We have been testing the app JPlay and it seems to work great. I wanted to have a few of the Renderer users here on this forum use it and give me feedback.
Today I verified it works up to 32 bit and 768kHz bit perfect and has proven to be stable. We will be testing more in the coming week.
For those that don’t know what it is, it’s software that runs on your iPad/iPhone with Qobuz/Tidal integration. It allows you to play directly from your iPad in high-res to your MSB DAC Renderer V2 module, no server or core needed unless you want to play local files.
Please give it a try and let us know your thoughts:
I just installed JPlay on my iPhone to try it out and it works as expected. I just did a smoke test. After I use it for a bit I’ll pass back some more comments.
One gotcha’ though. The device on the network named “AudibleOS” has to be given network access for the Renderer to work.
I keep things on my networked as locked down as I can. After initially installing it, everything seemed to work, including the volume control, which changes the volume on the Cascade! It doesn’t fool around with the bits is streams.
However, initially it wouldn’t play music and the Cascade displayed “0/0k Renderer”.
Then I remembered to check my router and found there was a device named “AudibleOS” that was blocked. I unblocked it and now it works!
Is “AudibleOS” a name you embedded into the Renderer?
What I meant to say was that if “AudibleOS” is something you embed in the Renderer it might be better to embed something like “MBS Renderer”, just to make it easier to identify it on the network (for the paranoid among us )
Yes, AudibleOS is a internal name. I’ll see if we can change this in a future release but it will probably stay this way. This is great feedback you’ve provided as it will help me troubleshoot with others in the future.
It does work fine, and the interface is a nice rip-off of Roon, down to the same font!
Anyway, as it does use UPNP, I did not sound any better than my Innuos doing UPNP as well. Of course, with JPlay you don’t need the server at all, if you’re not playing files, so there’s that…
But Roon still sounds better than any UPNP solution I’ve tried…
The big pro: you don’t need a separate computer (yay)!
-better library management then mcontrol, integrating local and streaming content
Cons:
-relies on upnp, that may become unstable at times
-you cannot edit/create tags
This was the main letdown for me: being “forced to accept” the streaming services tagging. They are a mess, specially in classical music, and when it comes to genres. And you always come up with duplicated entries in artists etc.
I don’t know it they implemented this feature, but that was a the deal breaker for me, and the reason to continue with roon.
Even the old Logitech media server features (although limited) genre and tag editing. But you have to create a local tags database, which I believe is hard for jplay to accomplish in an iPhone/ipad.
Hello- I own an MSB Discrete DAC and have been using JPLAY FEMTO (renderer on the PC) and JPLAY App (on my iPad and iPhone). The secret sauce is in the JPLAY renderer which runs on my custom built fanless i5 PC. I use a JPLAY USB card powered by an isolated linear power supply. I’ve compared JPLAY (both FEMTO and app) to ROON and found the SQ better on JPLAY FEMTO. The JPLAY app is OK, but ROON is still the best interface. I used locally stored files and QOBUZ for streaming. I played the same track and resolution from both locally stored and QOBUZ to do the comparison.
Reference: For organizing my music, I don’t rely on the JPLAY FEMTO app and use Minimserver. You can configure JPLAY app to use Minimserver.
I update metadata with an application called: PerfectTunes - since this is infrequent that I want to change cover art, etc.
JPLAY FEMTO settings - Kernel streaming or ASIO (I like KS better), DAClink ~1000HZ seems to work best.
Rest of my system: Magico A5s, Rowland mono amps and preamp, Purist Audio design 35th anniversary USB cable, Cardas interconnect and speaker cable.
Wow, thanks for sharing this. It sounds like you have really explored its potential and optimized the system. I agree that the Roon interface is one of the best.
hi Dan, I’ve also tried Audirvana Studio and that also sounded better than Roon. But of the three, JCAT FEMTO was the best. To arrive at this config it took a while of testing various combinations and was worth it. I also must say in full disclosure - JPLAY is a bit buggy on the App or on the server or both - can’t tell.
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