JRiver vs. Audirvana - The Smackdown

[shrimpcreole]

I've been using Audirvana for a couple years now. I absolutely cannot complain regarding the sound quality. Full-on audiophile. BUT, it's a one man show and very prone to glitches. Damien is extremely prompt when there are issues. There is no room to complain regarding his customer service or commitment to the software. I am a loyal use.

 

Today, I stayed. I downloaded JRiver. Wow, is the interface slick! Sound quality seems there as well.

 

For those of you who are familiar with both, what are your thoughts?

[freddie40]

I've been using Audirvana for a couple years now. I absolutely cannot complain regarding the sound quality. Full-on audiophile. BUT, it's a one man show and very prone to glitches. Damien is extremely prompt when there are issues. There is no room to complain regarding his customer service or commitment to the software. I am a loyal use.

 

Today, I stayed. I downloaded JRiver. Wow, is the interface slick! Sound quality seems there as well.

 

For those of you who are familiar with both, what are your thoughts?

 

 

JRiver has a much better interface.

JRiver's Data management is Top Notch. Audirvana's is very Amateurish.

JRiver has a remote It is incredible.

JRiver has very few bugs. Audirvana has many.

I prefer JRiver, but I do not use upsampling. I can see how Audirvana could be better if you were to upsample.

 

Conclusion. Based on my statements JRiver wins hands down. I do own both (Audirvana 1 & 2, JRiver 18, 19 & 20).

 

Dave

[speavler]

I had jriver on a pc for awhile. Bought it due to internet hype. Sound was unimpressive until I installed Fidelizer. At that moment I considered computer audio as viable option to my cd player. I was never able to get a stable system with jriver however. Daily reboots. Plus the constant paid upgrades. I went out and bought a mac mini, installed audirvana and achieved better sound and system stability. Never upgraded to 2.0 so I'm not sure what bugs you're referring to. Works flawlessly with remote app. I did like jremote, but now that I can queue up songs in remote app, I'm not really sure what else I could want.

[Musicophile]

JRemote: big plus for JRiver

 

Computer interface: JRiver is just to much PC on a Mac.

 

Sound quality: clearly better on A+.

 

Stability: slight advantage JRiver

 

I personally find A+ more intuitive to use.

 

Pricing policy: clear preference for A+.

 

So overall A+, but desperately waiting for the remote app.

[One and a half]

Comparison by moi, for running these two apps for at least 3 years.

 

Audirvana + (v2.x)

 

+ Pros

Excellent Sound Quality

IZOTOPE SRC (excellent)

Sounds best upsampled 2x

Direct Mode

Good interface with OSX (driver control etc.)

Excellent responsive personal support

VST Plugins

Price

 

- Cons

Library management needs polish (not the inhabitants of Poland)

No Windows version (where the $market is)

No Remote (although planned) only works with iTunes

 

JRMC

+ Pros

Excellent library management

Excellent remote (was originally 3rd party product)

 

- Cons

SRC not that great

Poor conversion PCM to DSD

DSD upsampling glitchy

SQ about average

Less than mediocre support - Look at a Wiki (an old one at that) or use Interact

Video, TV, photos just get in the way

[Windows X]

My friend tried setting up J River for Windows with Fidelizer Pro on OS X platform through Parallels. He said he prefers J River from Windows emulation over Audirvana 2. If you can access Windows emulation like Parallels, you should consider trying trial J River for Windows with free version of Fidelizer.

[Mercman]

Use Boot Camp; forget Parallels. Boot Camp is the way to go for quality sound. Parallels puts shims between all of your device drivers.

[SavantGarde]

Comparison by moi, for running these two apps for at least 3 years.

 

Audirvana + (v2.x)

 

+ Pros

Excellent Sound Quality

IZOTOPE SRC (excellent)

Sounds best upsampled 2x

Direct Mode

Good interface with OSX (driver control etc.)

Excellent responsive personal support

VST Plugins

Price

 

I don't think Audirvana Plus supports VST plugins (JRiver MC does). Audio Unit plugins are supported, though.

 

"Sounds best upsampled 2x" doesn't seem to be an advantage.

 

As regards the "Excellent responsive personal support", I have sent the developer a great many reports on bugs and inconsistencies of which as good as none have been addressed. Others seem to have similar experiences – just read the "Audirvana + 2.0" thread.

[Paul R]

JRMC has JRemote, which is awesome.

JRMC runs fine on most Macs, and can easily transcode PCM to DSD or DSD 128 without issues.

 

The JRemote product for JRMC is an overwhelming factor in favor of JRMC. That is true despite the occasional go around of disbelief in regards to Audiophile issues.

 

A number of folks will tell you JRMC sounds horrible without JPlay or Fidelizger or xxxx other product. I tend to disagree with this, as JRMC sounds very good indeed all by itself, but YMMV. Be aware that all those fancy and difficult to prove "improvements" are usually only available on a Windows platform.

 

The best sounding player is usually credited as being HQPlayer (on the Mac, as well as Linux and Windows) It however, does not sport a stunning remote app like JRemote, or the really good library management available from iTunes or JRMC.

 

As usual, listening to the different products is the only really satisfactory way to tell how it will work out for you, or what your preferences will be.

 

-Paul

[jmacdonough]

I've been using JRMC on my Windows PC for about 4 years now, and while I can't speak about Audirvana (not a Mac user), I think its sound quality is very good. Of course, I have a Asus Xonar Essence STX card, which certainly helps, but the customizability of JRiver is beyond reproach.

[Windows X]

Use Boot Camp; forget Parallels. Boot Camp is the way to go for quality sound. Parallels puts shims between all of your device drivers.

 

I seconded that. However, I have never seen any OS X user willing to reinstall system with bootcamp to try that no matter how hard I persuade them. So I suggested him to use Parallels instead.

[One and a half]

I don't think Audirvana Plus supports VST plugins (JRiver MC does). Audio Unit plugins are supported, though.

 

"Sounds best upsampled 2x" doesn't seem to be an advantage.

 

As regards the "Excellent responsive personal support", I have sent the developer a great many reports on bugs and inconsistencies of which as good as none have been addressed. Others seem to have similar experiences – just read the "Audirvana + 2.0" thread.

 

Sorry, should have just written plug-ins instead.

 

Upsampling allows A+ to remove a haze/digititis that's present on standard playback. This page is a very good reference for upsampling in A+ for those that would like to try. If SavantGarde doesn't hear a difference, then native sampling rate playback is fine too.

 

Comparing the personal support of A+ and JRMC, I suggest you view posts from member jriver on these pages and draw your own conclusion.

 

Personally, I listen to my CD player instead of computer audio, but experiment various methods to at least try to equal what I hear from CD/SACD.

[Paul R]

I seconded that. However, I have never seen any OS X user willing to reinstall system with bootcamp to try that no matter how hard I persuade them. So I suggested him to use Parallels instead.

 

What do you mean- reinstall "system" with bootcamp? Bootcamp is already in every MacOS install, and it is capable of re-partiioning the disk on the fly to build a bootcamp partition. (shrug) I have not met many MacOS users who have a problem doing that. Bootcamp even takes a Windows ISO and puts it on a bootable USB stick for you, along with all the Apple drivers for Windows.

 

There are occasional cases where a disk is far too fragmented to successfully re-partition, but this is both rare *and* easily handled. Simply boot into the recovery partition, wipe the disk, and restore it from time machine. If you use a local disk, it goes quite fast. Then BootCamp will successfully reparation the drive and install Windows for you. Works very well with the Windows 10 Tech Preview by the way.

 

Oh, and one other thing, if you have VMWare Fusion on your Mac, it can boot and run the Bootcamp partition in MacOS as well. Best of both worlds.

 

-Paul

[Windows X]

What I meant to convey is most OS X users use OS X as primary OS. They don't want to switch to Windows or bother trying to. Maybe they're not familiar with setting up system so they prefer to stick with OS X and just buy some Mac apps to try. One of my audiophile friends said using Windows is troublesome about managing USB Audio drivers. In OS X, he just plugs in and it works or something like that.

[Mercman]

What I meant to convey is most OS X users use OS X as primary OS. They don't want to switch to Windows or bother trying to. Maybe they're not familiar with setting up system so they prefer to stick with OS X and just buy some Mac apps to try. One of my audiophile friends said using Windows is troublesome about managing USB Audio drivers. In OS X, he just plugs in and it works or something like that.

 

OSX Yosemite supports USB Audio Class 2 so one generally doesn't need to install a special USB driver to play greater than 24/96.

 

Windows doesn't support the above, so a driver must be installed provided by the manufacturer. Not a big deal.

 

By the way, Fidelizer Pro 6.6 is excellent Keetakawee.

 

Thanks

[Windows X]

Thank you

[Paul R]

What I meant to convey is most OS X users use OS X as primary OS. They don't want to switch to Windows or bother trying to. Maybe they're not familiar with setting up system so they prefer to stick with OS X and just buy some Mac apps to try. One of my audiophile friends said using Windows is troublesome about managing USB Audio drivers. In OS X, he just plugs in and it works or something like that.

 

Most Mac users are either former Windows devotees, or pretty agnostic on the OS front. (grin) We just find that our Macs run MacOS and Windows, and with a little emulator assistance, Linux and a half dozen other OS's too. And they are great platforms to develop software on.

 

-Paul

[zackthedog]

I've been experimenting with just about every Mac player out there. JRiver is a marvelous gadget, and I keep a copy handy to catalog my music collection, which is sizeable. It's also nice to have if you want to play music remotely on a iDevice or stream your music. But ultimately the sound is a on the bland side and doesn't beat my CD rig.

 

Audirvana is much more refined, but the cataloging interface is frustrating and it does not support drag-and-drop, which I prefer when I just want to browse my collection and pick something off the server to listen to. Sonically I prefer it to Jriver by a long shot, there's a lot more transparency and flexibility, and the upsampling engine, as someone else noted, really clears up the digital fog.

 

HQPlayer is another animal, and for my money it makes computer audio worth fussing with. It offers a far richer, more colorful presentation, a deeper, fuller soundstage, and it trounces my CD rig, which is the point as far as I'm concerned. I don't bother with a library, just drag-and-drop albums into the player. It's a lot more sensitive to improvements in the playback chain, and the upsampling filters are pretty remarkable. It's also expensive relative to the other two, AND it only plays FLAC or full-res formats like AIFF.

 

I keep all three on my system but HQPlayer is my go-to player. Hope that helps.

[Chopin75]

Hi guys, 

 

not sure if anyone is still following this? I am new to digital computer audio. I am using trial of J river and really dislikes it. It looks primitive and keeps not auto detect my file’s correct format, e..g plays pcm instead of DSD unless I manually switch to DSD output. The latest audirvana looks really cool, can use from iPad, so I gather no need remote. Now how does this latest version compares with HQ player which i think also exist in Mac? I have no PC, and no, I won’t run parallel etc. Thanks for any opinion!

 

 

[jcn3]

8 hours ago, Chopin75 said:

Hi guys, 

 

not sure if anyone is still following this? I am new to digital computer audio. I am using trial of J river and really dislikes it. It looks primitive and keeps not auto detect my file’s correct format, e..g plays pcm instead of DSD unless I manually switch to DSD output. The latest audirvana looks really cool, can use from iPad, so I gather no need remote. Now how does this latest version compares with HQ player which i think also exist in Mac? I have no PC, and no, I won’t run parallel etc. Thanks for any opinion!

 

 

 

those problems indicate you don't have jriver set up properly -- it can easily identify file types and play appropriately.  do a search on jriver dsd settings . . . .

[jriver]

Chopin,

Try changing the skin.  You can also simplify the interface under options > general > features.

[Chopin75]

Sorry, what do you mean by changing the Skin ? 

[matthias]

On 24.4.2015 at 10:45 PM, One and a half said:

 

Sorry, should have just written plug-ins instead.

 

Upsampling allows A+ to remove a haze/digititis that's present on standard playback. This page is a very good reference for upsampling in A+ for those that would like to try. 

 

Please check your link. It does not exist.

Thanks

 

Matt

[One and a half]

1 hour ago, matthias said:

 

Please check your link. It does not exist.

Thanks

 

Matt

That was on the 'old' CA

[jriver]

On 2/9/2018 at 6:08 PM, Chopin75 said:

Sorry, what do you mean by changing the Skin ? 

Under the View menu, select skins, then try another.  Modern Cards Light looks good on a Mac.

 

You can also change the set of features, etc.

 

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Simplified_Interface