JRiver - anyone use it? Is it worth the money?

[cmr_for3]

Hi all

As above. I am looking for opinions on JRiver. The big draw for me is the virtual audio driver that allows it to force web browsers to use WASAPI output. On trialing it this does seem to give marginally better performance in BBC Sounds via my browser. It seems to be better value to go for the bigger license than the single, which would suit me anyway as I have two PC's I would use it on.

Thoughts welcome!

Thanks all

[Bryn]

Hi all

As above. I am looking for opinions on JRiver. The big draw for me is the virtual audio driver that allows it to force web browsers to use WASAPI output. On trialing it this does seem to give marginally better performance in BBC Sounds via my browser. It seems to be better value to go for the bigger license than the single, which would suit me anyway as I have two PC's I would use it on.

Thoughts welcome!

Thanks all

A similar facility comes with a QOBUZ subscription. With that, you can also select WASAPI (Exclusive Mode), blocking all audio except the QOBUZ stream. I find it very handy. I'm sure there must be freeware options out there, too.

[jayne lee wilson]

I used JRiver alongside Audirvana+ on the MacPro for a few years, up to Version 19, and it worked very well for storage/playback, with an extensive DSP Suite for various techspec/analytical tasks. When I still downloaded, the best thing about it was the easy file conversion which I used mainly to turn FLAC into WAV.

But with the advent of lossless/hires streaming, both downloads and JRiver fell away for me. I do recall the sound of it, which was more "analytical" than Audirvana+ (which offers two integer versions anyway). I don't know whether later versions of JRiver offer any filter choices etc...

[Beresford]

A similar facility comes with a QOBUZ subscription. With that, you can also select WASAPI (Exclusive Mode), blocking all audio except the QOBUZ stream. I find it very handy. I'm sure there must be freeware options out there, too.

I didn't know such direct output was possible using a browser - I thought that volume controls, resampling, etc were applied first in the website or its Java subsystem, then in the browser, then in Windows or other OS, these three levels of processing leading to a small but noticeable muddying of the audio.

Does QOBUZ in the browser allow you to select WASAPI, or is it just the standalone app?

[Bryn]

I didn't know such direct output was possible using a browser - I thought that volume controls, resampling, etc were applied first in the website or its Java subsystem, then in the browser, then in Windows or other OS, these three levels of processing leading to a small but noticeable muddying of the audio.

Does QOBUZ in the browser allow you to select WASAPI, or is it just the standalone app?

It's the QOBUZ app that offers the "Audio output" selection (via a small icon representing a bookshelf speaker cabinet and volume slider towards the bottom right of the screen.