It's an interesting thing, this. A tweaky audiophile program that strips away all the junk your computer could be doing while playing back your digital audio files.
The idea is to give each file as good an environment for playback as possible, minimizing jitter and maximizing sound quality.
Well, OK. That could be cool.
The program itself is tiny, and lacks any significant user interface. That's the idea, of course. Your computer can be doing a lot while it's playing back audio files, and in the minds of the self-professed fanatical audiophiles at Jplay, these other processes can adversely affect sound quality.
From their website:
"In music, timing is everything. And in digital music reproduction doubly so: while producing bit-perfect output is easy, producing it at exact time required by digital formats (e.g. 32 bits every 22 microseconds for CD) is not. Why? Because while your PC may be really fast, it’s also doing hundreds if not thousands other things at the same time it plays music. With so many things going on, do you trust it will always ‘hit the beat’ at just the right time? Programming optimizations in jplay are designed to minimize both software & hardware interruptions in order to make it ‘easier’ for PC to ‘keep the rhythm.’"
Installing Jplay is simple, just click on the software. It doesn't even really install anything, just starts the program. If there's any configuration needed, it does it and asks for a computer reboot.
Jplay's interface is a Notepad-esque window with instructions and the few commands. No flashy GUI, you don't even get to use your mouse, at least not for this part.
The idea is you find the songs you want to play (WAV, AIFF or FLAC only), right-click and select Copy. This holds the files in RAM, eliminating the need for hard drive access during playback.
The real question is: can you hear a difference? With some WAV and FLAC files ready to go on the HTPC, I compared Jplay back and forth with iTunes and MediaMonkey (iTunes doesn't play FLAC).
It seems, first off, that Jplay is a few dB softer than iTunes and MM. That right there makes a direct comparison difficult. The other frustrating factor is whatever Jplay is doing, it locks out other playback devices. So you can play a track on iTunes, pause, then listen to the track in Jplay, but if you try to go back iTunes/MM won't play. So you have to restart the program and by that time any sonic memory you had is long gone.
So with these significant caveats, could I hear a difference? Well, it did seem the Jplay playback was a little smoother, perhaps a touch more revealing. Again, I'll openly admit this was no double-blind comparison. If I had to put a number on it, maybe 2-3% better. With my rig in my room, it did seem to sound a bit different, but as I said, given the difficulties in A/Bing the programs, this could be an observer-expectancy effect.
Jplay is going to appeal to a certain type of person, that hardcore audiophile that has his speaker cable on tiny stands and obsesses about bit-for-bit accuracy. For him, this software can soothe his mind a bit about all the crap computers are doing in the background during playback.
The price, though, is steep: 99 Euros, or about $130. That gets you free future upgrades, and personal support from the guys who created the software. Still, that seems a lot for what is, at best, a marginal improvement. Fortunately, you can download a free trial version and compare it for yourself.
Jplay is obviously not for everyone, nor does it intend to be. If you're the type of hardcore person this software is clearly aimed at, it's a free download to check out. If you're not the type of person this is clearly aimed at, I'm sure you've already stopped reading.
I'm just getting started with computer audio. This sounds very interesting, I always wondered how much all that other stuff a computer is doing in the background could affect the quality of playback. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion that this is expensive. Yes it may be pricey as far as the actuall program, but what other piece of audio gear or accessory could you buy for $133? What are the alternatives? Buy a dedicated music streamer capable of delivering bit perfect audio from your computer music collection to you audio system? From what I've seen out there you could buy a computer and jplay for quite a bit less than the music servers being offered. Also there seems to be a way of using Jriver - a gui interfaced system of music cataloging and playback along with jplay (despite the names the companies are not related), maybe you could look into this and test it out.
After investing thousands in my speakers, preamp/dac, and amps this looks to me to be a relatively cheap was of delivering computer based music files to my system. A relatively moderate
but powerfull computer can be purchased for about $400, add jplay for $133 and you have a high end audiophile playback system. What kind of CD player can you buy for $533? and it still wouldn't be able to download and store thousands of songs, and you still have a computer that you can use when it's not in use for music playback.
Jplay will appeal to the gullible. Shame on S&V for such a shalllow article. Jplay was exposed as a scam in other forums, admitting among other things that the output is bit-identical to the sound they claim to improve from players like JRiver and Foobar2000. Jplay was also caught violating copyrights, and is under investigation for intellectual property theft. The only certain outcome is that buyers will soon need a new computer, because Jplay will create a thermal overload of your system by disabling so many critical (and non-sound impacting) operating system functions.
I'm not sure a discussion on Hydrogen Audio amounts to being "under investigation for IP theft" — you have some news you could link to of an official proceeding being launched?
And sure, JPlay may well be useless, but it's also not terribly helpful to say that those trying it out will be "certain" to need new hardware unless you have some evidence of that.
In any case, should we really be ashamed for posting something that says, quite guardedly "we tried this application — maybe we heard a difference; we're not sure — since you can try if for free, check it out" ?
Just to be clear, I am currently considering jPlay, and I have a lot of hardware and computer background. I've also read the blathering on HydrogenAudio.....
The fellows who wrote JPlay seemed to be very direct in their claims: their program doesn't change the bits; what it does is to minimize the computer overhead, which should make the computer better able to deliver the bits with better timing. What I would EXPECT from that claim is that JPlay might well have a significant effect on how many USB DACs sound - and none whatsoever on others. (I would expect some effect on non-asynch USB DACs; little to no effect on asynch USB DACS; and varying effect on DACs that use some sort of jitter reduction - dependiong on how much the DAC cares about jitter; and a lot will depend on the computer as well.)
My point is that I haven't seen any unreasonable claims made on their (JPlay's) part. They say "here's what it does, and some people hear an improvement" - and I see no reason to doubt that claim, and no reason to assume that it is some sort of scam. It just sort of offends me when people who don't have the technical background to understand the situation attack someone else based on that lack of knowledge. Reducing processing overhead on a HTPC MIGHT improve the delivery of audio, and certainly won't hurt it - and there is no reason to suggest that it would somehow damage the machine (any more than any other utility program is likely to).
I looked at Jplay too, and I have a computer background too, and I gotta tell you, the Jplay developers were exposed as incompetent on every key issue specifically tested by the JRiver and Foobar2000 developers. Jplay's claim of residing entirely in memory was refuted, their latency claim was exposed, and double blind testing revealed no difference. If Jplay were genuinely interested in unbiased "listen and make up your own mind" decisions, then their website would not be so carefully crafted to bias any decision, and they'd embrace double blind testing. Jplay was even dismantled in the forum of the most sympathetic listers (computeraudiophile). Jplay just has zero credibility.
Wow, Julian Hirsch and every deceased competent engineer or scientist must have rolled in their graves when MBerk posted. S&V should be ashamed that they've abandoned the scientific method and instead favor disinegenuous methods that leverage classical fallacies. I guess we can only depend on S&V for puff pieces instead of the insightful articles of the past. Prove me wrong and use double blind testing for determining the presence or not of audible differences.