Why is J River better than iTunes on PC?


I'm having a hard time finding reasons, but the general consensus I'm seeing is that J River is "better" than iTunes in every way. Now, I currently have a large amount of my albums ripped in AIFF format running through iTunes on my Dell PC (Vista Ultimate 64-bit). I downloaded JRiver (MJ) version 12 and have been playing around with it. By the looks of it, in order to simplify the tagging issues of trying to import AIFF into JRiver, I'd have to re-rip all the albums again in, what I'm assuming for best quality, FLAC.

In terms of SQ, I really hear no difference whatsoever between iTunes and JRiver...am I missing something here? Yeah, some of the DSP options are cool like the soundstage effect, but when comparing the two with all levels flat, neither sounds better or worse.

Truthfully, I seem to find the simplicity of iTunes much more appealing. Am I setting up myself for future disappointments or problems by using the AIFF codec and iTunes as my audio playback software? What are the big advantages of using FLAC/JRiver?

Thanks.
heywaj10

Showing 1 response by kthomas

I use JR and have for years. For me, it comes down to user-interface and scale - JR has a really flexible, intuitive interface that allows me to easily navigate in any way I find convenient. It also handles 70K songs, which I found really strangled other players.

I'm not much on trying to compare the sound quality - I figure that a lossless compression directly output (ie, no O/S manipulation) is going to be near identical, if not identical, regardless of player.