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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
kthomas
911 posts
 
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.
stateradiofan
7 posts
 
The short answer is... Hell yes J River is better. Its impossible to output in ASIO with the PC version of iTunes. There was a workaround with an old plugin called multiplugin that allowed iTunes to act as the GUI for Foobar2000 but It is no longer supported.

If you're not into bit perfect output just stick with iTunes because the kmixer is going to make all media players sound the same anyway.
chillinr6
4 posts
 
If you are itunes addict,on a PC i beleive it is easy to bypass Kmixer buy simply streaming,connecting computer to an Airport Xpress. I may be wrong but i experimented buy dissabling audio drivers on the fly with Task Manager and music kept playing, i also found no significant difference in sound quality between J River and iTunes,only player i hear a distinct diferrence was MediMonkey.Problem using Airport Express is limitation 24/44 files.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
I recently converted from iTunes to J River Media Center 13 because J River offers 1) ability to play 24/96 file formats, 2) can use ASIO to bypass KMixer (not an issue on Vista), 3) has a more flexible user interface. For example, with J River I can do a full page view of album covers, zoom the view in and out and then pull up a full page view of the cover when listening. Also, I can sort the view with a lot more options than iTunes has. However, the flexibility of the user interface does come with a higher degree of complexity in set up. For me, the flexibility of J River was worth it. As to converting, I used dBpoweramp batch converter to convert files from Apple lossess to flac. The batch converter is free - you just need to download it and then download the AIFF converter. I would suggest downloading it and trying a few conversions. You may have some tagging issues after converting, but I found them pretty easy to deal with. I would not re-rip unless your AIFF files did not come from lossless sources.
markblom
34 posts
 
The best thing that is way better about J.river of itunes is the screen format of seeing your LPs artwork infront of you. so its easier then the long lins you get in itunes . also it plays formats that itunes wont play and you can share your files with others Itunes you cant do that without really knowing what your doing and tricking it.
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