First of all, I have purchased the license for MC21, I really love JRiver. One of the reasons I really love it is I am into cinema sound formats and have been for years, right back when it started with pro logic...when you needed nicam stereo to get pro logic.
Sorry about the personal info but I think it helps to explain why I find JRiver useful and one of my confusions.
The main thing I like about JRiver is the fact I can listen to isolated audio tracks from DVD's and blu rays and it can skip all the blank spaces..I mean in a film the music doesn't play the entire time, so that results in sometimes long gaps of silence, before the next piece of music plays...well this is great as I can hear the score as it is in the film and as a mutli channel audio track..I just love this.
The other thing which I think is great...although home cinema AV receivers have effects for stereo sources they have options to give the impression you are listening to multi channel audio even from a stereo source...well JRiver does this and I reckon it sounds better on that than it does using an effect on the receiver.
Sorry this is getting a bit long...but now for the things I do not understand...main thing is it seems if I have the HD audio as an actual file, it will not play the HD audio, pr at least it seems...but it will play it from a blu ray disc..but only thing I would say is I could swear it sounds like HD audio although it doesn't say on my AV receiver that is...so maybe
I am getting the format on the files although it doesn't say...it seems to me where the files are is somehow a different player than the bit that plays the blu rays? I am not sure.
If you select JRS mixing, it will mix a stereo source to give the impression of multi channel audio..but what if you have this box checked and the source is already in multi channel audio, will it still have some mix on it through the JRS mixing thing or will it automatically detect that it is multi channel audio and disable the mixing? It is just I wouldn;t like to leave this box checked all the time if the source is not in stereo and it was applying some sort of mix to the audio.
Finally...last night I decided to try JRiver MC22 for the 30 days...you know I would never know it was any different, so I am not seeing anything any different..I do really appreciate the people who have posted me links to show what the changes are..but being honest, I read down and I do not understand what most of the updates are...as I purely use JRiver for my music and films...so I reckon that those new updates do not benefit me at all..well I see no difference ...with the exception of some more options at the very bottom of the main options screen.
From the start I reckoned that JRiver was capable of other things too..but I am not sure what..but I reckon for my purposes it is a huge improvement over any other media center/player I ever used. But I suppose I am posting this too, to say that I only use it for my music and films, and hoping that maybe someone would know some other options I can use JRiver for in regards to my music and films I am not aware of..I am considering trying out MC 23 but I will wait until the trial runs on MC22...so far I am not upgrading to 22 as frankly I do not see much of a difference...like I said..for my purposes I would never know that it was actually a new version. Thanks...sorry if this was a boring read but I thought I would explain all and maybe get to know how else I could benefit from this great software, I am not the most technical minded, although I may seem like it...I had JRiver for months before I knew I could actually get HD audio from it.