JRMC for Mac versus Win7/Boot Camp

[tseipel]

Good afternoon,

 

I recently purchased a 13" Retina MacBook Pro. My encoding workstation and music server are both Windows 7-based machines. I use dBpoweramp encode my music in both Lossless FLAC and Apple Lossless, the latter of which I use with iTunes to transfer/transcode to my Shuffle. I use JRMC, and to a lesser degree dBpoweramp, to edit my metadata and embed album art.

 

This leads to my question: What are folks' thoughts on using JRMC for Mac for metadata editing and embedding album artwork versus using JRMC/dBpoweramp in Windows 7 via Boot Camp? I currently have licenses for JRMC and dBpoweramp. I would have to purchase either JRMC for Mac or a copy of Windows 7.

 

Any input would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Tim

[wgscott]

I would wait and buy a copy of Windows 10 when available if you go that way. But if it were me, I would want to run OS X, and buy a mac-compatible version of JRiver.

[tseipel]

Thank you for your reply wgscott. Would you be willing to provide your rationale for your comments? Alternatively, would you be willing to share how you edit your metadata and embed album artwork on your Mac?

 

Cheers,

Tim

[Paul R]

I tend to do all my metadata editing at RIP or first inclusion time, so I do most of it with XLD on the Mac. It's free, it's good, and it is easy. Does a great job of finding album artwork and so forth.

 

So, I would go with a copy of JRMC on MacOS. It's completely compatible with your Windows versions. Two recommendations though:

 

RIP into AIFF format. Both iTunes and JRMC use that format flawlessly, and iTunes will transcode to your iPod Shuffle for you seamlessly. Only one copy of the media file that way - makes for much easier backups!

 

Secondly, you can probably share the medial files from your Windows machine, or you can use the Mac JRMC version to just access and play files from the library on your Windows Machine. (Or vice versa.)

 

Yours,

-Paul

[tseipel]

Thanks Paul. I have been leaning toward the JRMC for Mac route. I do the vast majority of metadata editing at the time of rip, but i still have thousands of files that I need to correct (read: obsessive-compulsively correct capitalization and the genre, date, and grouping fields).

 

I use Lossless FLAC because I also have a modified Astell & Kern AK100, which never played nice with my ALAC/AIFF files. Moreover, I've found the metadata fields in FLAC files to be more logical (to me at least) than their ALAC/AIFF counterparts (e.g., Album Artist Sort versus Album Artists Sort Order, etc.).

[Paul R]

Thanks Paul. I have been leaning toward the JRMC for Mac route. I do the vast majority of metadata editing at the time of rip, but i still have thousands of files that I need to correct (read: obsessive-compulsively correct capitalization and the genre, date, and grouping fields).

 

I use Lossless FLAC because I also have a modified Astell & Kern AK100, which never played nice with my ALAC/AIFF files. Moreover, I've found the metadata fields in FLAC files to be more logical (to me at least) than their ALAC/AIFF counterparts (e.g., Album Artist Sort versus Album Artists Sort Order, etc.).

 

I can see that. Might look into XLD though. To me it is far easier than using JRMC or dbPowerAmp, but it may be just a case of liking what I am used to, and it fits into the way I store media files.

 

I can usually just point XLD at an entire folder, and from it is trivial to transcode, edit, or whatever I need to do. The only thing it has a bit of trouble with is editing or creating custom metadata fields, which I do for some of my classical collection. JRMC handles that bit a little better, I think.

[tseipel]

I can see that. Might look into XLD though. To me it is far easier than using JRMC or dbPowerAmp, but it may be just a case of liking what I am used to, and it fits into the way I store media files.

 

I can usually just point XLD at an entire folder, and from it is trivial to transcode, edit, or whatever I need to do. The only thing it has a bit of trouble with is editing or creating custom metadata fields, which I do for some of my classical collection. JRMC handles that bit a little better, I think.

 

Sounds good on all fronts Paul. I appreciate the information re: XLD.

 

Take care,

Tim

[Antoine]

Both wgscott and Paul.Raulerson don't use JRiver. I know a lot of people who've steered away from JRiver on Mac (on a forum I frequently visit, the devialetchat forum). It's not stable. Also check out their forum, to see what problems are current.

[mwheelerk]

Seriously

[Paul R]

Really?! You really just went there? Gads...

 

 

Both wgscott and Paul.Raulerson don't use JRiver. I know a lot of people who've steered away from JRiver on Mac (on a forum I frequently visit, the devialetchat forum). It's not stable. Also check out their forum, to see what problems are current.

[kumakuma]

Both wgscott and Paul.Raulerson don't use JRiver. I know a lot of people who've steered away from JRiver on Mac (on a forum I frequently visit, the devialetchat forum). It's not stable. Also check out their forum, to see what problems are current.

 

I've been using JRiver on the Mac platform for years and haven't had any problem with stability. The only difference as far as I can tell is that the Mac version doesn't yet support video files. Other than that, no problems at all. BTW, my JRiver library contains 70,000+ files scattered across multiple external drives and it works fine both from my desktop Mac and from my MacMini acting as client accessing the desktop library over a WiFi network. It also transcodes PCM files for my DSD DAC on the fly with absolutely no issues at all.

[Paul R]

I've been using JRiver on the Mac platform for years and haven't had any problem with stability. The only difference as far as I can tell is that the Mac version doesn't yet support video files. Other than that, no problems at all. BTW, my JRiver library contains 70,000+ files scattered across multiple external drives and it works fine both from my desktop Mac and from my MacMini acting as client accessing the desktop library over a WiFi network. It also transcodes PCM files for my DSD DAC on the fly with absolutely no issues at all.

 

Did you know the newest versions support video now? (grin) It's really nice...