The differences between players and output modes are marginal at best. Some DACs react better to lower latencies, so ASIO or equivalent in Mac/Linux might help. If you want a major improvement, add
Isone to JRiver DSP (
thread) and open a whole new world of headphone soundstage tweaking.
JRiver is not about audio quality. They have the best audio output quality possible, but then so does any other bitperfect player.
The reason I use JRiver is for all the other features surrounding their audio quality.
Out of the box, there's very little that needs configured.
It's simple to load in VST plugins.
It can manage libraries with hundreds of thousands of tracks without breaking a sweat.
It has best-in-class video performance to go along with its audio performance.
It has a very powerful expression language that lets you display and sort your media however you want.
It effortlessly manages any number of audio devices (directly connected hardware, DLNA/UPnP renderers etc) via its zone functions.
It probably has the best native format support out there, with things like DSD playback built in.
It has advanced features like R128 analysis and volume leveling built in - for video as well as audio.
When the player (j.river 19) is opened, I cannot get any sound on my youtube, it's like the sound is muted on my internet browsers.
How do I fix it?
It sounds like you are using an exclusive output mode, which should block sound from other applications. Unfortunately some drivers don't seem to stop exclusive mode properly and you have to relaunch the application. (web browser etc.)
If you use a non-exclusive mode (DirectSound is easiest) this shouldn't happen, but it means that audio will be going through the Windows resampler.
I do all my YouTube watching through JRiver though, as it goes through the madVR (Red October HQ) video renderer, which is much better quality than the Flash player.
As a workaround, you might be able to use multiple audio devices? I have my system audio going to my DAC via S/PDIF, and any audio going through JRiver is sent over USB.
It's not actually been a problem with my DAC's driver, but I like having system audio and music/videos going to separate inputs - it means one never interrupts the other.
Thanks for the Isone suggestion.
I would like to believe it is as good as people say. Unfortunately most of my digital sound tweaking (equalizer, dolby and some DSPs) brought me an impression of unnaturalness in sound which I didn't like. Maybe Isone is a thing of better quality that won't give me this impression. I will probably give it a try!
I prefer Redline Monitor set to 90° with the distance processing disabled. This still sounds like headphones but restores the positional cues lost when wearing headphones.
