JRiver not up to the task

WattNot

Glazed Over
Subscriber
With so many good free players out there why would anyone put up with the endless problems and the lack of direct tech support of a player you have to pay for.

Media Center 23 re-installs itself every time I launch the program. This is getting old.
No tech support number to call, just a forum you have to wade through to hopefully find a solution to your problem. Anyone else have this problem?
 
Try Music Bee. I tried the free version of JRiver and just about every other free music player application I could find. For a Windows system I settled on Music Bee. For Linux I've been using Audacious in place of Amarok.
 
i use it without problem,it does reinstall itself if there has been an update tho.
my only real complaint is no support for spotify
 
MC23 is new, so I'd expect a lot of updates. Make sure you're on the right update channel. I've also disabled automatic updates as it's doing everything I want it too ... quite gracefully, in fact. ;-}

mc_update.jpg
 
I'm quite happy with Music Bee. All my files are FLAC on a local HDD. That may have something to do with my opinion.
 
i went with jriver after trying lots
eventually i got tired of installing plug ins
and then new current plug ins and then more plug ins until i no longer knew if i had the latest and greatest or if maybe they conflicted or if may be the older one actually sounded better.

jriver ended all this. a few clicks and it works. no hunting and configuring .... plays any format i want
i can tell it to use usb
and tell vlc to use hdmi ..... simple... all her inet stuff and tv go to vlc
all 2 chan goes to jriver .... set file open preference .. voila! ... 2 sound systems off 1 pc
 
I don't have any problem with JRiver, but it is not for those who are not willing to learn new software. To suggest that JRiver is somehow buggy or "full of problems is just plain WRONG. . Most of those free media players are not going to have banks of techs manning the phones either. What you get from JRiver is a very powerful program capable of solving most any large scale media application out there. They stay on top of their code and I have had almost no issue with it at all and have been using it since V19 was new. V23 says a lot about its longevity as a platform you can rest assured will be around and supported in the future. Can't say that with the freebies as so many of those are gone.

I have had questions and I simply go to their forum and get the answers in a day or so. I know it isn't like getting some nice person from wherever on the line but I like having reasonably priced software..

My V23 has updated maybe half dozen times since I installed it. It takes around a minute and I know that they are maintaining it, something I would worry about with "free" software of any type.

Try Itunes maybe.
 
I really appreciate all the feedback from all of you and maybe I'll give MediaCenter 23 another chance using some of the suggestions you have given me. I guess that I have been spoiled by the free Sony program MediaGo that came with my Sony Hi-res player. It always works perfectly and plays my FLAC files as well as everything else, and super easy to configure.
I have tried Windows Media Player, ZUNE, VLC Player, Foobar2000 as well.
 
No, there is patches and new functions coming out. I have had no issues like that. The Free music programs, well you get what you pay for - Musicbee sounds like crap compared to JRiver - tried them all. I have some *.ape files (lossless compression Monkey Audio another free algorithm) and not many players cover it. Foobar is the worst sounding of all though.

I'll disagree with this all day long. As long as the settings are the same (meaning whether you use WASAPI or equalizing or volume leveling or such) they should all sound the same. There is nothing "magic" that JRiver does to the sound.
 
Another audio scientist joins AK!

Welcome Tom.. :)

Thanks for the welcome. I don't know that I consider myself an "audio scientist" though. That just sounds like too much work. Musician? Yes. Music fan? Yes. Audio Scientist????????? That might be stretching things a wee bit.

Full disclosure: I have both Musicbee and JRiver Media Jukebox on my computer. I think there are far too many good FREE programs out there to HAVE to pay for a program. Make a donation it I like it? Sure.
 
As long as the settings are the same (meaning whether you use WASAPI or equalizing or volume leveling or such) they should all sound the same. There is nothing "magic" that JRiver does to the sound.
Yes, a WASAPI1 -- which stands for Windows Audio Session API -- player isn't doing the audio generation itself. What it does is convert the digital formats it supports into a (generally) PCM2 (pulse-code modulated) data stream which is sent to the Windows internals via the Windows Audio Session API. That API -- which stands for Application Programming Interface, i.e., the mechanisms by which programs and programmers access the facility -- interacts with the Windows operating system, and it's Windows that turns the PCM data into audio.

Therefore, given the same PCM data, all players will sound the same because it's Windows doing the actual sound generation rather than the player.

However, there might be some differences between WASAPI-capable players in terms of how they convert various file formats -- FLAC, WAV, MP3, MQA, etc. -- into that PCM data stream.

--
1 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd371455(v=vs.85).aspx
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation
 
Yes, a WASAPI1 -- which stands for Windows Audio Session API -- player isn't doing the audio generation itself. What it does is convert the digital formats it supports into a (generally) PCM2 (pulse-code modulated) data stream which is sent to the Windows internals via the Windows Audio Session API. That API -- which stands for Application Programming Interface, i.e., the mechanisms by which programs and programmers access the facility -- interacts with the Windows operating system, and it's Windows that turns the PCM data into audio.

Therefore, given the same PCM data, all players will sound the same because it's Windows doing the actual sound generation rather than the player.

However, there might be some differences between WASAPI-capable players in terms of how they convert various file formats -- FLAC, WAV, MP3, MQA, etc. -- into that PCM data stream.

--
1 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd371455(v=vs.85).aspx
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation
What I want to know is the search parameters you use to sniff these sorts of threads out!


Seriously though, as for whether JRiver sounds better I cannot say. The science would seem to agree with you, however I use JRivers PEQ a bit and in that way I find it does sound better to me.
 
Seriously though, as for whether JRiver sounds better I cannot say. The science would seem to agree with you, however I use JRivers PEQ a bit and in that way I find it does sound better to me.
A digital EQ can sweeten a mix, same as an analog EQ on analog gear. It would likely sound the same as other WASAPI players if the EQ was turned off. Though -- as I mentioned above -- there might be format conversion differences between players.
 
If you are still having problem. What I would do is uninstall and reinstall. Perhaps your installation did not complete or at least that is what it thinks. Maybe starting over will fix it.

I have JRiver 22 and really like it. Whether it sounds better not sure, navigating the app - such as browsing tracks - is much faster than WMP. I like it's features as opposed to maybe sounding better.
 
Don't even get me started on JRiver and the lack of support.

I have read so many unhappy posts on forums and social media like Facebook. Always the same thing, the lack of support. Jim simply does not take ownership of any issues users have.

When you ask a question you get a response like, "well maybe the problem is" instead of direction on how to trouble shoot to see if that is the problem.

I have had it for 4 years and still problems pop up all the time.

Someone posted over on the JRiver forum, "I have been studying the Wiki and there is just so much..." this is exactly the problem.

Most people do not want to study endless Wiki pages, they simply want to stream their music.

It's a software erector set, great for the computer geeks to play around with.

It's just a poor design for someone who does not want to spend the day reading and translating Wiki pages.

JRiver is the most frustrating, infuriating product I have ever deal with.

If only they offered support, it could be great fun.
 
I couldn't agree more with the lack of support.
Most of my questions on the forum end up exactly like this last example, posted by me around christmas. Zero responses. Basically the same as my other posts there.

I also agree with the sentiment in that I've passed the point of wanting to spend hours tweaking and learning every dingin' program on my PC. Some of them, I just want to use them and want them to work as expected.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,113728.msg786039.html#msg786039
 
I've been running JRiver for a few years now and here is what I think about it's issue with support. It is a very robust software, probably the most sophisticated media player out there. I sometimes compare it to something along the lines of a AutoCAD or something in that learning it takes a bit of dedication but without a lot of hand holding.

Problem with JRiver is while it is being updated nearly constantly with new and powerful features, its price remains low due to the simple fact that this isn't production software. It isn't loaded on dozens of machines in office buildings all over. While programs like AutoCAD costs thousands per machine, JRiver costs 59 bucks or so, and that's because it must compete with free media players that are much less sophisticated, and thus require very little support.

What JRiver attempts to do is provide the sophistication, the database tools that I for one really like, at a price that is far less than much of comparable production software costs. Those AutoCAD like companies can afford to have great and always up to date documentation of their software, books in print, tutorials, even help on the telephone. A company like JRiver simply can't give that level of support.

It is definitely NOT a player I would recommend to just anyone because of this. Most people either just want easy, or really need it to be easy. That's not JRiver I'm afraid. It is software that exceeds its grasp financially and because of that, some things get sacrificed, and written, up to date doccumentation takes a back seat to providing better more powerful software.

In actuality, it comes set up pretty much ready to go for a novice who is not interested in anything but playing music. The problems arise when novices start wanting to do more than what some of the other free players are capable of, and they get in a major jam. Then they look to support and find it lacking. With the free players, they would likely find its support lacking too except it is simple enough where support is unnecessary.

Bottom line, if you just want to make a few playlists, and hit play, you don't need powerful database tools, DSP, or any of the other tools in the box, get a free player by all means! But if you are wanting more, complete access to metadata generated lists, and all the customization then your choices are few. You need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, do your own research on their forum (chances are the answers are there) and then when you know a little something, you can post a question and expect answers to them. Otherwise, if you are in over your head, and screaming help, nobody is going to come. That's for software costing hundreds of dollars if not thousands.
 
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