[fishski13]

i couldn't get ASIO or WASAPI drivers to work in Foobar with Vista. i was also getting frequent drop-outs. i still may monkey around with it a bit, but J. River software is a no-brainer with my sub-standard 'puting skillz. ASIO or WASAPI with Media Center or Jukebox (ASIO only) is easy enough for even a caveman to configure.

i know Foobar is popular, but why would anyone bother? what, if any, advantages over J. River Jukebox?

 

[KingStyles]

And it sounds as good if not better than foobar.

 

[joe_cool]

Playback results vary depending on software (player and driver) as well as HARDWARE.

"drop-outs" = stuttering ? If you want assistance please provide more information. If you simply want to ventilate, that's OK too!

"When The Levee Breaks" is really awesome on Atlantic 19129-2.

 

[fishski13]

Quote:

Originally Posted by joe_cool /img/forum/go_quote.gif Playback results vary depending on software (player and driver) as well as HARDWARE. "drop-outs" = stuttering ? If you want assistance please provide more information. If you simply want to ventilate, that's OK too! "When The Levee Breaks" is really awesome on Atlantic 19129-2.

roger that. no no, i don't want to start a software war here.

as far as i understand, my drop-outs are caused by system latency and a driver like ASIO or WASAPI are needed. i spent hours trying to get the foo plug-ins to appear under playback without success.

 

[panda]

i just found out that j river can be used with asio output.

i don't have asio drivers so i installed asio4all, with no futzing (ie nothing to fiddle with) and selected asio output under j river preferences and it works like a charm!

i really like the interface and that it has built in crossfade. this has taken over from foobar as main music player... foobar works fine for me but this is more user/eye friendly.

*under vista

 

[bangraman]

I've liked j.River as a media playback app, far more so than foobar for the abovementioned and other obvious reasons once you use it, but at the same time I have real issues with their development and where they're going with it.


Their iPhone syncing is a case in point: An almost (ironically) apple-fanboi-like attitude of 'blame everyone else', and more amazingly, word filters built into their support forums which replaces all of their competitor's product names with 'another program'. That is pretty indicative of their bunker mentality, and I'm not sure I want to support it anymore.


Mediamonkey's features are thinner on the enthusiast side, but they are apparently stepping up to the plate a little more and they seem more open to suggestions... especially those aimed at playback. They also sync the iPhone and in a stark contrast to j.River, when 3.1 firmware broke Mediamonkey sync, they had it up and running in beta within a week. I've decamped to these guys for a while to see how things pan out. ASIO page

 

[Armaegis]

I remember reading on the jriver forums somewhere that the development team asked apple for the specs or whatever it was that they needed in order to sync the iphone and were denied. I'm sure it was more complicated than that, but that's all I can remember, and I believe it was from that exchange that they decided to stop supporting apple products.

 

[cravenz]

the 'stuttering' might be a result of your hardware not being able to handle it, though that would seem rather weird. By not getting them to work do you mean that they will not play at all or just that the playback will drop out after a while?

Try having a look at the bit rate of the files you are trying to play as well.

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Armaegis /img/forum/go_quote.gif I remember reading on the jriver forums somewhere that the development team asked apple for the specs or whatever it was that they needed in order to sync the iphone and were denied. I'm sure it was more complicated than that, but that's all I can remember, and I believe it was from that exchange that they decided to stop supporting apple products.

Exactly, the 'blame everyone else' aspect. You have to remember what they decided to stop supporting isn't some niche player... it's the main player.


Other companies / developers have managed it. They decided it wasn't worth bothering with.

 

[craigmcg]

I understand your frustration that J River doesn't continually devote resources to working around each new Apple firmware so you can use your device- I would use something else too.

That said, I don't have any Apple hardware so I'm glad that J River doesn't continually devote resources to working around each new Apple firmware because it means they can focus on improvements I may use.

I believe that both Apple and J River are doing what they think best for their respective companies and customers- I see no need to cast aspersions.

 

[m1abrams]

I have very similiar complaints with Jriver that Bangraman has had. I actually have more issues with how they treat their forums. They make major edits to any posts they feel makes them look bad in anyway WITHOUT notifying the poster or marking the post as being editted! If called on the action the owner of the company will threaten to ban you. Note I am not talking about posts are offensive or full of negative comments but simple question posts much like what has been shown in this thread.

Jrivers stance to anything that is difficult is to put their heads in the sand. They could have solved the Apple issue by using iTunes published API but they did not want to do that. I too moved onto MediaMonkey, much more friendly and responsive team over there and you are allow to mention other products without fear of being banned.

 

[panda]

did you guys switch to mediamonkey purely based on political reasons? or do you actually prefer that software??? or do you both have iphones? i've never did the whole sync thing when i had an ipod anyway so this is kinda trivial to me.

i remember trying out songbird which had some potential but was really buggy.

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by panda /img/forum/go_quote.gif did you guys switch to mediamonkey purely based on political reasons? or do you actually prefer that software??? or do you both have iphones? i've never did the whole sync thing when i had an ipod anyway so this is kinda trivial to me. i remember trying out songbird which had some potential but was really buggy.

Well for me it was mainly due to the lack of ipod Touch, iphone support. However I probably would have left just on the fact that the CEO was such a prick to me personally. So I guess yes political too. Keep in mind MediaMonkey is a nice app and in some respects better than Jriver (it supports iphone). MediaMonkey does just music/audio, it does not mess with video. This is a plus and a minus, plus in that it has less video clutter in the UI, and well obvious minus

. Jriver has spent more and more time on media beyond music which I feel has made it worse (UI wise) for just a music player.

 

[m1abrams]

Quote:

Originally Posted by panda /img/forum/go_quote.gif i've never did the whole sync thing when i had an ipod anyway so this is kinda trivial to me.

? what do you do with your ipod if you do not "sync", fancy paper weight?

Seriously though I like having specific dynamic playlists that I sync automatically to my iPod, not sure how I could use it without being able to do that.

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by craigmcg /img/forum/go_quote.gif I understand your frustration that J River doesn't continually devote resources to working around each new Apple firmware so you can use your device- I would use something else too. That said, I don't have any Apple hardware so I'm glad that J River doesn't continually devote resources to working around each new Apple firmware because it means they can focus on improvements I may use. I believe that both Apple and J River are doing what they think best for their respective companies and customers- I see no need to cast aspersions.

Passive aggressive much?


As m1abrams additionally alluded to, the sum behaviour on-forum is pretty indicative of what I mentioned as the bunker mentality. It's not a good mindset for a development or testing team (of which, by the familiar stance, I presume you are one?).


As for distractions, what I see is a mature piece of software on which features are just about worth incrementally upgrading most of the time, just like most other pieces of commercial software. Where is the flood of new groundbreaking features made possible by not being distracted by the laborious process of needing to work with the main player in the game in one key aspect of the function of MC software?


I just see it as a counterproductive head-in-the-sand approach. I hope it's something that's rectified, but the competition like Mediamonkey another program might catch up to jRMC fully in the next version as far as output options, etc are concerned - things that are of principal interest to Head-Fi denizens for example. And they offer it for free.


@panda: Songbird was the great white hope for many, certainly on the Mac side where there's iTunes and... well, nuthin' really (like most Apple software... you get a choice of one workable app, if you get anything at all). I still hope it amounts to something, but it's still slow and crashy as heck.