JRiver Media Center Settings and Tips Section
 

OK I would like this section to include information on settings, features remote access, drivers for DACS, and server configuration etc.

1 Maybe we can include a quick setup section
2 Detailed settings and best practices
3 Misc Options and features
4 Advanced networking Music Server setup
5 And those hard to find undocumented tweaks as well
6 Section to post JRiver Media Center bench mark scores

I realize most all of this information is in the online help section, but for many including me it is a HUGE list to go through.

We may also include preferred settings, drivers etc for the DACS many of us use, well at least the popular ones.

I will try and get some time to add to to this what I have learned about the JRiver Media Center and the IOS and other remote apps as well.

Lastly why even use this application some may ask, ther are others. Well I have sound it to be sych a stable better application, feature rich yes, lot of settings to tweak yes. But is is really tailored quite nice for use Audioplile type that LOVE this stuff! :)

Media Center has the leading engine for audiophile use. All data paths within the program (beginning with MC15.0.101) are 64 bit. Support for lossless formats includes APE, FLAC, Windows Media Lossless, and Apple Lossless. (WAV files can also be used, but the output is identical to any lossless format, so we recommend using lossless compression.)
Output via Direct Sound, Wave Out, ASIO, or WASAPI (Vista and above).
MC also supports DirectShow.
MC's DSP Studio in Playback Options allows re-sampling at 48Khz, 96Khz, and above.
Other audiophile credentials of the JRiver audio engine include:

• First to embrace lossless compression. Matt Ashland, J. River's CTO, is also the author of Monkey's Audio (APE).
• First to use a high precision floating point data chain for all audio
• First to support gapless and cross-fading playback
• First to implement the Replay Gain standard (a high-quality system to provide playback of varying tracks at the same volume)
• First to natively support ASIO (a quality-orientated way to talk to a soundcard)
• Full support of LAME gapless information
• Inclusion of high quality DSP filters, like the highest quality resampler available

Happy streaming all :thumbsup:

Dave... I'll make it a Sticky :ok:

OK sounds Great so as far as hardware goes I would like to offer a few tips on settings on machines etc to help folks make sure that the laptops and or desktop PCs are running a little faster. of course faster CPU's, more ram, bigger and faster speed hard drives with larger cache memory and SSD and or raid drives are a huge plus.

But here is a lit of things to tweak. But before we start create a new custom restore point to save your settings, just in case a mistake is made and you need to go back.

1 Make sure you right click on the Computer icon on win7 or go to control panel and all items.

Starting Tip, if you have not already you may want to go to your user icon and turn off all that UAC junk of Windows asking you everything you do are you sure before we begin.

A) Select System, click next on Advanced System Settings, on the remote access tab un-check allow remote.

B) Now click on the advanced Tab and then select the performance button. At a minimum turn off all the fade and animation, but for best performance select the radio button for Adjust for best performance, Next click on the Advanced tab and then the Change button for Virtual memory. This is a place almost nobody tweaks and if overs a most bang for the buck. Un-check Automatically manage and select custom. If you only have a single hard drive this applies. You will see a recommended starting amount, if you had this setting set to custom and you added ram you need to go back and reconfig since the registry in Windows needs to be told the new swap size. I try to go at or slightly above the starting point Windows is asking for, then double it on the Maximum field. NOTE make sure your hard drive has plenty of free space. Any drive at 80% full get degraded in a hurry and this will eat more space.

If you have a real 2nd hard drive not a partition on the 1st drive repeat this process on the 2nd drive. it will boost the system's performance. Save these settings and it should ask for a restart in most cases.

2 Back into the control panel display all items

A) Make sure power is set to High Performance and never sleep, next go the advanced tab and look at the hard drive sleep settings, the default is 20 minutes, click back towards 0 and it will say never, no save and save and back to the Control Panel.

B) Now we should go into the Sync Center and disable offline Folders, this is HUGE in terms of disc IO use. So get it off and it will ask for a restart, you can say later.

C) Now we can go back to the System icon on Control panel and open it then select Device manager. On the USB section expand it all and you should go to each and every USB HUB and on the power management tab disable them all so that uisb runs at max speed and wont sleep. , I also like to to the same for the Network card(s) as well.

I could care less about saving 30 cents of power, I want all I can squeeze from the machine. :)

There are 100s of more tips and tweaks I can give you but a few things to look at are:

Right click on the computer icon in the start menu or on the desktop and select Manage. On the left you will see Sceduled Task, A lot of spyware gets in this place to run at times I find these days, and then there is all the Adobe, and Google auto check junk, get rid of it on a music machine. You can always do this when you want to.

And last tip for now, go to the services and turn off and set to Disable all services that are not a neccisity sucjh as Adobe Flash, Adobe Acorbat, Goggle Updater etc. Also I Disable remote registry too. This is most times only on win7 PRO systems.

I highly recommend that you machine is Windows 64 PRO not 32 bit and you run 8 gigs + of ram, 4-6 is OK but the Media Center really sings at 8+ with at least an i3 and above cpu or modern quad and above AMD CPU. Make sure a modern 7200 rpm hard drive with a large cache memory is the drive type too.

I do seem that the new version 19 with the play from ram is a great feature for the high-end machines 8 gigs + ram. This will also cut down on Media Center accessing the drive.

See hard drives are MS Milli seconds in terms of speed.
Ram is NS Nano seconds 1 Billionth compared to 1 Millionth of a second and of course there are many speeds and type of ram too.
So we want to minimize drive IO as much as possible with Jriver. So that means turning stuff off not needed for a music machine and making JRiver the Boss and main app of focus

Personally if you have a high-end laptop or a desktop have a drive or raid drives for the Operating system, and install media player and all you music on the 2nd drive or a 2nd raid set.

The whole point it to diminish hard drive IO and read writes to the drive. When you increase the swap file in the above step you are setting aside a larger foot printer for the OS, drivers, apps etc to be able to write to the slower hard drive memory space when it needs to page after ram is full.

After you make all these changes you should run a 3rd party tools like CC Cleaner and or the disc cleanup util too after CC Cleaner to remove most all temp trash files etc. There are about 11 places that are hidden to remove the temp, misc temp, trash bad files etc. But it is to risky to try and detail all this in this topic without hands on training and you could hurt the machine if you delete the wrong items.

After you have done all you tweaks, restarts and cleanup now defrag the drive or drives and then restart and now grab a favorite beverage and lets stream some great tunes that that high-end gear.

As you keep adding to the database of music make sure you defrag on a regular basis and above all else.

BACKUP TO AN EXTERNAL DRIVE EVERYTHING :yes:

Enjoy :thumbsup:

The main reason I chose Audirvana Plus over JRiver Media Center is I did not want to be forced to go through the steep learning curve for the JRiver. I will follow this thread often to learn how to set up JRiver and may make the switch. How about a JRiver primer of how to tweak for initial set up that will provide 90% plus of the sound quality improvements and when the user becomes more knowledgable and inquisitive they can then tweak further. Also how to assimilate the user's music library. Sort of an on-line course?

I'll pitch in here later tonight. Still trying to get through a zzzzzzzz off site Board meeting, which ends this afternoon.

JRiver for Dummies :confused-18:

I suppose you are running JRiver on a Mac since you mentioned A+. JRMC19 was an absolute breeze to install and set up on my Mac mini. Dumped 1.87 TB into database. Every album art displayed, JRemote controlling via iPad. It was intuitive to set up with little internet guidance and poking around, few clicks here and there. My only misstep was changing the skin which caused digital clicks when playing certain files (and even then I was given and ignored JRiver's warning that the skin was incapable with my system). Changed skin to something else, all is good. The JRemote/JRMC UI is top notch and really unbelievable for the nominal grand total of $60. I was using Pure Music previously. The iPad app sold me on JRiver. I wouldn't hesitate to jump in and try it out. They allow a free two week trial period.

Apple provides a free iPad app to control iTunes which has more functionality than jRemote. I mainly stopped using it because Pure Music was making iTunes sluggish and unresponsive.

Is anyone using JRiver as a DLNA media server and can comment on the settings you've found to work best? I've been tinkering with the output format between converting to 24-bit PCM in JRiver and high bandwidth MP3. The 24-Bit PCM seems to sound better than the high bandwidth MP3 but the volume levels are different (with PCM being considerably louder). (The volume being louder is going to make it sound better)

If anyone out there is using jRiver as a DLNA server (especially with a PWD) I'd love to see your configuration.

That's a great start, Dave, and a big help, particularly since my give-JRiver-a-try-on-my-home-office-system experience has convinced me to add a dedicated music server to the main system. Thanks.