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[silversurfer0116]

Hi... I'm a newbie to JRiver and computerized music in general.  I have several hundred vinyl albums and CD's that I decided I am going to computerize and after checking things out a bit, I chose JRiver.   I also have a so called audiophile class stereo which was a factor as JRiver seems to be the software of choice for that club.  I have a nice Toshiba laptop with Windows 7 on it that I am using right now, that will probably be my main tool for doing this work.  I plan to use either this laptop or another laptop or tablet to be the "player" for my music through the aforementioned stereo.  In additon I use an Apple iPhone 5S as I like the phone's features, size, and build except for iTunes which is kind of crappy IMHO.  I have a few questions and any input will be appeciated.  Yeah, I tried search at the forums but most of the answers were way dated.

1) I was planning to use WAV files as the format of choice to play through my main home stereo but I take it that WAV files do not support tags so I am probably going with lossless.  I kind of feel that now is the time to make a choice as I do not care to duplicate this work in the future.  All Apple (ALAC) or all other...google? (FLAC).  When my iPhone dies, I will look hard at an android if there is a good, not too big phone out there.  I'm too cheap to dump the phone yet though. Apple seems easier but their our way or the highway 'tude chafes my **s.  Any thoughts on this?

2) I downloaded J River and imported what music I have on the laptop (for the iPhone)  I buy most of my new music as CD's from Amazon as they also give me MP3's as part of the deal.  So I have MP3's for Amazon, AAC for iPhone, some WAV, and backups on the laptop. Of course J river imported them all so most of my albums have three and four copies.  Really J River? This software can't see that and ask do you want this...really?  At any rate eventually the main music will be lossless and I'll keep AAC's for the iPhone elsewhere.  How do I block the MP3's and AAC's away from JRiver in the future and Just have lossless files in the library to access for music?

3) I do have a stand alone DAC (Cary Audio Xciter) that I plan to use to play music on the home stereo.  Any tips for this will be appreciated as well.

That's it for now. I want to get the show on the road as I have had this on the back burner for years and it's time to move on it. At any rate thanks for your time and any input you can give me...silversurfer0116

[jaxtherogue]

1) I wouldn't over think this point too much for a couple reasons.  First, if you plan on going lossless you can transcode between lossless formats without incurring a drop in quality so if one day you really decide to switch from ALAC to FLAC you can do so without fear. Second, well see my answer to your second question...

2) In my own setup I use MC to copy files to a my phone, a USB stick for use in my car and an Astell&Kern AK120 II.  For the first I use MP3, the second I use lossless WMA (it's the only non-wave lossless format my car uses) and for the AK I use FLAC.  I don't store three separate copies of every track in my library, instead I setup MC to transcode the file format when copying files to each device. My library contains mostly FLAC, which is then automatically transcoded (or not as the case may be) to the appropriate format when syncing to each device. I do have some MP3 and some DSD files but I do no keep multiple file formats of each album. There's no need to. Get ride of the duplicate file formats and stick with lossless, convert from there as needed.  MC has a cache that will keep the transcoded files around (and not add them to your library), though I find the conversion is so fast with my own setup that I don't bother to cache the other formats.

3) I am guessing that your DAC has an available ASIO driver. Make sure you have it installed and setup MC under Player > Playback Options to use that driver. It will help you get the best sound from your DAC.

[spiggytopes]

Hi,

FLAC will play on VLC player for Android.

I have an HTC M8 with a 64 GB memory card and the sound is actually quite good from the phone speakers ....

[jaxtherogue]

You can also 'stack' files such that the mp3, flac and alac version of the same file/track could be treated as a single track. See the below wiki entry. My preference is still to transcode on sync rather than eat up storage with multiple formats of the same track.

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Stacks

[glynor]

1) I was planning to use WAV files as the format of choice to play through my main home stereo but I take it that WAV files do not support tags so I am probably going with lossless.  I kind of feel that now is the time to make a choice as I do not care to duplicate this work in the future.  All Apple (ALAC) or all other...google? (FLAC).  When my iPhone dies, I will look hard at an android if there is a good, not too big phone out there.  I'm too cheap to dump the phone yet though. Apple seems easier but their our way or the highway 'tude chafes my **s.  Any thoughts on this?

I wouldn't use WAV.  I'd strongly recommend (as others did above) using a more modern file container format such as FLAC or ALAC.

If you want to use the lossless files directly on your iPhone, in the built-in Music app, then you have to use ALAC.

I probably would not (actually, I know I would not, because I don't). I'd recommend ripping to FLAC instead, and just transcoding a lossy version of the files for syncing to your phone. Most places where you use your iPhone are not going to be low-noise environments, first of all. Plus, the lossless files are so much larger, and space on your device is likely going to be limited.  So, I'd rip to FLAC and use those at home, plus you can stream them to your device through JRemote if you have a fast enough WAN connection, so even for travel on the road, you can still use them, so long as you have good cellular and decent upstream bandwidth at home.

Then, only for those instances where you need to use stuff on the road where there is no cellular (so, on airplanes, camping in the backwoods, etc) you can sync some high-quality MP3s to your device.  I use MP3 -v4 now, though if you're really concerned about quality, just use MP3 -V0.

There are a few ways to do this, but I just sync my entire Library (less some tracks I never want to ever put on my phone) to MP3 with MC's built in handheld system. I store these copies in a folder that MC doesn't watch, so it never knows about or sees them.  This does cost storage space, but since I use MP3 -V4 it isn't that substantial (around 350GB for ~37k tracks).  It stinks to give up that space, but after playing with it a lot, this worked the most reliably with Apple devices and dealing with iTunes.

Then, I import these into iTunes and use prod's MCiS to sync between MC and iTunes, and iTunes to sync rotating smartlists to my devices.  iTunes never "sees" my "real" files, it only sees these MP3 copies (which also has the benefit that it can't mess them up).

It would probably be best to start a separate thread if you want detailed help with some kind of scheme to do this.

[glynor]

Of course J river imported them all so most of my albums have three and four copies.  Really J River? This software can't see that and ask do you want this...really?  At any rate eventually the main music will be lossless and I'll keep AAC's for the iPhone elsewhere.  How do I block the MP3's and AAC's away from JRiver in the future and Just have lossless files in the library to access for music?

It imports exactly what you tell it to import. An automated, fingerprint based "de-duper" would be awesome, but that's not currently available.

But, you don't have to import everything. That's just what the Automatic First-Run import wizard does (it looks for all of your music everywhere it thinks it is likely to be).  I'd probably remove everything from your fledgling MC library and start over.  Read these articles for more detail on how to do imports:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Import
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Auto-Import

Your best bet will be to set up a set of Watched Folders in Auto-Import that look where you want them to look.

If you want to put newly imported tracks into a "holding area" before they're allowed to join your full Library, this is possible by tweaking some of the Media Views in MC and then using a Tag On Import rule to assign a special flag to newly imported files (so they only show up in a particular "Review Queue" View in MC, until you've "approved" them for the full Library).

[jaxtherogue]

If you want to put newly imported tracks into a "holding area" before they're allowed to join your full Library, this is possible by tweaking some of the Media Views in MC and then using a Tag On Import rule to assign a special flag to newly imported files (so they only show up in a particular "Review Queue" View in MC, until you've "approved" them for the full Library).

Intrigued by this possible workflow I setup a custom library field "Approve" that is set to zero on autoimport. Now I am wondering if it is possible to create a custom command/shortcut that will change that field to "1"? I know I can just edit the tag, but for the sake of quick an easy I am wondering if it is possible to do such a thing with MC.

[Arindelle]

Intrigued by this possible workflow I setup a custom library field "Approve" that is set to zero on autoimport. Now I am wondering if it is possible to create a custom command/shortcut that will change that field to "1"? I know I can just edit the tag, but for the sake of quick an easy I am wondering if it is possible to do such a thing with MC.

its possible but I think more complicated than needed ... unless you never are going to verify the downloaded tags or do your own retagging, you can just select all the files and change the tag for everyone of them at once. You don't have to do it per track or even per album - take off the tag of 200 cds at once .. just ctrl+A to select em

I rip to a temporary directory and add "zRetag" (or anything else you want to call it) in a field automatically. I set up a view that only shows the albums  with zRetag. Technically this temp directory is in the library so I can listen to them, partially tag them what ever. When I'm ok I use a tool inside of JRiver which you can set up to move the files and update the database at the same time. I also set a separate veiwx to only show files that no longer have the "zRetag" but are in the holding directory. select the files hit F6 and it moves them into the main area. This way you can take as long as you want to retag, listen to everything create playlists whatever, and when you're done, move them in one go. If you have only a small collection, and you are not adding lots of cds per month this might be overkill, but fully automating it would be even less necessary

[jaxtherogue]

its possible but I think more complicated than needed ... unless you never are going to verify the downloaded tags or do your own retagging, you can just select all the files and change the tag for everyone of them at once. You don't have to do it per track or even per album - take off the tag of 200 cds at once .. just ctrl+A to select em

I rip to a temporary directory and add "zRetag" (or anything else you want to call it) in a field automatically. I set up a view that only shows the albums  with zRetag. Technically this temp directory is in the library so I can listen to them, partially tag them what ever. When I'm ok I use a tool inside of JRiver which you can set up to move the files and update the database at the same time. I also set a separate veiwx to only show files that no longer have the "zRetag" but are in the holding directory. select the files hit F6 and it moves them into the main area. This way you can take as long as you want to retag, listen to everything create playlists whatever, and when you're done, move them in one go. If you have only a small collection, and you are not adding lots of cds per month this might be overkill, but fully automating it would be even less necessary

I have a similar process setup now and know can set tags on a group of files- I was just hoping to get super streaming. A custom command that set my Approved field to "1" AND moves the files according to my present to my main Music folder would be even better

[blgentry]

Now I am wondering if it is possible to create a custom command/shortcut that will change that field to "1"?

There might be some clever scripting with MCWS or something.  As far as I know there is no core command for adding or modifying tags, so a simple mapping isn't possible as far as I know.  But if you listen to Glynor, there's a way that's almost as good.  Set up a view with includes your Approved field as a Pane.  Then whenever you select a group of files, a check will appear next to Approved and you can check them all from the Pane.  Or you can make it a column right next to the file name, or whatever.  Again, as long as it's a check box, you can check it for all the files you have highlighted.  Did you know that Library fields can have an edit type of check box?  Go set your approved field that way if it's not already set.

I'm using this technique for album art that I "approve" to move it from the "this album art sucks" view.  The check box in a column works great for me.  Give it a try!

Brian.

[jaxtherogue]

There might be some clever scripting with MCWS or something.  As far as I know there is no core command for adding or modifying tags, so a simple mapping isn't possible as far as I know.  But if you listen to Glynor, there's a way that's almost as good.  Set up a view with includes your Approved field as a Pane.  Then whenever you select a group of files, a check will appear next to Approved and you can check them all from the Pane.  Or you can make it a column right next to the file name, or whatever.  Again, as long as it's a check box, you can check it for all the files you have highlighted.  Did you know that Library fields can have an edit type of check box?  Go set your approved field that way if it's not already set.

I'm using this technique for album art that I "approve" to move it from the "this album art sucks" view.  The check box in a column works great for me.  Give it a try!

Brian.

A checkmark would be great. I've tried setting my Approved field as a pane, but when I select files no checkbox appears in the pane (as they do in my Artist and Album pane). I have setup the Approved field as data type integer, not relational, edit type check and left the acceptable values field blank. I must be missing something.

Also, is it possible to setup the pane view so that when you click on an entry in a pane (such as an album) that is autoselects all of the files  in the list view that meet that criteria?

[blgentry]

A checkmark would be great. I've tried setting my Approved field as a pane, but when I select files no checkbox appears in the pane (as they do in my Artist and Album pane). I have setup the Approved field as data type integer, not relational, edit type check and left the acceptable values field blank. I must be missing something.

So was I!  My advice was wrong about Pane Tagging.  I just did some experiments and it looks like you need to set Edit Type to standard (or list) for Pane Tagging to be available as check marks *in the pane*.  But you don't need this at all, if you just make the your field (Approved) show as a column in the view you are working on.  Then there will be checks right next to every song that you can turn on or off.  If you want to check many at once, just select them and check ONE of the marks; that will check it for all you have selected.  It's really very convenient and fast.  Plus with Pane Tagging, you have to turn on Pane Tagging *every single time* you want to use it.  It is not possible to set Pane Tagging to "stick" on any view as far as I know.

Also, is it possible to setup the pane view so that when you click on an entry in a pane (such as an album) that is autoselects all of the files  in the list view that meet that criteria?

Not as far as I know, but JRiver is always surprising me with things I don't know.  But again, just a tiny bit more effort gets you there very easily:  Click on Album or something in the Pane so those songs are now showing in the file list below.  Now click in the file list anywhere.  Press Control-a to select all.  Done.  Not what you asked for, but very fast.

Good luck!

Brian.

[jaxtherogue]

So was I!  My advice was wrong about Pane Tagging.  I just did some experiments and it looks like you need to set Edit Type to standard (or list) for Pane Tagging to be available as check marks *in the pane*.  But you don't need this at all, if you just make the your field (Approved) show as a column in the view you are working on.  Then there will be checks right next to every song that you can turn on or off.  If you want to check many at once, just select them and check ONE of the marks; that will check it for all you have selected.  It's really very convenient and fast.  Plus with Pane Tagging, you have to turn on Pane Tagging *every single time* you want to use it.  It is not possible to set Pane Tagging to "stick" on any view as far as I know.

Not as far as I know, but JRiver is always surprising me with things I don't know.  But again, just a tiny bit more effort gets you there very easily:  Click on Album or something in the Pane so those songs are now showing in the file list below.  Now click in the file list anywhere.  Press Control-a to select all.  Done.  Not what you asked for, but very fast.

Good luck!

Brian.

Yeah I know all of the multi-select tricks et. al. I was just trying to make the process as lazy as possible.   

The checkbox thing is great though. Thanks for the tip@

[glynor]

Pane tagging only works if you have explicitly selected files (which causes the checkboxes to appear).  That's to keep you from accidentally tagging things when really just trying to navigate around.

I don't know, because it has been this way for as long as I've been using MC, but I bet if it was the other way, you'd end up hating it the fourth time you accidentally tagged something when trying to select a pane to open it.

If you make the field a Check Type field, and then add a column, it'll show a column of checkboxes. If you have multi-selected files, and then check the box for one of them, it will enable all of them.  So that works pretty well. I use it for a few different fields.

[blgentry]

Pane tagging only works if you have explicitly selected files (which causes the checkboxes to appear).

But for some reason this doesn't work with a field type of Integer and an edit type of Check Box.  If you make the Edit Type Standard or List, the checks appear.  Otherwise, set to Check Box, it doesn't.  Which is surprising.

I'll admit that I'm pretty new to Pane Tagging and library custom fields in general so I probably don't understand the paradigms correctly for each type.  <shrug>  It's just weird to see "check box" as edit type and then not get check boxes in the Panes. 

Brian.

[glynor]

But for some reason this doesn't work with a field type of Integer and an edit type of Check Box.  If you make the Edit Type Standard or List, the checks appear.  Otherwise, set to Check Box, it doesn't.  Which is surprising.

I swear I have some of those, but I'll check later.

I do as much of my tagging in the Panes as is humanly possible.

[Arindelle]

aren't check boxes going to be redundant? -- like you'd have two boxes for a check box field .. why not just add a field with one or 2 entries allowed ... they'd come up as box during a pane edit .. like verified or something

I do as much of my tagging in the Panes as is humanly possible.

O.T. a bit -- sorry but I'll chance it  but anyway to disable or increase the number of files before you get the "are you sure ... this could take a lot of time" warning? can't seem to find it I often change tags of 500+ files at a go from the panes ..