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[Grundgütigster]

I didn't choose JRiver but MediaCenter for playing HighRes audio files from a computer that solely is there for audio playing (MacMini). As a Mac user you don't have many options if you choose to play outside the Apple world. I went to FLAC files which is nativly not supported by Apple, so I had to look for a third party programme. I tried a few but for me MediaCenter had the best file managing solution including smart lists, different playing zones, DSP, etc. and the server solution for remotely usage with my iPad.
As I don't use it for video files (no advantages to other solutions I have), so I could be happy with the Ponoplayer, but I thought it fair to pay for it.
Selecting MediaCenter wasn't easy for me as the usage and GUI are far from what I am used to use. I am hoping for advantages here.

[tarrapin]

I started with Media Jukebox, 20 or more years ago. It was free then. I feel like we get what we pay for, if $20 or $50 is what I have to pay every 3 or so years, I think I am getting a great deal. I am sure there are people that know much more and use many more of the features, but it works for me. I am looking to learn about Limiter Compressor abilities (for a FM station at Burning Man this year), the interface on the 2 new Android remotes I saw, and I really want Milkdrop visualizations!!!!

Keep up the good work

Tarrapin

[mx4789]

I was looking for a TV tuner so I could cut the cord.  The audio part was simply an added bonus for me.  In short, I chose JRiver because I felt like a "paid program" would receive more attention in the way of enhancements and bug fixes than an open source project ran by volunteers.

If forum rules allow, you can read about my personal experience here: http://sinebotchen.blogspot.com/2015/12/dumping-dish-how-i-cut-cord.html (if not, then Jim or somebody can remove the link  )

[TedM37395]

As I'm new to both JRiver and these forums, I might as well start here.

I chose JRiver because an audiophile friend gave me a Centrance DACPort, an obsolete but very nice USB DAC. As it would be wasted on my desktop computer, I decided to put together a music "server" (player) for my audio system. After I ripped my CD collection to FLAC, it could replace the CD player as well as the iPod that had served as an Internet radio tuner.

Having used Winamp for many years to play audio files and Internet radio on my desktop computer, I thought I could use it for the new music server. I tried several remote-control options for Winamp before settling on MonkeyMote, which runs on the iPod. When I saw an Acer Cloudbook 11 laptop on sale at Fry's, I decided it would be the right hardware for my server. It's underpowered (Dual-core Celeron CPU, 32GB of SSD, 2GB of RAM), but that should be enough to run Winamp (and nothing else) with Windows 10. More importantly, it has no noisy fan. So I bought it, along with a 1TB external (USB3) hard drive. I copied the media files from my desktop computer onto the external drive, installed Winamp, plugged in the DACPort, and everything worked.

Then I discovered that I should be using WASAPI Exclusive mode or ASIO for best audio quality. Winamp doesn't support either one natively, but several third-party plug-ins exist. Sure enough, they provided audible improvement. Unfortunately, these plug-ins are beta software at best. After several weeks of tweaking and fiddling, I concluded that none of them were stable enough to use. I tried MediaMonkey, which natively supports WASAPI. But playing Internet radio streams in a playlist hung it up every time, requiring a restart. Not acceptable.

Almost out of desperation, I downloaded JRiver for a trial on my desktop computer. The user interface is far better than Winamp or MediaMonkey. The MonkeyMote remote control actually works better with JRiver. And it natively supports the DACPort in WASAPI Exclusive and ASIO. But with all the video, television, and numerous other features I wouldn't be using, I was afraid it would be too much for the underpowered laptop.

I installed it on the laptop anyway, started it up, and configured it to use the  DACPort with WASAPI Exclusive mode. It worked immediately, and sounded noticeably better than Winamp! When I opened up Task Manager, I was amazed to find that JRiver uses significantly less CPU than Winamp. After confirming that it all worked with MonkeyMote (including a playlist of Internet radio stations imported from my desktop machine), I went back to my desktop computer and bought a JRiver license.

I now have a "turnkey" music server on the laptop that starts JRiver automatically in Audio Only mode when I turn it on (a feature JRiver itself provides, with no need to put a shortcut in the secret startup folder). I'm using ASIO rather than WASAPI, as the JRiver Wiki recommends. And, of course, I can use JRiver to rip CDs and watch DVDs on my desktop computer.

Free software is often a good option, but not always. The cost of the JRiver license was money well spent.

[dxgfalcongbit]

Because JRiver is compatible with my DAC AMPLIFIER when play movie with AC3/DTS audio tracks.

[Sky King]

Word of mouth.  With free things, sometimes you get what you pay for.

[AnalogKid]

As one of the 1st posters said:  "The main distinguishing point ...is that it has top quality audio"  It will play most everything and do it well in a stable reliable fashion.

[JohnnyFire]

i choose JR cause it came with plenty of settings to improve quality and stability of your sound!

[Magellan]

I have used JRiver for many years - three specific reasons are most important (besides must do things like bit-perfect, reliable drivers etc)

The library management (thumbnails, speed, oversight etc)
The DSP engine and the ability to use room correction filters etc..
The multiplatform

I also like the driver that makes it possible to pipe audio from Tidal to JRiver, but it is somewhat unstable.

In general I like it´s versatility for audio.

During a long period JRemote was very important for my choice of JRiver, since it by far was the best iPad, iPhone and later Android remote available. Then also JRiver server mode was important for me. Now I mostly use another solution, but now and then I do fall back on JRemote.

Many players can do bit perfect audio, and for example foobar2000 can do most of what JRiver do when it comes to audio, but it needs much more hands on, can be less stable with many plug-ins - and it is dull. And it is Windows only.

What I do not like: web shops, photo manager (there are better tools for this) Video and TV do I never use. I use JRiver only for audio. It tends to be slightly overbuilt for this purpose. JRiver also have a rather steep learning curve and some utilities are difficult to understand or learn.

[David Sydney]

Hi JimH & team,

The reason I chose JRiver is probably typical of other users. Your main competitor is iTunes. I have been searching for an alternative to iTunes for quite some time, for very simple reasons;


• iTunes is incredibly clunky and slow. Airplay is notorious flaky and can stop working for no explicable reason. Getting album art work was a nightmare but has improved. I used to also own "Rinse" from Real networks to try to clean it up.
• With every new release features can disappear - especially on appearance and album especially with ie. non responsive to feedback or interested in competing because they think they don't have to
• Constantly being sucked into Apple's world if you want to improve quality. Not supporting FLAC files and must use ALAC if you want to move to high definition sound, movies
• The clincher for me was actually that J River can also drive my TV Tuner card who works fine but the software from the manufacturer (Compro) has been abandoned. ie. One library program that can replace iTunes, PVR, Photo Image picasa etc.

It's also very hard to find alternatives. If you do a search most of the information comes from Magazine/media reviews which do not include JRiver. It's not immediately obvious to most that if you have a networked AV amp you don't really need Airplay and therefore don't need to play in Apple's world. You can get a fast responsive, highly customised library that can share or broadcast files to multiple devices and handle hifi sound and resolutions.

Having said that though, JRiver has quite a steep learning curve to get it going and probably would not be able to set it up without referring to the forum.

• So a "migrate from iTunes" wizard or something would benefit where newbies could look up their iTunes library folder input it into the wizard and the rest is done in the background
• I still like the ITunes way of importing. If I have MP3s to add I will go back into ITunes to add them by simply dragging and dropping them, organising them by artist, album folders in the background. HD files I have to manually add into J River library folder
• I still like the iTunes library view where it is sorted by artist or import date or whatever - but it still has a 'recently added' section at the top of the library view.


Hope this helps
David

[danxmanly]

Even though I'm still in the 30 day trial period.. I'm hooked and will be purchasing.

Why?  Because....

Ability to play hi def files from my networked server via my HTPC w/o transcoding.  Both Plex and Emby ( both free for the most part ) force transcode and I get sporadic quality.   Files play fine when I launch them from within JR on my HTPC.

Library Management - infinite ways to sort and display my files. 

Gizmo - haven't tried this yet but looks great.

Sound quality - Just sound betters than other packages I have tried.

I've dabbled in JR MC on/off throughout the years, mainly just for audio purposes as the llama has faded away, but never really dove into the video aspects.  The theater view was totally a surprise for me last week when I decided to give it another try.   I'm hooked! 

[theoctavist]

I Came over from Foobar. I am a reformed ultrafidelista/audiophile (I am a man of science now. )

...lots of people were saying good things about it. I balked at the idea of "paying" for a media player (foobar, winamp, blah blah)

...but I decided , on a whim, to demo MC one day(v 16? I think) and have never turned back. the upgrade/purchase price is chump change for what you get.

the reason I stay? so many. My two little girls can migrate its menus easily(on their tablets/my smartphone/our laptop(s) with the local gui or gizmo). it is visually stunning, intuitive, unparalleled in DSP options, flawless audio performance(although...to be fair..I really want to rage when people say they can "hear a difference" from one player to another) , customizable beyond compare, well supported, modern, and ..hell, its a one stop shop for all media types. also... I *really* love that you can use VST plugins. I won't ever leave the MC fold, man. yall keep up the good work

..oh yeah. steep learning curve?  pfft.  my *DAUGHTER* (a 7 year old) got it set up on her laptop at her mothers house...without my guidance.  aint no learning curve to it!

[dap]

Hands down for the database capabilities. I have loads of videos and nothing else even approaches the capabilities of Media Center to organize them My Way!!

[dsnyder0cnn]

I don't have anything terribly unique to add, but here are my reasons:

• Bit-perfect playback using ASIO, Kernel Streaming, and WASAPI drivers
• DSP support for convolution that is compatible with Acourate generated FIR filters
• Automatic selection of convolution filter based on source file sample rate (so cool!)
• Compatiblity with the slick JRemote phone/tablet app
• The DLNA Renderer supports DSP convolution, making it possible to apply digital room correction to any DLNA input stream!

[ronkupper]

DSP.
Mainly Bass management.

Although primary an audio user I also like the madVR integration (i.e. image quality "out of the box").

[Sky King]

I got lucky.

[gulp]

1. Support of my PS Audio DS DAC, iOS devices and DSD as well as any other format
2. JRemote Support
3. Flexible custom fields and views by JRemote
4. Support of QNAP NAS

I wouldn't have chosen JRiver if one of 1.-4. wouldn't have been supported

[bronzguy]

JRiver does everything for me.  I currently have 1,400 albums burned to FLAC files on to a Hard Drive, and here are the important reasons to me that I use JRiver Media Center.  There are other reasons, but too many to list.
   
    •   JRiver has excellent bit-perfect sound quality, and plays virtually all file formats
    •   JRiver has very good Sound Quality on my two systems:
          o   Windows PC>JRiver>DAC>Amplifier>Headphones
          o   Windows PC>JRiver>Wi-Fi DNLA Streaming to Xbox>DAC>AV Receiver>Floor Standing Speaker
    •   Great way to keep your albums in a Library with cover art, and the ability to sort by artist, album, etc.
    •   Rips and Burns CD’s, and auto adds to your Library in any file format you choose
    •   Plays DSD files
    •   Easily creates CD’s from your music files
    •   Interacts with Amazon, Pono, HD Tracks, CD Baby, and others
    •   Plays Podcasts and video

[TKz]

JRiver gets the basics right.  I wanted a simple media player that everyone in the house could operate from the couch with minimal effort.  I tried almost everything – Media Portal, Kodi, MCE, and many others.  All were too complicated or messed up on the basics.

What I like about JRiver is that most operations can be done from the couch with a basic remote.

When you hit the back button, the video stops.  The other media players require you to hit the stop button.  A small inconvenience you might say, but everyone wants to use the back button, and, they get flustered when they hit the back button and the video disappears but keeps playing.

In JRiver you can delete the media from within Theater View using a remote.  This is a big one.  We use the PVR mainly for timeshifting.  We have no desire to keep media for generations to come.  Once we’ve watched it, we want to delete it.  The other media players make deleting files far too mysterious and complicated.

[pumpkinsdude11]

honestly because its the best sound I've heard from my pc.  was on iTunes.  then musicbee, which was a big jump from iTunes, but jriver is the player I've been looking for.  still on demo too.

[teodorom]

I own MC18, but I shall buy MC22.
Why ?
The WDM Driver, that is the ability to stream to it TIDAL, Qobuz or even Spotify .
I would be happier if in some next version I could handle both my music "on premises" and "on the cloud" with one tool (MCXX, of course, not Roon !)

[EJR]

Was using foobar at the time and tried MC to compare audio quality. Altho according to logic digital audio quality should sound the same it didn't. MC sounded better using wasapi more focus and clarity. JRemote was a real nice addition as remote (from before the creator became part of the team).

- Server: Being able to stream to devices with jremote or even web access.

- DSP even tho i don't need it much atm

Dont use it much for video or tagging

[Sky King]

Word of mouth.

[koupa]

My first post.

I use Roon as my basic audio player, Foobar2000 as a tagging and organizing software and Plex as my video library.

But I bought JRiver because it can do most of their tasks with 90% of the effort. For example Roon is perfect for browsing but it can't tag files. Foobar2000 exactly the opposite. But I can't use it without sitting in front of my computer since it lacks auto downloading artwork and it's text only interface. Plex can read multi part movies and auto download subtitles but it's a web interface and I can't use it for manage physically my library.

With JRiver I can do all of these with one piece of software.

[Plutotype]

Today I have uploaded some well known flac albums to my JRiver server and went back to my main PC, where I´m using RME Babyface ( audio card ). Launched JRiver client and connected to the server. Selected the ASIO device in the dropdown menu and started  streaming the music from the server onto my Beyerdynamic headphones. Holy crap! I hear more details in the tracks! Now thats what I call nice surprise. Uploading all my music to the server now.

[marsboer]

I went with jriver as a HTPC front end and audiophile PC playback platform several years ago after having ripped all my digital media, that is CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, and jriver was, and in my opinion still is, the only "all-in-one" HTPC front end that does both audio and video (I use MadVR) right, and in addition it is highly customizable on that part. I still pay for every new version to support great work on that front.

[EfeTe]

Never been a fan of MC's "sound signature" to be honest. Won't go into SQ digressions but let's just say I didn't like the way my setup sounded with it or at least A+ bested it in my opinion.

"Had to" go back to using JRiver as it seems to work the best with my current configuration namely DLNA to the PS Audio Directstream Junior's Bridge II.

Gradually becoming more accustomed to the sound and liking it more by the day -which is a good thing. Will continue looking at settings options etc to see if there's anything else I can do to get it closer to the way I like things to sound.

The product works a treat though! And I do appreciate spaces such as this one for learning and sharing. Cheers all.

[teachscience25]

I use it for music only and it does what I need it to do.  I especially love the ability to play all of my music through my DSD dac without having to play around with switching formats.

[abozo]

It was recommended to me a few years ago, when I switched from CD to a PC as my HiFi source.  I use it only for music.

I very nearly switched to Roon+Tidal a few months ago but after lots of listening I decided that JRiver still sounds slightly better.  That may be psychoacoustics but sound quality is more important than anything for me so I stick with JRiver for now.

It works well with my HiFi system.

[Greg6510]

I came from Musicmatch Jukebox back in the day.  I liked it until Yahoo bought it.  Yahoo destroyed it and it went out of business.  That's when I found JRiver.  Been here ever since. 

[David353]

Word of mouth from another Tango DJ brought me to it.

It has everything.  And it's well QA'd.  And has great sound.

I'm still on 30-day free trial, but unless I die in a freak accident in the meantime, I'm buying it. 

I'm also impressed with the support level -- and support speed -- I got on this forum both from users and JRiver employees.  Often my question was answered well within a few hours and in more than one way.

[Changeling]

I'm using JRiver because I can easily implement and manage the chain of DSP's that I want to use. No other playback software that I'm aware of can manage PEQ + 3 VST's that I want (need) to use to enjoy music over headphones in a way I was not aware being possible.
I'm also happy that you have a way to access the Lynx Mixer within JRiver although that's more of a set-and-forget feature, it's convenient nevertheless.

I was almost lost to Roon, but since they're militant about not adding VST support I'm sticking with JRiver for now.

[Maeghaus]

I started on MusicMatch way back in the late 1990s. I was particularly a Mac user by early 2001; I switched over to a little program called SoundJam MP (there weren't a whole lot of options for MP3 players for Mac then). Then Apple bought it and turned it into iTunes. I stayed with iTunes through all the good and bad changes and felt like they really had it together by version 10.6. Then, for some reason unknown in this galaxy, Apple decided to redesign iTunes "from the ground up" (beware that phrase from Apple). I've always thought that artwork is an important factor in digital music, since it was (and still is) a big factor in vinyl LPs. CDs kind of diminished the impact for a while, but iTunes had some features that allowed it to display art quite nicely.

What Apple did in v.11 was effectively remove a *lot* of artwork features. The view was smaller, there wasn't a sidecar window -- and they got rid of CoverFlow, the closest thing to album sorting on a computer. Apple simplified a lot of the features and in some cases removed them totally. iTunes now sucked big time to me. I began looking for some alternative.

I found JRiver MC through a iTunes forum suggestion for a different player. I initially used MC on the Mac in the early days of that version, but last year made my PC the main player (involving some changes in destination and XML files). I'm happy with both the Windows and Mac versions, and sometimes in my flirts with Linux I use MC. I like the versatility of media support and metadata options. I think the song/album cover art support, plus the playback, is great. I've tried other players as alternatives, but nothing quite like MC.

[stevechet]

Hi all, why did I choose JRiver ? simple really nothing I had tried before, whether free or paid gave me the complete package of usability, customization and utter sound quality of this program, plus the DSP has really helped in getting my sound where I want it

[lboregard]

Initially, I migrated to JRiver because the open source solution I was using needed too much hand holding and because it handled every media format I threw at it (I remember vividly when Avatar came out in bluray, not all media players supported it initially, jriver did).

I stayed because the lavf author was hired (nevcairel in the doom9 forums).

This makes media playing rock solid.

It's not perfect and I have some "complaints", but I'll post them in the appropriate thread

[progerman]

For me, it was the cataloguing. I tried other programs - I even wrote my own utilities - but in the end, nothing came close to JRiver Media Center in this regard.

The DSP Studio is nothing short of fantastic, and to say my Audeze LCD-4's sound "alive" with MC and "dead" with everything else seems unfair, but it is very true! Add some parametric equalization to it, drop the pre-amp on the equalizer to compensate... and it sounds amazing!!!

Finally... the tree view. O... M... G... The customisation on the library fields; the expressions; and the tree view - I am in HEAVEN every time I want to tinker with my library. I have customised it soooo much that I am scared when you release a new version, but so far I was able to upgrade to MC22 and MC23 without issues.

I am sure I can think of more too... but that sums up the basic ones.

[earthquakefish]

I like the layout of the interface is my main reason.  I find it intuitive and while this may sound silly when I was young I used to love making mixtapes/cd's and I find the layout of JRiver well designed this way in creating a playlist on the go with lots of options.

While I know in many way this part is subjective: after upgrading my AMP that has a built-in DAC that takes USB connection I did prefer the audio results from JRiver versus iTunes or Groove Music to my ears.  Just having upgraded my amp/speakers after having the last set of audio components for 15+ years the $50 seemed very little in comparison in cost.

So my music is now running through JRiver, a Cambridge Audio amp, and a midrange set of Mission speakers from the 90s outside of when I play a CD through my Arcam CD player.  The Arcam CD player still sounds more solid, detailed, and nuanced but this (JRiver and Cambridge Audio integrated amp/dac) are amply close for half the price.

[stevedig]

Gizmo... Android, and web. I travel a good bit on business and the ability to load my library from pretty much anywhere in a web browser or the android app and watch TV series, movies, listen to music, etc... while I travel from place to place on contracts is heaven. With flash ending in 2020 I sincerely hope we're working diligently on an html5 replacement.

Add to that the flexibility to customize the sorting, grouping and organization of 10s of thousands of media files through these mediums and I was hooked. Almost a years worth of continuous play movies and tv shows alone makes this a can't live without feature. Add to that almost 900 albums and as physical media the library is all but unmanageable. Endless hours of sorting and organizing and still you can't find what your looking for among mountains of disks. MC solves that problem very nicely.

DLNA is a major factor in this for me as well. Every tv, receiver, blue-ray player in the house is dlna compatible with support for flac and mkv which are my containers of choice. They all pull, or are pushed to, by jriver constantly. Other than sporting events and news I never watch live TV and don't miss it.

I like the look of theater view but without an easy way to fast forward/rewind/jump to a location in the video like web gizmo provides I sacrifice the lovely interface for the convenience of this level of control. I'll switch to theater view when I want info about what I'm watching ... actors, director, release/air date, etc... but for managing playback and finding media to play web gizmo wins with me still.

J is the hub and control center of all AV in the house, and on the road. Keep up the awesome work guys. Love it!

[Cryph]

I am a brand new user as of MC23. I had heard of your software, but balked at the idea of paying for a media player/server.. as silly as that is.

I come from Foobar/Kodi(dsplayer) and I run in audio only mode. The UI is an improvement upon Foobar out of the box(FWIW) and also offers even more flexibility it seems.
I won't dare ask my family to give up Kodi's interface. At least for me there is no competition in the video space due to this.

I was always able to have audio UPnP with transcoding over both WAN and LAN links.. however, the plugin for this in foobar became unmaintained long ago, and had bugs in my particular configuration that were simply a headache. I also developed the desire to want my music server to be Linux based, so honestly your multi-platform support was a big draw. It also "just works" no hacking things together -- pretty impressive. Aside from lack of RANDR on my end initially(search isn't the greatest here) the Linux build ran just as flawlessly as windows build.

In addition out of the box, DSP support(w/ VSTs) is light-years ahead of Foobar. I needed a para EQ and Foobar would have been a hassle. MC took 5 seconds, builtin.
I feel like I got more than a placebo boost in quality overall when switching from: Foobar w/ Replaygain and Advanced Limiter -> MC with output leveling + peak normalization --
This is more an issue of ignorance, though.

My HD650s sound the same to the same output device with OEM cables, these incredibly cheap ones I bought, Foobar, or JRiver.
JRiver is just a hell of a lot more pleasurable to deal with-- as is this really cheap shorter cable.

I purchased a MC23 Master License, and will almost certainly buy upgrade licenses because frankly this is an impressive (supported well/updated frequently--at first glance) product, even if I use 1/8th of it and upgrades may not apply to me whatsoever. Chalk up a recurring sale to the forum team/devs.

[sg60]

For me it's Smartlists. I haven't come across any other audio software that provides as much control over the creation of playlists as JRiver does. This is the indispensable part of the application for me.

[MattBA]

I started using MC almost 10 years ago because I was tired of iTunes being the sore limited software it was.
As of today, MC still allows me to deal with my 50 000 music files with unrivalled ease...

- library management
- tagging
- layout, views
- plays all formats
- speed
- forum support

And as someone pointed out earlier, some kind of sense of loyalty. Good product made by good people for a good price.

[jmone]

MC has so many features (you even forget they are there).  We had some Italian friends stay and watched a New Zealand Movie called Hunt for the Wilderpeople on Blu Ray.  Great Movie, but it did not include Italian Sub Titles.  No probs with MC "--> Get Movie & TV Info --> Subtitles" and we had the Italian Subs.  Love it!

[jesseinsf]

I chose it for WASAPI/ASIO direct connection, multiple zone and a bunch of other features. There is nothing that compares to the excellence that was put in to it's development. If I were to complain about something then it would be Microsoft's negligence with fixing the Start Button that freezes every time I use exclusive mode. Microsoft.... This is very annoying.

[pablo_hp]

MC has so many features (you even forget they are there).  We had some Italian friends stay and watched a New Zealand Movie called Hunt for the Wilderpeople on Blu Ray.  Great Movie, but it did not include Italian Sub Titles.  No probs with MC "--> Get Movie & TV Info --> Subtitles" and we had the Italian Subs.  Love it!

I too.

[Matias]

Audio only: sound quality, DSP, formats, library management, DLNA server, tagging, synching to devices.

Having said that, I will not upgrade until SoX upsampling parameters are user configurable. Including SoX parameters over DLNA server. I have asked this before, not interested in upgrading until it is implemented.

[bfburkejr]

1) Best Sounding
2) Best file organization
3) Most intuitive interface
4) Can do just about anything you could ask of a Media Player and usually does it very well
5) Has a great Forum Community
6) Fairly Priced
7) Playes nice with my OS and computer (Windows 7 Ultimate)
8 ) Integrates fairly well with my pro audio gear, better than any others I have tried.
9) Never ceases to improve with time.

[HTPC Videophile]

I use both  JRiver and Kodi . JRiver main plus-points for me:
(1)Library Management and tagging in Standard View.
(2)Expression Language feature
(3) Audio DSP
(4)madVR integration natively.

[stanzani]

DSP (eq parametric filters, convolution, format conversion ...)
tag management

[AuditGuy]

Excellent question

I like:

Culture:
Active development cycles
Independent business, that cares
Forums and support

Tech:
support for external DACs - with plenty of useful options
full DLNA support
tagging options
database scope
remote control apps
portable install
auto playlists


What I'd like next:
full 2 way sync of file tags for external devices - not just iOS
ability to customize theatre view presentation- when I play Talk Talk, I get images from UK business called Talktalk
integration with streaming service Qobuz
onward development of Panel - its good, but the experience on my windows phone is not up to iOS and Android app standards
exposure of more tags in mobile apps

[Zootsuit]

I've been around JRiver/Media Center since the dawn of time, or so it seems - trading ripostes with King Sparta, arguing over file anti-copying technology, etc., though mostly silent the last few years.  My main reasons for loyalty/stickiness:

(1) Superior audio quality. I'm not able to parse subtle differences in audio quality like some (too old), but know what I want my music to sound like since I have a lot of experience hearing it live and in person. I go back to Miles and Coltrane in the mid- and later 1950s.
(2) All in one solutions for things like tagging, metadata,etc. I don't have the patience for hopping from one application to another for each separate function, and besides, there are few other programs out there that challenge JRiver's functionality.
(3) The forum - a spirit of helpfulness from other users that far outstrips the help/support we receive elsewhere, if we ever receive it at all. Case in point: At another unnamed site, it took me three emails over a course of 10 days, each written in vernacular English, to even get support to understand what my issue was.

That said, every now and then I sense an air of condescension from advanced audiophiles/technogeeks at some of the less advanced users and their questions. I count myself in the latter cohort, but since I haven't had occasion to invade that space in the last few years, I haven't experienced it directly. Media Center and its users are so advanced and sophisticated that it sometimes seems a bit less welcome to those who are still learning. IMO, anyway.