iTunes Alternatives

[Paul Barker]

The HiFace2 is supported natively by Linux and Mac OS.

I liked the look of that so ebay searched it.

OUCH! Better sound good for that price.

[David]

I have re-evaluated J River yesterday with markedly different results. I now consider it the very best computer audio sound I have heard. There is ooodles of micro detail, the widest soundstage I've heard and plenty of bass.

So what went wrong the first time? I'm putting it down to the fact my Mac was doing its Time Machine back up and backing up my music library.

Which leads me to a question: is J River playing off the hard drive or does it load the music onto RAM like Audirvana?

Also, is the Remote App $9.99?
David

[Cressy Snr]

Which leads me to a question: is J River playing off the hard drive or does it load the music onto RAM like Audirvana?

Also, is the Remote App $9.99?
David

It reads off the hard drive by default unless you tell it to play from RAM.
I can't remember which menu to look in though.

JRemote for iPad is available on the app store for £6.99.
It's worth buying

[David]

A small technical hitch: actually quite a large one! Hi Tech don't have a Mavericks driver available yet so having downloaded it I'm now stuck with my Arcam Dac until such time as they do........but it's still sounding very nice even if not as nice as with the JK
David

[Ray P]

Which leads me to a question: is J River playing off the hard drive or does it load the music onto RAM like Audirvana?

Assuming the Mac version is the same as Windows (I'm on V19 for Windows), you can choose; check out Tools, Options, Audio.

There are a few options there. Perhaps it would be worth investigating them further; look at the info and forum on the JRiver website.

Ray

[David]

I've found the 'memory play' fuction. Just need the Hi Tech drivers now.....

[David]

Here's a reply from Hi Face (whose drivers are used by the JK dac):

Dear Customer,

as you know, there are problems with OSX 10.9 (Mavericks) and some M2tech products. We still don't know the causes, but we're actively investigating to dicover and eliminate them. In fact, 10.9 is supposed to act same way as 10.6/7/8 with USB, but it doesn't. we're trying to find out whether this is desired or it's just a bug in the beta version of Mavericks everybody is using today. As soon as we'll find it out, we'll advice. Of course, if this feature is desired by Apple programmers we'll update our driver according to it.

Many thanks for being patient!

However this HI Face ad today is less reassuring:

'Senior Information Technology engineer or Senior Electronic Engineer or Senior Graduate in Computer Science for embedded and kernel-level programming under Windows, Mac OSX and Linux, particularly for driver development.'

[Ray P]

So Steve, just wondering how JRMC is with you now that a little time has passed - did you buy it?

Ray

[Cressy Snr]

So Steve, just wondering how JRMC is with you now that a little time has passed - did you buy it?

Ray

I didn't buy it in the end, as the latest builds for Mac seem to have crashing issues.
I might give it another go when they have sorted things out, but iTunes is making good sounds as I type this.

[David]

It has never crashed with me, except when I had I Tunes open at the same time and the I Tunes screen saver kicked in. Shutting I Tunes solved that one. The sound quality remains the best I've had with digital computer players.
David

[Cressy Snr]

Hmmm.
I've downloaded and installed the latest version, which is 19.0.76 and got a ten day extension of the trial period. The crashing problems that many users including me were complaining about, have been sorted and we are back in business.

As you say David, Media Center 19 gives a different sound than iTunes, particularly when memory play is engaged. I find it slightly thinner sounding than iTunes, which is more sumptuous and well upholstered in comparison. This is odd as on Mountain Lion, the reverse was true.

On OSX Mavericks, this difference between the players, seems more obvious to me than it did with Mountain Lion. Apple seem to have upped their game with iTunes sound quality with the release of Mavericks and the gulf that separated JRiver from iTunes seems to have narrowed significantly. JRiver is on balance still better, but whether it is worth paying for is now a harder to answer question than it was before.

JRiver is a more cerebral experience, whilst iTunes gets down and boogies.
Hard to choose.

[David]

Hi Steve,
Apple has certainly upped the game with Mavericks, and aging giving the ability to use core audio, if your Dacs up to it.

I have just tried I Tunes again and get exactly the opposite results with I Tunes /J River. I use J River with memory play.

The I Tunes sound lacks bass weight /sumptuousness compared to J River. I wonder whether the issue is something to do with your DAC and how well it works with core audio? In the basence of drivers for my JK Dac, I'm using the very inferior Arcam R dac, but this deal well with core audio.

There are a few very features of J River though, such as it was importing duplicates, which I could probably prevent if I had some time to spend familiarising myself with it.
David

[Cressy Snr]

Well, I bought jRiver the other day. On balance, it is preferable to iTunes.
OK so the interface isn't as pretty, but the functionality is far better, and it does a better job of cataloguing and playing my music, than iTunes does.

I feel MC19 on the Mac, is now a mature release and is worth the money.
Also the jRemote app for iPad blows away the Apple Remote app, in every way possible.

[David]

Hi Steve,
I'm still on trial but will buy when this expires. I did check on J River's Forum and realised that although my trial version uses core audio, it didn't have integer mode as the latest full version does. So I'm now trialling that version and integer mode gives a further sound improvement with the Arcam DAC.
David

[Cressy Snr]

Aye Integer mode is out for me as My old MF DAC only has the older adaptive USB input at 48KHz max.

Pointless engaging integer mode on a Toslink SPDIF connection.