Any Raspberry Pi alternatives to Jriver?

[RoundRound]

Hello people,
I've been using Jriver for a while now and while its good, I'm disappointed with their attitude towards their paying customers, lack of proper dither and apparent focus on 'photo sharing'...
 
Are there any good quality players that work on RPI? Volumino and Roon don't do digital volume attenuation very good...
 
Supposedly HQplayer can use the RPI as a NAA - but i can't find any instructions on how to do it and they don't have any proper dedicated support forum.
 
Any ideas are welcome!
 
Thank you.

 

[yay101]

Slow low power cpu and any sort of signal processing don't really work together, at least not without dedicated hardware. I have found if your DAC can do hardware volume control it works great with the option set.
 
As far as hqplayer installation goes, just install any distro on your rpi. Then install the packages for the player after. Look up a guide for whatever distro you choose and go from there.

 

[RoundRound]

  Slow low power cpu and any sort of signal processing don't really work together, at least not without dedicated hardware. I have found if your DAC can do hardware volume control it works great with the option set.
 
As far as hqplayer installation goes, just install any distro on your rpi. Then install the packages for the player after. Look up a guide for whatever distro you choose and go from there.

Thanks Mate,
Sadly I couldn't find any guide on HQplayer and RPI - there are linux packages on their site but no mention which one fits...
I guess I could try to install all of them? If it's not compatible it won't install right?

 

[bgentry]

Hello people,
I've been using Jriver for a while now and while its good, I'm disappointed with their attitude towards their paying customers, lack of proper dither and apparent focus on 'photo sharing'...

What do you mean about proper dither? ...and I don't see any "focus" on photo sharing.

The Pi is a neat box, but it's so low power... why not use a PC or a NUC or a mac mini? There are a world of options open at that point.

Brian.

 

[RoundRound]

There is a well publicised (despite repeated banning of users and post) issue wit Jriver's Dither implementation, it's not the 'proper' TPDF dither that's the industry standard in sound production etc. If you attenuate much (-40dB) than it doesn't sound as good as it could be - this is a real issue for people who connect a dac directly to a power amp, for example. 
 
Many people have suggested they at least add TPDF dither as an option, for people who want it - but they know better than their paying customers. 
 
If you look at the plans for the next version of Jriver (21) there's no new features about sound - because as they said to one user on their forums (before locking the tread) they think their sound 'is the best there is'. Most of the new features I saw were about Photo sharing...
 
The RPI 2 is actually quite powerful quad core and if it's running linux it's quite efficient and sound doesn't take that much. I have a 'proper' media PC I built and compared to it the RPI sounds nicer, I suspect because it has less electrical component noise. 
 
Another advantage is that the RPI has a neat add on board (HifiBerry) that ads optical and Coax out - try to get a coax out of a mac min or even a PC... Personally I think it's better than USB, but YMMV.
 
I'm still open to new ideas.

 

[bgentry]

There is a well publicised (despite repeated banning of users and post) issue wit Jriver's Dither implementation, it's not the 'proper' TPDF dither that's the industry standard in sound production etc. If you attenuate much (-40dB) than it doesn't sound as good as it could be - this is a real issue for people who connect a dac directly to a power amp, for example.

I just did 15 minutes of research and it seems very complicated. 40 dB is quite a bit of range. It's the difference between quiet music and very, very loud. Not the quietest or loudest anyone would listen, but still. I guess you can hear the difference on your setup?

If you look at the plans for the next version of Jriver (21) there's no new features about sound - because as they said to one user on their forums (before locking the tread) they think their sound 'is the best there is'. Most of the new features I saw were about Photo sharing...

I've read every thread about MC21 that I think exists and I've never seen anything about "photo sharing". Maybe you mean video? Maybe you mean improvements to image support overall? Most of the requests I've seen are for tweaks to the UI for video, some for the basic UI, and all kinds of other stuff.

You're right though, that every request for an attempt at increasing audio "quality" is essentially dismissed. I consider myself an audiophile. I think JRiver sounds great as it is. I haven't done any real testing again other players. I just know I hear things with JRiver and a decent headphone setup that are really hard to hear on almost any speaker setup until you start to spend pretty crazy money.

It sounds like you are far more into the very subtle (or not even there?) aspects of audio playback than I am. More power to you; as long as it makes you happy.

Brian.

 

[groovyd]

I agree, they do very little to support the audio-only users and their attitude toward these requests leaves a lot to be desired.  I am also an audio only paying user who doesn't care at all about video or any of the other projects they have focused on the past 3 years I have paid for it. But you never know what they will work on before you pay for the next so you just grin and bear it hoping they improve something you want even a little.  Here hoping this year is different...

 

[yay101]

Oh OK I'm assuming your not experienced in Linux then? Nothing wrong with that everyone starts somewhere.

Debian takes .deb files.

Arch takes .pkg.tar.xz file

Fedora takes .rpm

Also remember that one thing that makes Linux superior to other platforms for playback is the ability strip the platform back to just a kernel and the packages you need to run your platform, something to this k about when you are set up.

 

[RoundRound]

Thanks mate,
Can I ask you to take a look at this link?
https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/v3/jessie/

I think one of those .deb packages fits the RPI, but not sure which one?

Thank you!

 

[ludvigrollover]

This is mostly about using RPi as a dedicated player. There are a bunch of dedicated distributions you can just write onto an SD card and run. They just don't do much beyond playing music.
 
I'm currently using PiCorePlayer on the Pi. I have a server box running Logitech Media Server in a virtual machine that has all my files. This works very well even on a first gen Pi. I'm using Modi2U with USB as my DAC. LMS is kind of a mess to install if you don't have experience wrestling with Linux or Perl.
 
For EQ etc, there is nothing with a decent UI or documentation for normal people. Linux audio can accomplish great things but is pretty hard to get into, even now (it used to be way worse...). First of all, there are multiple frameworks implemented on different ideas how the stack should work or interface. They can also be connected to each other in creative ways. There's ALSA, gstreamer, pulseaudio and jack for starters. There are EQ plugins for ALSA, and jack is the musician/pro sound server with the best DSP plugins.
 
PiCorePlayer uses ALSA for output, but ALSA configuration for anything complex is not straightforward or documented well. If you just want a player, PiCorePlayer or Volumio etc will work fine, but don't expect EQ etc. There is also Kodi, which is more TV/video oriented. I don't use it but lots of people do.
 
I have a long term idea to make a better player and I may get there sometime this decade.
 
Sorry to be a wet blanket. I love Linux, run it on all my computers,  and make my living with servers, but getting into Linux audio beyond the basic players is an undertaking.
 
If you run Raspberry Pi 2, and can plug it into a monitor or TV and use it like a regular computer, your options with desktop Linux may be a little better. There are a multitude of desktop music players and Pulseaudio is pretty good in that environment these days.  I'm currently using Clementine on desktop, it has Spotify etc integration. It does have a terrible EQ too. Good luck

 

[RoundRound]

Thanks mate!

The only functions I really care about is a good volume and TPDF dither implementation, as well as room correction (convolution) once I get around to do it properly. I also need an elegant way of controlling the player from an iPhone.

Which of the players you mention support these features?

 

[RoundRound]

It sounds like you are far more into the very subtle (or not even there?) aspects of audio playback than I am. More power to you; as long as it makes you happy.

Brian.

 
Hey Brian,
Thanks for the note. 
 
I am familiar with the argument that even if you attenuate by -50dB the sound we are concerned about is well beneath the room's noise floor, but I have a pretty decent speaker set up (Chord Hugo (to be replaced by a Yggy soon), ATI 6002 amp and a pair of B&W CM10s2 speakers (who may be upgraded in the future, wife permitting, etc). I believe we re taking about a lot of spatial cues that get lost with the wrong dither. 
 
I actually experimented with a 'proper' dither VST plug in on windows (Jriver supports VST plugins) and I could hear the difference, subtle but there.
Even if one 'can't hear' different dither implementations, I fail to see why Jriver refuses to include the better one...  

 

[ludvigrollover]

Thanks mate!

The only functions I really care about is a good volume and TPDF dither implementation, as well as room correction (convolution) once I get around to do it properly. I also need an elegant way of controlling the player from an iPhone.

Which of the players you mention support these features?

 
I don't know if there is a TPDF implementation (had to check wikipedia). I'm going to be looking into room correction and EQ once I get my living room rearranged, but there is no off-the-shelf support AFAIK. You can run REW on linux, that much I know. The linux player distros are not that consumer-oriented, they are open source hobby projects.
 
I believe PiCorePlayer and Volumio have at least streaming support from iDevices and they have a web browser UI (the player shows up on your network).
 
Sorry, not much help.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I'm both and audio and video person and I think JRiver does the job on audio.
 
I'm glad to hear they are improving the video.
 
I'd like to be able to use JRiver as an all=in-one control center to launch, run, decode and process both local media libraries on my pc, and streaming services like Tidal, Sling, Hulu, and Nerflix.