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Something New in JRiver MC, MC19 now available

Seriously folks. I have been playing with JRiver 19 Mac for the past 72 hours, and with regards to playback on the Mac what is it that I'm not getting from Audirvana Plus? For purposes of ripping and metadata editing am fine with XLD, MAX and Tag.

The interface and "kludge" factor of the software on the Mac detracts from the listening enjoyment. Both the user interface and user experience of JRiver on the Mac are woeful. I have not used PC version, but from what can surmise from its screenshots, the Mac version is a distant "port" of the original. It is as if JRiver Mac 19 is running on a less than optimal Windows emulator.

Listeners can use whatever software they like to listen to whatever music they choose. I just think if we are all going to be part of a community than it is the responsibility of all of us to not only share news of new items, but also provide context and meaning. Why and for which features should someone contemplate taking the plunge?
 
davidavdavid said:
Both the user interface and user experience of JRiver on the Mac are woeful. I have not used PC version, but from what can surmise from its screenshots, the Mac version is a distant "port" of the original.
Click to expand...

Maybe, I loaded up the mac version, I use JRiver on a windows PC, and I liked being able to control the JRiver on the PC from JRiver on the mac, but that wasn't enough to make me want to pay for a licence.

In the beginning I didn't care for the JRiver interface, but I've got used to it, and I like it a lot now. I particularly like the flexibility of views, tagging and moving data around that iTunes, for example, doesn't allow. iTunes does things for you which are nice, like organising and sorting, that, at first look doesn't seem apparent in JRiver. Ultimately you can do more with JRiver.
 
davidavdavid said:
... Both the user interface and user experience of JRiver on the Mac are woeful.
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when you ad gizmo (android) also my thoughts are complete.
the mc android remote is enough to switch to FB2K. assuming the shown developing progress of gizmo it will take years to reach the basics of fb commander.

just my 2 ct.
f.s.
 
JR19 for Mac is fine and gets better with each new release, Gizmo works fine as a remote and if you want a bit more refinement then JRemote for IOS is excellent.
 
davidavdavid said:
Seriously folks. I have been playing with JRiver 19 Mac for the past 72 hours, and with regards to playback on the Mac what is it that I'm not getting from Audirvana Plus? For purposes of ripping and metadata editing am fine with XLD, MAX and Tag.

The interface and "kludge" factor of the software on the Mac detracts from the listening enjoyment. Both the user interface and user experience of JRiver on the Mac are woeful. I have not used PC version, but from what can surmise from its screenshots, the Mac version is a distant "port" of the original. It is as if JRiver Mac 19 is running on a less than optimal Windows emulator.Listeners can use whatever software they like to listen to whatever music they choose. I just think if we are all going to be part of a community than it is the responsibility of all of us to not only share news of new items, but also provide context and meaning. Why and for which features should someone contemplate taking the plunge?
Click to expand...

Indeed very distant down to Alt-F4 to exit as a menu option and saying Alt when it should say Cmd button. My evaluation period is almost up and they wont be getting my licence fee. It is something I can live without.

All you windows users enjoy.
 
With these softwares Apple has been spoiling us. Although it hasn't tarnished JRiver's excellence for Windows, I'm not yet convinced on any grounds by its Mac port - certainly not enough to shift Audirvana from pole position.
 
My reasons for buying MC (for a pc) were that it has some very powerful features to let me organise and browse my music the way that I want - about half my collection is classical for which these features are particularly useful. iTunes, by contrast, was close to unusable for me; LMS not that much better (though struggling with plugins helped a bit). JRiver also has a straightforward audio interface, and one can be reasonably confident that it's not messing with the bits unless you want it to. Their developers are very responsive, and usually answer queries on their forum promptly. Adding JRemote and an iPad makes the whole user experience excellent. And I can still use my Squeezebox Touch if I want to - it's just another MC zone. I don't know whether it'll ever fit the mac paradigm or mentality - the developers are dyed in the wool windows guys - but if you want it's database feature, and you want more than the bog standard artist/album/genre view structure there's no other show in town within laughing distance, IMO. Interesting that they are working on a Linux port - I think we might see it embedded in some products before too long.
 
So sad, that being the case, I just assume work closely with the developers of Audirvana Plus and build out my on customizable database - schema and structures - that I can integrate with their software. Looking at JRiver brings the computer far too close to the experiential/aesthetic audio realm.

I have been using my Mac Mini for a good 5 years now, and with the suite of applications I mentioned in an earlier post have been happily listening to and navigating my almost 4TB of lossless music.

If I wanted an iTunes replacement, I would have asked for one. For Mac users I recommend talking with the folks at Swinsian and having them integrate and implement some more audio system options and features. They have to the UI and the UX working.
 
AndyU said:
In DSP studio where you enable R128 volume levelling, it also says that "the overall volume of a playlist may be reduced. Enable 'Adaptive Volume' on the left to compensate for this". Did you try that? Have you selected any other signal processing? All the volume levelling uses is JRivers volume control, which uses 64 but arithmetic and so is of incredibly high quality, so there shouldn't be any degradation in sq, apart from the reduction in level.
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Absolutely, by using R128 levelling the level may be reduced by up to -23dB. I have tried using adaptive volume and it certainly brings things nicely back up to a realistic volume. All other DSP is switched off.

It really doesn't sound as good as played 'pure' - with all processing switched off.

This comment on the J River site kinda sums up adaptive volume for me:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=82025.msg579564#msg579564

Peter Stockwell said:
I was overly critical of R128, there's a thread on AoS, where seomeone went to the trouble of comparing the streams with and without R128. They found it had no effect on data integrity.

It will sometimes cut output level by 15dB or so, and I think that I was unwilling to compensate with the volume control, so playback sounded dull. Which, of course, leads to the arguments about perceived differences dissapearing if levels matched.

Have it disabled at present, but consider, now, that its not as diabolical as I first thought. I'd say I was wrong.
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Fair enough but I do think I am comparing apples and apples as I compensating for the volume differences.

On a slightly different note I also experimented with upsampling everything using DSP to the highest sample rate that my dac can deal with - 192k. With everything else off, using the 'output format' in DSP I upsampled everything below or above 192k, to 192k and then did some off/on tests. Initially, upsampling everthing sounded crisper, more exact - very obvious - but it proved to be quite fatiguing to listen to after a while. I tested it on my other half and just asked her whether there was a difference and if so which one was preferable. She comfirmed what I thought - sounded more processed when it was upsampled and less 'real'. Pianos and brass had more 'real' texture without the processing. It would be very interesting to see if anyone else can duplicate/dismiss these findings.
 
Pelham said:
Absolutely, by using R128 levelling the level may be reduced by up to -23dB. I have tried using adaptive volume and it certainly brings things nicely back up to a realistic volume. All other DSP is switched off.

It really doesn't sound as good as played 'pure' - with all processing switched off.
Click to expand...

Just to be sure that we talk about the right things - R128 is just a way to calculate how loud a track is. That information is used to adjust the volume/gain setting. There is no processing of the music file beyond the processing already needed to scale the gain unless you play at 100% volume.
 
I think we are talking about the same thing. Strange isn't it! I have no idea what is going on.

I guess that the phenomena could be caused by whatever process is used to adjust the gain -or perhaps, probably more controversially, the increased CPU/memory load of having to process it in the first place).

For instance, in the Bufallo IIIse DAC boards the volume control that adjusts the gain through changing the digital data (albeit in a very minor way - see here for detail http://hifiduino.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-sabre-dac-digital-volume-control-better-than-analog/). Regardless of whether this specific implementation produces an audible change to the signal or not, the process could be causing what I'm hearing.
 
JRiver use 64 bit arithmetic for all their processing, including volume control. This is then dithered down to 24 bits using an uncorrelated dither generator. Their algorithms have passed the critical scrutiny of at least one respected sound engineer, Bob Katz, who as you can see in this thread was able to detect a bug in JRivers initial implementation of dithering that affected the 24th bit. You need quite good ears to do that.

So it seems that the obvious question to ask is, have you done a correctly level matched comparison of R128 adjusted material and unadjusted? There's a reasonable argument that JRivers volume control might actually be better than most volume controls in most DACs or preamps.
 
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