J River MC 18 for Mac OSX

Being a Mac user I have (obviously) never had the opportunity to use J River.  There are several users on the Linn forum who use it (I have a KDS) and I am sure there are several NDX/NDS/nDac users who also use it.

Although I have a MacBook Pro in my listening room and use it with Kinsky (Linn's version) to control my KDS I also use my iPad and iPhone (with appropriate control point software) to control my KDS.

Is J River strictly for laptop/desktop use or are there iPad and iPhone versions (it does not appear that there are).  If I want to use an iPad it seems that the only choice would be to run J River on my iMac (my FLAC files are stored on an external HD connected to the iMac) and use Apple Remote or another VNC program to control J River - correct?  If so than not so convenient.

Gregg

I just finished doing some reading on their forums.  The initial release will be VERY rough and is not expected to reach feature parity (Music only) with the Windows version until the end of 2013   Sorry however I think I will wait.

Gregg

Gregg,

You should be able to control JRiver with the fantastic JRemote app.  If not there are many other ways.

-p

In that case i'll wait until 2014 to give it a go ... I'm very happy with iTunes Audrivana for now. 

I'm not really in to beta testing ..... I know some people enjoy doing it, but i like to wait until things just work. 

I have to agree with you Guy - I am not interested in being a beta tester for all of 2013.  I will try it out in 2014 and give them the extra $25.  

At the rate they are talking about it seems as if it will be a LONG time before a fully mature and developed product will be available.

Now - if only DBpoweramp will consider making a Mac version - copy the same to MP3Tag 

Gregg

You must remember that a "long time" in JRiver's timescale is a few months.  Not "years" or "never" as you get with software made by hifi mfrs.

-p

I have a half dozen friends who already bought a license.  I will let you know how it compares to the FULLY mature Windows version for Audio as we go along.

-p

Thanks Peter. Like many, I've been looking forward to this.

I looked at their boards and read the comments of the moderator.  It will only be Audio the first year (for us who needs more?) however it will be extremely limited.  They anticipated full parity with the Windows version (only in terms of Audio) by the end of 2013.

Gregg

Of course it is up to each to decide whether or not to try J River either now or at sometime in the future. I am not a Mac user, in fact my son-in-law has just given me a Macbook Pro in an effort to educate me, but frankly, I find it totally without merit. I can well understand why it only has about 6% of the market (last figures I read) I doubt I will waste any more time with it.

However, I have read here that many Mac users seem to be looking for something better to use as a UPnP server than they have available at the moment, so that is was why I posted this info.

J River has been something of a revolution for us in selecting and playing our music – the only part of the program we will ever use. One of the things that appeals is that it is possible to remove or hide almost everything that you do not wish to use or see within the program. The fact that the Mac version will be Audio only to begin with would be of huge appeal to me if I were to use a Mac.

As Patrick has already indicated, the development team respond very quickly when a problem is identified. It will be interesting to learn how well this product satisfies Mac users requirements.

Peter

I think JRiver is superb, way ahead of any other media player or UPnP server I've tried, but from what I can gather from the forum they are initially only planning to port the player aspects to the apple world, not the UPnP server, so it will interest those planning to buy a V1 more than those with streamers.

Hi Likes

Your point about the UPnP element is something that I had not found any specific info on. I looked again and still could not find anything so I posted a question on their forum.

Below is the Question together with Jim’s answer, [answer received 15mins after posting the question]

Hi Jim

Are you able to say whether or not the UPnP server element will be working at launch, as this is the only way for us to use the program?

Many thanks and good luck with the project.

Regards
Peter

It's too soon to say exactly what the feature set will look like on Feb 22, but networking features are important to us, so it won't be too long after that.

Import will work as it does on Windows.  Libraries may be compatible.

Thanks for picking up on the point as I too think the network features are of special interest, indeed, essential in our case.

Regards

Peter

I'm sure they'll port the Media Server and UPnP aspects at some point, but I would also hope that the excellent JRemote app for iPad will also work when they do. The responsiveness of their developers to questions on the forum is but one of the many superb things about the product - one of their team helped me out with a bit of smart regular expression programming almost as soon as I asked for help.

Not only are the executives and devs regularly in the forum helping out.  There is also a very strong group (dozens) of dedicated, longtime, heavy users who may know the program best of all.

It is nice to see Jim Hildegrass (CEO) in the Forum all the time.  FYI, he is in his 70s now and has handed over the reigns to Matt.  Although he will be there, just in a more limited role.

-p

imagine if Naim offered a half price version of imminent new products to willing beta-testers with indefinite free updates . and their developers and execs responded to questions in this forum ... dream on! 

Thanks Patrick ... I'll follow with interest.

Unlike some here, i'm not worried about UPnP, as I no longer use it. ITunes with Audrivana is very good as it plays virual anything including SACD DSD files and it uses the excellent Izotope music engine rather than the OS X Core Audio framework. This means it can use integer mode. It plays from memory too at the correct sample rate and it will soon accept AU plug-ins for correcting room resonances. So J-River would need to offer that kind of functionality and a bit more to persuade me to change. 

Again I have little or no interest in anything other than it playing music ... So not playing movies is no issue for me. Nor am i am wanting to send music all around the world or even around the house ... So i'm not overly demanding with my requirements. 

As I understand it is the way it handles metadata that i will probably enjoy in that i can hold a lot more details about my albums and cross refrence things ... So i can bring up all the albums on which Albert Lee plays guitar for example. That would be a great feature. 

Anyway it is good they are doing the port to a decent operating system ... It means folk like me who can never see any point in buying Windows can at last try ... Well when it is ready, of course.

Guido,

Given your comments I think you will like it right off the bat.  It does play from memory, no problem there. Additionally you can ask it to pre-buffer up to 20 seconds.

Tagging is limitless.  If it doesn't exist you can make all the custom tags you want.  Plus many tags are "strings" not "single values" so you can do things like multiple genres etc...

They do have a "Convolver" for room correction but it requires something like Audiolense for the actual measuring.  Never used it.

They even have "Speaker Correction" although I have never used it, nor know anything about it.

It is a complete package.  You should love it.

-Patrick

Well Naim would have to sell every singel streaming device they have ever made for half the price then, and most of them would never reach retail for full price

True Story.

JRiver sounds like a very promising addition to the rather under-developed world of OSX based UPnP servers and as Patrick points out JRemote is a very impressive way of controling the music server. I feel the same as Peter but in reverse as I won't let windows machines over the threshold. long time readers of this forum will be in no way suprised to learn that I'm still a huge fan of headless Vortexbox implementations either as servers or players.  

Tog

Just tried out JRiver for the Mac.  Downloaded, installed, found 9,803 files on my Vortexbox in a few minutes and started playing. Sounds great. Some delay in refreshing the screen, but I'm using it on a circa 2008 power book that has some issues, with the lowest OS (10.6.8) they say "may work."

I'm done with the iTunes proxy file madness of Audirvana. I can only get it to play 1 time out of 3, and need to add files every time I add an album to the Vortexbox, and seem to need to redo the settings every few times (it starts playing through the computer speakers).  Though as soon as I installed JRiver, it started behaving 

In the quick comparison I did, I liked the sound of JRiver better.  They sound very different. Audirvana is "dryer" while JRiver seems to have a richer sound stage. How does that happen? Will need to listen some more.

The response from the development team is nothing short of stunning at times, less than a day between builds on 2 occasions if I recall correctly, otherwise, a new build every few days.

The quality of the sound has been top quality if not from the very first build certainly soon after; it’s hard to be sure now just when this was achieved.

There are still issues, this is undeniable, but frankly for our needs there are only a couple of things left to sort out. Well to be accurate, they are not yet implemented fully, so a little more time is needed. These in no way affect playback quality though. There will be others no doubt that will require more than us from the program, again, give them a little more time. I can only say that as the program is so adaptable it has changed the way we listen to our music.

Windows or Mac we are delighted with J River.

Peter

So what's special about JRiver? I currently use iTunes/Audirvana & it works perfectly. Not interested in holding lots of information on the music, other than album name, track name, time, artwork & occasionally other stuff that iTunes reveals easily. Not interested in movies, play direct from iMac via USB.

So why should I stump up for this? (Plus 7 quid for the iPad remote...)

I like JRiver because it lets me organise and view and play my music the way I want, and because the playback quality is beyond reproach. Also, as Peter has said, the responsiveness of their developers is in a class of its own; post a question on their forum and a developer or a skilled user will usually answer quickly. As far as the money is concerned the amount involved is utterly trivial in the context of a hifi system where mains cables cost hundreds of pounds/dollars. You would really have to be mean to begrudge the paltry cost of JRiver or JRemote. On a pc you get a 30 days free trial in any case. When the mac version works acceptably I'm sure they'll offer the same free trial. Right now, if you are into being an early adopter for the mac version, you get a decent discount. I guess the inherent advantage JRiver will have over iTunes + Audirvana is that it is a high-quality product under the control of one team, rather than a deficient product  (iTunes) that needs a parasite (Audirvana) to fix it. Plus sound quality features high in jRivers priorities; iTunes is a portal to flog low bitrate music.