use windows jriver for ripping.
2. see answer above from inflatablemouse
3. separate os's = separate purchases. what i wrote at the top of my reply i think answers your query about sharing music files. you can run separate libraries per OS if you want, but it makes more sense to me to have one principal library and the other one shares that.
4. try banshee if you just want a media player without the bells and whistles. it looks like itunes and functions like itunes. but it's not as good as jriver's mediacenter in my opinion.

[JoanRivers]

Sorry about taking so long to reply.

Some follow up questions:

a) Going on aoqw76's comments, it sounds like you'd use MC in Windows mode to rip CDs and perhaps tag them etc, and your Linux side will still 'see' everything okay?

the database that MC creates is unique to MC, but the information is just collected from meta data in the files.
So any media player will work, you can switch to itunes or media monkey or whatever - they will just create their own database anyway.
You can if you wish purchase dbpoweramp for CD ripping, but in my opinion there is little benefit of that over MC's own ripping. It works perfectly.

b) Any time frame for when CD ripping in Linux will be possible? I'm not sure which OS I'd like to house my main ripping/storage activities...but I was hoping Linux could handle it, as I'm not a huge fan of MS' business practices.

c) Since MC is proprietary software, I'm just wondering how that affects any future decisions to use other music organiser software. I.e. would you be required to re-rip everything again and re-do the tagging? E.g. if for some reason I wanted to use Apple's music organiser, iTunes, could that 'see' my PC rips and tags and still play them at the highest possible quality you can get on PC? Or if I used a Linux media player, could that access the MC catalogue on PC?

d) A couple of questions on ripping and organising album tracks etc...

i) Say you've ripped an album and have it on your storage device...once it's there, can you remove pops and clicks in individual tracks at a later point? I.e. I've got quite a large collection of CDs and don't want to re-listen to them again for that specific purpose...but once I listen to them again, it would be good if I could remove such artefacts.

Pops and clicks are a very rare problem unless the CD is damaged.  They could be edited after ripping.

ii) I'd like to be able to re-order album tracks to reflect the original release. E.g. The Beatles often had their albums released in the US with a different track order or different track listing. I'd like to be able to have the original track listing, with perhaps "bonus" tracks or whatever tacked onto the end. Possible?

Yes you can reorder the tracks to your preferred configuration, just swap track 1 with track 2 or whatever order you prefer.

Haven't really explored other options too much, but I have heard good things about VLC (not sure how much of an audio option that is) as well as UMPlayer, which a Linux magazine recommended.

...oh, I was lookig at an article in a hi-fi magazine on this topic. The writer said that they used Audacious to play audio and VLC to play AV files and that they used Audacity when necessary...haven't really looked into Audacious and Audacity...but since this came from a hi-fi magazine, it would carry some weight, right?

It also mentioned dbpoweramp. If that's a paid product, any reason to pay for that over just using your PC to rip CDs?

Lastly, on recording resolution...there'd be no reason to rip it a resolution beyond the source CD, right? Think I saw two different figures as to what that actually is...would MC tell you so you can match it when you rip the CD?

Thanks.

P.S. tried to edit "MC" to read "MC" without much luck, in either "Modify" mode (where I hit "save") or with the pencil/pad diagram option either. How do to you edit? Or does it take time to go through? Well, that "P.S." went through all right! But not the...hang on, the site dropped the "JR" bit from "P.S." bit re edits! What's going on?

[aoqw76]

Hi, the database that MC creates is unique to MC, but the information is just collected from meta data in the files.
So any media player will work, you can switch to itunes or media monkey or whatever - they will just create their own database anyway.
You can if you wish purchase dbpoweramp for CD ripping, but in my opinion there is little benefit of that over MC's own ripping. It works perfectly.
There is no point in ripping a CD at resolution higher than CD - not even sure how you would do that. The files will normally be 16/44 WAV files but you can convert at the same time as ripping to FLAC or AIFF or another lossless format. NB if you convert to FLAC then itunes cannot play those files as it does not support that format.
Ref pops and clicks - on CD? there shouldnt be any. If you have a scratched CD then the ripping software will attempt to recover the data, but if it cant then you will get bad data. I have a rip of my OK Computer that is bad on the last couple of tracks but that's a damaged CD and there's nothing you can do to fix it. (I need to buy a new CD).
My windows MC saves to a certain folder that the Linux MC is watching for auto import. It's merely a coincidence that I'm using MC twice, that's irrelevant. You just need good ripping software that supports tagging, which is quite often automatic (the software will match the CD to an online database and hence it will know the artist, album title, song title etc. It might prompt you to choose if the CD happens to match more than 1 album which have by coincidence the same number of tracks of exactly the same length each. But that's the case for all ripping software.)
Yes you can reorder the tracks to your preferred configuration, just swap track 1 with track 2 or whatever order you prefer.

Bottom line is, if you want high quality "audiophile" music playback from a computer then JRiver media center is certainly one of the best software options out there. It is flexible enough to satisfy your needs regarding playback. It is fast, has remote control via Gizmo (android) or JRemote (ipad/iphone), has versions for windows/mac/linux, will play back any format ..... there are very few rivals.

And the support from the software house is excellent.

[mwillems]

If you want an interim ripping solution on Linux, I use rubyripper when I have to rip on a linux box.  It does secure ripping and pings FreeDB for track info etc.  It uses the CD paranoia engine for it's secure rip portion, has a good feature set, and is FOSS.

[bob]

If you want an interim ripping solution on Linux, I use rubyripper when I have to rip on a linux box.  It does secure ripping and pings FreeDB for track info etc.  It uses the CD paranoia engine for it's secure rip portion, has a good feature set, and is FOSS.

Does it rip to flac and do the tagging properly? Is the tagging configurable?
I used grip in the past and configured it to put my material to a folder based sorting structure (always a pain with those classical discs).
grip is really geared to mp3 though...

[mwillems]

Does it rip to flac and do the tagging properly? Is the tagging configurable?
I used grip in the past and configured it to put my material to a folder based sorting structure (always a pain with those classical discs).
grip is really geared to mp3 though...

It rips to FLAC, and it appears to tag correctly (provided you monitor and correct the Freedb results).  When I import the files into JRiver all the tags that rubyripper assigned import correctly. I haven't attempted to do much tag customization as I use the command line version of rubyripper, and do most of my "intense" tagging in JRiver once I have FLAC files imported, but it's relatively easy to edit common tags.

The only "downsides" to rubyripper are that it's slower than JRiver's secure rip (by about half), and I think that (as of October 2014) it's officially unmaintained, but I haven't checked on that, someone might have picked it up in time to get it into jessie.  There are a number of alternative CD paranoia implementations though, I just liked rubyripper's CLI interface the best.

[JoanRivers]

There is no point in ripping a CD at resolution higher than CD - not even sure how you would do that. The files will normally be 16/44 WAV files but you can convert at the same time as ripping to FLAC or AIFF or another lossless format. NB if you convert to FLAC then itunes cannot play those files as it does not support that format.

I have been reading of late how some companies are selling supposedly 'high resolution' music...but it's really CD quality somehow transferred to a higher resolution setting...perhaps 'fooling' your DAC into displaying a higher resolution than the actual source materia.

But what I would have had in mind with my previous post was reading to sets of resolution figures for CD...from memory, something like 44 and 48 bits (or whatever the actual numbers are). So, I suppose what I'm getting at is whether the MC rips at the correct bit rate when it's not the 'usual' resolution, if that makes sense.

Ref pops and clicks - on CD? there shouldnt be any. If you have a scratched CD then the ripping software will attempt to recover the data, but if it cant then you will get bad data. I have a rip of my OK Computer that is bad on the last couple of tracks but that's a damaged CD and there's nothing you can do to fix it. (I need to buy a new CD).

I was reading in an article how the author made a point of removing pops and clicks from a CD before ripping it, I think. From my point of view, the pops and clicks could be either from the master recording, or from artefacts on the CD (like dust, etc.).

So, my question is whether it's NECESSARY to remove such pops and clicks BEFORE you rip it. I.e. can you rip the music first and then remove pops and clicks at a later point...once you are in a position to listen to the music again at your leisure? I want to do a lot of ripping, not relisten to CDs one a time for audio defects.

Lastly (for now. I am a bit rushed at the moment)...I glanced at the Foobar 200 website and some of its features appealed to me...curious if this site's product has these features:

- AccurateRip verified error free.

- AMG, GD3, SontaDB, Musicbrainz & freedb, provide rich names & high resolution album artwork.

- DeDup remove duplicate tracks

Maybe there's more features which I noticed, but I have to log out.

Thanks.

[JimH]

Pops and clicks are a very rare problem unless the CD is damaged.  They could be edited after ripping.

[mwillems]

I have been reading of late how some companies are selling supposedly 'high resolution' music...but it's really CD quality somehow transferred to a higher resolution setting...perhaps 'fooling' your DAC into displaying a higher resolution than the actual source materia.

But what I would have had in mind with my previous post was reading to sets of resolution figures for CD...from memory, something like 44 and 48 bits (or whatever the actual numbers are). So, I suppose what I'm getting at is whether the MC rips at the correct bit rate when it's not the 'usual' resolution, if that makes sense.

A standard CD must be 44.1KHZ and 16 bit because that's the CD standard and that's all CD players know how to play. High resolution formats like SACD, DVD Audio, and Blu ray Audio may have higher resolution, but will not play in a normal CD player/drive.  The companies selling high resolution music that's upsampled CD quality are selling it in those other formats, or on the internet.  Sometimes hi-rez optical media will have a CD "layer" so the discs will play in regular CD players, but that layer is still 44.1KHz/16 bit. Optical media labelled "CD" (and nothing else) will always have the same resolution (44.1KHz/16 bit). 

Regardless, JRiver successfully detects the sample rate and bitdepth of music when ripping if that's what you're asking, and doesn't resample when ripping unless you tell it to. 

[JoanRivers]

Thanks JimH re post-rip editing out pops and clicks answer.

mwillems - I found that article on this topic of resolution and it mentions the relevant bit in this passage:

"And for those readers thinking they're safe because they only buy 'hi-res' tracks that were digitally recorded after 1996, there's still around a 98 per cent chance you're listening to upsampled versions of music that was originally recorded at either 44.1 or 48kHz and coded using 16-bit words...You're also likely listening to music that's so compressed it uses only 8-bits of what's available".

So, not clear to me why there's two rates here: 44.1 and 48kHz. But I suppose a follow up question would be if your display is telling you that such recordings are supposedly hi-res (e.g. 96kHz and higher), then is MC smart enough to tell that and so not waste storage space allocating a higher resolution to it?

Some related questions on ripping:

a) Does your DAC dictate the quality of the rip? I.e. a superior DAC will rip better quality music than, say, your MoBo just by itself?

b) In this thread someone said that you can't rip CDs yet with the Linux version of MC. I noticed that there is a paid version now of MC for Linux. Still no ripping ability? When might it become available?

c) I haven't received my PC yet...it should come with Windows 8, I'd say. I'd want to install Linux on my 2nd drive. Not exactly sure how that's done, but my main question is whether it's possible to install MC on Linux Mint Debian version...I'd be curious to try out the Gnome desktop or whatever you call it...otherwise Cinammon. Just curious if any of these choice have an impact on whether I could run MC or limit what it can do. Maybe I just should just stick to getting MC on the Windows side of my PC? Never really used Linux before, but maybe I could work at making it my default desktop.

[mwillems]

Thanks JimH re post-rip editing out pops and clicks answer.

mwillems - I found that article on this topic of resolution and it mentions the relevant bit in this passage:

"And for those readers thinking they're safe because they only buy 'hi-res' tracks that were digitally recorded after 1996, there's still around a 98 per cent chance you're listening to upsampled versions of music that was originally recorded at either 44.1 or 48kHz and coded using 16-bit words...You're also likely listening to music that's so compressed it uses only 8-bits of what's available".

So, not clear to me why there's two rates here: 44.1 and 48kHz. But I suppose a follow up question would be if your display is telling you that such recordings are supposedly hi-res (e.g. 96kHz and higher), then is MC smart enough to tell that and so not waste storage space allocating a higher resolution to it?"

48KHz is the film/DVD standard, 44.1KHz is the audio CD standard.  Sometimes music is mastered and sold on DVDs in 48KHz. 

MC does not detect upsampled music (if the file says it is 96KHz, MC takes it at it's word).  There are some tricks you can use when looking at a spectrogram that will suggest that the music was recorded in regular resolution and upsampled, but it's hard to know for sure.  It would be hard to have foolproof auto-detection because there's very little musical content in the ultra high frequencies, so if a given recording has limited content above 20 KHz it could be because it was upsampled, or it could be that there just wasn't very much content in the original music at those frequencies.

Some related questions on ripping:

a) Does your DAC dictate the quality of the rip? I.e. a superior DAC will rip better quality music than, say, your MoBo just by itself?

A DAC is a digital to analog converter.  Ripping a cd is a digital transfer process (it's digital to digital, there is no analog step), so DACs are not involved.  If you were ripping a vinyl record, your analog to digital converter (ADC) would be important, but you still wouldn't engage the DAC.  DACs are important for playback quality, not for ripping or inputs.

b) In this thread someone said that you can't rip CDs yet with the Linux version of MC. I noticed that there is a paid version now of MC for Linux. Still no ripping ability? When might it become available?

I don't know when there will be ripping, but there is no ripping capability in MC Linux right now.

c) I haven't received my PC yet...it should come with Windows 8, I'd say. I'd want to install Linux on my 2nd drive. Not exactly sure how that's done, but my main question is whether it's possible to install MC on Linux Mint Debian version...I'd be curious to try out the Gnome desktop or whatever you call it...otherwise Cinammon. Just curious if any of these choice have an impact on whether I could run MC or limit what it can do. Maybe I just should just stick to getting MC on the Windows side of my PC? Never really used Linux before, but maybe I could work at making it my default desktop.

If I were you, I would spend some time getting comfortable with Linux before buying a Linux MC license (the MC windows and linux licenses are separate).  Linux can be a bit of an adjustment if you're accustomed to a windows environment, and not everyone enjoys it.  I love it, but I also enjoy fiddling with things and problem solving.  Running linux is a little like owning a motorcycle: fast and tons of fun, but you have to learn how to do basic repairs in a hurry (or you wind up getting rid of it) 

MC for Linux is only officially supported on 32-bit debian wheezy, if you want to run it on other distros you're forging your own path (at least a little).  Many folks here on the forums are running it on other distributions (including Mint), and there are helpful install threads for most of the major distros.  My experience is that it works just fine on the other distros I've tried, but you have to be comfortable doing a little detective work sometimes.

[JoanRivers]

Thanks mwillems. For some reason I was under the impression that the Linux version of MC was in beta, so when I saw that there was a paid version of it, I assumed that it would have had ripping now. Looks like if I get MC, it will have to be for Windows, then I can get back to this forum re sharing the music on the Linux side of my system, if I have problems doing that.

I inserted quotes in my OP here and will try and do that to my new posts in this thread with additional questions. Maybe let me know if I could have used a better reply or not.

If you were ripping a vinyl record, your analog to digital converter (ADC) would be important

Any suggestions from music lovers here on what a good ADC to get is? I'm personally interested in one which isn't over $500. No idea on how much a good one costs though...best bang for buck and recording quality main criteria.

Lastly, I'd like to get back to those comments I mentioned about Foobar 2000's ripping.

The marketing on their web page is very good, re accuracy, error detection, eliminating multiple recordings etc.

As far as the Windows version of MC goes (hope it's okay to discuss this here!), what info is there on how MC does ripping? Same/worse/better than Foobar's. That's with regard to my post here:

Reply #8 on: December 05, 2014, 01:31:28 am

If Foobar's ripping is superior, can you mix and match that with the MC? I.e. use Foobar's ripping system but using MC as your front-end?

[InflatableMouse]

I believe MC's secure ripping mode (Windows version) is as good as it gets.

[aoqw76]

You can rip with whatever software you like, it will just make a standard wav file which you can then choose to convert to your preferred lossless format, so flac / aiff etc.
MC will play all of those.
I think you should just install it on whatever computer / OS you have right now and try it. Using it will probably answer all your questions.

[JoanRivers]

I believe MC's secure ripping mode (Windows version) is as good as it gets.

I'm looking for an answer which deals specifically with the features I mentioned earlier on the Foobar 2000, i.e. does MC's ripping match the dBpoweramp as far as:

i) "securely AccurateRip verified error free". I.e. I like the "error free" bit of that!

ii) "rich names & high resolution album artwork"

iii) "DeDup remove duplicate tracks".

That info is upfront on Foobar's website but not so easy to find at this site.

Just wondering if MC's ripping has this kind of stuff as standard or you can add these features to it.

And it's possible to use dBpoweramp for these reasons in conjunction with MC, if MC can't match these features?

I think you should just install it on whatever computer / OS you have right now and try it. Using it will probably answer all your questions.

I don't have my PC yet! Getting one in the next week or two.

[aoqw76]

You can use any ripping software you prefer, and use mc for overall library management/ playback. There are no restrictions, mc doesn't care how or who ripped the files, they just need to be in the watched folders ( so new tracks will be auto imported into the library as soon as they are created)

[astromo]

You can use any ripping software you prefer, and use mc for overall library management/ playback. There are no restrictions, mc doesn't care how or who ripped the files, they just need to be in the watched folders ( so new tracks will be auto imported into the library as soon as they are created)

To expand on this, AccurateRip is a proprietary system that JRiver doesn't subscribe to. You can check on Interact where Matt explains why he considers that the MC secure rip feature meets user's critical functional needs.

On a Linux platform, morituri is the commonly referred to ripper that I'm aware of that includes AccurateRip as part of the package.

MC includes an artwork database that you can use for cover art.

Duplicate filtering can be achieved through MC's expression language and a suitable view. Search on Interact for info. This capability has been discussed before.