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Audiophile music player for Windows/Mac and your opinion...
AudiOhm
Senior Member
Foobar2000, Free and simple to use...
Ohms
Ohms
Waxx
Major Contributor
Foobar is great, but hard to organise your libary when it's very big like mine. That's why i use JRiver, that does everything right that Foobar does right, but have a better libary system. It's not free altough, but cheap for what you get. If you want freeware, Foobar is better than anything else.
AudiOhm
Senior Member
All my files are stored in folders, all I do is "Add folder"...
Ohms
Ohms
Waxx
Major Contributor
It's not adding them, it's searching trough a big database of several TB of audio stored on a NAS connected over wifi or lan. Foobar hangs often, JRiver does that never.
OP
PaperBoat
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2022
- Messages
- 219
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- 36
- Thread Starter
- #7
Have you ever felt that JRiver sounds thicker/ fatty than Foobar even if it's bit-perfect streaming? I've JRiver 29 and I feel somehow JRiver manipulating my music with its thick sound signature in bit-perfect mode! I know some people will not agree with this and name it the "placebo effect"...
Waxx
Major Contributor
never noticed that, but it could be that hte apo of windows is processing when you use wdm drivers for your soundcard. Try using wasapi drivers, not the standard wdm and disable the APO processing that windows give you with EAPO and make sure JRiver is not processing anything (because there is a dsp part in it).
OP
PaperBoat
Active Member
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2022
- Messages
- 219
- Likes
- 36
- Thread Starter
- #9
Can't disable JRiver DSP processing completely because I don't rely on JRiver inbuilt clip protection, instead I use DMG Audio Tracklimit... Other settings like dither, volume control, resampling, replay gain are disabled. Hardware buffer is set to 50ms, installed IFI ASIO driver for my Multi-bit IFI Zen V2 with NO GTO filter running... Windows pc "C-State" is disabled. What else to do?
tuga
Major Contributor
HQPlayer. I use it in combination with iTunes/Music: browse with the latter then drag-drop into the HQP window.
Count Arthur
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2020
- Messages
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Long time user of JRiver.
Positives for me:
Positives for me:
- As someone that had a large collection of CDs I like that it can rip and catalogue CDs, find artwork, etc. and store as uncompressed WAV files.
- Easy to import files and include them in the library along with the ripped CDs.
- Bit perfect playback.
- DSP features.
- Not a subscription model - Frequent updates are released, but for audio only, it's not necessary to upgrade to the latest version at every release. I think the current versions is 30.0, I'm still using 27.0.
I vastly prefer the UI and consistency of MusicBee to JRiver.
JR appears to have more 'options flexibility' but can be pretty inscrutable in it's 'documentation' of Who is doing What to When.
I do like JRemote to stream selections (or playlists) from the Big System to various BT amps/dac littered around the house
JR appears to have more 'options flexibility' but can be pretty inscrutable in it's 'documentation' of Who is doing What to When.
I do like JRemote to stream selections (or playlists) from the Big System to various BT amps/dac littered around the house
Count Arthur
Major Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2020
- Messages
- 2,429
- Likes
- 5,745
Zensō
Major Contributor
I like Roon on the Mac. The way they cross-reference artists is great for new music discovery. The built-in DSP is also very good. Unfortunately, their iOS apps are pretty terrible and I eventually left the service after waiting over a year on promised bug fixes that never materialized.
Primarily MusicBee and sometimes PlexAmp for me.
I find the UI for Foobar2000 very clunky, I couldn't get it to look the way I want and gave up with it (I'm not saying it's not possible, it just didn't work for me).
JRiver doesn't seem much better and I already use Plex for all my other media, so I don't want to pay for something else with such an overlap of features.
Roon looks lovely, but I really can't justify the cost of it to myself.
I find the UI for Foobar2000 very clunky, I couldn't get it to look the way I want and gave up with it (I'm not saying it's not possible, it just didn't work for me).
JRiver doesn't seem much better and I already use Plex for all my other media, so I don't want to pay for something else with such an overlap of features.
Roon looks lovely, but I really can't justify the cost of it to myself.
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Important reason to use foobar2000 is free usages for roomcorrection using Mathaudio Room EQ. The simplicity and quality is amazing. It's REW an APO in one solution for tech dummies like me.
I dunno about "audiophile" - by that standard any of them are sufficient.
Anything that supports EQ, exposes the metadata/library interface I prefer (especially for classical which is a nightmare for most tagging/metadata systems), and also supports multichannel out for my 5.1 setup gets my pick - currently that's Roon which works seamlessly across both Mac and Win (which is nice because I also work across those).
