[glynnw]

Over the past year I have tried to find a ready-made server that lets me run JRiver and use my TV for the screen.  Those that offer Roon may do what I want, but from what I have read so far Roon doesn't offer the flexibility of JRiver at this time.  I see no HDMI outputs on any of the ones I can afford.   From what I have seen, although many of these may provide better sound than my PC, none offer me the visuals and reference material I get through JRiver. They all seem to have a simple basic information format - "here it is- hit play" - all on a small display I cannot see form my chair.  Even JRiver's remote, Gizmo only offers simple selection and play functions.  I refuse to give up easy tag reading and editing, endless images of playing artist, wiki info on same and lyrics, all with the simple press of 1 button.  I understand there are various software programs available that claim to improve sound, and I am willing to try them, but not the ones that may disable video and internet.  If anyone can suggest a few, I would be thankful.

[*Scotty*]

I am using a HAL MS-2 PC Music Server to play back music files. It has a HDMI output which I feed to my large screen Samsung LCD TV.  I use jRiver 21 for playback feeding an outboard DAC and a wireless mouse and keyboard as needed to operate jRiver. Very convenient and the wireless mouse is essentially my remote control.
 The current MS-3 PC Music Server has
Intel Atom N2600 dual core processor with Intel graphics and chipset
Use of mSATA 60GB SSD drive
8GB of DDR3 memory
Internal DVD drive for ripping CD's to an external user drive
Internal 802.11N WiFi
Gigabit Ethernet connection
HDMI and SVGA video connections
Foobar2000 preloaded
Exact Audio Copy preloaded
Fanless system
All aluminum chassis with black brushed anodized finish
Windows 10 OS
8in.X8in.X2in. chassis, posted pictures do not do it justice, it has a very good anodized finish.
Front MS-3
 
And back MS-3

My MS-2, which is basically identical to the MS-3, is head and shoulders above my Toshiba Satellite laptop in sound quality and makes listening to music a three dimensional immersive experience versus the musical wallpaper soundscape supplied via the laptop. Resolution is also much higher using the MS-2 as the server compared to the laptop.
 I really wouldn't want to go back to using the laptop as my server, it would suck the life out of the experience for me.
See these threads for more info.
MS-2 PC Music Server Thread
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=111932.0
MS-3 PC MUSIC SERVER Thread
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=132170.0
See Hollis Audio Labs facebook page for additional info
https://www.facebook.com/HollisAudioLabs/photos?ref=page_internal
Hope this helps.
Scotty

[Vincent Kars]

Assuming you are using JRiver on a PC: have you tried bypassing the Win mixer?
If not, try drivers like ASIO or WASAPI (depending on your hardware).
You might experience a slight increase in transparency.

[chrisc]

There are many settings you can try on JRiver.  Some work, some have a negative effect.  Are you running Windows, or a Mac?  I have both and found that the Mac, running ElCapitan provides a more detailed sound than the Windows machine did, until I loaded Windows 10.  Now I that this is running, it is the same.

Suggest the following:

In Tools / Options / Settings / Device and output format / Output encoding (which will be set at None), try:  2 x DSD on DOP format.  Save it and try to play something back.  If you hear nothing, reverse it
Under sample rate, have you set the output for the various sampling rates to No Change for as high as your DAC will manage?
Then you can fiddle with Parametric Equaliser to see if this improves matters, or makes it worse

I understand there are several tweaks with version 22, but only for Windows machines

And of course the rule - only change one thing at a time

[Bob2]

.

[glynnw]

Thanks for the replies.  I am currently using Windows 10 on a small NUC PC, so I cannot add any sound cards, etc.  Prior to this I built 2 specialized PCs using such things, but I am slowly tiring of the work and expense necessary to keep DIY projects functioning (I have a dead amp on my desk right now). I used an external SOtM USB but my experiments with linear power supplies blew up 2 of them so I have abandoned that for the moment. Currently using ASIO on JRiver - I was using WASAPI and don't know why  it is now on ASIO but I will investigate.  The HAL server looks interesting and I will look into it.  At one time I was playing with some freeware that tried to improve sound on a PC by disabling unneeded services, but I cannot remember the name of it.  If anyone knows the name of software I can download and try, that is what I am really looking for at the moment.  I don't mind paying if it really works.  Thanks again and please keep your ideas coming.  Improving my digital front end is my current project.

[WGH]

Audiophile Optimizer is supposed to improve sound quality but I have never tried it. I would like to do an A-B comparison but there is no trial version and it costs $129 to buy.
http://www.highend-audiopc.com/audiophile-optimizer

The manual is a free download, check to see if there are different levels of optimization that keeps the stuff you want.

At one time I messed around with Fidelizer and software like that, manually turned off services and still could never could hear a difference, too bad there is no way to switch back an forth without re-booting. Now that I have Win10 I should give Fidelizer another chance.
http://www.fidelizer-audio.com/
"The goal of Fidelizer’s optimizations is to reduce the “digital glare” in computer audio solutions and make music comes alive like listening to real sound. Fidelizer has free version without time limit. All changes made by Fidelizer are safely reversible."

I do know different versions of the ASIO driver sound different, I use WASAPI with the knowledge there is more variation in the quality of recordings than realized by any software tweak.

Wayne