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all about pc and audio thoughts ...

i most share with you all here my little experince with combinations of pc and audio.
im love music and i have expensive hifi system devore fidelity nines speakers and leben cs600 amp and used cary cdp1 has asource.
i live in israel and im read alot of all pc audio things programm like amarra ,foobare j.river. asio for all drivers and waspi and more...
i talk with expert in pc and he say to me that it cant be any proggram that make the sound better ?
and i like to how is the best way to do rip for all my cds in home do i need specials proggram?
and any suggest for pc or if i used mini pc like zotac small and i used only the pc in usb port
any suggestions for proggram or pc or dac to win my old cd player cary cdp1 ??
bolero32
realremo
460 posts
 
One thing Jplay definitely does do in iTunes is utilize WASAPI and Kernel Streaming, which iTunes does not do, at least not in its most current version. The sound quality upgrade on my system is significant. Foobar: won't recognize AIFF files, cannot display album art...and J.River was hard to work with on my laptop, too many options, couldn't get sound out of it for some reason, but I was probably just impatient, and will try it out again someday. It's true that this is my work laptop and I am running programs that are memory intensive, like 3dsMAX and photoshop, while playing music, this is not a dedicated music laptop. Jplay makes a massive improvement in SQ in my situation.
realremo
460 posts
 
Dtc - did not know that about JRiver, not sure if memory playback is as important on a PC as WASAPI and/or kernel streaming, as we must avoid the windows audio mixer. I do think JRiver would be an excellent product, but just not for me. I have owned an iPod for 8 years, use it extensively at work, and using JRiver for home audio while maintaining iTunes for iPod support was too much for me. Much simpler to just get Jplay so iTunes can utilize kernel streaming. I suppose it's possible for JRiver and iTunes to use the same library of lossless music, but did not investigate this option as it would needlessly complicate my life. I already have enough tech-based stress.
albertporter's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
albertporter
4,949 posts
 
Steve,

Jplay and Jriver is the best current combo for PC, however the right version of Amarra on Mac still beats it IMO.

One must be careful of using not only the best playback software, but the best CD ripping software as well, dbpoweramp/Accurate Rip with PC and XLD with Mac.

Here are some more tips (no advertising):
www.empiricalaudio

Which version of Amarra do you suggest? I currently run Pure Music and although it's good I suspect what you say is true that the Amarra is better.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Albert - I use version 2.3.3 4318/19. It is called 19, but comes up 18. The link is on my audiocircle.com forum if you awant to download it. I have compared it to 2.3.3 4344 and 2.4 4347 and I prefer it. It is not too buggy if you avoid 192 and 176 tracks.

Make sure you use the two uninstall scripts in the extras folder if you already have an Amarra installed.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
Realremo - J River does not believe memory playback really adds much to a properly functioning, well tuned system and I do not really hear a difference using it. I agree that using WASAPI or kernel streaming versus going through a mixer are more important than memory playback. Trying to run J River and iTunes in parallel should be doable, but also a potential nightmare for tagging, cover art, etc. IMO, the main strength of JPlay is minimizing the effect of other activity on the system, so I am not surprised it helps on your work environment laptop. On a well tuned, dedicated system, I am not convinced it provides much sound improvement.
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