JPLAY - It aint subtle


Tried it awhile back and just couldn't get it to work consistently. When it did work, I could hear that it was doing some good things. Recently however, I was browsing ComputerAudiophile and saw that quite a few their members were using it so I decided to give it another go. It seems that they have done some improvements up to the current 5.1 version. It only took me 5 minutes from download of the trial version through set up.

I am not one for audiophile jargon so let's just say that what I heard would be comparable to what I would expect to hear if I had thrown some serious money at upgrading a major component. Needless to say I went ahead and spent the $130 to purchase the software.

My setup has been using two computers. One simply acts as a fileserver streaming files to the other pc. I had figured that reducing load on the pc doing the processing couldn't hurt the sound. Jplay also recommends a dual-pc setup, so I went ahead and tried their configuration and what I heard was yet another step above what I got with the single pc.

Now, I know that there is major controversy brewing over what exactly Jplay does and how to explain it. Jriver actually generates a warning page specifically citing tests that shows that Jplay has no benefit whatsoever. However, I am one of those audiophiles that follow what my ears tell me and not what some measurements show. Having said that I'd like to limit this thread to generating some feedback and discussion from others who have tried the software and want to share with others.
128x128hew

Showing 4 responses by lewinskih01

The more I read about JPlay, the more interested I get. My digital front end is now a SB Touch, followed by a Metrum Octave. In a few weeks I'll get a USB converter, probably an Audiophilleo, and will get rid of the SBT and use a laptop as server, probably with JRiver. What are the minimum laptop requirements to give JPlay a fair shot?
Cerrot,

I'm interested in your experience, as I'm getting ready to build a server and I'm wondering about this. Are you using Windows Server 2012 plus AudioPhil's Optimizer, plus JRiver19?

I'm following AudioPhil's recipe for the server and plan tu run WS2012 with the Optimizer and JRiver19 initially, and then try JPlay. So I will likely make my own experience, but having yours as a reference would be great.
Cerrot,

Thanks for the reply. I recalled from prior exchanges, a good while ago, you had the Juli@>Esoteric reclocker>DAC, but didn't know if this was still your current setup. I wonder if the reclocker isn't the key difference here. Nevertheless I will use your input and try WS2012 + Optimizer + JRiver and then compare that to same + JPlay. In fact if I find the time to do so I want to try comparing what I have today (old laptop with Win XP with JRiver into Audiophilleo into Metrum Octave) to same hardware running WS2012 + Optimizer + JRiver, and eventually compare this to the purpose built server running the same software. Should be interesting, although it will be nowhere near A/B testing considering the time between trying alternatives.

Turning off all processes and services that are not required for music playback makes sense to me - at the gut level, no technical knowledge to support that. Have you considered WS2012 + Optimizer?

Cheers!
Thanks for the input.

Upon further investigation I realized Windows Server 2012 requires a 64-bit computer, while my old laptop is 32-bit...so I won't be able to try out what I intended. Will need to wait for the server motherboard to arrive and will only be able to test software options on the same hardware.