Help: MediaMonkey to JRiver?

vcwatkins

MediaMonkey has been slowing down and otherwise acting buggy lately. I have read that over 100k files can cause MM to start to have problems. I'm wondering if I should migrate over to JRiver now and would appreciate any advice.

Right now, my main library looks to be 127k files, 2.5tb, and is stored on a 4tb USB3.0 drive wired to main office PC. I haven't ripped a fraction of the vinyl that I would like to get done (@24-96), so I'll need quite a bit more room to grow. The collection is backed up 1x to a WD NAS.

So my questions are:

• Is JRiver preferred over MMGold for large collections? If not, other recs?
• How hard is the migration?
• Do I just delete the MM library and rebuild using JR?
• Any tips on the migration, cleaning up files, or changing file/directory structure before building JR? Most has been ripped with MM or dbPowerAmp and I've tried to stay consistent. But I rarely go directly to the folders to edit anything, so I'm not sure how likely it is that I have tons of minor problems, or any critical problems that need to be fixed first. Should I just build in JR and see where that gets me, and try to fix everything within JR after the build?
• How long is the build likely to take?
• How will JR handle artwork, comments, ratings?
• If I add a MacMini, will it run JR to fetch songs on the network shared library? Do I have to build a whole second JR system and library on the MacMini (main one on office PC)?

Sorry to be so ignorant - MM has been so easy til now that I didn't worry about this stuff and am not informed at all.

Thanks for any help,
Craig

cascius

I haven't played much with jriver over the last few years, but I can tell you that around 10 years ago they were already optimizing their database with libraries of over 500k tracks. I can only imagine that it should handle your library with ease. You can get a 30 day trial I think, why don't you just give it a shot?

I'm not sure you have the storage to do so, but you could always copy your library to another folder, import it in JR and play with it. This way you have a backup.

vcwatkins

Great suggestion. Thanks, @cascius.

cascius

By the way. As long as MM saved all your tagging to ID3 tags, JR will import them nicely.

vc69

Yup, just let jriver build it's own db by pointing it at your files. You can give it a try for free and run it without bailing on MM until you are sure you like it.
As an aside, have you tried deleting your old MM db and rebuilding it? There might be some corruption in the db causing your buggy-ness.

vcwatkins

vc69 wrote: »

Yup, just let jriver build it's own db by pointing it at your files. You can give it a try for free and run it without bailing on MM until you are sure you like it.
As an aside, have you tried deleting your old MM db and rebuilding it? There might be some corruption in the db causing your buggy-ness.

No, haven't tried rebuilding MM. I'll give it a shot while I download JR and look around. Thanks guys!

Emlyn

One of the things JRiver excels at is file management and customizations for music library management. But, it does take a while to figure out what it is capable of. To get started, I'd recommend copying 50 albums or so to a separate folder and pointing JRiver only at that folder. Learn how things work with JRiver before using it with your whole media library. I've found it to be very stable, but it does take a while to learn.

I switched from Media Monkey and iTunes several years ago. The transition was without major problems, but it did take a while to figure out what JRiver is capable of. It is not short of options! I have a sense I'm only using half of what it can do.

I'm not sure how it handles ratings that are placed by another program as I've never paid attention to that feature. One problem I did have was tagging artwork when a track has a long file name ending with a punctuation mark of some sort. That was a head scratcher, but I finally figured out that the file name was the problem on a handful of tracks. JRiver allows a user to set up any file naming convention. I use the music folder name/artist name/album name/track # plus track name. As long as the tagging is done consistently, file management is a breeze this way.

If you find you like how JRiver works after playing with it for a while, I'd recommend setting it up to import all of the files in your music folder to its library structure, then manage the files after that. I'm at around 30K tracks in mine. It won't move tracks around into different folder structures unless you tell the program to do that. I would recommend using one program exclusively though once you settle on what works best for you. Easier to manage things that way.

vcwatkins

Very helpful! Many thanks, @Emlyn.

cascius

Since Emlyn mentioned how you might run into an issue with ratings i'll add my 2 cents: transferring ratings rarely happens smoothly with any software out there.

Easy fix: create m3u playlists in MM for each rating (5 stars, 4 stars...) and then import those into JR. Then you can just select all tracks within that Playlist and rate them accordingly. Quick, painless process.

JR is indeed extremely powerful. You can create your own tags (i.e. sub-genres), use regular expressions inside tags, import all sort of track info from allmusic.Com through a plugin, etc...

Best of all, any tagging is properly saved inside the music file.

I used to spend a lot of time in JR and loved it. I had made a few themes for it back in the day. It was fun

vcwatkins

Gotcha, thanks cascius!

bikerboy

I started using Jriver earlier this year after using MM for years and haven't had many problems. I think it sounds better than MM. I don't use ratings so can't help you there. You don't need to wipe anything. Let Jriver find your music and create the dll files like MM to use the music on your hard drive. The only thing I haven't figured out is how to remove the "The" in "The Rolling Stones" ect so it will be in the R list, not in the T list. I also want to figure out how to get Jriver to send DSD to my dac and hear if that sounds better.

Emlyn

It's not easy to figure out how to set it to ignore the "The" prefixes, but once you see how it makes sense from a data management perspective:

Try "Tools - Options - Tree & View - Sorting" and check the box for "Ignore articles (a, an, the)

Once I saw that I had to smack myself on the forehead and say "D'oh" because I'd been trying to figure it out and been annoyed for a couple of weeks. There are a lot of options!

vcwatkins

Many thanks guys! Hope to accomplish this weekend.
Craig

bikerboy

Thanks Emlyn! I'll look into that. Jriver has soo much stuff that it can be overwhelming at times. But with the Gizmo app on my LG phone it is great seeing whats playing or changing the song. Hard to use a cdp anymore.

vcwatkins

Well, that was about as easy as it gets. Took 2.5 hours to import everything. Ratings came through. All the art is there. Just need to clean up a few things as expected. I'll be purchasing the program along with a mobile app.

Do most use the JRemote?

Many thanks to those who responded,
Craig

vcwatkins

Gotcha. I have an old ipad I can dedicate. Thanks.

vc69

jremote works great. Superior to the Logitech software I use in every way.