If they’ll incorporate streaming, it will be a killer player. It’s cheap, has many useful features that other players do not have, it plays all the formats, it’s rock solid, it has regular updates, and a very supportive users’ community… Its sound is decent, it’s just not the best.
It’s not only that. Their interface is hideous.
I also don’t like it. It’s like a PC app from the Windows 95 era. But it offers a good library management.
I agree. I’m hapoy to help a small company. BUT
-support must be much better - I saw that many problems doesn’t have an answer or a quick answer from the company. It’s ok to help each other but the big help must come from the boss (or his team). With a paid subscription comes great responsabilities.
-the rhythm of developement must be accelerated
-most of normal features for free apps are not present. There are (very old) free players with tons of skins, posibilities of changing fonts, size etc
1 Like
For people that don t need streaming services, who don t want to pay any suscription… Jriver IS a very good alternative. It s cheap, does a lot of things, the sound IS good, play a lot of formats, very flexible… Good library management… Very stable !!! Yes jriver is very good and could be the killer app if it propose streaming services like tidal, qobuz, … About sound quality jriver IS good. I don t Know what IS with the 28 version… I m running the 26. But if they increase the quality sound Jriver will simply become the best App to manage and listen our local music.
1 Like
I did say if you WANT , I upgrade every new version more as a way of “paying” call it a subscription by another name. $60 is a a one platform license, $20 is the “early bird” version update. I have been using it for over 10 years, ever since I started digitizing my music.
The audio section of MC hasn’t really changed in years. The only additions I can think off are Artist and Composer Images and Lyrics Lookup. Most change is in the video parts which keep changing externally
1 Like
No offence meant (to him) but while Jim H is CEO/Owner streaming will not happen , he is firm in the belief that Streaming is not financially viable.
You can however use a remote like mConnect that connects DLNA and allows access to Tidal & Qobuz. I also use the Cambridge Audio Stream Connect app that gives me access to all sorts going to my CXN
V28 has added little in audio terms , a few infrastructure changes t the embedded web browser , its now Chrome based.
Version is a bit of a misnomer, its a way of getting in some finance I suspect , but at $20 a year I am happy to keep paying in.
MC is an agile product it releases build about 1 or 2 a month , any small changes are made quickly , but then its a very mature product so a small add in takes a short time as its adding to a base.
1 Like
BUT who uses the “windows” interface ?
I agree the UI of MC itself is old school but I use it only for file and library maintenance on a big noisy desktop , in a study far away from where I listen (that’s what networks are for 
).
To actually LISTEN I use a series of iOS or Android apps which present a far prettier look and feel. (as above JRemote, mConnect , StreamMagic etc)
The key to MC is the flexibility and configurability of its views - YOU define how it looks , its easy to use once you know how. Then your Remote then is your predefined view of your library. Think a way of splitting Rock from Classical for example , a simple rule [Filename (Path)] contains ‘Classical’ does it easily, you can even predefine shortened lists for say top 20 Composers. Pretty much if you can think of it you can do it. These are features I can’t see how to reproduce in Audirvana (yet I suppose).
If you wish to discuss further I would suggest a PM , here is not really the place to sing the praises of another competing product
Well, it depends on the use case. I was using it on the laptop connected to the USB DAC, so I was interacting with the interface quite a bit. I really hated every minute of it and that’s why I switched to Audirvana.
In addition to what you say, I use another useful feature.
You can set different libraries and switch during the same session between them. I have a library for classical music, and a library for rock & jazz. Each has its own playlists and even settings.
iTunes does it too, but JRiver is much better, because with iTunes you have to quit the application and launch it again to load another library. With JRiver you never quit your session.
There is no doubt that with a little metadata effort you can navigate around your library extremely well in JRiver. I find AS a little disappointing for this sort of navigation. I have never gone to the trouble of splitting libraries I have just one but split up logically on metadata.
I am an A+ user. It has a decent iTunes like library management.
So, I was very disappointed with the library management of AS. And I opened a special thread about it.
It appeared then, among other things, that Damien designed the library management without studying first what are the conventions that MusicBrainz and Discogs apply for the separation of multi artists and multi composers of an album. This is particularly absurd, since AS adopted the ID tag of MusicBrainz, while ignoring the proper conventions of MusicBrainz!
As I have a lot of classical music, this ill conception of the library management rendered it completely unworkable for me: an awful mess that prevented a proper navigation and sorting of the metadata .
The only way to fix this issue would have necessitated to modify the tugs of the thousands of albums of my music collection, especially for AS, while all the other players, including Roon, read and interpret them properly.
It also appeared that this problem is not new. It existed already in A3.5. I wonder why no one on this forum provided Damien with a feedback to make him realize that this is a serious issue that should be fixed.
This is not the only problem with the library management of AS. There are others. It needs to be revised in depth.
But this one was one of the two reasons for which I didn’t subscribe to AS.
My final point is that I do recommend AS only to users who want to stream. It has a good sound and is cheaper than Roon.
But until AS’ library management is repaired, I can not recommend it to people who listen to their own music, especially if they have many classical music albums that were carefully tagged.
1 Like
I concur , I just tried to find an album I know I have (I am listening to it),I cannot find it via Album or Artist . My library is large and a lot of classical so I share the worry.
The search function is a dog …I enter “six partitas” and don’t see my album, there also seems no way to split local from Tidal.
Even if you are happy with the sound, the player is worthless if you are unable to find the album that you are looking for.
How hard should that be if you know the artist’s name?
In my classical music collection, I have more than 50 albums for some artists.
…and you don’t know the composer or the name of the work?
Not being funny but I’d imagine most people know what is in their library and a few search terms out to really narrow it down.
When you have thousands of albums, and box sets that are composed of 10-15 albums of the same artist, without a proper browsing, sorting and search, you waste your time.
1 Like
I have in my collection Bach: The Six Partitas by Angela Hewitt .
I was sitting at my desk listening to the album in JRiver but for all the search items I used I could not find that Album in AS – WHY . In JRiver I could find it via server configured views in seconds. I shouldn’t need to struggle to find an album. What am I doing wrong ?
I have 2 versions the 2018 recording and an earlier (1990’s) one , I could find the earlier one but not the later one. The albums have different names Bach: Partitas and Bach: The Six Partitas ,
Explain how I find it ??
I have a large collection and I know “roughly” what’s there but I have library software to help me find stuff …
2 Likes
I have the same albums of Angela Hewitt. It took me 1 second to find them in Swinsian. It’s a player on Mac that serves me as a library manager for all my players. I just typed “Hewitt bach” in the search box.
From here, I can just drug and drop the albums in HQPlayer or in Foobar (Mac) who have a very poor library management… But with AS, it is even impossible to drug and drop something to it.
I don’t need to drop of course to JRiver. It will find the albums as easily as Swinsian.
1 Like