hi-end Which player for quality and music sorting?

[Niko]

Hi everyone, 

I'm currently working on considerably improving my computer based hifi installation. So far i've been using foobar 2000 and relying on cue files for tagging my music. Unfortunately the limitations of the remote controlling solution and the ones of the cue sheet formats for music tagging, made me consider a new player. As i rebuilt my pc from scratch and optimized every part for a high end experience, i imagine that they must be better options sq-wise, than foobar.

 

During my researches i came across players like Roon, JPLAY, Audirvana and so on, but could find out which one would fit my needs better, which are:

 

1) Sound quality

2) Ability to tag my music automatically (as much as possible), as i have a very large library

3) Durability: i would like to use my system as long as possible, without having to worring

to have to do the tagging again, in this frequently changing digital world

4) Possibility to control the music remotely (and retrieve it easily), as i'm not considering hooking

up a screen to this computer, excempt for occasional maintenance

 

I would be interested as well to hear what solutions you guys are using for those purposes.

 

Your advises would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Nico

 

 

[RunHomeSlow]

You can test easily jriver and audirvana full software for free and see.

[rn701]

Roon or Jriver.

 

Both deliver good sound quality. Roon has a far better remote (on tablets, not phones) for headless operation. Roon tagging is automated, but does not save to your individual files, only its database. JRiver has some automated tagging and it updates your files so the tagging is portable. It also has flexible manual tagging features. 

 

JRiver also has cd ripping, and mobile sync/transcoding, and some sort of remote access/playback which Roon doesn't have but they say they are working on it. Roon cd ripping is very basic and is only available on their Linux version.

 

Roon is much easier to install, maintain and use, and has a much nicer interface. It interfaces very nicely with Tidal and Qobuz. JRiver does not and never will.

 

Roon seems to check most your boxes but it's expensive. JRiver is the Swiss army knife and it's cheap, but the UI is outdated and it requires a bit of tinkering.

[WAM]

Perhaps you should read Bluesman's Roon Vs. JRiver | Clash of the Titans article. Good read. 

 

-> Using Audirvana myself.

[Niko]

Thanks for your inputs, guys.

I didn't see anybody mentioning JPlayer. I could get any infos, as my post on their forum got ignored and unpublished by the moderators.

Does it have any tagging function, and how does it perform sq-wise?

[Mike Rubin]

On 12/23/2019 at 9:47 AM, Niko said:

Thanks for your inputs, guys.

I didn't see anybody mentioning JPlayer. I could get any infos, as my post on their forum got ignored and unpublished by the moderators.

Does it have any tagging function, and how does it perform sq-wise?

I haven’t tried Roon but I have tried Foobar, JRiver and Audirvana, Foobar locally and the latter two both locally and on my network. 
 

I am biased towards JRiver.  Audirvana, to my ears sounded better, sometimes surprisingly so, but it was ridiculously unstable and terrible for database maintenance.  In the end, I decided that the sound quality advantage was more than offset by the issues I encountered when using it and uninstalled.  
 

Foobar and JRiver sound the same to me when at my computer, but JRiver is far easier to control remotely.  Its tagging capability is second to none, it handles immense music hoarder libraries easily, and it’s really easy to add and delete files from the database on the fly.  It’s also a hell of a lot less money than Roon, as you know.

[Alexander M]

Roon, JPlay, foobar 2000 should not be used if sound quality is important to you. 

JRiver will be most suitable for you if you can configure it correctly.

[franz159]

@Nico

For tagging (under Windows) you could look at MusicBee, quite complete and free.

Even if MusicBee would work also as a player, I'm not using it for that, jut for tagging, so I cannot comment on Audio quality.

On the other hand, when tagging is done, you only need to occasionally go back and add new albums / amend existing tagging. 

For playing, I'm a strong supporter of raspberry pi based solutions...to have an idea of where you might end up you could start from this review: