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[Terry Dactyl]

Hi - I hope someone can offer me some pointers on how to set up JRiver to work with an Arcam rPlay streamer, please.

First of all, my system...

A Linn LP12 turntable which is used now only for the purpose of ripping my LP collection to FLAC. My amp doesn't have a phono stage, and we have two cats who will jump up onto the turntable, thus making it unsuitable for relaxed playback.
My music is stored on a Western Digital drive which is connected by an ethernet cable to my (Sky) hub.
My amplifier is a Quad Vena, which is (was) connected to my laptop (Windows  10) via USB.
The speakers are B&W 684s.
I used to use iTunes, but have found recently that it's almost impossible to scroll through my library. My understanding is that fast scrolling over a network is difficult under Windows 10.
I downloaded JRiver Media Centre 23, and it has worked much better than iTunes in that regard, so I bought the licence.

What I've wanted to do for a little while now is to eliminate the (assumed) path of the music through the laptop. The plan was to use the laptop only for 'control' with the music path to be NAS drive > Sky hub > Quad Vena > speakers.

My local Hifi shop has lent me an Arcam rPlay streamer which has now been installed as follows;

Ethernet cable from the rPlay box to the Sky hub; coaxial cable from the rPlay box into the Quad Vena.
Therefore, as far as I can tell, the music does NOT travel through the laptop.

Please bear with me. The rPlay says I should download the DTS Play-Fi app either onto my laptop or onto an Android device (my Samsung mobile phone). I'm not a great user of phones and really wanted to keep the JRiver setup on my laptop as my method of control. So I've installed DTS Play-Fi onto the laptop and have it set to "Music Mode - All Audio Sources"
The rPlay box says 'Wirelessly stream from your Play-Fi, AirPlay and UPnP sources to your Hi-Fi' but I assume I should ignore all of that because I'm not streaming wirelessly(??). The only wireless bit is the link between the laptop and the hub.

Now to the nub of my question. Clicking 'Play' on an album cover on JRiver duly plays the said album, and I'm assuming that the music is travelling via the rPlay and completely bypassing the laptop. Is there a way in JRiver to tell if this is actually the case. I've seen the wiki article about 'audio path' that says that "With the Noire skin, the DSP button will change to blue in this case", and mine definitely isn't.

What's also casting doubt in my mind about the 'path' is that whilst it's possible/probable that the 'album' music is going direct from the NAS drive to the rPlay and on to the Quad, I'm now listening to internet radio (bach.net) which I select in JRiver through the 'Open URL' option which in turn opens bach.net's website on my browser. That would suggest (to this bear of simple brain) that music is still emanating (via WiFi??) from the laptop.

So....is it conceivable that my music is being routed thus - NAS > Hub > wireless to the laptop > through JRiver > wireless back to the hub > through the rPlay and on to my ears. If it is, then there's no point in my buying the rPlay.

Guys I'm sorry for the long-winded question, but I've tried to be as explanatory as possible.
I could speak to Arcam's Customer Services but they're closed for Christmas / New Year. My HiFi dealer is very knowledgeable but has no experience of JRiver.

All responses greatly appreciated.

Terry
 

[JimH]

We have a wiki topic on DLNA (similar to UPnP).  You could read it to get a little better understanding.

MC can act as a controller to play from a server to a renderer.  In this case the files aren't ever passed through MC.

Your Arcam is the renderer.

Personally, I wouldn't be concerned about the path.  I would be concerned about whether the files are converted or not.  If MC is the server, there may or may not be conversion, depending on how you have it set for the DLNA server being used.