Now that it is working smoothly, I would say Audirvana is a solid improvement over JRiver. I found that the 8GB of RAM in the first Win10 laptop wasn't sufficient to run the OS as configured and switched to a 16GB model. What were your impressions WGH?
I would say Audirvana is system dependent, it doesn't sound as good as JRiver in my system.
Ani Difranco's latest album "Revolutionary Love" is a good test album. The album's first track "Revolutionary Love" has both deep bass and a faint triangle in the left speaker. If you don't hear the triangle then something is wrong. The low resolution of YouTube videos kill the triangle, it is very clear in the
44.1kHz/24bit download from HD Tracks.
Audivana's bass is bigger and not as tight. I have a REL Gibraltar G2 sub, it is super fast and tight to 20 Hz. The low bass increase is easily heard and change adds more boominess, I would have to turn down the sub if I kept Adirvana .
The high treble is rolled off. The Salk HT2-TL speakers use the RAAL ribbon tweeter, any attenuation by any component, be it cables, electronics or software can be heard. Even though I know the triangle is there I have to strain to hear it.
The micro-detail is missing. I am using a full loom of Hapa interconnects along with a review sample of Jason's new
Ember USB cable. The Hapa cables resolve micro-detail very well, there are plenty of reviews in the
Hapa Circle talking about the increased dimensionality music has.
Tomy2Tone has a good
review: "They [Quiescence Copper] really do have a what I call an " in the room" feel to them but not at the expense of any hyper detail or exaggerated tone."
The "in the room" presentation is missing with Audirvana, all those subtle clues are missing, the music sounds OK but the soundstage is a shallow arc between the speakers.
Hey, Audirvana's midrange is pretty darn good so the software isn't a total disaster.
But... If you have stand mounted or tower speakers with limited low frequency response and no sub then the added bass will sound great. At the other end, speakers with a tipped up treble like Klipsch or Paradigm or electronics with pronounced highs like some Krell amps and Japanese receivers will benefit from the decrease in high treble. The USB outputs on laptops is filled with noise that can make the music sound harsher (that is why the USB filters like the Audioquest Jitterbug are popular), a decrease in high treble would probably be beneficial. And if your system never resolved micro-detail then you will never know it is missing.
Adirvana could be the perfect player for the masses. The interface still sucks though.
It's strange the laptop needed more ram to run Adirvana. The program ran smoothly on my 10 year old Intel Atom (1.8 Ghz) with 4 GB ram Windows 10 music server. I finished my new music server and Adirvana still runs smoothly. Build details are
here. The Kingrex UC384 USB/SPDIF converter only does WASAPI. Kernal Streaming and ASIO are not available so I can't listen to those.