OK. I am befuddled. I am on a train at the moment on a wireless connection on my laptop, browsing about CQC of course.
Let me focus on J.River Media Center integration for a moment. The J. River website says J. River Media Center has iPOD support, and can play songs purchased via the iTunes music store. So, if this is the case, can my entire iTunes music library be accessed and played via J. River? And if this is the case, can I access my entire iTunes library via the CQC Interface Viewer media repository widgets? Does that allow me to then select and stream my entire iTunes library over the network?
So I can fully integrate my iTunes music library from the CQC Interface viewer if I install the J. River MC on the PC in any particular room?
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CQC uses J.River purely as a ripping and metadata retrieval system. You can rip your CDs and get the metadata, using J.River, and then you can export that informationto CQC which imports it. So CQC has no control over J.River as a player or anything of that nature. We are just getting data from it.
You can continue to use J.River to do whatever you want, and it won't affect CQC's access to the ripped media files or anything (unless you try to update a file while some other player has it open, in which case JR wouldn't be able to write to the file.) But we cannot tell JR to do anything or access any of its functionality related to interfacing to portable devices or anything like that.
Dean Roddey
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I see. I guess I was thinking that J. River somehow creates or reads metadata for the iPod media it can import and play, like iTunes Music Store downloaded tunes, and that CQC could access that data. I was looking for a way to integrate my extensive iTunes library with CQC and I thought this path might have worked.
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Are there any plans to integrate iPod/iTunes into CQC? It seems like more and more companies are adding products to their lineup to do this, although I have no idea how well or what features are integrated.
MikeW
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I had asked Dean about the Ipod stuff before and I'm sure one day he will try to add support, most of the companies I have seen integrate it have a special dock or something that allows a rs-232 connection to the Ipod..rs232 protocols can be found on the internet and as well I once seena small adapter for sale but can't recall the website.
Russounds current support is using the "Navipod"
http://www.tentechnology.com/products/pr...d_gen2.php
Basically all you can do with this is send IR to the ipod and play, stop. ffwd rewing etc but no support for seeing your playlists or the artist/track data which is probably he very most important thing.
Russound has another product that should be out soon and from what I have been told it will be their own dock and probably run on the RNET protocol and you will be able to see Artist/Track/Album on the keypads and as well see your playlists..this is what I have been told anyways.
Basically unless you have a serial connection to the Ipod or can communicate over the Ipod firewire cable 2 way I'm not sure how else you could access playlists and album data.
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Once we get our repository in place, we can look at some of these types of things. I assume we'll have to export the media data to some format that the iPod understands. The metadata will be easy of course. The media data might be harder. THis is another argument for having a WMA-only repository, because then there's just one source format to have to be able to convert from in order to export to various other devices as required.
Dean Roddey
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Hey Dean....is there a reason a full driver can't be written for J. River? Transport, playlists, and all that? Is it because the API is C++/C#?
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It's a COM interface, and I have serious doubts as to whether that would work because our drivers run in a service because it would effectively load JR into the driver as an in process server (I think.) It's not been fully explored so I can't say for sure.
Dean Roddey
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Dean Roddey Wrote:THis is another argument for having a WMA-only repository, because then there's just one source format to have to be able to convert from in order to export to various other devices as required.
I don't understand the choice of WMA. Why not make a Mp3-only repository. Every portable and software player plays Mp3, not WMA. Having an ACC-only repository wouldn't make sense either.
Even for a business choice why would choice WMA. You are forcing people to have 2 libraries. One for CQC and the other for an Ipod. The Ipod is the most popular portable player.
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MP3 is a lossy format. The upside of WMA is that you can batch transcode into mp3 format and it doesn't take up much additional room.
I know for me personally, i'm reripping all of my 400 CDs because I ripped to mp3 first, and now that i've upgraded my system i can tell the difference between lossless and lossy. Certainly, formats like .FLAC would have been nicer, but that's far far far from a standard recognized by anything else, so not the right choice if you're going to only pick one.
