Jplay

[Antoine]

Nice Morten!

I'm still using the UltraStream engine but increased the ultrabuffer from 25 to 30 because sometimes I heard a very small crackle/pop, as if a sample was dropped, it's now working perfectly. Haven't tried the Xstream engine yet.

[Morten]

Hello again,

Yep it is nice, I am happy with the solution, I ended on choosing the "relaxed" setting, and disable the power settings.

I run with ultrabuffer size of 150, when I play 96KHZ I need to go this high, otherwise I also get the crackle noises.

In Foobar you can change output setting on the fly, going from Jplay to WASAPI is a real eye opener, with Jplay everything just get so much bigger and it frees the music, it is really extraordinary.

Have you tried to disable to power leg on the USB cable, and if so what are your findings?

Kind regards

Morten

[Antoine]

Hi Morten, interesting as I think this shows how much PC's can differ and also how 'great' the effect of tuning the PC can be, seen from a latency perspective. My setup is fully stable at the low ultrastream buffer of 30 using all bitrates/sample freq's. Also I've set the USB driver latency to minimum and all sample freq's in JPlay to 'directlink'. If low latency also really matters much for sound quality I really don't dare to say but it seems to be a general consensus at computeraudiophile.com and it of course says something about the number of 'distractions' (from other hardware interrupts, programs, processes, drivers, etc.) the PC faces during playback.

And yes, I've experimented much on the USB power. You can read all about it in the 'my system' topic on this forum. In short the Devialet needs the USB ground active and won't work without it. Not when starting playback or during playback (I tested both, music simply stops when I cut the USB ground or won't start at all when there's no USB ground connection active). My final setup is now: Kingrex uPower battery PSU feeding power externally to JCat USB interface card -> Kingrex Unanimous uCraft dual headed USB Y-cable (one connector signal+one power both connected to the JCat USB card) -> Devialet.

NB. I think you meant to write 'going from WASAPI to JPlay'.

[Morten]

Well it is Saturday night and the kids are sleeping...

I have tried to run Jplay in hibernation mode and so far like what I am hearing, I do however have one problem, the music have to be on the actual PC where Jplay and Foobar is installed--now it is stored on a NAS.... bugger I may end up buying a new SSD on 1TB :-(

When will it ever stop...

Kind regards

Morten

[Antoine]

"When will it ever stop..."

Haha, well there's also the JPlay dual PC setup, one for control and one for music playback. Both PC's fully optimized, tweaked and 'armed to the teeth' of course!

[Antoine]

Wow, I love reading these kind of messages as it kind of confirms what I am hearing!

Is this guy 'Devialet-User' active/reading here too?


http://jplay.eu/forum/hi-fi-equipment/aurender-x100l/

Hello everybody.
Just recently we have compared an AURENDER W20 with an optimized dual-PC-setup and everybody agreed that the dual-PC-setup sounded much better than the W20!
We have used two systems for the comparison: The fully active GRIMM LS1 playback-system and our large reference system (DEVIALET 800 / B&W 800 Diamond / PS Audio P10 / AUDIOQUEST).
In fact the dual-PC-setup has beaten every other source we have compared it to (LINN DS / NAIM and of course every CD-player including PS AUDIO PWT memory player).
To us this is right now the ultimate source for real audiophiles (and I am in this game already for more than 30 years). It is really astonishing…….

Hello.
The two PC's we are using have been build on FUJITSU D3062-B motherboards, INTEL i7 cpu's , SAMSUNG SSD's plus the full range of the latest JCAT products. Especially the JCAT USB card improved the SQ very much. OS 2x Windows 2012 server, AO 1.26, JPLAY dual setup, playback with JPLAY mini. All files we are using are wav. format ONLY, ripped on a special HQ ripping server made by AMI HiFi.
But please note that we are using a PS AUDIO P10 power generator plus high quality power cables equipped with FURUTECH's top range series 50 connectors for the PC's powersupply, too. Moreover we place the PC's on a very good HiFi rack (ARTESANIA Exoteryc).
Finally it seems as if the DEVIALET USB input matches perfectly with the JCAT USB card. Besides, the 5V power can be switched OFF as the DEVIALET does not require it. This might be an advantage, too.
Maybe we simply had good luck to find such a marvelous setup.

[Morten]

Nice,

I am still happy with Jplay.

I am still trying to get hibernation to work, without buying a new disk to my music PC.

I can actually get it to work if i make a virtual drive on my NAS, the problems is that I can’t get the PC to reconnect to the virtual drive when I restart the PC

What about you Antoine, you haven’t experimented with hibernation?

Kind regards Morten

[Antoine]

Hi Morten,

I haven't tested hibernate mode yet, I haven't even used JPlay mini yet as well. Don't know if I will as well as I'm not the kind of listener that works with playlists, I listen from song to song or album to album and can change from artist, genre etc. in a whim and want to be able to do so with absolute freedom and not more than a touch on my iPad. I really don't want to stand-up and remove a USB stick to stop playback which seems to be necessary for JPlay hibernate mode in a single PC setup. Also the Audiophile Optimizer software already limits the number of threads/services in server core mode to a bare minimum. If I ever switch to dual PC mode I might check it out.

BR,

Antoine.

[ogs]

I own a license for JPlay and like the sound very much. I have not tried AO or the dual pc setup. It seems like too much work. And then the JCAT card and mini player. Not at all family friendly. I also prefer to play albums rather than tracks and I have never really used playlists.
I wonder how AO/JPlay/JCAT/mini would stack up against the Totaldac reclocker or d1 server? Has anyone had the opportunity to compare?

I haven't even used JPlay mini yet as well. Don't know if I will as well as I'm not the kind of listener that works with playlists, I listen from song to song or album to album and can change from artist, genre etc. in a whim and want to be able to do so with absolute freedom and not more than a touch on my iPad.

[Antoine]

It's not much work. Windows Server 2012 R2 installation doesn't differ much from Windows 8. The Audiophile Optimizer takes care of the system tuning and configuration. Only thing you have to do is install JPlay, JRiver/Foobar and a few hardware drivers (most are recognized by windows). From there it's set and forget, you turn the machine on and off using the power button. It boots in seconds from a SSD as it has to start very little.

JPlay Mini is an optional player provided by JPlay, you can keep using any player you like as long as it has an ASIO output capability. The JCat USB card is a PCI express interface card to which you connect the Devialet once. Don't see any family unfriendliness here.

No idea how the Totaldac d1 server compares to a fully tuned PC music server. I haven't read any comparisons. It has to do really well though to beat it. And this regardless of it's steep price of €4990. The Aurender W20 mentioned above is even three times as expensive, costing a mere €15.000€/$17.200