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Hey all,
I've been a big fan of XBMC for over a year now, but several issues finally pushed me to try J.River Media Center.
I don't know if any other Xonar DX sound card users had problems with XBMC, but the past Dharma Beta releases all made funny blats of noise when stopping a playing audio file. I think it was repeating the last sample (or group of samples?). Whatever it was, it sounded a lot like a 20 Hz square wave and would last for a few ms to 1/4 - 1/2 sec.
This plus a few other buggy behaviors finally made me move on. While I still love the XBMC interface on my HTPCs, the program just wasn't cutting it...
I tried J.River, and decided to give ASIO4ALL a shot. ASIO4All is a very simple interface that keeps the audio data stream out of the windows mixer. If a program can talk to an ASIO driver, which J.River MC can, ASIO4ALL takes the program's digital output and passes it directly to the sound card's device driver for DAC or pass-through.
The hub-bub about this is that it allows you to try the holy grail of bit-perfect audio data, straight from the program producing it to the sound card output of your choice.
What I found was a very surprising. I have two PCs I use for sound, my regular desk top in my office with an old Audigy Platinum sound card, and a decent HTPC in my bedroom with the Xonar DX. Both are running XP Pro. I use the stereo analog output from both cards to drive my amps.
On the Xonar DX machine, I really didn't notice any difference in sound quality, but all of the weird, buggy behavior is gone. Very clean sound with never a pop, click, blat, snort or toot.
On the Audigy machine, the difference was actually amazing. I have used this machine to test drivers and speakers with SoundEasy. I swear, I have all effects turned off everywhere features can be accessed (in both the Audigy driver and in Windows' sound device configuration).
I could hear a profound difference on the first song I played. Everything since confirms it. The sound is more accurate, especially in the 40 to 100 Hz bass region. It doesn't make sense, but I would say the sound is more detailed, even in the midrange and treble ranges. This is the first time software has made grin while I listened to music :D
J.River MC can:
Run in a window, where it looks and behaves much like Windows Media Player.
Be run in a full screen mode that yields a nice, usable 10' interface that is easy to control with a Windows MCE remote.
Launch Total Media Theater 3 automatically for playing my BluRay Rips (with the selected movie playing).
Can tag wave files. Yes, it actually can, by placing the tag information in an ID3 format at the end of the wave file. This tag may not be readable by anything but J.River's MC, but it's a real tag in the wave container.
Harvest the meta data from the directory and filename structure, or the tag, or a combination of both (which is the method I used to build my library). I now have my groupings by artist or genre back for my wave files and can simply select play all for hours of back-ground music.
I paid the $50 for my copy three weeks ago, and it's good enough that I'll happily pay another $100 for the two licenses I still need. You can run it for free for a 30 day trial.
ASIO4ALL is a free, tiny and completely benign program. It doesn't even run until you play a song or a movie in MC, and it closes when playback is stopped. It doesn't load or mess with codecs. Even while MC is playing something, other programs can access the sound card driver like ASIO4ALL isn't there at all.
What's really nice about this is that MC has a digital signal processor built in, seven clicks in one dialog box turns off all extraneous processing, or you can use it as you see fit, Effects, Sub output (complete high & low pass filters), EQ, Crossfeed (for headphone listening), Room Correction, Tempo & Pitch, & Volume Leveling are available.
If you have any issues, or just want to see if a direct digital path from the program to the sound card makes a difference, a trial won't cost you anything, and I'd like to hear from anyone who tries it or is already using it.
I've been a big fan of XBMC for over a year now, but several issues finally pushed me to try J.River Media Center.
I don't know if any other Xonar DX sound card users had problems with XBMC, but the past Dharma Beta releases all made funny blats of noise when stopping a playing audio file. I think it was repeating the last sample (or group of samples?). Whatever it was, it sounded a lot like a 20 Hz square wave and would last for a few ms to 1/4 - 1/2 sec.
This plus a few other buggy behaviors finally made me move on. While I still love the XBMC interface on my HTPCs, the program just wasn't cutting it...
I tried J.River, and decided to give ASIO4ALL a shot. ASIO4All is a very simple interface that keeps the audio data stream out of the windows mixer. If a program can talk to an ASIO driver, which J.River MC can, ASIO4ALL takes the program's digital output and passes it directly to the sound card's device driver for DAC or pass-through.
The hub-bub about this is that it allows you to try the holy grail of bit-perfect audio data, straight from the program producing it to the sound card output of your choice.
What I found was a very surprising. I have two PCs I use for sound, my regular desk top in my office with an old Audigy Platinum sound card, and a decent HTPC in my bedroom with the Xonar DX. Both are running XP Pro. I use the stereo analog output from both cards to drive my amps.
On the Xonar DX machine, I really didn't notice any difference in sound quality, but all of the weird, buggy behavior is gone. Very clean sound with never a pop, click, blat, snort or toot.
On the Audigy machine, the difference was actually amazing. I have used this machine to test drivers and speakers with SoundEasy. I swear, I have all effects turned off everywhere features can be accessed (in both the Audigy driver and in Windows' sound device configuration).
I could hear a profound difference on the first song I played. Everything since confirms it. The sound is more accurate, especially in the 40 to 100 Hz bass region. It doesn't make sense, but I would say the sound is more detailed, even in the midrange and treble ranges. This is the first time software has made grin while I listened to music :D
J.River MC can:
Run in a window, where it looks and behaves much like Windows Media Player.
Be run in a full screen mode that yields a nice, usable 10' interface that is easy to control with a Windows MCE remote.
Launch Total Media Theater 3 automatically for playing my BluRay Rips (with the selected movie playing).
Can tag wave files. Yes, it actually can, by placing the tag information in an ID3 format at the end of the wave file. This tag may not be readable by anything but J.River's MC, but it's a real tag in the wave container.
Harvest the meta data from the directory and filename structure, or the tag, or a combination of both (which is the method I used to build my library). I now have my groupings by artist or genre back for my wave files and can simply select play all for hours of back-ground music.
I paid the $50 for my copy three weeks ago, and it's good enough that I'll happily pay another $100 for the two licenses I still need. You can run it for free for a 30 day trial.
ASIO4ALL is a free, tiny and completely benign program. It doesn't even run until you play a song or a movie in MC, and it closes when playback is stopped. It doesn't load or mess with codecs. Even while MC is playing something, other programs can access the sound card driver like ASIO4ALL isn't there at all.
What's really nice about this is that MC has a digital signal processor built in, seven clicks in one dialog box turns off all extraneous processing, or you can use it as you see fit, Effects, Sub output (complete high & low pass filters), EQ, Crossfeed (for headphone listening), Room Correction, Tempo & Pitch, & Volume Leveling are available.
If you have any issues, or just want to see if a direct digital path from the program to the sound card makes a difference, a trial won't cost you anything, and I'd like to hear from anyone who tries it or is already using it.
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