JRiver Media Center 16.0.178 Update Options

[JimH]

For those who know JRiver Media Center, here's the latest release. I'll start an owners thread soon to interact with our userbase here.

Download link
JRiver forum announcement topic

New Media Center 16 Features

• Play Doctor -- Successor to Play as Radio, it asks you for an artist, genre, etc, then builds a playlist of about 6 hours that includes your request and adds additional tracks. Can add from Last.FM, too. Save as Playcharts. Click on Playing Now to begin.
• DLNA II -- Reorganized "from" and "to" lists in Playing Now. Select your server. Select your destination. Play. Works with the J. River Id. Right click to hide a server.
• DLNA Server as a Library -- Load media from a DLNA Server and use it as if it were a local library.
• Netflix Browsing -- Instant Queue, Browse by Genre, Automatic Full Screen, Support for Media Center Remote, Series Grouping.
• Relational Fields -- Several fields are now relational.
• Artist Images -- View your Artists with artist photos instead of album covers.
• Lip Sync Therapy -- AKA King's Speech. MC16 can adjust your audio to match your video. Alternate to reclock.
• Analyzer DSP plugin -- Can show calibrated frequency information per output channel. May become a visualization in a future build.
• Search II -- Revised search added for Theater View and Gizmo. Fuzzy matching.
• Room Correction -- Improved look and operation.
• And more...

This post has been edited by Garf: Sep 27 2011, 17:40

[pluchon]

JR Media Center is at the forefront of the business for its ability to handfle high sampling frequencies and bit depths. WASAPI vs. ASIO, etc. Stuff of the rarefied audiophile world.

But its Achilles' heel is in the world below. Any tag change from inside JRMC also forces a datestamp change. MediaMonkey is more flexible in this regard. Two options (off by default) allow it both to make its own tag changes *and* to detect tag changes made by similarly capable software while date stamps remain unchanged. You can maintain carefully archived libraries that way.

It's surprising that JRMC still relies on a brute force tracking method while more advanced techniques have been around for a long time. About 10 years ago, Kaspersky's antivirus used to write a "stealth" signature on each file it scanned to fast-detect any future change to that file. You could not see any evidence of that change through Windows Explorer. The file looked untouched. Yet my antitrojan could see the change.

Anyway, there is no need to go through so much trouble for audio files. You can change the size of a file without changing its date. Any file manager that compares folders side by side will flag two files identical in name and date but different in size (for example, Fastlynx, Laplink, PowerDesk, FolderMatch do that).

So I bought MM for its file handling sophistication. And I am contemplating JRMC for experimenting in the world beyond 44.1/16. It's OK to reward two great teams, but not to straddle several horses. Foobar is the latest horse I am straddling, after I discovered its amazing ABXing ability today. But I don't mind ABXing separately, since it's a lab activity separate from regular listening.

This post has been edited by pluchon: Mar 14 2012, 05:15

[FasterThanEver]

Any tag change from inside JRMC also forces a datestamp change.

It's surprising that JRMC still relies on a brute force tracking method while more advanced techniques have been around for a long time. About 10 years ago, Kaspersky's antivirus used to write a "stealth" signature on each file it scanned to fast-detect any future change to that file. You could not see any evidence of that change through Windows Explorer. The file looked untouched. Yet my antitrojan could see the change.

I can't imagine why I would want any program to change a file and not force a timestamp change. I want to see a meaningful value when I look at a file's modified time in Windows Explorer. My backup software relies on the date/time modified info for incremental backups. I avoid any software that subverts the standard behavior.

Your personal preference may be for a tag editor that subverts the standard file timestamp mechanism. That fact that JRiver behaves as a Windows program should is evidence of good design.

Bill