J. river for Linux

[brubacca]

Anyone out in Emotivaland use J River for Linux?
What version of Linux are you using?
I have a small media pc built on windows and it is not performing to my taste. I can't get my USB Dac to work after multiple attempts. I am so sick of the windows thing. I moved an old squeezebox touch over to the DAC and it works flawlessly.

I put a coule hours into making the PC recognize the DAC, but no joy .

[copperpipe]

I just use vlc. J River does not look like it belongs on a linux system (in terms of appearance, look and feel etc), and I find it needlessly complex; plus you need to pay for it

I prefer simple, but that might not work for you.

[brubacca]

Actually simple is what I am looking for. I just found something that I had been trying a couple of years ago called Daphile Linux. It was Very Simple. I think I may give that a shot again. I'll image my windows machine and then try loading Daphile. The issues I had with it a couple of years ago were sound card hardware related.

[copperpipe]

It's totally your call of course, but I've been there before, testing all these small / custom distros. I think if you stick to the major ones (redhat, suse, debian) and then maybe one level down from that (so fedora, centos, x/k/l/ubuntu or mint etc) then you have the best experience; well supported, a large community for forum support, frequent updates, stable etc.

In my experience, if your hardware / software doesn't work on a recent version of ubuntu or fedora, then it's not going to work at all on any distro.

[cburbs]

What usb dac?

Do you need to install & download a windows driver for it?

Does it show up in the device manager?

[brubacca]

Schitt Gungnir Multibit.

It says that windows should download the driver automatically. Which in my case it does, but there is a driver error and the device will not start. I tried multiple ways to load both versions of the driver on their website and the driver will not load. I also went into devices and removed all USB devices, then throws to load each driver. I tried my dedicated PC all three back ports and one of the front ports. Then I got my laptop and repeated all steps above. Again no joy.

I spent way too long on this. Just to verify that the USB worked I brought over my Squeezebox touch and it worked immediately.

I have had other DAC products working on this machine. I used (before this) both the Meridian Explorer and a Musical Fidelity V-Link2. (Yes the Meridian Drivers were removed).

I guess the last thing to try is removing all USB devices. Booting into safe mode and loading the driver there. This is a headless install and if I go to that grief I am thinking just load Vortexbox or Daphile.

Yes to device manager, but error the device will not start.

[cburbs]

What OS version?

[brubacca]

Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit with all the latest updates loaded.

I also tried to load the drivers by right clicking the file and Running as Administrator...

[cburbs]

Did you try the following - Alternate drivers (if you have trouble with the above): Schiit USB Gen2 Drivers 1.03 (For XP, 7, and 8)
from there page - schiit.com/drivers looks like there is a 1.03 and 1.16 driver.

Also note - Connect the DAC with a standard USB A-B cable, 2M or less in length, with true USB 2.0 rating—not 1.1 or 3.0

[brubacca]

I tried whatever two were on the download page. I am also using a Schiit USB cable.. They only thing I really didn't try was putting the Wyred in between.

When the same exact thing happened on two machines and when the cable worked with the Squeezebox Touch I kind of gave up. I may give it one more try, but as I am looking at the latest build pf Daphile and seeing some of the growth of the product I am very tempted to load up a USB key and try it.

[PAC]

I am using J river for Linux on a laptop that I have in my equipment rack. I feel they work very well together. Initially, I used Trusty Tahr 14.04 LTS which worked very well. There are aspects of Linux that I had to learn with the switch from Windows to Ubuntu. Especially, use of the "terminal" which is like the "command prompt" in Windows. It was all fairly straightforward and there are many examples, tips, and suggestions on the web to help you along. The more I use Linux, the less I like Windows. (although Windows 10 is working well for me and seems very stable - but I do not use it for J river) Several months ago, I upgraded to Wiley Wherewolf 15.10 which works equally as well with J river 21.0.23. I do not ever have to touch the laptop as I have Wake on LAN to turn it on and I use IR to turn on the XMC-1. Gizmo works very well with the J river. The USB is always recognized by the laptop as long as I turn on the XMC first and then the laptop. I have lost USB recognition when I turned off the XMC-1 AND the rear power switch. A reboot of the XMC-1 with the laptop off fixes the condition for some reason I don't know. I leave my XMC-1 in a low power off state when not at home - that is why I use IR (through category 5 cable and IR block) All in All I am very pleased with J river and Ubuntu - Ubuntu seems to be very well supported.

[cburbs]

Odd I know I have had issues that just required a reboot after adding a dac/driver.

shouldn't be that difficult to setup....

[brubacca]

Spent more time on this last night. Rebooted, removed, booted in to safe mode. Tried several tricks, but to no avail.

I promise you I am no novice at this. I have loaded many systems over the years starting with DOS 4.0. Possibly this is a hardware issue. I'll update if I discover this.

This Operating System has only seconds to live.

[cburbs]

Yes odd it doesn't work on either machine. Have you reached out to them for support at all?

Last thing I would try is if you have a friend with a machine and see if it works that way - last resort but you never know.

[brubacca]

I will have time to load the new OS on this mini pc this weekend. I can try my laptop again with the wyred in the chain. Also I should be able to get the new OS on the dedicated machine. The saga continues.

[brubacca]

Last update on this thread. I loaded the latest version of daphile linux. It worked immediately with usb on the Gungnir DAC no fuss.

So i can only conclude that my issue with Windows was a software issue.