JRiver optimum setup.

[Martinh]

Quite a few people here use JRiver Media Centre on their PCs, so I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread for setup discussions, tips and tricks to squeeze the maximum performance from it.

For those who are new to PC based music, here's the Wikipedia entry:

JRiver Media Center, or "Media Center" is a multimedia application that allows the user to play and organize various types of media on a computer running Windows.

Media Center is a "jukebox"-style media player, like iTunes, which usually uses most of the screen to display a potentially very large library of files.

Regular, usually daily beta builds are posted on the Media Center Interact forum implementing requested features and fixing reported bugs. The forum has an active user community, more than 25,000 users as of 2011.

Also available for Media Center are an Audioscrobbler plugin, and G-Force, a popular visualisation.

It can also rip CDs, and burn them. MediaCenter also supports static and dynamic playlists.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS2Hdg8xURyG9j27YUzkxvYFBC4lwINa gic22T272wqEgnLZpWk http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNimfsDs7gnYfANdY4vkCi7rPe-pBTFdoYzZX4AOKeeBRsPdQG

[Martinh]

I ripped some new CDs this week and found that the reply volume levels between discs was quite variable.

My question is whether I should use the replay gain function built into JRiver or if there's another solution :scratch:

Needless to say, I don't want to use it if the SQ is going to suffer.

Likewise, I have the variable volume control function enabled, so that I can control the volume from my tablet. Does this add extra processing that could affect SQ?

Cheers,

[Ali Tait]

Some say it does, though I like to be able to control volume remotely. What digi input do you use?

[Martinh]

What digi input do you use?

I'm not sure which digi input you mean, Ali.

On the Rega DAC, it's the coaxial spdif.

Cheers,

[Martinh]

Can anyone tell me what the benefits are of using a NAS as opposed to local storage (either internal or external HDD) please?

I've got my files on the HDD of my player at the moment.

Cheers,

[apollo]

I don't think there are any problems playing music over the network as long as the connection is stable.. at least I haven't faced any. If the connection has problems then there may be jitter, but with normal throughput things should be fine.

Also I try keeping all DSPs in my Jriver and sound card (essence stx) disabled. That means I set volume control at disabled.
But if you are playing 16 bit audio files and you enable 24 bit output in Jriver settings, you can use the extra bits for digital volume control (I think) without any loss of signal.. as long as you don't go too low on the slider.

[Martinh]

I don't think there are any problems playing music over the network as long as the connection is stable.. at least I haven't faced any. If the connection has problems then there may be jitter, but with normal throughput things should be fine.

Also I try keeping all DSPs in my Jriver and sound card (essence stx) disabled. That means I set volume control at disabled.
But if you are playing 16 bit audio files and you enable 24 bit output in Jriver settings, you can use the extra bits for digital volume control (I think) without any loss of signal.. as long as you don't go too low on the slider.

Hi Tirthankar,

Thanks for that, yes I've got the output set to 24 bit now.

Found out about the ReplayGain function - interesting to see that, in general, older CDs have their output level set much lower than on recent ones. Some of the new cds have output level greater than 100% :scratch:

Will use replaygain only when playing background music when we have guests.

Cheers,

[Ali Tait]

I'm not sure which digi input you mean, Ali.

On the Rega DAC, it's the coaxial spdif.

Cheers,

I meant what do you have the input set to on Jriver, ASIO, WASAPI etc?

[Martinh]

I meant what do you have the input set to on Jriver, ASIO, WASAPI etc?

Ah, it's set to WASAPI Event style, set for exclusive access.

[Ali Tait]

Aye, that's the same as me.

[Martinh]

Does anyone use JRiver with a NAS? - looking for any positive/negatives of doing so.

Cheers,

[AlfaGTV]

Humm, i do. Not sure what you are looking for though?

I store all of my music files on the NAS. Sometimes i use JRiver as a player on my Xonar Essence STX-equipped PC. Other times i use JRivers UPnP server software to deliver files to my UPnP renderer (Bladelius Embla).

And i remote control the whole thing using MyRiver on my iThingy's

//Mike

[Ali Tait]

I use a Drobo connected to the router, then Ethernet to the TFS.

[Martinh]

Humm, i do. Not sure what you are looking for though?...

//Mike

Hi Mike,

At the moment, I'm storing my flacs on my music player PCs HDD. It's a windows 8 machine and I have the on-board 750GB HDD split to have the OS on one partition and the music on the other.

I had the idea to buy a small-ish SSD and put the OS on that, to speed up start up, responsiveness etc. The music files would then go onto a conventional HDD somewhere.

My PC doesn't have space inside for a second drive, so I was thinking that I could do this by attaching a USB HDD or NAS drive.

I'm worried that moving the music to either Ethernet or USB might change the sound, add noise, more complication etc so was wondering what others had experienced.

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

[Martinh]

I use a Drobo connected to the router, then Ethernet to the TFS.

That looks nice, but a bit pricy for me :rolleyes:

[Ali Tait]

They come up all the time secondhand on eBay. Good thing with these is they automatically back themselves up between the hard drives, so if you lose a drive you haven't lost any music.

[AlfaGTV]

Hi Mike,
...snip....
I'm worried that moving the music to either Ethernet or USB might change the sound, add noise, more complication etc so was wondering what others had experienced.

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Ahh, now i understand! :scratch:

:) i think it is a wise move either way, you actually move one of the biggest sources of interference out of the computer. True, you will have traffic on network interfaces rather than SATA/IDE channels.

To my ears, the resulting audio is better, but i haven't made serious comparisons...
It ill leve your computer more quiet, cool and generally more well behaved! :D

Regards /Mike

Edit: USB for tranferring files is fine by me, more than adequate performance and always bit perfect transfers. The same goes for network transfers.
It is when you start using USB for transporting audio streams it tend to misbehave, bad timing(=jitter) and only rudimentary error detection, leaving the guesswork to the receiving end...
:cool:

[realysm42]

Why are people using Wasapi event style instead of standard Wasapi?

[Ammonite Audio]

Why are people using Wasapi event style instead of standard Wasapi?

Good question. I use J River Media Center on my home-built silent mini-PC, feeding audio via USB to a HiFace Evo, and thence to either DAC or digital amplifier. As I understand the hierarchy of streaming stuff, WASAPI Event Style should be pretty much the best (probably on par with ASIO when the hardware supports it); however I am finding consistently that I get a more natural, musical and rewarding sound when I use plain WASAPI, with all other settings the same.

[realysm42]

Interesting, thanks.

[Vincent Kars]

It is basically about buffer management.
In case of WASAPI the driver pushes the data to the audio device.
In case of event style, the audio device pulls the data from the buffer.
Event style often works better with async USB DACs

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WASAPI

[Gazjam]

Have a look here, set your Jriver up this way...
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/436-jriver-media-center-17-detail/

Its a great "baseline" to get you started before you delve in to deeper settings.

[Ammonite Audio]

It is basically about buffer management.
In case of WASAPI the driver pushes the data to the audio device.
In case of event style, the audio device pulls the data from the buffer.
Event style often works better with async USB DACs

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/WASAPI

I know that. The HiFace Evo is async, so WASAPI Event Style should be better, but ordinary WASAPI still results (in my system and to my ears) in more enjoyable and musically satisfying reproduction.

[Martinh]

Have a look here, set your Jriver up this way...
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/436-jriver-media-center-17-detail/

Its a great "baseline" to get you started before you delve in to deeper settings.

Thanks for that Gary,

I think I already had most of the items in the guide covered, except the tip to auto load only JRiver server when used without a display.

Have changed this and it still seems to function correctly.

Cheers,

[laozi]

I've been using foobar2000 for years and I never thought that there could be any better program for music...untill now. Now I am using JRiver.

Thanks...

[Rothchild]

But if you are playing 16 bit audio files and you enable 24 bit output in Jriver settings, you can use the extra bits for digital volume control (I think) without any loss of signal.. as long as you don't go too low on the slider.

I'm pretty confident this is simply not true.

A 16bit file is a 16bit file, adding any 'extra bits' is worthless as they'll be empty!

You can't just invent the 8bits that weren't captured in the first place, all you'll do is make the file larger and the computer therefore more likely to choke on it (not that this is very likely these days either given that we're talking about playing a stereo (2 channel) file.

(My (not so up-to-date) studio computer regularly copes with 50 or channels of audio with processor munching realtime effects such as convolution reverbs quite happlily.)

Potentially, where you might be getting confused is that a lot of audio software now works with 'floating point' maths, which enables gain to be manipulated beyond the range of the converter, this is handy if you're mixing as you can 'clip' a channel in the daw but pull the master down (at some point before it reaches the converters) and there's no distortion. However, if that (over-peak) level makes it through your converters (where it is returned to a 'fixed point' (ie 16bit)) they will distort/clip and things will sound properly horrible.

I'm sure J-River is a very competent audio player but some of the stuff written about it reads like the kind of stuff that I thought had been debunked for quite some time - adding in dead bits for headroom is a prime example!

As for the volume issue, the best solution IMO is to calibrate your room to a standardised SPL (83dB C Weighted Slow at the listening position, with a -20dBFS (RMS) Pink noise source is the Dolby cinema standard) mark this gain setting on your amplifier (with the rest of your gain staging at Unity). Depending on what you listen to it might be worth setting a quieter point too (83dB -20dB is perfect for classical, if you listen to pop and rock you might go for 77dB with the -20dB test tone to compensate for the greater overall loudness).

After that if you play something and it's too loud, (most modern recordings) and you have to turn the amplifier down, write an angry letter to the record label pointing out that it's stupid and uneccesary and insist that they should stop with the overmastering nonsense! ;-)

[NRG]

Padding to 24bits is exactly how the Logitech squeezebox works, in fact they implemented it from the SB Mk1 but only at 20 bits, from the SB2 onwards it's been 24 bits so it ccould be true if JRiver works the same way.

[Rothchild]

Moving the file in to floating point maths will probably allow the software volume control to work with finer resolution but this will not improve the resolution of the file. I will concede that if you want to feel sure that there's no 'bit reduction' going on you should use an analogue volume control (ie the knob on your amplifier) but there is no value to be gained from simply encoding a 16bit fixed file in to a 24bit fixed file, regardless of whether the software volume knob is working in fixed or floating point.

[Vincent Kars]

Maybe I’m stating the obvious but if your DAC is 24 bits, you have to feed it 24 bits otherwise it won’t play.
If you are playing a 16 bit file on a 24 bit DAC, eight zero bytes are added.
In case of JRiver/WASAPI you have to tell this in the DSP studio/output format.
These 8 zero bytes are added on the fly

If we play 16 bits and apply volume control
MSB - LSB
1111111111111111
000000001111111111111111
Yes we do loose resolution

If we do the same on a 24 bit DAC with 16 bit audio
111111111111111100000000
000000001111111111111111
We could indeed chop those 8 zero bits of without loosing resolution
This is 6x8= 48 dB reduction.

However, this is a bit theoretical no DAC is able to resolve 24 bits.
A bit more on volume control can be found here:
http://thewelltemperedcomputer.com/Intro/SQ/VolumeControl.htm

[NRG]

Moving the file in to floating point maths will probably allow the software volume control to work with finer resolution but this will not improve the resolution of the file. I will concede that if you want to feel sure that there's no 'bit reduction' going on you should use an analogue volume control (ie the knob on your amplifier) but there is no value to be gained from simply encoding a 16bit fixed file in to a 24bit fixed file, regardless of whether the software volume knob is working in fixed or floating point.

Well yes thats why its done to provide a digital volume control, it does not meant to improve the resolution. You get about -35db attenuation on the SB before resolution suffers. Personally I never use it and attenuate at the pre-amp.