all about pc and audio thoughts ...

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.

Hi guys, just a couple thoughts and some of my experience that I think of when reading through this thread... I've been a budget audiophile for alot years, Okay, cheap.
When I switched to computer audio about 16 months ago, I downloaded the free version of JRiver (14?) and foobar 2000... at the time JRiver was ever so slightly better, but so close that on most recordings I couldn't tell the difference. Foobar did an update, with that I felt Foobar now had the edge. I realize that JRiver has also improved, but since that time Foobar 2000 has had maybe a dozen updates and on maybe half of those, I heard an improvement... the current version is a different world from what I downloaded 16 months ago... granted, I haven't compared with a current JRiver version and JRiver was more user friendly. Next, JPLAY, when I first tried it, I was smiling big, nice improvement, after some research, I upgraded my ram from 3 to 6gb, I turned off all or removed any programs not needed (dedicated music server, so most) what I found then was that JPlay no longer was the huge improvement, occasionally it sounded a bit leaner, but no longer added depth or detail and lastly, last night after months of undecisiveness, I finally downloaded windows 8... in my system, it is a clear improvement. ... I know the general consensus is that MAC is better, I don't know, it may be, but I can tell you that my system has improved very nicely over these past months using Foobar 2000, outputting wasapi into an anynchronous to spdif, to my dac. The differences in my system when properly optimizing my server was more than noticeable and Foobar 2000 has also dramatically improved, anyone using Foobar, go to the top, hit HELP, then update to current version. (its about 3 weeks old).. I'd love to hear from anyone that has compared very recent player versions... I hope this might help someone out, Tim

Agree that effectiveness of JPLAY to a large degree depends on if you are using your system as a dedicated Audio device or not. I do everything on my PC and am almost always multitasking. JPLAY helps reduce non-critical background operations. Other nice benefits of JPLAY is that it currently has 3 engine playback options (beach, river and extreme) that all sound different. Also, all future JPLAY upgrades are included in the original purchase. Worth a free trial download for those that are interested.

I think Decible is the best player for Mac.