JRiver digital playback for beginners. Question and Answer Forum, 2021.

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marpow

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
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There is continued growing interest in having a music playback system that is digital file based. There are many threads on QQ about this subject, look up all @HomerJAU. This thread is meant to be JRiver specific.
This can be overwhelming to think about for some and certainly a certain amount of work and equipment is necessary.
My intention is to only help those that are interested. There are many playback systems, my experience since 2017 has been JRiver.
Hopefully here we can help each other with the learning of ripping different physical media, SACD, DVD, Blu Ray, etc.
Now that we have the ripped file and have created a safe place for storage then it will be time to playback our file.
This can be just as challenging as ripping discs, but very rewarding.
If you, the reader, are interested all questions are welcome.
If you are a seasoned veteran, just keep in mind we are only helping beginners, who want to learn the way of music playback. Dogma and rhertoric does no one any good. We just want the beginner to be sucessful in playback, getting more advanced will come naturally over time.
This QQ Other JRiver Link has good info with addtional links but has out dated parts to it.
With my current system I am able to playback with JRiver all files, I choose FLAC (sometimes WAV) for most (CD's, Blu Rays, Digital Downloads) music, DSF for SACD rips and digital downloads that playback as a DSD file. MKV for Atmos/Video files.
Listening to your favorite stereo or surround music via a press of a button is very rewarding.
Hopefully through this thread together we can get your music ripped, stored, and able to playback, all nice and tidy.
I remember when Brian Moura helped me with my first playback of a digital file, it was so great, I new I could never go back to playing the hard discs.
I will start to populate this thread in baby steps so that we can learn together. Questions to start are good.
For now here is the link to the JRiver site, where you can look and see what they have to offer, the link is the Audio Page. After free trial eventually a purchase will be needed. There is an upgrade at least once a year which costs about $40.00 or less, some do not like that, I do not mind.
JRiver Link
I will add a BOLD STEP 1,2,etc so the reader can follow the progression of the Tutorial.
 
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Awesome videos Ted, I remember watching those. I noticed the NativeDSD logo. Where these posted on the NativeDSD website? Have you been a part of NativeDSD along with Brian?
I am going to watch them again so I can get more experienced in history from then to now.
 
This is helpful as setup for JRiver is daunting and so I've never really got it working correctly. Once we move, I will spend some time with it so this will be a great resource!
 
This is helpful as setup for JRiver is daunting and so I've never really got it working correctly. Once we move, I will spend some time with it so this will be a great resource!
Great that you have interest. I am putting together a start list so we can learn together. Lots of little things to get started I should have a good start by end of weekend.
 
I have JRiver set up and playing well with an Oppo 105D and sounds great!

But what I have not gotten set up is JRemote or the feature to play ISOs. I get an error when I try clicking on an ISO, and I figure it’s a setting I’ve not yet set correctly?
 
For multichannel yes, stereo no.
Thanks. I'm sending everything over HDMI to my receiver right now. I would like to set up a zone in JRiver to send 2 channel from the USB output of my server to my Oppo 205. Then the stereo output of the 205 to my Surround Master. Finally the multichannel output of the SM to my Denon 5.1 analog input. Any advice would be appreciated.
 
The setup for this "zones" was described as a piece of cake by our Kal resident audiophile wiz wonder. But no instructions was given. And I asked at the JRiver forums and found the reply hastily written (no real tips or explanation) with a link that was confusing at best.

I have found their help forms to be of only passing interest and help. The first question they ask you is what vers of the software are you on, and if you are on one vers older than the current they want you to upgrade right away. Two vers out of date and you can pretty much kiss any help goodbye.

I upgraded to the latest 18 months ago and got no improvement in the library glitches I was encountering. I saw no improvement at all. I believe there were a few new features added, but nothing I tend to use. In fact, I think JRemote is discontinued, but old versions do work with new JR versions. That is my next thing. A used iPad with a good size screen and JRemote and that will be my next upgrade. Then I will work on zones setup. I'd like to get on it right away, but I am really busy with vinyl transfers to 24/96kHz / FLACs of rare LPs. Then I sell off some of those LPs along with other records I have found over the years at thrift stores. I was planning on doing LP sales in 8-10 years when life slowed down a bit. But with the pandemic, I had more time on my hands and got with it. Sales have been strong, I've been busy which is a good thing.

So due to my less than impressive experiences at JRiver forums, I am glad that this thread has been started. I'll still go over to their forums, but they need to realize that the competition is breathing down their neck and cop a nicer stance with questions. Just posting a link that is not very descriptive is not winning any new fans. And others have said the same thing, no it's not just me.
 
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Yeah, I find the same thing with forum advice. It can be quite convoluted and difficult to find a simple answer to your issue. It does take a lot of work to get everything setup properly, but I keep hammering at the rock.

I run JRemote on my iPhone and iPad. Definitely nice to have this option. One cool feature is you access you CD flac files and stream them from your iPhone or IPad to Bluetooth speaker in another room. Nice for use during a shower!

Good luck with those rips and I hope you are successful in recouping some of the original purchase prices.
 
Yeah, I find the same thing with forum advice. It can be quite convoluted and difficult to find a simple answer to your issue. It does take a lot of work to get everything setup properly, but I keep hammering at the rock.

I run JRemote on my iPhone and iPad. Definitely nice to have this option. One cool feature is you access you CD flac files and stream them from your iPhone or IPad to Bluetooth speaker in another room. Nice for use during a shower!

Good luck with those rips and I hope you are successful in recouping some of the original purchase prices.
I've already brought in 400% of outlay, with the best of the cream not even listed for sale.
 
I have JRiver set up and playing well with an Oppo 105D and sounds great!

But what I have not gotten set up is JRemote or the feature to play ISOs. I get an error when I try clicking on an ISO, and I figure it’s a setting I’ve not yet set correctly?
Hi. SACD ISOs and BluRay rips depend on making sure disk images playback is selected as automatic (tools->options->file types and look under "data" heading) and file association is set so you can click on the file from outside JRiver and it will fire it up). If your ISO is an SACD/DSD image also make sure same is set for the audio file type of DSD (DSF, DFF, SACD...JRiver calls SACD ISOs "SACD:) Look here too:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/ISO_Files
 
Hi. SACD ISOs and BluRay rips depend on making sure disk images playback is selected as automatic (tools->options->file types and look under "data" heading) and file association is set so you can click on the file from outside JRiver and it will fire it up). If your ISO is an SACD/DSD image also make sure same is set for the audio file type of DSD (DSF, DFF, SACD...JRiver calls SACD ISOs "SACD:) Look here too:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/ISO_Files
Thanks Ted. I've been converting to Flac, but this can save me some time. Just need to make sure it automatically selects the multichannel files.
 
Thanks Ted. I've been converting to Flac, but this can save me some time. Just need to make sure it automatically selects the multichannel files.
You can set up a rule for SACD ISOs to show only multichannel. I think it's in my JRiver videos.
Create an ISO custom view with two rules:
filetype is "SACD"
channels greater than or equal to "3" (or you can put any number in there, or put greater than 2)

Here's one of my posts from AS (from 2012) showing how to create views in more detail
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...ences-repository/?tab=comments#comment-181249
 
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