PKay Posted June 25, 2024 Posted June 25, 2024 I am curious how many people are using Audirvana? I have just seen a post on Audial that Pedja (the owner) is now using it. Have any SNAers used it and compared to Jriver/Foobar? There is a one month free trial and it works on Linux as well. https://audirvana.com/
Jakeyb77_Redux Posted June 25, 2024 Posted June 25, 2024 I haven’t compared it to those but I used for a couple of years with a Mac Mini and it was great 1
PKay Posted June 25, 2024 Author Posted June 25, 2024 I have just loaded the 30 day free trial and it’s fantastic. That is with 4mb of ram which is the minimum. I will do the tutorial soon. 1
PKay Posted June 26, 2024 Author Posted June 26, 2024 50 minutes ago, TDX said: It's ok to use, nothing too special to me. What are you using?
TDX Posted June 26, 2024 Posted June 26, 2024 55 minutes ago, PKay said: What are you using? Had their old version (so called life time use). Also tried their studio version, there is no difference between versions to be honest. I mainly use Roon every day. 1
Honreekea Posted June 26, 2024 Posted June 26, 2024 I have both J river 30 and the current version trial of Audivarna. The Jriver sounds better IMHO 1
davm Posted June 26, 2024 Posted June 26, 2024 I use Audirvana on a Mac mini 2012 i7 with 16GB of RAM. It connects directly via USB to my Accuphase DAC. Local files are stored an external SSD drive connected by Thunderbolt. This means the data channel for music files is quite well separated from the USB connection to the DAC. Audirvana also works well if local files are stored on a networked device. I up sample music to DSD128 before sending it to the DAC. (Note, Audirvana won't up sample DSD, only PCM.) If you have a lot of classical music in your library, you must be very precise and consistent with meta-data tags or you'll see some frustrating inconsistencies with the way music is displayed or not displayed at all in Audirvana. Roon is much better in this space as, by default, it relies on external meta-data repositories before using local meta-data. In my case, I have very tight control over meta-data and Audirvana works fine, but only after a lengthy and meticulous clean-up and then strict adherence to using tags that are suited to Audirvana. For me, this was worth the effort as it allowed me to achieve the display of classical albums in exactly the same order as I've long adopted with physical media (vinyl and CD/SACD). The fine-grained control over the order in which albums appear is definitely one of the strengths of Audirvana (as long as the meta-data is right). Audirvana has a remote app that I find a bit clunky overall and again significantly inferior to Roon. Overall, Roon wins hands-down on ease of use and the high standard of its interface. As far as the sound, I haven't compared Audirvana to Jriver so I can't comment on that. But I have compared Audirvana, Roon and Amarra Luxe. A year ago when I compared the three, I thought Ammara Luxe was the best sounding, but the interface is so bad it makes it unusable for me. I thought Audirvana came second sound-wise and Roon was in third place. Based on that, I continued to use Audirvana. However, I've just recently compared Audirvana to Roon again and I thought Roon's sound has improved significantly. So much so that I'd now rank Roon ahead of Audirvana for sound quality. Again, the caveat here is that I up sampled to DSD128 on both platforms. I'm close to pulling the trigger and switching to Roon. The main thing holding me back is meta-data, particularly with classical music. Some of the tags I've used suit Audirvana and are ignored or misinterpreted in Roon which will require (another) meta-data clean-up to be able to migrate. Cheers 2 1
PKay Posted June 27, 2024 Author Posted June 27, 2024 On 26/6/2024 at 5:48 PM, davm said: I use Audirvana on a Mac mini 2012 i7 with 16GB of RAM. It connects directly via USB to my Accuphase DAC. Local files are stored an external SSD drive connected by Thunderbolt. This means the data channel for music files is quite well separated from the USB connection to the DAC. Audirvana also works well if local files are stored on a networked device. I up sample music to DSD128 before sending it to the DAC. (Note, Audirvana won't up sample DSD, only PCM.) If you have a lot of classical music in your library, you must be very precise and consistent with meta-data tags or you'll see some frustrating inconsistencies with the way music is displayed or not displayed at all in Audirvana. Roon is much better in this space as, by default, it relies on external meta-data repositories before using local meta-data. In my case, I have very tight control over meta-data and Audirvana works fine, but only after a lengthy and meticulous clean-up and then strict adherence to using tags that are suited to Audirvana. For me, this was worth the effort as it allowed me to achieve the display of classical albums in exactly the same order as I've long adopted with physical media (vinyl and CD/SACD). The fine-grained control over the order in which albums appear is definitely one of the strengths of Audirvana (as long as the meta-data is right). Audirvana has a remote app that I find a bit clunky overall and again significantly inferior to Roon. Overall, Roon wins hands-down on ease of use and the high standard of its interface. As far as the sound, I haven't compared Audirvana to Jriver so I can't comment on that. But I have compared Audirvana, Roon and Amarra Luxe. A year ago when I compared the three, I thought Ammara Luxe was the best sounding, but the interface is so bad it makes it unusable for me. I thought Audirvana came second sound-wise and Roon was in third place. Based on that, I continued to use Audirvana. However, I've just recently compared Audirvana to Roon again and I thought Roon's sound has improved significantly. So much so that I'd now rank Roon ahead of Audirvana for sound quality. Again, the caveat here is that I up sampled to DSD128 on both platforms. I'm close to pulling the trigger and switching to Roon. The main thing holding me back is meta-data, particularly with classical music. Some of the tags I've used suit Audirvana and are ignored or misinterpreted in Roon which will require (another) meta-data clean-up to be able to migrate. Cheers I have downloaded Roon to try. My computer has 4mb of ram and is older so it might struggle but it’s only running music so hoping it works well.
TDX Posted June 30, 2024 Posted June 30, 2024 On 28/6/2024 at 6:10 AM, PKay said: I have downloaded Roon to try. My computer has 4mb of ram and is older so it might struggle but it’s only running music so hoping it works well. I guess you mean 4GB.
dennisjames1 Posted February 21 Posted February 21 (edited) A very late response, but here is my two cents worth. I have used Audirvana for many years and the sound is first class. Have also had Roon subscriptions and loved it as well. But JRiver gets my nod too as the best, as others have said there are lots of tweaks under the hood, also the GUI is very much Roon like quality where Audirvana falls away here. When I make direct comparisons between Audirvana and JRiver on my equipment they are neck and neck, for my ears though I feel JRiver just has a little more grunt to it fuller, better bottom end. It is a pity that Jim from Jriver won't add Qobuz , Amazon etc streaming options. I know there were issues when a Tidal proposal was considered at one time. Edited February 21 by dennisjames1 mistake in wording
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