JPLAY - Hi-end audio player for Windows

[John]

I have windows 7

[Ammonite Audio]

What is the technical difference between playing from memory in JRiver Media Center and doing the same in JPlay?

[alfie2902]

Been playing around with this tonight and I have to be honest, I cannot hear a difference between my music server using Foobar/WASAPI and the JPlay player. Having said that, my music server is not a normal Windows PC, as it's trimmed down with as many services as possible switched off and it doesn't have a mouse, keyboard or screen or anything else running, like A/V or other software - no fans either and a hard drive which is as good as silent. I would have bought JPlay if there had been an improvement, but for me it didn't change a thing SQ wise and with it's clunky interface it's not a winner compared to what I have already.

I expect other peoples results will differ, especially if they have a standard PC with all the usual bell's and whistles running, which definitely can impact SQ, as I have experienced this myself especially on laptops. However, I reckon for a dedicated music server built and configured for nothing else, it could be redundant. To be honest if you have enough RAM available, all you have to do is run the portable version of Foobar from a RAM drive and you should have the same thing? With Foobar being free, it would be hard for me to justify it's cost under those circumstances. I will play around some more though with hibernation mode and such like, as it would be more power efficient to use JPlay with the PC virtually shutdown, but then you lose the convenience of something like Foobar and playing music for me would become a faff again.

Having said all that, I didn't notice a difference between having an SSD in my server against a mechanical hard drive, so maybe I just have cloth ears

What is encouraging though is that software like this is being developed, which can only be a good thing for file based audio. What we need is a free or low cost bare bones Linux distro, which boots a PC and does nothing but play music from RAM with a user friendly interface - only a matter of time and no doubt out there in some form already, waiting to be discovered by the masses? Maybe some on this forum have something similar already

Hi Tim,

Your findings are quite Interesting mate, I suspect your trimmed down windows OS on your music server is already doing some of the things Jplay does!

Did you try the two different playback engines 'Beach' & 'River' by toggling the 'e' key? If so could you detect any difference?

Seems there's already a few similar pieces of software, cMP & cPlay, StealthAudioPlayer & Signalyst HQPlayer. Also there's Fidelizer, an optimisation program for Windows but not a player. I suspect if your server is nicely sorted then perhaps these may not add much, but may be worth a play.

[Tim]

Hi Tim,

Your findings are quite Interesting mate, I suspect your trimmed down windows OS on your music server is already doing some of the things Jplay does!

Did you try the two different playback engines 'Beach' & 'River' by toggling the 'e' key? If so could you detect any difference?

Seems there's already a few similar pieces of software, cMP & cPlay, StealthAudioPlayer & Signalyst HQPlayer. Also there's Fidelizer, an optimisation program for Windows but not a player. I suspect if your server is nicely sorted then perhaps these may not add much, but may be worth a play.

Yes, I think you are right Alfie I'm probably achieving the same result as JPlay anyway. Foobar will play from memory as well if you set the file buffering and I have played with that, but there is a slight delay when it loads the tracks (like JPLay) and as there was no perceived benefit I don't bother anymore. I suspect pretty much all of my file play is handled direct from RAM anyway, without me having to do anything. I have shut down the pagefile and just about everything else too, so nothing gets written back to disc anyway. My server has 4GB RAM and a 64bit O/S and when running only uses around 700MB and that's with an integrated Nvidea ION GPU. Compared to my desktop PC with 8GB of RAM which has 2.5GB in use when I'm just browsing and playing music, so quite a difference and the desktop has it's own 1GB graphics card too. Just looking at the Processes running in Windows Task Manager in normal use, around 30 on the server, 77 on the desktop PC. I also have a Western Digital (EADS) green drive which are suited for low task silent operation and have a different firmware optimisation from general purpose hard drives. These show excellent results with sustained reads but are not so good at random access as they are 5400RPM - it has an onboard 32MB cache buffer as well which I believe reads ahead. I have also partitioned my hard drive, so the music library shouldn't become defragmented and reads remain consistent. The WD EADS drives are very low powered and run cool, mines around 35 degrees C and that's without any fans in the case.

I intended to try some more configurations but to be honest I'm so happy with the results at the moment that I'm more inclined to listen to music that fart around with the O/S anymore.

I have been playing around with JRiver too using WASAPI output and playing from RAM - very good results and with all the benefits JRiver has as a usable media player, it does really make you question the price of JPlay? I opened it up in Notepad++ and had a look, only 1800 lines of code and a portion of those are just plain text instructions for displaying to the end user. At today's exchange rate JPlay is £86.00, JRiver Media Center £30.00 and foobar is free I spent yesterday listening to those three players and cannot with my system (and cloth ears) make out any discernable difference in sound quality - they all sounded the same to me. I did have a look at JRiver Jukebox, which does play from RAM but there is no inbuilt WASAPI playback and it didn't sound as good as the other players to me. I didn't try the options for Beach & River, missed that to be honest so will have to try those too - did you notice a difference?

However, playing from RAM with the computer in hibernation is a compelling feature of JPlay, but I don't like the fact that once the music starts you are locked into hibernation until it stops - this would be a major annoyance for me. Also, the fact that people here have tried it and struggled to make it work is likely to be a major drawback for the average computer user and could be a hindrance if people download the trial and have problems. What would be good is a right click Play in JPlay function like foobar and other players have like below;



You select the files, right click them, send them to JPlay where it plays them and automatically enters Hibernation mode - that would be good and worth around $10.00 at the very most as a program. But what I think won't appeal to most people who use file based audio, is the software's inability to browse through your music library and play random selections easily - I think folk like doing that, especially younger music fans. I personally don't think the developer really understands their potential target market and is trying to cash in by tagging it a high-end audio player - snake oil and exploitive IMO, which is symptomatic of the audio market. Its a very simple program and no doubt somebody will dissect it and produce something open-source soon and there are others around as you have discovered. A cynic may say the developer realises this and has priced it accordingly to make a quick buck, before the program becomes superseded by other lower priced or free alternatives.

I like the simplicity but its overpriced (hugely), not very user friendly, a bit too basic and with other cheaper alternatives available I think it could struggle to become popular. I so wanted to like JPlay, but its not a complete product IMO and no better than what's already available. However, my findings are not entirely representative as my player is not an off the shelf product and this would very likely be an improvement for somebody using a laptop. I rather think though that if you have a dedicated music server, it really has no benefit over the other programs mentioned, but the only way to find out is to try it and see - if it makes an £86.00 sound improvement then good, if not buy some more music.

I'm sticking with foobar2000/WASAPI playback for now, but I'll try those others out too when I get a mo


Yesterday's listening tests:
Windows7 Pro 64bit
D525 1.8 GHz Intel Atom CPU
4GB RAM
Rega DAC & Beresford Caiman (GATOR)
Mark Grant G1000HD
Albarry PP1/Harbeth SHL5
Matrix M-Stage headamp/Sennheiser HD650

JRiver Media Center/WASAPI played from RAM
foobar2000/WASAPI
JPlay

Music: (a selection from the below albums, all FLAC 16bit/44.1kHz)
Alison Moorer - Miss Fortune
Beethoven Sonatas - Emil Gilels
Eric Bibb - Diamond Days
Jennifer Warnes - The Hunter
Tord Gustavsen Trio - The Ground
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Alison Krauss & Union Station - Paper Airplane
Peter Gabriel - Security
Van Morrison - Poetic Champions Compose
AC/DC - Black Ice
Mahler 5 - BPO, Simon Rattle
Otis Taylor - Clovis People Vol. 3

[Welder]

Dontcha just love Notepad++.

[Tim]

Dontcha just love Notepad++.

It's a little cracker John

[Chippy_boy]

I might be missing something here, but please can someone have a go at trying to explain why on earth streaming a load of bits from disk, into memory all in one go has any remote chance of sounding even a tiny bit different to loading them into memory progressively and streaming them from memory?

To say this is bonkers is an understatement.

[Tim]

I might be missing something here, but please can someone have a go at trying to explain why on earth streaming a load of bits from disk, into memory all in one go has any remote chance of sounding even a tiny bit different to loading them into memory progressively and streaming them from memory?

To say this is bonkers is an understatement.

I think you may have missed the point, it's not so much to do with what you have described above, but more to do with how a typical Windows PC can affect sound quality and trying to isolate as much as that away from the playback of a digital file. It does make a difference, more so on some systems than others - the ideal is to have no processes active at all, other than the music player sending data to a DAC. The simplest way to achieve this is direct from RAM, which is solid state and with no moving parts. It's pretty much an accepted ideal in FBA, which is why programmers are developing this area.

(unless of course I'm missing something too?)

[jmudrick]

What I would say about Jplay is this. If you don't hear a difference, however you run it, don't buy it! That's why they have a trial.

I would guess the observations above about who is mostly likely to get the most out of it are correct. If you've a dedicated server and have already minimized unnecessary services then you may not hear a difference, particularly in non-hibernation mode. I don't have a dedicated server, I just use my HP notebook. With Fidelizer and J.River is sounded quite good. Hibernation mode (with the additional tweaks recommended on the Jplay forum) with Jplay is where I hear a positive difference in clarity, soundstage stability, the usual good stuff you get when you tweak an already good system. It is an extremely simple system to use, and, admittedly enforces a different listening discipline having to listen to your entire queue.I simply copy album tracks using Windows Explorer. I don't mind, I actually find it more relaxing just to put an album on and listening to the whole thing, the way we did with an LP side.

[Chippy_boy]

I think you may have missed the point, it's not so much to do with what you have described above, but more to do with how a typical Windows PC can affect sound quality and trying to isolate as much as that away from the playback of a digital file. It does make a difference, more so on some systems than others - the ideal is to have no processes active at all, other than the music player sending data to a DAC. The simplest way to achieve this is direct from RAM, which is solid state and with no moving parts. It's pretty much an accepted ideal in FBA, which is why programmers are developing this area.

(unless of course I'm missing something too?)

I think you are.

You say, "it's not so much to do with what you have described above, but more to do with how a typical Windows PC can affect sound quality and trying to isolate as much as that away from the playback of a digital file"

The 64,000 dollar question is why or how can background processes or anything else for that matter change the sound of an identical stream of bits. It's illogical, unbelievable and frankly, impossible.

I can see how different digital audio solutions can sound different if for example the word lengths are different, or if sample rate conversion is going on, or something like that. But other than that, on the same PC (with the same digital output and the same oscillators) the same stream of bits into the same dac and amplication and speakers will sound the same. Not only that, it MUST sound the same. The only way it can sound different is if the bits are changed, and there's no way that can be influenced by playing from ram or playing from disk. It is impossible.

I brace myself for the "I know what my ears tell me" brigade to wade in. But I will say in advance, if anyone thinks they can hear such a difference, they are in my opinion deluded. The sound is a function of the digits and jitter and neither of those is influenced one iota by what processes are or are not running on the PC. Nor whether it's read from ram all at once or progressively transferred from disk to ram.