Audiophile music player for Windows/Mac and your opinion...

[Boltman92124]

Long time user of JRiver.

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'm still on version 20! Started using the Gizmo remote recently and a big screen TV for the display. Love it.

 

[Roderik]

Why do you need a music player if on a Mac or an iPhone you can stream anything via Airplay in perfect quality? And if you absolutely want to prevent the unavoidable wifi hiccups, you just connect your Mac or iPhone with your amplifier or active speakers in another way. What you do need is a music provider like Apple Music. Or another one as long as it delivers at least cd quality streams.

 

[sarumbear]

You mean Plex? I’m using that on my Apple TV for movies, with the Plex server running on the NAS. I haven’t tried it for music playback. Can it be remote controlled via some app? My music playing Mac mini is headless.

Yes I meant Plex. Their music offering works on the same server you have. Like with films, you use clients to access the library, either via the standard app or the music optimised app called Plexamp. You can integrate it with Tidal as well.

Music

www.plex.tv

 

[jhaider]

Roon EQ is attached to the player. Every stream to a player gets its own EQ.

And if you want to play something on physical media, or something else that doesn’t flow through the player software?

Again, it is very very stupid to calibrate a system using a tool shackled to a single source. PEQ is a system calibration tool - meaning it is used to modify the response of the transducers in a system. That is in contrast to opposed to tone controls that are used to modify the program material to taste. System calibration should be downstream in the signal chain from all source switching, so it applies to all sources that feed into that system.

 

[sarumbear]

Why do you need a music player if on a Mac or an iPhone you can stream anything via Airplay in perfect quality?

You still need a player to send the output via AirPlay.

And if you absolutely want to prevent the unavoidable wifi hiccups, you just connect your Mac or iPhone with your amplifier or active speakers in another way. What you do need is a music provider like Apple Music. Or another one as long as it delivers at least cd quality streams.

The OP was looking for players that play saved files to one's own storage system, not streaming.

 

[Roderik]

You still need a player to send the output via AirPlay.


The OP was looking for players that play saved files to one's own storage system, not streaming.

I still don't understand. The Mac or iPhone gets music via Airplay to amplifier or speakers. And in Apple Music you can make a library if you want to. Same with other music providers, I suppose. This thread seems much ado about nothing. But that of course is quite usual on ASR.

 

[sarumbear]

I still don't understand. The Mac or iPhone gets music via Airplay to amplifier or speakers. And in Apple Music you can make a library if you want to. Same with other music providers, I suppose.

Apple Music is just a player. People may want to have a different software to do the same job. There are many image editing software for instance. Do you use Microsoft Office, or Pages, or Google Docs, etc.? Most audio persons like choice. Would you be happy if there were only one make/model Hi-Fi system on the market?

This thread seems much ado about nothing. But that of course is quite usual on ASR.

iPhone and Mac may seem to you the entire world but the market is much larger than that. You seem to miss that.

For instance there is no Apple Music (app), yet, on Windows, which is 80% of the desktop computer market. No hope for having it on Unix either. Many of the players listed on this thread can run on many platforms, and can support multitude of file formats and codecs; many, many more than Apple Music.

 

[rwortman]

And if you want to play something on physical media, or something else that doesn’t flow through the player software?

Again, it is very very stupid to calibrate a system using a tool shackled to a single source. PEQ is a system calibration tool - meaning it is used to modify the response of the transducers in a system. That is in contrast to opposed to tone controls that are used to modify the program material to taste. System calibration should be downstream in the signal chain from all source switching, so it applies to all sources that feed into that system.

The point of having a database like Roon is that all digital media are uploaded to the system. The only physical media I play are LP’s and that is sent thru an analog EQ that closely mirrors the Roon settings. If you have systems in many rooms, Roon’s ability to do the EQ in the box beats buying a standalone EQ for each room.

”very very stupid”? It’s just a choice. If your music collection is all on physical media and you stream occasionaly just use your streaming service’s native app and this question is irrelevant.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

JRiver, for management of a large classical library and for built-in EQ. But I do dread trying to do anything new with it, and having to wade through the forum for answers.

IDK why someone doesn't write a manual and publish it. I know I would gladly pay to buy it.

 

[sarumbear]

I can advise you to take a closer look at this article about top music players for Mac. Explore this list of music players for Mac and find the best option.

No Roon, Plex, not even MacOS's native player Music!

However, it is interesting to see that Foobar website has around 130K visits a month, whereas the Mac only Elmedia has more than a Million! Taking into account that Elmedia serving just 15% of the market, it shows how little Foobar is actually known/used in the market. Second on the list JRiver has even less interest with 41K visits and the rest are not even registered! The unlisted Plex has most number of visits among 3rd party players but even it has less than 170K visits.

These are certainly very niche products with extremely small user base.

 

[Jmudrick]

From Winamp to JRiver to Audirvana to Roon. Very happy with it (four systems and on the go with ARC).

 

[Rottmannash]

I don’t know if you are doing this intentionally or you are confused with what a player is. Strange that you even post a vote on players.

iTunes is a player that was published by Apple and was integrated with their download shop. As any player it plays bit perfect. As a store they only sold lossy tracks. However, it allowed you to rip CDs to uncompressed format files to a library. You can add other compatible files that you obtained independently to that library as well. Hence, it was a player that is integrated with the iTunes service.

iTunes download shop still exists but Apple started a separate streaming service, Apple Music, which was integrated to iTunes. On the Mac iTunes is replaced with the Music app, soon that will happen on Windows too. The Music app is a player and a library manager, which is integrated with Apple’s iTunes and Apple Music services.

I hope this is clear and you understand the difference between bit-perfect player and lossy tracks.

"Strange that you even post a vote on players."
Not sure what is strange-I have an opinion and voted for Audirvana. As for the rest of your post it's quite condescending, as are many of your posts on ASR. Not playing flac files is a non starter and AFAIK iTunes doesn't play them. Not interested in converting all my files to ALAC.

 

[Berwhale]

I can advise you to take a closer look at this article about top music players for Mac. Explore this list of music players for Mac and find the best option.

So Elmedia is the top choice music player on the website owned by the company that makes it?

Do you work for Electronic Team, Inc?

 

[sarumbear]

So Elmedia is the top choice music player on the website owned by the company that makes it?

You seem to have missed that I have not posted that link?

Do you work for Electronic Team, Inc?

You have also missed the message of my post, which was to show that all of these players, including Elmedia listed by a member, are niche players used by very few people.

Read the post, grasp the message, and read the profile of the poster and then if you still have a reason to blame partisanship or marketing, tell us why.

 

[Berwhale]

You seem to have missed that I have not posted that link?

You seem to have missed that I was replying to someone else (Kytolpe), not you.

You have also missed the message of my post, which was to show that all of these players, including Elmedia listed by a member, are niche players used by very few people.

Read the post, grasp the message, and read the profile of the poster and then if you still have a reason to blame partisanship or marketing, tell us why.

See above.

 

[sarumbear]

You seem to have missed that I was replying to someone else (Kytolpe), not you.



See above.

It seems I have missed, indeed. Sorry.

PS. I must pay more attention.

 

[theREALdotnet]

It’s not an article, it’s an infomercial by Electronic Team, Inc.

 

[PaperBoat]

It’s not an article, it’s an infomercial by Electronic Team, Inc.

Nope...

 

[Roderik]

I can advise you to take a closer look at this article about top music players for Mac. Explore this list of music players for Mac and find the best option.

All for the eq-fanatics and room acoustics finetuners who will never be satisfied with their gear. I play my cd's or stream my music via Airport Express and tos link with the fairly modest Marantz CD 6003 and PM 6007. My monitors weren't too modest and they still aren't, even though they are 25 years old Diapason Preludes II. And I never felt the need for all sorts of endless tricks to beef-up my music. Only when I recently added a 12 inch Dali active subwoofer I spent some time running in the subwoofer and adjusting its volume to integrate the lower frequencies perfectly. But a music player? No way. Okay, VLC can function as a music player but is only used as video player.

 

[Old Listener]

No Roon, Plex, not even MacOS's native player Music!

However, it is interesting to see that Foobar website has around 130K visits a month, whereas the Mac only Elmedia has more than a Million! Taking into account that Elmedia serving just 15% of the market, it shows how little Foobar is actually known/used in the market. Second on the list JRiver has even less interest with 41K visits and the rest are not even registered! The unlisted Plex has most number of visits among 3rd party players but even it has less than 170K visits.

These are certainly very niche products with extremely small user base.

The number of visits to these websites is not a good measure of the amount of use of the corresponding players. You may visit the website a few times and then download and install the software. Once you start to use the player, you don't need to keep visiting the website routinely.

I've used JRiver for almost 17 years. In recent years, I rarely visited the website.