krutsch said:

   
I was an early fan of Bitperfect, but have moved away because of lack of AudioUnit support - I use Voxengo's HarmoniEQ and ACON Digital's Verberate Surround (for ambience up-matrixing in my surround system with 2-channel music - turns my small room into something that sounds quite large). Also, I have a Rega DAC which takes about 1/2 second to switch sample rates and A+ allows for a configurable sample rate switching delay.
 
For the scripts: I have quite a collection, but mainly use these scripts to prep files for use with my Sony Walkman (NWZ-A17) and for creating MP3 CDs for my car. For example, re-embedding art work (instead of relying on the iTunes library files), scaling art work, exporting and converting to album folders to burn to CD, batch re-naming of files, auto-build playlists using ID3 tags, etc.
 
Check out the site - there's a lot there: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/index.php
 
I'm sure JRMC does many of these things, as well, but I prefer to stay within iTunes.

Click to expand...

 
Thanks for the tips on the scripts, I'll look into it over the weekend!

mikesale said:

Is there a way to use the Mac Ctrl Key in shortcuts? (Looks like not?)

Click to expand...

Not that I'm aware of. On the other hand, the control key is rather small and in a bad place for rapid key combinations, so it's not big deal. If I want another key, other than Command, to use as a modifier, alt is available.

Brian.

johnjen said:

I
And Media Center has, since its inception on Mac, ALWAYS behaved oddly.
Occasional crashes, sometimes working just fine but then require fussing to get it to perform the function requested.

And I am a tweaker and have fully 'customized' MC, which is nice and all, but some of the programs behavior is 'quirky' to put it lightly.

Click to expand...

I totally understand if you don't like MC. Your other comments indicated that pretty well. But the above suggests that MC crashes all the time, doesn't work correctly, and that type of thing.

I've had occasional crashes. Not many, but they've happened. I tracked some of these down to a DLNA problem: I was using a network renderer (WD TV) that had a very unreliable wireless connection (too far away) and this caused MC to crash sometimes. Now that it's on a reliable connection I haven't had this happen again.

MC certainly requires some getting used to. If you want to tweak it, it definitely requires some work. Like the keyboard shortcuts file referenced above. It's not super duper easy, but it's doable.

But you make it sound entirely broken. Which is not my experience at all. I use MC just about every day for hours at a time.

Brian.

Anyone else having this minor issue on 2.4 ?
I tried my earphones out of my Macbook Air Cirrus 3.5" port and when I pulled them out when the music was playing before it would jump to internal speakers but now the track freezes with no sound.... it does not pause or release the track but locks up.

bgentry said:

I totally understand if you don't like MC. Your other comments indicated that pretty well. But the above suggests that MC crashes all the time, doesn't work correctly, and that type of thing.

I've had occasional crashes. Not many, but they've happened. I tracked some of these down to a DLNA problem: I was using a network renderer (WD TV) that had a very unreliable wireless connection (too far away) and this caused MC to crash sometimes. Now that it's on a reliable connection I haven't had this happen again.

MC certainly requires some getting used to. If you want to tweak it, it definitely requires some work. Like the keyboard shortcuts file referenced above. It's not super duper easy, but it's doable.

But you make it sound entirely broken. Which is not my experience at all. I use MC just about every day for hours at a time.

Brian.

Click to expand...

I listen for 4-8hrs /day every day (with very few exceptions).
 
And while these days it will crash ≈ every other day, while I was ripping it crashed twice.
 
It also has numerous other 'quirks'.
But I still do use it 24/7 and just restart in once a day which seems to reduce the amount of idiosyncratic behavior by quite a bit.
Like I said I use it because it has the best SQ of all of the players I tested.
 
But I do understand the reasons why Jriver operates as they do.
I just wish they paid more attention to core functionality as well as adding features.
 
And my crashes are not DLNA related as I turned it off (and left it off for months) and it made no difference to the behavior of the program.
 
And while there are some aspects I do enjoy with MC such as the database functionality, even that has quirks, such as NOT finding albums that DO exist within the existing database.
 
Like I said it has numerous quirks, which I have learned to live with…
 
JJ

johnjen said:

I listen for 4-8hrs /day every day (with very few exceptions).

And while these days it will crash ≈ every other day, while I was ripping it crashed twice.

Click to expand...

What version are you using? You should post a log of the crash so someone can try to figure out why it crashes so much for you.

And while there are some aspects I do enjoy with MC such as the database functionality, even that has quirks, such as NOT finding albums that DO exist within the existing database.

Click to expand...

That's not normal at all. The database is rock solid. What happens when MC "can't find an album" ?

Brian.

bgentry said:

What version are you using? You should post a log of the crash so someone can try to figure out why it crashes so much for you.
That's not normal at all. The database is rock solid. What happens when MC "can't find an album" ?

Brian.

Click to expand...

I'm using the latest version of 21 (21.0.66)
And previously I was on the last version of 20.
 
Mac OS automatically sends in a crash report every time it crashes.
And I prefer to keep my crash 'log' out of the forum, as it becomes a source of consternation after a while.
I used to try to report such behavior, but other than very early in the dev. process it hasn't really made much difference.
And in thinking about it a bit more, now the crash frequency is probably more like once to twice a week, and not every other day (all the while restarting at least once a day).
 
When I use either the wizard or click on the arrow to the left of the album name or artist, often times it comes back with nothing listed.
I see this as a result of a 'strict' search protocol (misspelled or incomplete spelling result in nothing being returned)
Which I can understand due to the nature of the search parameters, but it means I have to be exact (there is no 'wiggle' room), and even then sometimes it can't find the album that I know is listed in the database.
 
And as I stated early on, I do understand the difficulty in taking an existing version and port it over to different platforms.  It can take lots of time and fussing to resolve some of the more esoteric issues such as the close/minimize/resize buttons not being in the 'correct' position above the title bar etc.
And I also realize the financial investment they have made in 'branching out' from the PC platform to Mac and Unix platforms, and the need to 'recoup' those resources.
 
Still the core issues remain, more or less a secondary issue in terms of 'fixing' them, other than cleaning up the new features that are added.
And it isn't to difficult for me to induce a crash, so I have learned to be deliberate and careful when using the program, and restart when I seethe behavior start to stutter.
And I'm probably an exception in terms of their 'usual' customer in that I run MC 24/7 in a continual loop with 8-12hrs of music loaded in the cue at any point in time…
 
Lastly I do appreciate your concern and willingness to help resolve any of this, but after this much time has passed It seems unlikely they will change their priorities in terms of dealing with issues such as these, and probably not just on my account.
 
And to be fair most folks will probably never see this degree of crashing and 'quirky' behavior, especially if they aren't running 24/7.
So it's only when used in 'extreme' conditions where these issues seem to arise.
And it probably is my expectation for the app to better act or conform to the Mac standard, which, is also unlikely due to it's pc origins, which isn't altogether a bad thing, but it doesn't quite 'measure up' either.
So it may just be my biases, but crashes and quirky behavior tells me core s/w issues remain in the code and I see them all the time.
 
JJ

I don't think you're being exactly fair about this.

1. You say it won't find mis-spelled entries if you look for the correct spelling. (using the links next to album or artist names). Ok, this is true. It's not a feature. Meaning that JRMC doesn't have fuzzy search built in to these shortcut keys. This doesn't work on any version of MC, including the Windows version.
2. You're not willing to do any troubleshooting on your crashes. If you don't want to post a log here, that actually makes sense. Post a log over at the JRiver forums instead. That's where they belong anyway.
3. Your conclusion is that the code has "core issues".

I'm not trying to be harsh or anything, but that just makes no sense to me.

If #2 is still true, I have one suggestion for you that's easy to test: Turn off auto import and see what happens.

I really do wish you good luck with this and I'm willing to try to help, over at the jriver forums, if you ever change your mind.

Happy listening.

Brian.

I know that MC doesn't have 'fuzzy search', but not finding albums that are spelled correctly is also part of the 'problem', or what I would term a 'core issue'.
 
And you're correct I'm not willing to put any more time into the crashes, for 2 reasons.
#1 If I'm the only one who is experiencing them to this degree then the motivation to fix them is 'slight' as has been the case all along, since they are still a common enough occurrence.
#2 If they are much more common and others are reporting them (and there has been evidence of this all along) they should, given enough time, have dealt with many of these 'core issues' already, only I don't see any real change in this regard.
 
But really the crashes are just one of the 'core issues', albeit one of the more time consuming ones.
 
And to give you an idea of a relatively minor 'core issue'…
Every time I start MC, within a minute after the main screen comes up, a drop down tool bar will 'pop' up on screen and then as soon as I click elsewhere it goes away.
This is related to when the DLNA services have completed their startup routine.
It was one of the reasons I turned off the DLNA services, which I recently turned back on and was reminded of why I turned it off in the first place.
I have reported this in the past, but this particular 'core issue' remains.
There are numerous other 'quirks' as well.
 
And auto import has never been on.
 
And I do appreciate your willingness to help, but at this point It seems clear to me that the course Jriver is on isn't going to change, nor do I expect it to.
They will do what they deem necessary in order to continue to develop their products. 
They are a work in progress after all…
And all of this may be due to the s/w development tools they are using to generate the code and search for 'bugs', in which case there really isn't much they can do, except wait for the bugs to be removed, before they can do so as well.
 
And I'd rather have this player to use, instead of not.
And I still do use it as my player of choice, and I will continue to find work arounds for the 'quirks', because as I stated it has the best SQ and for that I'm willing to deal with the 'quirks'.
 
JJ

johnjen said:

I know that MC doesn't have 'fuzzy search', but not finding albums that are spelled correctly is also part of the 'problem', or what I would term a 'core issue'.

Click to expand...

Can you describe this? It's not clear what you are trying to do and what the results are. Or how you "find" these albums that MC fails to find under some conditions.

I won't try to troubleshoot the rest of your issues as you've made it clear that you're not interested.

Brian.

When I was re-ripping the very same albums back into the library, I would click on the circled arrow to the left of either the album name or the artist and more often than not nothing would be returned in the search window.
 
My immediate thought was how is this even possible?
I mean it's the same album that I have been listening to all along, yet the search engine doesn't find it.
But when I 'manually' search for that specific album, there it is.
 
JJ

^ You almost certainly have a metadata mismatch between your older albums and the new ones. It could be as simple as something like "The Black Crowes" versus "Black Crowes, The" . Those look like two different artists. Yet a search for "the black crowes" will bring up both.

The link arrows you are describing do an *exact* search. So order of names matter. The general search isn't exact and it goes across many fields at the same time: Album, artist, comments, file name, etc. The general search is very powerful in that way.

I'm rather confident that you have a mismatch somewhere that is making you think things are broken, when in fact it's your metadata. Examine the tags carefully, and I'll bet you'll find the difference. One powerful way of doing this, is to find two things that should "match" but do not. Highlight them both. Open the Tagging Window. Now look through the fields that should be the same: Artist, Album, etc. Any that say "varies" have at least 2 different values.

Brian.

Yeah you're probably right about that.
 
Which I suppose would only be a problem under limited conditions, such as re-ripping already existing tracks.
 
Thanks for the analysis.
 
JJ

I've added HQPlayer to the first post and made a few updates to the descriptions. Are their any other players I should add?

currawong said:

  I've added HQPlayer to the first post and made a few updates to the descriptions. Are their any other players I should add?

Click to expand...

 
Roon? I would consider a Roon an iTunes alternative.
 
Otherwise, I am not aware of any and thanks for the thread.
 
I will add this: I was very surprised by the elegant simplicity of Vox and even use it to curate M3u8 playlists for my MPD-based streamers.