Petestorms

That is really, really strange eternaloptimist. I had the same problems distinguishing JRiver and JPlay V4. But with V5 it is very obvous. I Use the following chain: CAPS 2.0 server > Musical Fidelity V-Link 192 > YBA DAC. @Everyone: if you have the older V-Link (I/II) do yourself a favor and swap it for the V-Link 192 with XMOS chipset. Is is much nicer sounding in every setup we tried. Not subtle but very obvious.

Has anyone some experience with dual PC setup yet? Tried it yesterday and my first impression was mildly positive. Later that evening I noted some serious harshness in several tracks (e.g. Kate Bush debut album, which is very mediocre sounding without the right setup). Went back to one PC setup and it became quiter. Maybe it was me, or the tracks I played eventually, and I was getting a bit tired after some hours listening. Regarding the 2 PC setup, you see blocks of network data arriving at the ethernet adapter at a very frequent interval (few seconds). Must be some buffering going in in the Audio PC. Has some potential I suppose but I am not really convinced yet. Will try later again. As far as I understand, the sound setup is done on the Control PC. My settings were: Engine: Beach; Buffer: 2 samples; Throttle&Hibernate on.

@eternaloptimist. Tried some radio stations in JRiver (MP3, AAC, WMA) and the ones I tried worked without a hitch. Please report your own findings.

Couldn't agree more on the comments above. First of all, this version version finally integrates seamlessly with JRiver. This is a big step forward compared to the previous version which was quite a bit frustrating to use. You just use JRiver like you are used to (directly or through JRemote iPad app). Just install JPlay and activate their software as ASIO driver/plugin in JRiver (one time action). Also, it supports a streamer/player setup. This means that the processing, decoding of audio etc. is done by a network (windows) PC loaded with JRiver and JPlay (configured as server) and the sound is sent through the network to the audio player. This audio player is a PC that just contains Windows and JPlay (configured as client). It only forwards the audio packets received to the (USB) DAC and can be very light weight. This might sound complicated but setup is a breeze and cost me about 10 minutes. Remote control through JRemote on iPad works as expected. I use a CAPS 2.0 server as audio PC running Windows 8. Processing (server) is done on a moderate 5 years old desktop that is upstairs at my office. It takes my music from a Synology NAS. Music starts playing very quickly after pressing play on my 100 Mbs network, so the overall lag seems quite low. And, most important, the sound in both 1 and 2 server setup is a quantum leap forward. It is an absolutely bigstep forward compared to the version 4. Voices (e.g. on Janis Ian's Breaking Silence) are more focussed, the music is much more real and the last bits of stress are ironed out of the tracks played. I read somewhere that people still think that (software like) JPlay is bloatware. I can only encourage you to try it yourself and give it the benefit of the doubt. They have a demo version available. I am looking forward comparing it to a Mac/Amarra system. Somehow I think the JPlay guys are moving ahead.

Besides focussing on the hardware side of this server, I would like to mention that OS and software are as critical to squeeze every bit perfectly out of a music server. I am a happy CAPS 2 server user, but only recently got the best out of it by installing and heavily tweaking Linux on it. Wasn't as happy with Windows (and ,even, tried (H)Macintosh/Amarra on it). But perhaps some other community members have even beter suggestions in this area. I suggest a part of the community will try to find out the best practices. Especially when I read Chris' notes on capacity for room correction etc which will not be trivial to set up software-wise. Chris, looking forward to read about the 4 new servers and thank you very much for your effort so far.