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[JimH]

I removed a thread that started with a statement that one player sounded better than another.

Several people replied and Wheaten said this:

yeah, I think you're referring to topic's where the MAC is the player.
As both JRiver, Audirvana, Volumio, Roon,...... produce a bit prefect signal (and running on the same hardware and no filters or signal processing added) these signals are identical. So if you sent this signal to a stand alone endpoint, it would be strange that you hear differences.
If you do hear differences than the signals are not identical.
To me this is the same as stating that a downloaded e-mail has better sentences, than the online version........

I agree.

Such sound quality discussions are pointless.  They don't usually even take into account whether the output is volume matched.

[Wilderness]

I don't know whether the sound volume was the same when I tried JRiver, iTunes, Audirvana, Roon, and Pure Music, but to me JRiver in bitperfect mode sounds significantly superior to those other players.

JRiver sounds more like music: richer, fuller, and more emotionally engaging than those other players.  The other players sound dull, lifeless, and boring, like digitally processed music.

If there is a "glow" and a beautiful tone in recordings, I get all of that in JRiver, and it is addictive in a good way.  I am listening to Mazzy Star right now, and the sound is so beautiful that I am in awe of its gorgeous tone.  I get almost none of that sound quality in the other players.

I know that bitperfect is supposed to sound the same regardless of player, but I know what I hear.  It's not even close.

Roon has a lifetime subscription price of something like $499.  I would pay that price for JRiver without hesitation.