I Like Memory Playback? (J River)

Posted by: pcstockton on 13 September 2010

I have been reluctant to create this thread as I have never experienced a difference regarding sound quality between ANY media players. I have tried almost every widely used player that works with Windows.

- WMP
- iTunes
- Foobar
- Winamp
- J River
- Media Monkey
- Cplay
- XBMC
- XMPlay
- VLC
- Songbird
- VUPlayer (i think it was called)
etc....

None ever sounded any different to me, assuming bit perfection and everything else standardized. So I have always used Foobar as it allows for the ultimate in customization, the fastest performance with huge libraries, and the best UI imaginable.

For the last few weeks I have been trying J River Media Center after I read they now have "play from memory" as an option.

I have only ever tried this with Cplay, but its interface and reliance on cue files disqualified itself regardless of SQ. Honestly though even when I did use this for a few days I did not notice any improvements. If anything there was something I didn't like about it. Maybe it is the resampling you are forced to use... who knows?

In any event, after a full day with JRMC 15, I was noticing a bit more cohesiveness or tightness to the presentation. Also, the spaces in the music seemed quieter. Lastly, the "attack" on snares and other extremely dynamic sounds are quicker on the front end.

Please keep in mind that these differences are VERY subtle, but noticeable. The only thing I can chalk up the differences to would be the memory playback, which I did not de-select for a comparison. I will give that a shot this week.

At this point I am thinking of using JRMC as my reference player, i.e. when no one else is around.

I will continue to use Foobar when I have friends over (often daily). They can use the Remote app to select music on their own iPhones, it has lyrics which everyone loves, an easier ability to setup an ad hoc playlist (add to playback queue), and on screen bio etc... Plus it is simply lightning quick, much faster than JRMC.

The downsides to JRMC:
- Weak iPhone app
- While customizable, not as easily or as deeply as is offered by Foobar
- Slower than I would like, especially in "Theater View", which is the only way I will use it. (although it is faster than iTunes)
- No lyrics
- No on-screen wiki bio/artist picture
- Costs $50
- There are some idiosyncrasies I just cannot get past in "Regular View"
- Doesn't offer "Directory Structure" as a sorting method. This is fairly crucial to me as I search by "Artist View", and want to see the library sorted as I have them stored on my hard drive. For example, I have Funkadelic and Parliament in the same folder and therefore show up together in Foobar. Or people like Miles Davis, who might be tagged as Quintet, Quartet, with Gil Evans, with Coltrane etc..... I want all of my Miles albums shown together rather than 7 different artist entries.

The Upside to JRMC:
- It simply might sound a little better. ( i cannot believe I just wrote that)
- I haven't tried WAVs yet, but I have read it handles them well.


Give it a shot if you haven't tried it before.

I don't think anything is going to fully usurp Foobar for me in the near future, but I do hope someone develops a "play from memory" component for Foobar. That is, if that is reason I am enjoying the SQ of J River.

-Patrick
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by likesmusic
patrick - how about comparing foobar run as a player to foobar run as a upnp renderer with ASIO4ALL? There should be no issues with volume controls, mixers etc. when run as a renderer. The "dCS Guide to computer Audio" is excellent at helping you get it right
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by js
I don't believe Vol should work with ASIO in FB. I'll check later and see what's up at this end. Does Kernel Streaming work for you in Foobar? Worth a go if I recall correctly. I remember Foobar and HiDef fighting with you way back. It's not the freindliest program and the downside end of open source. Of course, the way you've manipulated the library and skins is the upside. Smile Gotta like the MC interface. I especially like the rows of scrolling album covers.
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
quote:
Originally posted by likesmusic:
patrick - how about comparing foobar run as a player to foobar run as a upnp renderer with ASIO4ALL? There should be no issues with volume controls, mixers etc. when run as a renderer. The "dCS Guide to computer Audio" is excellent at helping you get it right


Likes,

I wont use ASIO4all. My soundcard is ASIO2.0 so the standard ASIO is fine.

I have used my Foobars as Server/Renderers but honestly I dont remember using volume.

There is no problem per se with the volume working in Foobar. In fact I really like it. I can control volume with the remote app.

I was just curious why volume was defeated in JMRC?

I have read the dcs set-up guide in the past. Nothing new there.

thanks for the thoughts,
Patrick
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
quote:
Originally posted by js:
I don't believe Vol should work with ASIO in FB. I'll check later and see what's up at this end. Does Kernel Streaming work for you in Foobar? Worth a go if I recall correctly. I remember Foobar and HiDef fighting with you way back. It's not the freindliest program and the downside end of open source. Of course, the way you've manipulated the library and skins is the upside. Smile Gotta like the MC interface. I especially like the rows of scrolling album covers.


JS,

I am an XP user on my hifi puter, so no I havent used KS. In fact, on the few friends I have running Win7, KS crashes the computer (all of them). I stick to WASAPI on their machines.

The problem I had with hires happened solely with the M-Audio Transit. Since it doesn't have auto sample rate switching it isn't an option anyway. All works perfectly with the Juli@.

Honestly, I think the Theater View in JRMC is pretty cool, but only if I am listening to a particular album, or not searching around. It is worthless for browsing and searching.

I just happened to notice that the Volume didnt work with JRMC and thought it was strange. I figured JRMC auto defeats volume when using ASIO/WASAPI/KS. I assumed their volume isn't bit perfect as Foobar's is.

Thanks aain for the help!
-Patrick
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
quote:
Mine has been on 512 since initial setup. I will play with some other settings


Didnt notice a single difference with any buffer setting. Not sure if memory play defeats the whole purpose of using buffers though.

-p
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by js
Shoudn't at that end but no dif is still no dif in your setup.
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
Re: Volume.

I just did some research in my folder of webpages and set-up guides I accumulated years ago.

Foobar's volume control is fully bit perfect and can be used with ASIO/KS/WASAPI.

JRMC must automatically defeat the internal volume for some reason.

There is nothing inherent to the ASIO/KS/WASAPI output that defeats volume control in any player.

-Patrick
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by js
Yep. I was just about to get back. Tried it and it's part of the Foobar program and should work. I do understand that it's supposed to be bit perfect but I just compared 20DB down to wide open and adjusted the analog volume to compensate. You can hear the volume control. It's good but I wouldn't use it unless I had to. Dither has a lot to do with these. Preferred ASIO this time around but that could be device specific and always close to KS. Have you tried a coax connection?
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by Alamanka
I apologize to ask what is probably a silly question.

What is exactly "Memory playback"?

I tried to look on the JRiver web site but could not find an explanation.

Thanks.
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
Alamanka,

It loads the track into RAM and "plays" it from there rather than the spinning hard drive.

-p
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
quote:
I just compared 20DB down to wide open and adjusted the analog volume to compensate. You can hear the volume control.

just another example of how bit perfection doesn't tell the whole story.
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by pcstockton
quote:
Have you tried a coax connection?

I haven't. At least not with the Juli@. I dont like the idea of the break-out cable either. Although coax does allow up to 24/192, but I dont have anything over 24/96 for now.

I used a Chord ProDac? Coax from my DVD to the nDAC when I had it on demo. But that was just for listening to a few CDs.... getting the lay of the land. I didnt make any comparisons.

By the time I need 24/192 support, I will probably have moved beyond the Juli@ into the Serve or something.

-Patrick
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by naimUnT
quote:
Originally posted by likesmusic:
The "dCS Guide to computer Audio" is excellent at helping you get it right


The dcs Guide is a Godsend! I could barely cope with the acronyms and computer babble until I read this illuminating dcs Guide! Highly recommended for newbies!
Posted on: 23 September 2010 by js
Nice tool to set you up for fine tuning snd final comparisons. Just skimmed it and it's a really good primer. I don't agree with everything as they're biased towards certain configs just like other makers but lots of great setup info.
Posted on: 06 October 2010 by Rosewind
I have been using J River Media Center and I agree that there is a clarity to the sound that I don't get from Media Monkey - my ususal player. And memory playback sounds better (to me too).

Best wishes,
Peter
Posted on: 07 October 2010 by goldfinch
Hi Peter, make sure you disable all dsp functions and other features such as volume optimization and so on, I noticed a difference this way too.
Posted on: 10 October 2010 by gypsykirk
A good post!
One that has led me to download JRMC15 on trial and I must say it has been worth it, I'm impressed.
I currently have been feeding foobar flac files, with asio4all (windows XP) drivers installed.
I found this to be the best media player I had tried (SQ wise) and was the best compromise..ie flac, for metadata etc.

However after converting a flac file to wav with db poweramp and opening it in J.river, I appear to have all my metadata presented to me, including artwork!!
I like the fact i can use it solely for all my media and i think when my trial is up i will definitely purchase it now. I think it's worth the money!!
Especially if it will handle wav files in this fashion.
I found the sound quality to surpass foobar flac v flac too but the wav is another step up.
I haven't really messed around to the nth degree with settings etc yet, my main concern under trial is to compare SQ differences and Mr Stockton i think this is a winner!
Posted on: 10 October 2010 by gypsykirk
one question though...
Does anyone know why my ASIO buffer size is 2048 samples?? as opposed to the 512 Media Monkey and Foobar use??
I'm not even sure what it is! I just set up my drivers as per dcs guide too and get 512 until using media monkey....It ain't a problem, it sounds better Smile
Posted on: 10 October 2010 by Hook
quote:
Originally posted by Rosewind:
I have been using J River Media Center and I agree that there is a clarity to the sound that I don't get from Media Monkey - my ususal player. And memory playback sounds better (to me too).

Best wishes,
Peter


Hi Peter -

My experience exactly. JRMC (using the WASPAI output plugin) is the best I have heard.

But I continue to use MM for ripping new CD's, tagging, editing and organizing. Only resorting to EAC on the rare occasion when MM throws out an error or warning.

Hook
Posted on: 25 November 2010 by mike k burke
Not been on the forum for a bit as i've been building myself a music PC loosely following the guidance for a cMP2 machine. see http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/ for details

I thought I would share my experience from doing this.

Comparing on my main PC there is a slight diffence between the 'front ends' eg Foobar and cplay etc but the big differences are made when you start killing windows processes to reduce the system latency. Using the default video monitor driver rather than the 'graphics card' one is one of the biggest effects I noticed

My music Pc is now running a slimmed down version of windows 7 with all unnecessary drivers/programs removed.

I read with interest Graham's comments on using Linux and MPD as logically this seems the way to go - more info please Graham!

player is cMP2 with cplay front end, ASIO4ALL drivers set with minimum buffer size. I know you can use Foobar to front end cMP2 which then means Foobar is using RAM playback. Haven't tried it yest but I'll report back when i do

Music is on a SATA drive as I found this sounded better than the old EIDE drive i started with. This maybe due to electrical noise of the EIDE interface rather than anything to do with transfer speeds. Files are now WAV's. I started with Flacs but decompressed them (using Foobar)and found they sounded better. I tend to put this down to minimising the computational load in general, as this tends to be the philosophy of the guy behind the cMP2 project.

All cooling on the PC is passive so no nasty fans and associated electrical noise to contend with.

Soundcard is an ESI Julia using a cheapo optical cable although when I reduced from a 10m cheapo to a 1m today the difference was noticeable.

The comment on which RAM to use is interesting as again the advice in building this type of PC is buy the fastest you can and then underclock it, hopefully you then get the lowest jitter possible.

I am sure there is far more to learn as to what works and what doesn't and I'd be very interested to hear about anyone elses trials and tribulations in building this type of PC

Mike