j river jukebox media player

[nandac]

hey all, i just got into computer audio seriously - moved to a new place and bought a mf m1 dac with a naim nait 5i2 amp and dynaudio excite x12 speakers.

all my music is lossless uncompressed flac (as recommended by bhagwan mazhar).

now i am fiddling with the j river media jukebox (freeware) to "optimize" the sound.

how many of you use this media player?

for starters one of the first things to do in such an enterprise (sound optimization) is to bypass the internal computer sampling of the flac and make sure it is fed directly into the external dac. wasabi, asio4all et al. i am stuck in this because the jukebox doesn't support such capabilities. and only the j river media center does.

anybody have an idea about all this?

is it necessary to buy the media center?

appreciate the feedback.

 

[hydra]

I use JRiverMC. I've not tried the Juke Box. IMHO JRMC well worth the amount you pay.

I had been using Foobar for more than a year in a dedicated Music PC, and swore by it. I'd done all the textbook optimisations on Foobar and had it running well. I quite liked how it sounded. I tried JRMC a couple times in between and did not find any difference initially.

The last time I tried JRMC (v17) I happened to try it with a track (Jennifer Warnes, 'Way down deep' from The Hunter) that really opened my eyes to the difference in the way Foobar handled bass, vis a vis JRMC. The bass line was very loose and bloated when played through Foobar, and it sounded just right when played through JRMC. I tried a few more tracks with just this in mind, and I found JRMC to sound better. However, in some tracks where the vocals, esp. female vocals, tend to be a bit edgy, (like Adele, 'Set fire to the rain' from 21) I found Foobar to be more forgiving.

Now, I don't deny that the might be some DSP work happening in the background with JRMC. Maybe so. But I tend to like what it does, so I go with it.

I also like the way JRMC handles the library: WAV files are handled well, with full tag display and library integration. It is the same for FLAC files with the entire album in a single file, with a .cue file for support. Foobar does not handle these two well.

If Juke Box does not have WASAPI support, I think that itself would be good reason to move to JRMC. Do try out the trial version and see if it makes things better for you.

 

[nandac]

i downloaded the free trial version of jrmc. and did the tweaks as suggested in Interesting post about MC settings on Computer Audiophile

the difference between the mediacenter and the jukebox is immediately apparent. smoother, tighter and more 'musical'.

 

[bhagwan]

hey all, i just got into computer audio seriously - moved to a new place and bought a mf m1 dac with a naim nait 5i2 amp and dynaudio excite x12 speakers.

all my music is lossless uncompressed flac (as recommended by bhagwan mazhar).

now i am fiddling with the j river media jukebox (freeware) to "optimize" the sound.

how many of you use this media player?

for starters one of the first things to do in such an enterprise (sound optimization) is to bypass the internal computer sampling of the flac and make sure it is fed directly into the external dac. wasabi, asio4all et al. i am stuck in this because the jukebox doesn't support such capabilities. and only the j river media center does.

anybody have an idea about all this?

is it necessary to buy the media center?

appreciate the feedback.

Yes;

18 is needed. J River i.e. [You can get a crack too - just look around]

Also buy J Play - no crack is there - will have to pay for it.

Now & for a while - I have been ripping in Pure Wave - it sounds 'better' to my tin ears;

I run with Wasapi @ 25m/s

More later..

 

[nandac]

what's a crack?

 

[thevortex]

JRMC is a very good Media Centre application. However, progressively it has become a memory hog.

If you are after the best sound quality, you would be better off trying one of the player options suggested in the 'Fidelizer' thread...

 

[Staxxx]

OT perhaps: I also rip in WAV and use a modified version of Foobar. It is a close run thing against uncompressed FLAC but I think I prefer it too.