This Newbie Needs Help With JRiver

Steve - Usually when you upgrade to a new version of JRiver the old version still exists until you manually uninstall it. Since you're experiencing some issues with v21 anyway regarding unexpected crashes (as some other users are also reporting) I'd suggest trying to launch v20 from your start menu and see if the server library is found there. There are instructions in their forum about exporting a library from one version to make it available in a later version, which you can try once v21 becomes more stable. It might be best to stay on v20 for now. Good luck, it can be very frustrating getting such relatively complex HW/SW systems working properly for the first time. I'm going to spin some vinyl, it's much easier!

Steve Williams said:

unfortunately I manually uninstalled MC20

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Even if it is uninstalled, try looking in Documents> JRiver> Media Center 20> Library Backups These should still be there unless you dumped them specifically. I have uninstalled MC a number of times but the backups endure.

Steve Williams said:

I found it Kal. Thanks

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Steve - hopefully you are fully back in business.

I do not think JRiver does an adequate job in describing their underlying architecture and how to use it in clear terms. It is not a secret, though, and many people have figured it out generally. If you already know what I am about to say, sorry, but it might help other newbies.

I never liked their term "library", for example. There is a directory file containing the metadata and pointers to the actual media files. That is what they call the "library", but it is really just like the card catalog in the typical book libraries we have visited since our youth. To avoid confusion, they should have called it a directory or catalog, rather than the "library". The really most important things are the media files containing the actual music to be played, which are not part of their "library" file. The "library" is just an aid to facilitate searching and locating specific media files, just like the familiar old card catalog.

For certain media file formats, the metadata = the tags (album name, artist, track #, timing, album art, etc.) can be optionally stored in the media files as well as in the "library". That is true for some common formats like FLAC, dsf, etc. It is not true in WAV, dff, ISO and several other formats, which have no or limited ability to store metadata. (I do not know how this translates to the MAC environment.). But, you must be sure to manually write the tags from the library to the media files, which is a JRiver library function. This may be important particularly if you do a lot of manual editing of the tags, as I do with a predominantly classical library.

Where am I going with this? Backing up the library file is useful and important, and JRiver does much of that automatically. But, I like to also create a second backup of the metadata in the media files themselves, since my media file formats support that. That way, even if I were to lose the library file and its backup copies, I could just reimport the media files into a new, clean library, and all my tagging would be there, good as new. I also like to keep the library file on a separate drive from the media files, the former being on my main system drive and the latter being on my NAS. As long as I have the media files, I can always easily rebuild the library.

And, it bears repeating, that backing up the media files is even more critical than backing up the library. Media files need to be backed up manually outside of JRiver. Ideally, you would keep media file backups offsite for protection against disasters. If your media file formats do not support tags, a copy of the library backup should also go offsite. Library files are small, media files are large.

So, far this has worked pretty well for me with about 3,000 discs, mainly dsf, on many TBs of NAS storage. I hope it is helpful.

Auto import

If you have not done so already; configure auto import to point to the NAS

Tools > Import > Configure auto import

Normally it sees DSD but jRiver is a bit erratic
If you explicit open a DSD" File > Open File, what happens?

Just to make sure: I suggested to do so from the File Menu inside JRiver

Yes it should but somehow it doesn't
Just to make sure check if DSD is imported in the Import configuration


The other one is simply open it using the file menu
Does it play?
Is it added to the lib?



Clear enough?