J River Vs. Media Monkey Do they sound different

Based on the reading I have done, with Wasapi-event-style you need to have the wordlength pre-set to 24 bit, which is what the dac expects.

Initially I did not know about this and the Jriver would play for a few seconds and then cause my pc to crash and then needed to reboot DAC and Windows. Setting the wordlength to 24 bits is just a requirement of the certain pc-dac communication (wasapi) and works perfectly. It is described in the JR Media Center setup guide for Win Vista/7 from the computer audiophile forum or the guidelines posted by Ayre or DCS. This is not required however for Kernel Streaming which allows you to set anything you want.

I've not heard M.Monkey though. I'd like to listen to Pure Music or AyreWave too in Mac OS and compare.

Thanks,

Digilog5, I did run both KS and Wasapi event for hourrs this weekend and would agree that Wasapii event is a tad more revealing.

As a beginner with a PC-based source, I would say that the sofftware is at least quirky. The ripping software is tempermental and the album art features work about half the time.

I'm still having a ball acccessing my music and am astounded by the sound quality. Whether its the W4S Dac, which has gotten spectacular reviews, or the PC-based source, IMHO it sounds better than my Oppo 83 as a transport into the Dac. Can't see ever going back.

In an attempt to hijack my own thread, I was wondering if anyone has had good results with a particular USB cable. I'm using a cheap Radio Shack 3 mete ( to reach my sofa0 right now and am looking to make an investment in a quality ($250-$500)USB cable. Looking at Cardas Clear, Audioquest carbon and a host of others.

Has anyone had good experience with a mid tier USB cable?

I installed J River on my computer recently and could never get it to run. It would open and just hang the program. Running Windows Vista and the stock cheapie sound card (Realtek HD I think). Would love to compare it to Media Monkey, which I did get to run fine (although I could not get the ASIO output plug-in to work so I am running wav out). Media Monkey sounds pretty darn good, but since I can't get ASIO to work properly, I don't know if the WAV out is outputting bit perfect data to my DAC or not.

I am new to the computer audio stuff, so I don't know where to start to troubleshoot J River. Searching through endless forum pages to find troubleshooting solutions that may or may not apply to my computer/situation is daunting...

I have just downloaded the free Jukebox 14 version and although it sounds very good it no longer supports ASIO or WASAPI output. I am using it with Directsound. After reading their forum, it turns out that "audiophile features" are now only available in the paid Media Center software. Like I said earlier it still sounds very good but not quite as good as my Potplayer+Reclock combo which are free as well.