church_mouse

Does it really matter what price was paid for a product, or whether we like a vendor when it comes to a principle? Surely, a principle which varies according to the price is not a principle, it is merely a market calculation? I accept that I am clearly out of step here with the majority opinion expressed. I will just make these observations: 1. Chris says that my automobile analogy "is a bridge way too far". I accept it is an extreme, but how is the principle any different? 2. Chris then said "we should then ask if all the people would rather have JRiver go out of business offering free stuff than to pay $30 to upgrade". There is something in this save that JRiver was not offering "free stuff" - the CD lookup is referred to on JRiver's Wiki as a benefit of the product i.e. it is something included within the purchase price - a feature, not a "freebie extra". 3. If the alternative is for JRiver to go out of business, then JRiver could: a) ask for their customers to make a voluntary payment to help out. b) increase the price or change the pricing model of their future licences. c) introduce an extra fee to all licence holders, rather than just pick an arbitrary group. (This breaches my principle, but at least applies to all). I have no animus towards JRiver. I have great respect for Chris (as far as I can judge from his comments on and handling of this site), I just disagree on this occasion (quite strongly on the strength of the arguments so far).

I do think Audiophile Neuroscience has a valid point here. Would people be so happy to accept the argument "that is just how the industry works" if they were told that parts of their car would now be switched off by the manufacturer merely because you had not bought a new car from them within 5 years? I have an old (unused) JRiver licence. I haven't updated it in quite a few years because there has simply been nothing in their updates for which I have any great need/use. They have taken a development line which does not fit my use case. Chris, correctly, points out that the aggregate cost seems small (unless, of course, someone purchased JRiver when they were financially sound and now finds themself in much harder times where every penny counts). However, that avoids the principle - IF JRiver is switching off access to a service for no reason other than the owner of the software licence subsequently has not bought anything else (an update) from them, how can that be morally right? If the principle is morally right, then the amount is irrelevant and charging $6 per month or per week would also fit the principle.

It has been some years since I last bought a cartridge for a turntable (Rega Planar 3 placed in storage), but two manufacturers I remember producing reliably good MM cartridges across the price range were Ortofon and Nagaoka.

@FX Studio Let me get this clear: in support of your contention that MQA is not dead you state "Millions downloaded already so never going away". Yet, just a few posts earlier you accepted that the downloads were illegal and that "I am certainly not advocating for it at all". Are you are now advocating the use of illegal downloads, or do you accept that legally those "millions downloaded already" are not available? I doubt I am the only one who sees the irony in arguing that the future of MQA - the "authenticated by the artist" format - relies upon the music being pirated?

People, I think you are treating Fx Studio unfairly, and this is why: When I tested MQA vs FLAC in the past, invariably I preferred the FLAC version but both versions were capable of producing a decent soundstage on my lowly equipment. Fx Studio appears to have invested in a very expensive PA system which he believes makes MQA sound wonderful but, in his own words, where the FLAC "sound collapses around the speakers down to 2D". But wait...MQA is a dead technology. FLAC lives on. It seems to me that what we actually have here is a plea from a music listener on how to rescue a very expensive sound system which only sounds decent with a failed audio format. I am sure there are many of you on this site who have the goodness in heart to help out poor Fx Studio with a few tips!

I have the original Mytek Manhattan - Apple driver support for it ended some years ago. I believe this also applies to the 192. See below, taken from their website. My experience of Mytek support has not been good and they are a company I would not buy from again. "FireWire connection in Stereo192-DSD DAC, Manhattan DAC (the first version) and 8x192 FireWire DIO card does not work with newest Apple computers (from 2018 and higher). *The Stereo192-DSD DAC and the Manhattan DAC (the first version) USB2 driver is NOT compatible with El Capitan/Sierra/High Sierra/Mojave."

@computerilliterate I am not sure if you want to find out what the streaming experience is all about (i.e. is it for you?) or if you have already decided you want to add a streaming solution to your audio system. If you just want to see if streaming is for you, then you could just sign up for a free Qobuz trial, download the Qobuz app to your laptop or iPad (available in both the Windows and Apple app stores) and start listening to some music on your device using the app. (If you have some reasonable headphones you can plug in and use, that would be better still). If you find using the app, or the process of finding the music you want to listen to all just too bothersome or confusing, then I don't think streaming is for you and you have saved yourself quite a bit of cash. If you have decided already that you really do want to stream, but want things to be as simple as possible (avoiding computers as much as you can), then a network streamer unit could be ideal (the right unit will have audio outputs to go to your amp, connect to the internet through your home network, and have the Qobuz link built in so that you can continue to choose your music using the iPad or Windows app but the streamer gets the feed and sends the music to your amp). You will be able to get some great recommendations for suitable streamers from the good people here, but giving an idea of how much you want to spend will help filter out pointless recommendations. Don't suggest a figure more than you want to spend because you will probably get a few suggestions which smash the budget anyway.

An impossible task, so I have simply listed 5 of my favourite covering different styles: Tangerine Dream Vangelis Biosphere Ocoeur Helene Vogelsinger (a newish discovery for me, whose music keeps finding its way on to my playlist) I will have to set aside some time and take a listen to some of the names you have recommended above who are new to me.

Just be aware that not all albums benefit from the sublime discount. I ended up downgrading from sublime because so few of the albums in my “Favourites” list qualified for the discount. I may just be an outlier use-case.

I had read quite a few users reporting that they felt feeding to the analogue via an external dac sounded better. It was when I mentioned this to a dealer that he expressed surprise and informed me that the analogue gets internally converted to digital anyway. Your experience of better sound quality does not seem uncommon, though why that should be may be harder to explain. Happy listening.

Doesn't that mean you are doing 2 lots of conversions? I was told the internal dac cannot be bypassed - so analogue input gets converted to digital to be processed. Is my understanding wrong?

Alongside Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk was my teenage years. Those German pioneers grabbed my soul and held on to it ever after. Music, Non-Stop!

JRiver will allow one to restrict the output to only those fields on display or all fields held. However, I prefer to view the export in Excel and create a second one of Album and AlbumArtist. I am sure there are better ways, but I have limited skills so I keep it simple to reduce user error!

One of the reasons I keep JRiver as my back-up player is for this purpose: 1 I have a smart playlist in JRiver called All My Music. 2 I use the ''export playlist'' option in JRiver to generate a csv file which I store in the cloud for easy access anywhere. I run an export every time I add a purchase in case I should ever need some supporting evidence for insurance purposes if I suffered a catastrophic loss.

The sad thing is that, until the very recent redesign, showing all the prices in the My Favourites list is exactly what they did do. Perhaps I was the only user who found that very useful.