Foobar or JRiver

[daftcombo]

never used it so don't really know what it is and how it feels but I believe jmc lacks that specific feature

In a playlist, clicking on a track T will make it the next to play when the current one ends, and the ones after T will follow.

You don't have to reorganize your playlist everytime you want a special track to play after the current one, and you have visibility on what will play next.

 

[doctorjuggles]

Voted ‘Other’ for Roon. Expensive, but it really has changed the way I listen to music.

 

[graz_lag]

Strawberry
Not having any fancy tagging needs, I prefer a Linux player that allows for simple bit perfect configuration.
It was forked off Clementine in 2018 when that development team told us they "were not interested in audiophile things" when a 2014 update removed it's bit perfect config tools.
View attachment 31221

Make sure you have disabled that stubborn guy of Pulseaudio.

For me, ALSA + MPD + Cantata as UI, with Pulseaudio disabled.
MPDroid on the smartphone as MPD-client within the same Wi-Fi network. (There is a minor bug here, 'cause I keep always ON the battery saver option on my phone, MPDroid may occasionally disconnect from the MPD-server, relaunching the app solves the issue.)

Minimserver / BubbleUPnP for Wi-Fi streaming to a couple of UPnP renderers in the house.

 

[BDWoody]

Voted ‘Other’ for Roon. Expensive, but it really has changed the way I listen to music.

I'd agree with this... I stream mostly through Tidal, and the Tidal/Roon integration really has opened up a lot of enjoyment on my part.

Read through Amir's review he referenced above...that will give you a much better idea what it is all about.

 

[daftcombo]

I'd agree with this... I stream mostly through Tidal, and the Tidal/Roon integration really has opened up a lot of enjoyment on my part.

Read through Amir's review he referenced above...that will give you a much better idea what it is all about.

I'm interested; what would you say is improved that way? Sound quality or something else?

 

[BDWoody]

I'm interested; what would you say is improved that way? Sound quality or something else?

Not sound quality. I'd bet all of the options mentioned are going to be more than competent with that. From my experience, roon required very little technical fussing...it has just worked remarkably well.

I don't have a large personal collection of music, so the integration gives me the 60 million track Tidal library, combined with very slick and thorough metadata cross referencing and presentation on any video screen.

The Roon Radio feature has played songs and artists that I never would have heard otherwise, and seems to follow a vibe pretty well if you seed it with a set of songs you want it to continue with.

All of my many chromecasts of various flavors are easily grouped, and with the CCA being a recognized roon endpoint (not messed with by Windows), it gives me another very flexible high quality optical or analog streaming option.

I can't say specifically what it is that has led me to just have music on a lot more since I started using it, but I do, and I consistently think about just how incredibly slick it is.

A lifetime membership is about the cost of one good DAC.

That's just what comes to mind without turning it into an essay...

 

[Peter Leyenaar]

Foobar appears to be Windows only, I prefer Roon , however, if one spend $500 (lifetime Roon member fee) in your local
used cd and record store , you'd end up with enough CDs to keep you happy, of course Roon's 384kHz/24-bit is sooo much better, you can easily hear the difference
Apparently Steve Guttenberg (yes him again, oh no) doesn't like Roon
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/the-audiophiliac-does-not-love-us/48116;)

 

[Soniclife]

Apparently Steve Guttenberg (yes him again, oh no) doesn't like Roon

What better recommendation do you need to use Roon.

I used foobar for years before switching to Roon, it's integration of my ripped collection and tidal are it's killer feature for me, and it's easy way of poking about in music you don't yet love.

Musicbee I also like, it's powerful and easy to use, and free, a good combination.

 

[Soniclife]

I would like to use Roon, but my experience is that it is quite cumbersome for large collections of music and has no tree view.

There seem to be plenty of people on the Roon forum with large collections using it without problem, it does like good hardware to run on, especially true for larger collections. A tree view would be the wrong approach to use it properly, if you're wedded to that presentation it won't work for you.

 

[KSTR]

Roon depicts the problem right with their own advertising on the startpage. Roon is a not a music player, it's a bloated mess of everything where they just happened to forget removing the actual playback process of music ;-)
Pretty much like a modern "cell phone" where making actual phone calls is sort of a side benefit only.

 

[DDF]

If one wants to use the Convolver plugin (for speaker correction, phase correction, room correction), one has to choose a bitrate and stick to it because the impulse in Convolver and the song have to share the same bitrate. Only solution when you throw other bitrates is to resample with SoX or other before Convolver.

Got it. Alternatively, one could use it with equalizer APO

 

[Kal Rubinson]

The Roon Radio feature has played songs and artists that I never would have heard otherwise, and seems to follow a vibe pretty well if you seed it with a set of songs you want it to continue with.

I am glad it works for you but I have gotten nothing but consternation from Roon Radio. Almost always, its choices are strange and jarring. I keep it turned off and I am glad that it is easier to do now than before. It used to be a repetitive annoyance.

Roon also wastes most of my screen real estate with blank areas and unnecessary stuff while the tools need to be reached for.

 

[daftcombo]

Got it. Alternatively, one could use it with equalizer APO

EqualizerAPO works with Foobar only if you choose "DS" output, not WASAPI nor ASIO, which arguably give better sound quality.

Moreover, with APO too you can only use a single bitrate for a convolving impulse, so you would rely on Windows resampler, which is probably worse than SoX in Foobar.
(See Archimago's study on Windows resampler: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2015/11/measurements-windows-10-audio-stack.html)

 

[Snarfie]

Foobar. Mathaudio Room EQ is working on it for No cost. Did try Jriver with the basic room correction pluginn at the end i had to use REW which for me is way to complicated. Further more lots of pluginn's you can use.

 

[Cortes]

Any software that doesn't support folder structures is as broken by design as is a filterless NOS dac ;-)
My feeling is the younger generation has completely lost the connection to hierarchical structures because most software (or "apps") in almost any field doesn't support it anymore (at least not in the default settings). Everthing is flat now. And from there you start to pick items by searching using masks etc, rather than organizing things right from the beginning.

I've tried many different player SW and always return to bare-bone foobar, one of the main reasons is it can be configured to almost zero mouse usage.

+1

I just can't use seriously any media soft that assumes is able to organize my collections better than myself.
I once tested a trial of Roon, all impressive, all cool, but I was unable to complete the free trial period and went back to Foobar because the organization by folders is not supported. Same with the rest of soft I have tried, such as audirvana.

 

[Sal1950]

Make sure you have disabled that stubborn guy of Pulseaudio.

For me, ALSA + MPD + Cantata as UI, with Pulseaudio disabled.
MPDroid on the smartphone as MPD-client within the same Wi-Fi network. (There is a minor bug here, 'cause I keep always ON the battery saver option on my phone, MPDroid may occasionally disconnect from the MPD-server, relaunching the app solves the issue.)

Minimserver / BubbleUPnP for Wi-Fi streaming to a couple of UPnP renderers in the house.

Just as an FYI, don't have to worry about Pulse, Strawberry will take a back door around it once you point it to Alsa - Device.

 

[g29]

Any HQPlayer users here ???

 

[noel_fs]

jriver sucks big time, my preference is roon, otherwise foobar/musicbee.

 

[noel_fs]

+1

I just can't use seriously any media soft that assumes is able to organize my collections better than myself.
I once tested a trial of Roon, all impressive, all cool, but I was unable to complete the free trial period and went back to Foobar because the organization by folders is not supported. Same with the rest of soft I have tried, such as audirvana.

with small libraries, folder organization is fine, but when you have 20k songs there is nothing as good as roon

 

[Ron Party]

with small libraries folder organization if fine, but when you have 20k songs there is nothing as good as roon

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?