J River MC 18 for Mac OSX

That's all fine, if a little philosophical. Regardless of corporate alignment/evil, iTunes plus BitPerfect does all I need. It also lets me sync our iDevices for travel without a separate process. I guess I'm similar to tonym in that I don't much see the point of anything else at this stage for our needs.

I tried JRiver recently. OMG it has a very, very long way to go. It is surely the buggiest and most non-Mac like software I have ever seen running on a Mac. It crashed so much I couldn't even get through streaming a single track. Nevertheless, it is a purely Windows application running on a Mac desktop. Sorry for the fans, but I have never seen anything this badly executed on a Mac, both in terms of UI and stability. I hope for their sake they completely rewrite the UI to be a proper Mac OS application.

The biggest benefit I see to JRiver is that it connects directly to music on a network drive, and plays FLAC and WAV natively.

I have my music on a Vortexbox (like a network drive.) Audirvana uses a work around to play from iTunes.  This work around constantly breaks. And, every time you rip a CD or add music, you need to update Audirvana. iTunes from a network drive is a nightmare.

OK... I'm not using a network drive (I've a QNAP NAS which I use for other purposes but no way do I want it for streaming music), No need for FLAC files, my setup plays Wave perfectly too. the support bit's irrelevant too because it all works perfectly (although I gather the Audirvana folks are pretty good at answering technical questions) I've never had mine "constantly break". Nope, J.River's not for me.

Likewise, no need for streaming here. Actually, we do stream audio/video from the Mini to iOS devices for listening/watching in other rooms. The inbuilt sharing functionality (which requires zero setup) does this just fine.

I convert flac in XLD on the rare occasion I need to and the BitPerfect support is (bit)perfect. The guy who wrote the code replies directly and promptly (my query was user error because I didn't read the manual).

It is called an "Alpha" release for a reason.  Usually when a product is in Alpha stage you wouldn't even know it existed. The "Beta", which you wouldn't normally have access to will be much better.  The first official build will be the tits.  Just hang on a sec.

The beauty of this is that it allows people like you to help them develop the software by reporting bugs and making suggestions (just imagine if you had that ability with NStream).  The downside is that it makes people like you discount it too early.

-p

Right. But if they release it to the wild, I then it's fair to complain and criticize. I am a software engineer, and I would never let go of something in that kind of shape. Not in a million years. And to ask money for it. Just...WOW!!! 

They should have written it as a Mac OS app from the ground up instead of porting a Windows app to look and behave like a Windows app on Mac. The latter never goes well. CollectorZ's Music Collector suffers that problem. It has numerous major bugs and usability problems and they have been very slow to address them.

I already decided to give JRiver a pass. If they had allowed for using a Windows license on the Mac version when it comes out, I would have given it a chance, but -- unlike Asset UPnP -- they chose to collect money separately for the Mac version.

They have been completely honest; here's what they said:

Early versions will be very rough.  If you're not comfortable with helping us solve the problems, you may want to wait a few weeks before installing.  You can read the thread that announces the build to see how we're doing.

JRiver  involve and respond to their users much more readily than, for example, naim, and this seemed a pretty straight and fair offer to me.  They asked for an utterly trivial amount of money, which would earn early participators free upgrades for the life of the version. They probably also hoped that asking for a few bucks would discourage negativistic moaners too.  It's a cracking product on windows; no reason it shouldn't be equally as good on a mac, given time.

They are asking for more than a few bucks. $30 is a lot if the software is so bad I can't use it, and there is no guarantee I ever will. I asked about buying the Windows version at full price (so I could run in a VM) and migrating that license to the Mac version later, but they rejected that and want payment twice, even though I had no interest in concurrent use on two platforms.

My real point is they are porting a Windows app, rather than trying to build it as a proper Mac app. That never works out well in my experience, so I'm not hopeful about it. If I am proved wrong then great for the Mac community, but it's moot for me anyway. I moved on to a different solution.

I just bought a 13" Macbook Pro Retina.  I will boot into the MacOS and download the trial and see how bad it really is...  Ive only booted in the MacOS once, to set-up Bootcmap for Win7.

After reading about JRiver Media Center for Mac on this thread, I decided to download and try out their "alpha" version.  While it's true that this application is very "un-Mac-like" and has a lot of work needed to make it a true "Mac application," I also have to admit that its audio quality is quite superb — perhaps even better than Songbird.  Importing files into the library is somewhat of a pain, though.  In Songbird, you can simply drag and drop to playlists and the files are added to the library automatically.  With JRiver, you have to navigate to the right folder, import the files to the library, then add them to the playlist.  There's also no way you can use typical Mac keyboard shortcuts, like command-Q, command-H, or command-M, so the app is somewhat tedious to use.

It does show a lot of promise, though . . . and the sound quality is very fine.

RaceTripper- in what direction did you move?  I usually use Songbird for playing flac files on my Mac.  It's pretty decent, in terms of being fully "Mac-like," and its UI is very useful.  Have you found an other Mac software that you're happy with that plays flac files and allows you to build playlists?

I don't play any music from a computer. I stream the files. I gave up on using the Mac and got a QNAP NAS. I use Logitech Media Server with the UPnP plugin, and that streams audio to my ND5 XS in the listening room and to a Squeezebox Touch in my home office.

RaceTripper-  I'm sure that's a superior solution.  Do you turn off the QNAP's streaming software?

QNAP's default streaming software is Twonky, which is broken and has to be hacked to work correctly with classical music. I have it turned off.

Personally, I prefer to play records. It's much faster and easier to get something playing, they are more straightforward to use, and they sound better. 

Yes — I've also found Twonky to have problems, especially trying to stream from a Mac to a Naim streamer.  The NAS solution is much better.  Thanks.

Well, after a lot of frustration with Audirvana, and the Mac version of JRiver I've just ordered a Sonore Rendu. http://www.sonore.us/index7.html

JRiver Mac is crashing too much to enjoy (though it was stable at first as I reported here earlier.)

As I already have a Naim Dac, I didn't want to invest in an ND5xs with a redundant DAC.  Will let you all know how it compares. A bit more expensive than a Mac mini, but I'm almost over 1TB of music and that seems to be the max capacity of the mac mini. 

This should really not be a problem.  When I moved on to streaming with a Klimax DS I fully researched and came to the conclusion that a NAS was completely unecessary.  I did not want the associated pain with NAS specific operating systems and wanted to remain in a completely MAC environment.

There is no reason that you are maxed out on storage with the Mac Mini.  I use an external USB (or Firewire) hard drive which is currently 4TB.  The Mac Mini does not max out at 1TB - simply connect an external HD to it.  4TB will allow you to expand the size of your collection by a factor of four.  Once that is filled up I am sure things will have moved on and we will be seeing single HD's with 8, 12 and 16TB capacities.

Best

Gregg

Or you can just build an array. I have three 4TB Firewire RAIDs attached to my Mac Min, for a total of 12 TBs os storage. I moved to a NAS because the UPnP software for Mac is mostly smelly rubbish.

racetripper,

what is your control point????

-patrick

My present setup is QNAP 219PII running Logitech Media Server with UPnP plugin. Office system has a Squeezebox Touch. Listening room has ND5 XS.

so what is the control point?  Or do you select on the Touch and ND5x front panel displays?

Does iPeng work for that scenario?

-Patrick

n-Stream. Sometimes the remote, sometimes the front panel.

I use it for less than 10% of my listening, probably not even more than 5%. I have thought about getting rid of it and getting something cheaper (along the lines of the SBT and Arcam rDAC I have in the office).

How about JRiver (Win) on Mac via VMWare or Bootcamp?

Tog

That's exactly what I am doing with my new MacBook Pro Retina.  Only booted in the MacOS once. Sweet machine.

-Patrick