J.River Setup Vista

J.River Setup for Windows Vista :

Introduction

These instructions are for setting up J.River to work with Windows Vista. There are separate instructions for setting up

J.River for Windows XP.

There are two versions of J.River available,

Media Jukebox is completely free and works extremely well for most music users, with one caveat when used with Windows Vista. The only way to achieve bit-accurate playback and automatic sample-rate changes is to install the

ASIO4ALL driver. This is a fairly complex installation and is only recommended for advanced users.

Media Center is a $50 download (with a 30-day free trial period) and offers multiple music libraries (which are useful for organizing large collections of music), along with extensive support for both videos and photos (making it a complete playback center for all of your computer-based media). Perhaps even more importantly for Windows Vista users is that beginning with version 14, J.River Media Center also offers support for WASAPI, which is a newer audio interface between the operating system and the music player. Installation of WASAPI with Vista and J.River Media Center is very straightforward and requires no third-party software.

Setup

Once you have downloaded and installed J.River, select "Tools - Options" and then highlight "CD & DVD" in the left-hand column. Make sure to check "Use digital playback of audio CDs" under the "General" section. Then under the "CD Ripping" section click on "Advanced Ripping Options..."

In the upper left corner is a section for your ROM drive. Under "Copy mode:" select "Secure" from the drop-down list. This will ensure that error correction is applied for bit-perfect ripping. Then click the "OK" button to return to the "Options" window.

From the "Options - Playback" window, click on "DSP & output format..."

In the left hand column, make sure that all of the check boxes are cleared, except for "Output Format". This will avoid the use of any signal processing that may degrade the playback quality of your music files. For the "Output Format" settings, be sure to set the "Bit Depth" drop-down menu to "24-bit". Use the defaults for the rest of the settings.

Then select "Encoding" from the left-hand column and click on "Encoder" to see a drop-down list of choices.

If you have plenty of disc space, choose "Uncompressed Wave". To save about 40% on your music file sizes, or if you wish to export your music library for use with other programs, choose "FLAC Encoding". The resultant files will have the metadata (such as the song titles) embedded in them, making them more easily portable.

Next, select "Playback" from the column on the left-hand side. Select "Windows Audio Session API (WASAPI)" from the drop-down list for "Output Mode:".

Then select "Output mode settings..." and select your Ayre USB D/A converter from the drop-down list under "Device:". Then be sure to check the box for "Open device for exclusive access" and clear the box for "Present 24-bit data in a 32-bit package (required by some hardware)".

For standard installations you are done!

ASIO4ALL Kernel Streaming

(Recommended for advanced users only. However, when using the free version of Media Jukebox with Windows Vista, Direct Sound will require manual sample-rate switching to deliver bit-perfect audio to your Ayre USB D/A converter. Therefore ASIO4ALL is recommended with this combination of software.)

If you have chosen to use the ASIO4ALL kernel streaming DLL, you should have already installed the ASIO4ALL DLL driver (see "Windows XP ASIO4ALL Setup").

To use ASIO4ALL with J.River go to "Options - Playback". Under the drop-down list for "Output Mode:" select "ASIO".

Next click on "Output mode settings..." and select the ASIO4ALL driver from the drop-down list under "Device".

There is a box where you may type in the "Channel offset". This tells the ASIO4ALL driver which audio device should be used for playback.

Determining the correct number for "Channel offset:" can be a somewhat tricky when using J.River. If you have no other soundcards or audio devices installed, you may leave it at the default setting of "0". If you have more than one sound device installed (most computers have built-in soundcards), then there are two strategies for determining the correct channel offset number.

The first is to follow the suggestion offered in the "ASIO Settings" window and simply use trial and error.

The second way is to use the ASIO4ALL control panel to determine the correct channel offset. The difficulty here is that the only way to access the ASIO4ALL control panel through J.River is when the program is playing a music file. (At this point it doesn't matter if you can hear music playing back or not.) If a music file is playing and everything is configured correctly an ASIO4ALL icon will appear in your system tool tray, near the clock in the lower right corner of your monitor. Double-click on this icon to bring up the ASIO4ALL control panel.

The ASIO4ALL control panel lists each sound device that is installed in your system. You can select whether or not to route each sound device through the ASIO4ALL driver by clicking the button next to each device. When the device is selected, the left side of the button will light up. When the device is deselected, the left side of the button will be grayed out.

Select only the Ayre USB D/A converter, and de-select any other audio devices.

Click on the "Wrench" icon to access the advanced section of the control panel. Click on the name of the device you wish to configure and it will be highlighted.

For the Ayre USB D/A converters, be sure to clear the checkboxes "Always Resample 44.1kHz <-> 48kHz" and "Force WDM Driver to 16 Bit". This will ensure that the data sent to your audio device is bit-perfect.

NOTE: If you are using more than one music player program, the ASIO4ALL DLL must be separately configured from within each program. Changes to the settings made from within one program do not carry over to any other program.

Close the ASIO4ALL Control Panel and return to "ASIO Settings" window in J.River.

If the Ayre USB D/A converter is the only device routed through the ASIO4ALL driver, then the "Channel offset:" number should be set to "0".

This completes the setup of ASIO4ALL for J.River.