JPLAY - It aint subtle

Tried it awhile back and just couldn't get it to work consistently. When it did work, I could hear that it was doing some good things. Recently however, I was browsing ComputerAudiophile and saw that quite a few their members were using it so I decided to give it another go. It seems that they have done some improvements up to the current 5.1 version. It only took me 5 minutes from download of the trial version through set up.

I am not one for audiophile jargon so let's just say that what I heard would be comparable to what I would expect to hear if I had thrown some serious money at upgrading a major component. Needless to say I went ahead and spent the $130 to purchase the software.

My setup has been using two computers. One simply acts as a fileserver streaming files to the other pc. I had figured that reducing load on the pc doing the processing couldn't hurt the sound. Jplay also recommends a dual-pc setup, so I went ahead and tried their configuration and what I heard was yet another step above what I got with the single pc.

Now, I know that there is major controversy brewing over what exactly Jplay does and how to explain it. Jriver actually generates a warning page specifically citing tests that shows that Jplay has no benefit whatsoever. However, I am one of those audiophiles that follow what my ears tell me and not what some measurements show. Having said that I'd like to limit this thread to generating some feedback and discussion from others who have tried the software and want to share with others.