Article: Roon Vs. JRiver | Clash of the Titans

[bluesman]

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[bluesman]

12 hours ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

I may have missed it but when you did the listening comparisons did you employ the memory playback feature in JRMC? It was requested and provided some years back and does seem to make a difference.

Thanks so much for the kind words!  I never tried memory playback, based initially on JRiver's statement that they are "... unaware of any test that shows a sound quality advantage to memory playback".  When it was only 32 bit, JRMC couldn't put more than a gig in memory and reportedly stopped playing when the file reached its truncated end.  Now that it's 64 bit, more memory is usable - but it's still not able to process and cache large, hi res files.  It has a theoretical advantage if your network carries a lot of traffic alongside your audio, but mine does not.  Here's a current thread on Interact about memory playback that has some interesting and useful detail.  For those who haven't seen it, memory playback is in the audio options under the tools menu. 

 

Best regards for low noise and distortion in the new year! 😀

 

David

[bluesman]

10 hours ago, One and a half said:

For my work laptop, I use JRMC, cause I'm too stingy to buy another Roon license. Tried to stream mp3 across the net with JRMC, works fine, but bandwidth in remote sites of our country severely restricts the quality. For mobile use, Onkyo Player works in cars and on planes where internet access can be problematic or non existent...In summary the 'in use' features of Roon, such as networkable end points and the music management win it for me.

 

I agree with your keen observations and insights!  Unless I'm missing something, the only reason to consider buying additional Roon seats would be for use at additional sites outside your LAN at which you'd use the features.  I got along fine with Foobar in my office before I got JRMC, and I still stream via JRMC outside my LAN. 

 

I need a stand-alone player so rarely that I still use my iPod Nano when necessary. If it ever dies, I'll probably just put some files on my phone or tablet & use those in a pinch.

[bluesman]

2 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Thanks for your efforts and for the clear descriptions and caveats.  It is an impressive and useful report.  Since there are utilities which will monitor and report CPU load and other hardware functions, it would have been nice to see some of those numbers used to compare the two programs.

 

I also note that the analysis does not mention DSD, format conversions, upsampling/downsampling, DSP or multichannel.  

Thanks for your thoughts, Kal - I really appreciate any and all input from you!  As you can see, this ended up being a lengthy piece.  So I tried to focus content more toward entry level users, both current and potential.  In my experience, most who are already into DSD have fair familiarity with JRMC &/or Roon.  Most who've continued to mod an open source approach that far have used Foobar etc for years and rejected JRMC, Roon etc long ago.  And the other major group of ultrahigh res listeners uses high end hardware that obviates (at least in their minds 😉) these simple software solutions, and it'd take a higher level of comparison than I could have added for them to derive much benefit from it.  And as my own equipment is far from state of the art, I couldn't provide observations relevant to users of better stuff.  So I and I alone decided to limit the scope to what you see, knowing that (at most) it'd provide about 80% of what 80% of readers might want.  I may have been wrong, but I tried to think it out clearly and make an intelligent decision.

 

For the same reason, I also kept the evals to basics: bit perfect, no DSP, no sampling morphs etc.  The spectrum of "bit nudging" is endless, and it'd sure make an excellent sequel of similar size.  And I don't have the knowledge or hardware to do multichannel well.  The best I could have cobbled together would be a modern interpretation of my college dorm room systems, in which you could find various guitar and PA amps and speakers driven by an Eico preamp and a few items I built from magazine plans.  I simply have no experience with more than 2 channels.

 

Best regards -

 

David

[bluesman]

1 minute ago, Audiophile Neuroscience said:

its free to try, and would be interested to see if you thought it made a difference.

 

 

Thanks! I'll give it a try & report back.

[bluesman]

1 minute ago, Kal Rubinson said:

I was pointing it out in the hope that it might prod you or someone else to consider going in this direction.  My experience suggests that these more stressful tasks might reveal some significant differences.

I'm game!  I'm working on some new ideas for Chris, and you've tweaked my list.  Best of all, I can now tell my wife in all honesty that we have to get at least one new DAC and another pair of good speakers 😁

[bluesman]

58 minutes ago, kmp14 said:

Excellent comparision!  I am hoping that one point you made is correct, but I believe that it is in error.  When discussing Roon and zones, you state that:

 

"Linking Chromecast zones to RAAT zones can be done using Google Home"

 

I do not think this is correct.  I wish it was, but I have not been able to find anything over at the Roon forums or doc that says that you can do this.  I posted the question over there and one response says you can't do it.

 

Here is a link to the question, posted on the Roon forums:

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/raat-endpoint-and-chromecast-audio-grouping-in-google-home/56963

Yes, I saw your post and the responses.  But here's a link to my Roon source which says: "Due to hardware limitations, Chromecast devices can not be grouped with other, non-Chromecast devices outside of the Google Home app".  I haven't tried it because we don't use Google Home, so I can't confirm that it's correct.  But it is in the Roon knowledge base, so I assume(d) it was good information - and maybe it is.  I'll try to find out.

[bluesman]

3 minutes ago, Kal Rubinson said:

You probably need a 6-8 channel DAC and 3 more speakers and a sub if you choose to go down the rabbit hole.

I lack the DAC, but I have a great sub.  And I love rabbit, especially in a mustard cream sauce......

[bluesman]

27 minutes ago, Mayfair said:

The article says that ...' JRemote was an aftermarket remote controller and renderer that still works well but is no longer available from the iTunes App Store. ..."

 

According to JRiver, this is incorrect, and JRemote is still available from the Itunes App Store

 

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,118802.0.html

You are correct. It was not available for a while after JRiver bought it, and there were some web posts about this.  They added Panel in what I assumed was an attempt to obviate the need for JRemote - but Panel's a very poor substitute, in my opinion. I bought JRemote for my iPhone when it was still an aftermarket app.  But when I tried to put it on my iPad, it wasn't in the App Store. I'm glad to see that it's there now, because it's really great and I use it daily. I see that it's now available for Android, too. Good on 'em!! 

 

One of the things I love about JRemote is that it looks and feels more like Roon than like the JRMC GUI.

 

Thanks for catching this!  I should have double-checked and apologize for my error.

[bluesman]

9 hours ago, gcoupe said:

 

The information is correct - but it's open to misinterpretation because of the way it is worded.  Roon cannot group together Chromecast audio devices within Roon - Chromecast audio devices can only be grouped together by using Google Home...See this entry in the Roon Knowledge Base on zones for full information.

The more we look into this, the fuzzier it gets.  It's becoming clear to me that we're all unaware of a lot of information that would make our lives much easier.  What we need is a checksum for the stuff we read and hear, because a lot of it is less than completely accurate regardless of the source - obviously including me! 😵

 

You can indeed group Chromecast Audios from within the Roon GUI using "Group zones" - that's how I did it. And Roon is very good about letting you know which zones you can group.  It also identifies the zones you can't group with the one you've selected, and it offers an explanation if you click "Why?"  The 6 zones identified in the screen shot below are my 5 Chromecast Audios and their grouping.

 

 

I actually forgot that I had the Google Home app on my iPad because I only downloaded it to set up the Chromecasts and never used it again - I went to the App Store to download it last night and found the "open" button instead of the download symbol.  When I opened it, I discovered that my "whole house" group of Chromecasts was listed there along with the individual devices!  So linking Chromecast zones in Roon apparently links them in Google Home and creates a proxy Chromecast "device" recognized by Roon. But you are correct that no non-Chromecast device or zone is recognized by Google Home (or, to be as accurate as possible, none of mine is recognized). So I have absolutely no idea what the statement in the Roon knowledge base means about grouping Chromecasts with other devices in GHome. Had I tried to do it myself before repeating what's in the Roon KB, I would have known that.  I promise faithfully not to make that mistake again!

 

I'd also already been to that RKB page on zones.  Strangely enough, despite its most recent updating on Wed May 2, 2018, it makes no mention at all of Chromecast.  This strikes me as a serious oversight, given both the popularity of the devices and their fine integration into Roon.

 

The older I get, the more I find out how little I know. 

[bluesman]

16 minutes ago, gcoupe said:

there are times when I feel like the Red Queen running hard just to stand still...

 

 

And thanks for your efforts to keep us all informed - I know how difficult it is to maintain currency across so large a board.

[bluesman]

5 hours ago, March Audio said:

Just one comment which you touched on regarding costs.  J River is on a continuous and chargeable update path. Yes you can stay with deprecated versions but that's not the reality. You will spend $20+ on each regular new release. 

 

You're obviously correct that JRMC upgrades are not free. And "[c]ontinuous quality improvement brings updates quite frequently, but that’s only true for the current release. So sticking with a deprecated version leaves one further behind the state of the art with each subsequent update of the latest version."  But as long as your needs are met, I see no reason not to stick with what you have until the wheels fall off.  Of course, it's hard to resist those upgrades, so I've made the move consistently - but I only met Roon a few months ago, and it's been a game changer.

 

There's only one thing Roon won't do for me that I absolutely need, and that's WAN streaming (for which I use JRMC).  As long as I can continue to do that, I'll stay with JRMC24 since I only use it when I'm away from home.  Should 24 ever become nonfunctional after its sunset, I'll have to decide between upgrading to the then-current version and going back to Foobar.  And if Roon ever adds remote access, I'll embrace it fully unless something even better comes along.

[bluesman]

4 hours ago, unfrostedpoptart said:

Nice article for what it covers but missing a huge topic:  multi-channel audio.  I use JRMC for this and have tons of 5.1 FLACs And you really need to go back and add info about JRemote (both as a remote and an endpoint) since you (for some reason) thought it was discontinued.

 

Thanks for reading and thinking about the article - I appreciate it!

 

I decided up front that including multichannel audio was too big an addition, given the length of the piece without it.  Yes, both can do it (thanks for responding, Kal!).   A comparison worth reading will require the same level of effort and detail that was devoted to 2 channel, in addition to a good multichannel DAC and sufficient source material.  I hope to put this together and produce a piece of similar length and depth on multichannel this year.

 

Yes, I was wrong about current availability of JRemote - my inability to find it in the App Store when I got my iPad a few years back was my most recent attempt to find it, after buying it for my iPhone well before that.  So I use Panel on my tablets for JR.  I know that it's available now for both iOS and Android, and I strongly recommend it.  Not only is it a great app, but it also has a much more smooth and contemporary feel than JRMC itself. It's actually very Roon-like   It’s a fine endpoint that’s fast and well laid out, and it’s what I use in the car and while traveling.

[bluesman]

2 hours ago, petaluman said:

I did want to correct one piece of the music information in this article.  Jacky Terrasson is a pianist; Stefon Harris plays vibes on the Summertime release you mentioned off the Kindred album.

 

Also, one absolutely-not-a-big-deal question purely out of curiosity.  One downloading & streaming source is the Live Music Archive on archive.org, where anyone can post live recordings of bands that have consented to being included.  Obviously, many of them are unknowns, but there are some important artists from a wide variety of genres.  A few random examples: Billy Bragg, Charlie Hunter, Grateful Dead, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Del McCoury, Little Feat, Jackie Greene, Sarah Jarosz, Alabama Shakes, North Mississippi Allstars, Dumpstaphunk, Matisyahu, Michael Franti...  Obviously, this is not commercially released music, but the artists may be well-known.  What does the metadata-searching feature of these applications do with these (if anything)?

 

Of course it’s Stefon Harris! Looking at the same piece too many times in too few hours has that effect on me (& many others).  I have the same problem when writing a web application - stupid mistakes & typos leave bugs that are found as soon as a few users boot it up and (in retrospect) should have been found & fixed by me.

 

I promise to be more careful!  I had some disagreements with Harry Pearson over errors like this in TAS, eg in the review of Dave Grusin’s wonderful Sheffield D2D album Discovered Again. The worst was the statement that Ron Carter’s bass went “well below 20 Hz”. The low E on a bass is 41.2 Hz at concert pitch (a=440) - this is simple fact that I’m sure they knew.  But HP refused to correct (or even acknowledge) it, telling me it wasn’t his problem because he didn’t write it

 

I don’t know archive.com but it sounds like I should. I’ll check it out and report back.  Thanks!

[bluesman]

16 hours ago, bluesman said:

I don’t know archive.com but it sounds like I should. I’ll check it out and report back.  Thanks!

 

Wow - archive.org is an amazing achievement! I knew about the project, but its stated focus has been books since it was started. So I never looked into it beyond a curious peek shortly after it became available in the late '90s.

 

There's a lot of interesting local music on there, including some from a local venue in my neighborhood. I downloaded a few FLACs to look into your question, and mp3Tag only shows tags for codec, bitrate, sample rate, and "last modified" datetime.  Everything else is empty, like they are on my own live audio recordings.  MusicBrainz Picard shows the same small data set for every track I examined, e.g. this one:

 

 

I'll wander through random files to see if some have been tagged before uploading, but there's clearly no consistent standard or effort to establish one.  So if we find things we want to download for offline play, we can batch tag them for consistency with our libraries.  I'll download an entire performance and tag the tracks as an album - this should appear like any other album on the player of choice. If it doesn't, I'll look further & report. 

 

FWIW, the site's terms of use carry the caveat that "...[a]ccess to the Archive’s Collections...is granted for scholarship and research purposes only". So we probably shouldn't be tying up their bandwidth by downloading or streaming for entertainment.

[bluesman]

1 hour ago, hvbias said:

bluesman do you mind saying how many classical tracks (or albums/CDs) you have? Just trying to get a rough idea what you mean when you say Roon is good for classical, I am thinking about giving it another try. Thanks.

 

I only have about 200 classical albums ripped to FLAC or downloaded. Most of my 1500 or so classical albums are vinyl, about half being 78s dating back as far as the 1920s (all my family’s collections from parents & grandparents). But playing with the Roon tagging and sorting systems, I was able to do enough with my limited classical files plus over a thousand jazz and a few hundred blues albums to be confident that it can do pretty much whatever you want.

 

Problems like parsing symphonies into movements and keeping track of conductors with multiple orchestras my require a ripping and/or tagging scheme you’ll have to design and apply. This is easy with Roon - it’s just labor intensive.  There are also many posts on relevant fora supporting this.

[bluesman]

1 hour ago, hvbias said:

I have recordings of the same piece by the same artist just recorded at a different date or live vs studio. In some cases like the Beethoven piano sonatas I've counted as many as 3 or 4 different performances of the same piece by Wilhelm Backhaus, one of my favorite Beethoven interpreters.

 

You can add tags to cover all that and more - live vs studio, session location, recording date, reissue #X, etc.  You could even add a tag to identify how you got the file (eg ripped vs downloaded vs recorded yourself) and how you ripped it. There may not be a specific tag for what you want, but you can create new ones. This link (https://kb.roonlabs.com/Tags) will take you to the Roon tag overview page.

[bluesman]

3 hours ago, hvbias said:

 

If I am understanding this correctly these are locally stored tags in Roon and not written to the files?

 

How would it handle box sets that are a compilation by artist or say conductor? Would you be able to have the name of the box set as well as the name of the original LP era album come up properly in Roon and searchable?

 

You are correct. This moderator post on the Roon Community site explains:

 

“Roon does not add any information to your base files. So any updates, edits, etc made in Roon stay in Roon. This is by design. Many people, myself included, perfect the files metadata before putting it into Roon. Basically, if I download a file or Rip a CD, I do so to a staging area. I then review the metadata, make changes if wanted or necessary, and then move it to the Roon watched folders.”

 

You can add group tags, which would let you delineate boxed sets. You can add comment tags to files that will identify the source. You can even add “hidden” tags that are only searchable and visible for you.  The only limitation is your imagination.  All such tags are usable in Roon but are not included in file metadata, so they’re invisible to other players like JRMC.

 

It works great for me.

[bluesman]

On 1/22/2019 at 3:17 PM, Allan F said:

 

I can't agree with the above statement given the availability of HQPlayer which, with appropriate upsampling and filter settings, can and will produce higher quality music playback than either Roon or JRiver. The latter music players can provide high quality playback, but not the highest.

 

Hi, Allan!

 

I haven’t compared them in my own home and systems, so I can’t comment from my own experience. But there are a lot of very long threads on web forums with raging debates among those who prefer HQP, those who prefer JRMC, those who use HQP with Roon, and assorted others. I’ve found no clear consensus.  There are enough supporters of each platform to suggest to me that differences are purely subjective. I’m very glad that you’ve found your preference and thank you for your input. You make me want to try HQP (which I will now do).

[bluesman]

On 1/26/2019 at 3:17 PM, Allan F said:

 

I can only recall seeing preferences of Roon or JRMC over HQP because of HQP's rudimentary user interface or computing demands, and not with respect to the primary issue of sound quality.

 

Here's a typical thread on this (found on the Roon community site) with the following quotes reflecting what seems like a consensus:

 

• "I just can’t detect a lot of difference between Roon DSP and HQP." [from David Orgel]
• "For me its now a case of sounding different rather than better." [from Audiogeek]
• "...issue with DSD256, sometimes constant dropouts with HQP and no issues at all with Roon." [from Mystic]
• "HQPlayer Poly-sinc DSD7 sounds so similar to linear DSD7 in Roon" [from Jeff (Dr Tone)]

 

Others favor HQP for SQ, but reports of gross differences are few and far between.  Most HQP enthusiasts describe small and subjective differences they find preferable. As I'm in the middle of a large review for an upcoming article, I won't have time to try HQP until I finish up.  My DACs are not up to serious DSD, so I'll have to buy a new one - but I'll get back to this as soon as I can.

 

It may be freezing outside, but I've got my tubes to keep me warm  

 

[bluesman]

5 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

Not unexpected from the Roon community.

 

But all of them are using HQP with Roon, so they have no vested interest in the superiority of either one.

[bluesman]

37 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

They have a significant financial investment in Roon.

 

With the Arctic front about to cover 75% of the US, those warm tubes will be a blessing if you live within that area.

 

I thought HQP is $150 on top of the cost of Roon.  If it were free, I'd add it on the spot just to have it.  But the best way to fight the "feeling like a fool for having spent the extra money for no reason" factor (née "buyers' remorse") is to use it anyway.

 

Yes, I'm in that area - and it's beginning to feel a lot like winter! Fortunately, spring is just around the corner.......

[bluesman]

36 minutes ago, Allan F said:

 

HQPDcontrol is free. HQP is not. However, it doesn't make much sense to "use it anyway" if it doesn't sound better and demands more of your music server's resources. "Buyers' remorse" is hardly a justification, and I highly doubt that there are many using the combination of HQP and Roon who don't believe that it produces better sound. Having said that, it is my understanding that more recent versions of Roon have significantly reduced the gap in SQ between the two.

 

First, I didn't know that HQPDcontrol was a player.  I thought it was a remote control app for the $150 HQ Player Desktop app - and after re-reading the entire website, I still do.  What am I missing?

 

Second, you either have a limited circle of friends or an unusual one.  Buyer's remorse is a common driver of behavior that's otherwise inexplicable, especially to the spouse or SO of the remorseful............"It's really great, honey! Thanks for understanding how much I wanted to buy this!" has it all over "I'm sorry I wasted the money on this, dear. It's no better than Roon, but at least it's cheaper than that RF-reducing curtain rod I spent $500 on last month."