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Foobar or JRiver

Foobar VS JRiver

  • Foobar

    Votes: 105 53.6%
  • JRiver

    Votes: 54 27.6%
  • Other (Mention below)

    Votes: 37 18.9%

  • Total voters
    196

noel_fs

Active Member
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Dec 12, 2018
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Can you further explain?

Do you mean that Roon is fine if and only if you have a small library... such as only 20K songs?
the opposite, if you have a few hundred its manageable with foobar, when you get to the point of 20k songs which is a lot of albums even having them organized in folders with a good hierarchy its just unbearable to deal with. You will end up listening to the same 20 albums out of the 2000 you have. Roon organizes it just like a streaming platform would do. With the extra insane networking features roon provides.
 

BillG

Major Contributor
Joined
Sep 12, 2018
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Auckland, New Zealand
Since someone mentioned Roon giving one suggestions based upon what it's currently playing, here's MusicBee's functionality in that regard:

:cool:

Untitled.jpg
 

daftcombo

Major Contributor
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When the Khadas is $99USD, and it's a recommended DAC here based upon its exceptional performance measurements, that argument falls short... :rolleyes:

Don't forget the 9$ Apple Dongle. DACs are almost free these days, like the air you breath.

Then FooRiver or JBar2000. With the money left you can buy concert tickets.
 

BDWoody

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When the Khadas is $99USD, and it's a recommended DAC here based upon its exceptional performance measurements, that argument falls short... :rolleyes:

I didn't say any good DAC...
 

Burning Sounds

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 22, 2016
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Location
Co. Durham, UK
I've been a JRiver user for more than 10 years. It's rock solid and stable and I make extensive use of DSP (8 channels with X-overs and EQ). It only shows 1-2% CPU usage. Its WDM driver is a real strength enabling the routing of any external content through the DSP - in my case primarily Qobuz. Output from my turntable can be routed through JRiver with no problem. VST plugins are easy to install and work well. I've built the required X-overs and DSP for my speakers in Acourate and used JRiver's convolver with no problem either. The CPU load is higher, but everything works fine. As an experiment I've also tried full room correction (FIR filters for the 8 channels and upsampling) without any glitches. I can use REW and route it through JRiver to measure the transfer function of my DSP settings. JRiver doesn't have graphing capability which is a weakness and there seems to be no intention to develop it, either, which is a shame.

As a long time Qobuz subscriber I was recently offered a 90 day trial of Roon. After reading a lot of positive reviews of Roon maybe my expectations were too high, but I didn't subscribe. I didn't find the playing now screen particularly impressive with some text way too small and yet large amounts of wasted screen space. I use a large screen TV and the amount of blank space looked strange. Images of musicians/bands were often poor or non-existent. I generally liked Roon Radio - in fact its ability to choose music that I liked based on the seed music was also its downfall - it regularly choose music (from Qobuz) that I already had. Integration with Qobuz was excellent, but I much prefer the playing now layout of the Qobuz desktop app to Roon's layout. Qobuz' desktop app has improved dramatically over the last year - it used to be very buggy and was one of the reasons I wanted to evaluate its integration with Roon.

Roon's DSP was easy to implement. The graphs are good, but more detail would make them even more useful. I couldn't find a way to successfully measure the transfer function of my DSP settings in Roon - there seemed to be a lot of processing going on causing too much latency. My biggest dislike in Roon DSP is that to turn a particular filter off you only have to click in the vicinity of the appropriate button. This makes it way too easy to make a mistake and inadvertently send a full range signal through your tweeters. In JRiver you have to click inside a check box, which may look old-fashioned, but makes for much more precision and less chance of a mistake.

Overall, I just found JRiver more versatile, with numerous options for control - mini wireless backlit keyboard and mouse (my favourite), several apps for tablets, phone etc.
 

vavan

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
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Tks

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Started using JRiver a month ago or so, loving it more everyday after using Foobar2000 for nearly a year.

Keep discovering new and useful features it has, and just generally an amazing piece of software. Now I just got to figure out how to tweak the GUI to more of my liking, and that'd be perfect.
 

BDWoody

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Oh! A good $500 DAC! Why didn't you say so then, you ninny?! :p;):facepalm:

Yeah...youre right... How incredibly misleading...

Good thing there are hawkeyes like you out there to keep the masses safe...
 

Snarfie

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You will end up listening to the same 20 albums out of the 2000 you have. Roon organizes it just like a streaming platform would do. With the extra insane networking features roon provides.
Sometimes i choose using my android tablet (using Monkymote) on albums specific the pictures. When i see them (which give a good feeling) i think sometimes hey this album i did not hear for a long time. It is a more intuitive/subjective way of choosing your music. These pictures are combined in an overview only visible in android (Monkeymote) not in Windows using Foobar only.
 
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