[johncarm]

I am setting up a MacBook Pro as a music player for the first time, and I am trying to figure out what software to use.
 
I like the functionality of JRiver, but my issue is that it sounds dramatically different than other Mac media players, and not good. It sounds much brighter and somewhat harsh by comparison to Clementine and iTunes. This is with two different DACs, (1) the iFi Nano, (2) the Trends as S/PDIF source driving a custom DAC with coaxial input.
 
I wonder about changing settings, but there are hardly any settings, and I haven't found any that make a difference.
 
Any idea what is going on?

 

[StudioSound]

It shouldn't sound drastically different from anything else.
The only things I could possibly think of are that you have bit-perfect playback in JRiver but the other players are resampling, or vice-versa. If you're using the new v22 you could try enabling SoX resampling instead of the default SRC resampling.
If you're using volume control, make sure it's set to the internal volume control rather than system volume control, and that you have dither set to TPDF - it defaults to RPDF for some stupid reason. (tip: you can search in the options window)
If you're going to use volume control on the computer at all, I'd also recommend that you analyze your library and enable volume leveling. It does a really good job and will prevent inter-sample clipping.

 

[johncarm]

It was set to "System Volume Control," and changing that to "No Volume Control" was an improvement. It may have fixed it completely.
 
Thanks!