J River Alternatives

[krelldog]

I currently have JRiver as my media player. I have no issues with it, but I'm wondering if their's a better option with hopefully better graphics and at least comparable or better sound. Also- It would need to be user friendly....I'm not completely computer illiterate...but I do like things as simple as possible.

 

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

[Kal Rubinson]

JRiver's graphics depend on what you feed it but, if you want overall graphical pizzazz, try Roon.

[kilroy]

I haven't used it, but the foobar interface can be heavily customized. Lots of instructions online and on YouTube showing how to do this. Some people say sound quality is better than JR. I believe it doesn't have a remote app though like JR's.

[miguelito]

43 minutes ago, krelldog said:

I currently have JRiver as my media player. I have no issues with it, but I'm wondering if their's a better option with hopefully better graphics and at least comparable or better sound. Also- It would need to be user friendly....I'm not completely computer illiterate...but I do like things as simple as possible.

 

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

 

[miguelito]

44 minutes ago, krelldog said:

 

I currently have JRiver as my media player. I have no issues with it, but I'm wondering if their's a better option with hopefully better graphics and at least comparable or better sound. Also- It would need to be user friendly....I'm not completely computer illiterate...but I do like things as simple as possible.

 

Jokes aside... If you use JRiver to modify your files, transcode, curate your library, etc, what I would do is continue to do that in JRiver, and use Roon for everything else.

 

If you're after ultimate playback quality, then Roon+HQPlayer is your ticket - and I understand JPlay is coming to Roon as well.

[ElviaCaprice]

52 minutes ago, krelldog said:

I currently have JRiver as my media player. I have no issues with it, but I'm wondering if their's a better option with hopefully better graphics and at least comparable or better sound. Also- It would need to be user friendly....I'm not completely computer illiterate...but I do like things as simple as possible.

 

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

Better graphics as in video playback?   The others mentioned here don't do video.  If bit perfect audio is what you seek, then JRiver is a great choice.  The price is right also.

[Ciamarasound]

I used JRMC for years and now I'm strictly Roon and haven't looked back. It's by far the best user experience available.

[Fitzcaraldo215]

13 hours ago, Ciamarasound said:

I used JRMC for years and now I'm strictly Roon and haven't looked back. It's by far the best user experience available.

I suspect that is true for most users. But, there have been a number of threads here and elsewhere criticizing Roon with large classical libraries, which invariably require a lot of manual tagging.

 

That is why I am sticking with JRiver.  I doubt if I use 10% of JR's features.  The other 90% is just clutter for now that can get in the way of ease of learning or ease of use, except I am past all that now.  Occasionally, I discover some really useful feature in JR amid the 90% that is new to me, but which has been there for ages.

 

It is also true that, though far less elegant or user friendly, the clunkier JRiver has feature/functionality  much, much wider than Roon.  I use JR for stereo and Mch music plus video from BD and Cable TV.  JRiver has enabled me to eliminate the A/V prepro, the disc player and the cable box from my system, while improving the audio/video quality going straight to DAC and TV monitor.

Roon is still quite far from supporting the feature set I need.

 

Oh, and the price for JRiver is a steal.

 

 

 

 

[beerandmusic]

Roon if  you want to get locked into a subscription, but i would never do that...i would go for lifetime for $500 (or wait for discount), before i would get locked into any subscription...but imho, if you want graphics, do multimedia..if you want music do hqplayer, or if budget matters, go foobar.

[duxservit]

I have Audirvana+ on the same machine as JRMC. Pretty good for just replaying music.

 

[daverich4]

I'm a long time JRiver user but always thought JRemote was pretty basic. Roon Remote on an iPad is everything JRemote wishes it could be. 

[jimm2]

Another long time JRiver user that recently made the switch to Roon and haven't looked back.

 

JRiver is great for tagging and library management but I got tired of waiting for them to update the dated UI or provide integration with streaming providers so I gave Roon a try. I found it very easy to make the switch and wish I had done it sooner. Besides the improved UI and metadata, the Tidal integration won me over.   

 

Also, I could never get the family to embrace JRiver. It was too complicated for them. No such problem with Roon.

   

[One and a half]

If only Roon would index files at the speed of JR instead of taking days and creating a mess of the tagging. JR's indexer can catalog 50k files in about 10-20 minutes including the artwork, Roon struggles overnight and then some. 

 

Being an endpoint over a network, Roon doesn't sound as good as standalone players as it has to negotiate complex routing and timing. Just an overhead I can live without. I don't see much of it raved about in these pages nowadays, does that tell us something? I've tried it twice and found the experience more annoying than engaging, no matter how 'easy and simple' it is to operate.

 

I still don't understand Tidal, that interface is nowhere near the ease of Spotify and the sound from local files easily trumps streaming from Tidal. Anyway, if you're happy with Tidal, integrate away.

[jimm2]

I have approx. 30k files and Roon didn't create a mess of any tags so can't comment on this other than to say it worked well for me. For my library, I only had to make a few metadata changes which was much better than I expected. I don't have many classical recordings so maybe that's why I had very few issues.   

 

Roon is definitely much slower in indexing files but this really didn't impact me since it's done in the background. If I recall, it took about 24 hours to index my library. JRiver is clearly superior in all areas related to library management.  

 

Regarding sound quality, I didn't notice any difference between JRiver and Roon on my system. My main rig is about $4k so certainly not high end or super resolving.  

 

Streaming is a must for my family. They could care less about local files or sound quality. For me, Tidal is the best compromise and I find the integration with Roon to be excellent. I wasn't happy with Spotify sound quality so I moved to Tidal. JRiver has clearly stated they have no current development plans with any of the top streaming providers so this and the UI issues were enough to push me off their product. 

[Kal Rubinson]

1 hour ago, jimm2 said:

Roon is definitely much slower in indexing files but this really didn't impact me since it's done in the background. If I recall, it took about 24 hours to index my library. JRiver is clearly superior in all areas related to library management.  

Are you sure all that time was for indexing alone and not for analyzing?  Roon incorporated all my files (about 30K) almost as fast as JRMC but it took days for the analysis to complete.  However, it was entirely functional during that process.

 

 

[jimm2]

Just now, Kal Rubinson said:

Are you sure all that time was for indexing alone and not for analyzing?  Roon incorporated all my files (about 30K) almost as fast as JRMC but it took days for the analysis to complete.  However, it was entirely functional during that process.

 

 

Good question. Not exactly sure what was happening in the background.  My full library was available fairly quickly in Roon but the background processing continued for about 24 hours. Makes sense this could be for analyzing files. To be honest, not sure how long JRiver would take to re-analyze my complete library since it's grown incrementally over the years while using JRiver. 

[firedog]

You have the option to turn off the processing/analyzing in Roon or turn down the amount of processing it uses.

Certainly just doing the indexing of the library takes very little time.