JRiver Media Center Discussion

If your streamer does UPNP you can use JRiver to send the signal to the streamer for local files. That's what I do with mine.

 

Nope. Good idea though.

 

I run JRMC on a Pi2AES, connect to it with JRMC running on a mac over remote library or whatever the feature is called, and I'm very happy with how well it works playing flacs and alacs from my NAS.

 

I know we have a lot of Jriver folks, and I know we have more than a few folks on various Linux distros. How much overlap is there though? Jriver seems to be fairly well supported on the biggest distros (namely Debian-based Ubuntu, Mint, etc). I have been running build 25 for the last year on Manjaro (Arch based) and have had a fairly stable experience. I am thinking about moving to the latest build 29 but not sure what it will actually get me. I'm not using any of the Cloud or Streaming functionality as it stands, and that's what the dev team seems to be mostly focused on with the newest releases.

Any folks running newer than 26 on Windows feel free to chime in too.

 

I have demoed Roon in a one box and two box config. Two box sounds better to me and just a sliver behind Jriver (in sound quality) in my one box pc setup.

Has anyone setup Jriver as a DLNA server on one computer then used another as the target for DLNA playback?

Did it sound noticeable better than a one box Jriver setup? And if compared to Roon 2 box, which did you prefer for sound quality?

Trying to determine if there is a benefit before I press another pc into service and try to get dlna to work. THX!

 

Not another pc, but I had a Sonnet Hermes that I was streaming music to from my laptop/Jriver. I did think it sounded better. The Hermes is supposed to be Roon optimized, but as I do not have Roon I had a friend flash Volumio onto it, but just as the backbone to have it running. My laptop did the rest.

 

JRiver sent me a notice about upgrading to V31, stating some online services would be going away on older versions like my V26. Seems that would not impact me, cuz I could care less about cover art or cd lookup options.

Question for Windoze users, Is there an audible sound difference / improvement going to V31 from an older version like my 26?

I could have sworn I heard an improvement from 23 or so to 26 when I last upgraded, but it could have all been in my head.

 

From this page https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=132329.0

Assuming you are set up for bit perfect, the version of JRiver should not matter.

 

Thanks Allan. Yes, I know it should not matter in bit perfect mode and I strictly use ASIO. Yet, I know my speaker room interface is not perfect so I do use DSP, not Jriver, but Reaper's EQ VST plugin (exclusive mode engaged).

I suppose when all is said and done, the differences are minute regardless of straight bypass vs using any sort of dsp. The dsp is going to have a much greater effect. One of the reasons I do not use Jrivers is SQ and lack of easy to use flexibility on the parametric side.

 

ReaEQ looks interesting. Thanks for the tip.

 

I just upgraded from MC29 to 31 for the integrated prime video theater mode feature, however, the audio is definitely different from 29. I'm not sure if it's outright better or worse, but it's different. I don't use any dsp, eq, or any other processing and both versions have the same settings applied.

You can have as many versions of Jriver open at the same time as your computer can handle, so comparing is relatively quick and easy. I'm going to be comparing these two for a while because the difference is very interesting.

31 sounds noticeably clearer than 29 and the bass is different, but there are other aspects that are making it sound different as well.

 

Might be this
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=136169.0

 

Nah, thanks for pointing that out to me though. That's off by default, which is what it's set to in my settings.
From what I've heard comparing the two versions for the last two days with speakers, MC31 is cleaner, clearer, and less dry than any previous version I've personally heard. I don't like how the bass sounds in this version though. If you're able to test a trial of 31, I would definitely recommend giving it a go. I'd be interested to see what you all think.

 

Have you posted anything on the JRiver forum to find out if anything has changed? It’s very odd to me that a digital player that is not altering the sound with DSP sounds different to you. Are you the digital volume control in JRiver?

 

It is odd and also frustrating. I used to have the same thought process before I compared foobar to Jriver 24, years ago. I still think the software should sound the same since it's just playing raw lossless files, but that's simply not the case.

@Merrick was actually the person who pointed this out to me years ago when he upgraded to 29. I downloaded the 29 trial, compared that to 24, and sure enough there was a noticeable difference. In that scenario, 29 was outright better in every way. He made a profile post about it back in March of 2022.

I don't use the digital volume control, it's always at 100%.

 

I switched to Roon. I like JRiver and its customizability but the UI is stuck in the 2000s.

 

I apologize if this is considered noise.

So, after comparing 29 to 31 for a while now, I think the difference I'm hearing between the two is absolute polarity. MC31 sounds as if somewhere in the software/audio backend/engine the polarity is inverted and it doesn't have absolute polarity.

I've been talking to the admins on the Jriver forum about it trying to figure out what could be causing it and have tried all of their suggestions with no success. I've looked at the waveforms of tracks recorded in Jriver and with their WDM driver, there is a visual difference, but the waveforms are not inverted. I tried inverting the polarity in Jriver, but that didn't work.

If anyone is interested, give these tracks a listen & tell me what you think. Let me know if you're unable to listen to them.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13n5DEZPGl_05L-K7Mqsd9NOUyE53Y-wC?usp=sharing

 

I just did a small sampling of the tracks and could hear a difference. To me the 29 samples seemed to have more bottom and richer mids. I will have to listen further to come up with more differences.

EDIT: When I moved the files off of the OS ssd to my music folder on a spinner, things got a lot closer. Will try some more testing later.

 

That's what I'm hearing too. It's as if the bass/full tone of instruments and vocals is being canceled/sucked out so all that's left is midrange and treble. It sounds like there is a difference in spatial depth as well, to me. 29 sounds like instruments and bass are able to be projected forward from a speaker or headphone diaphragm whereas 31 sounds like everything is on a single line going from left to right (no depth) projected in reverse or to the back of a speaker.

I've also noticed, with one song in particular that has a hard rough texture to the sound, that it doesn't have that texture at all in 31. That is why I originally thought that 31 sounded "cleaner and less dry" but I think it's actually aspects of sound being canceled out.

 

I just discovered the WDM feature of JRiver, and I am struggling to contain my excitement for the solution this offers me. I've been looking for a more user and budget-friendly solution to integrate streaming services into a DSP (PEQ) platform. I just can't swing the monthly premium of Roon on top of all the other services I use for music/TV. I primarily use Spotify for music discovery, but have not been able to apply PEQ to Spotify for listening to my LCD-Xs. Well, no longer an issue, as it works perfectly with the WDM driver pathway out to my DAC, with the ability to apply the PEQ filers at will. Halle-freaking-lujah!