Optimising J River

Finally I bought the J.River V 16 music player. I had been using the free trial version for quite some time.


One day recently, I decided not to be a cheapskate and clicked the purchase button and within minutes I became a licensed user of J. River V 16 at a cost of US49.98 (RM159.93).


However, before you proceed to play music, you need to tweak it a bit to optimise its performance.


I optimised mine after getting advice from other users and I will share the tweaks for the benefit of all those who are keen on CAS (Computer As Source or Computer Audio System).

In 'Tools' click 'Options'

In 'Audio Output' click 'Output Mode' and click 'WASAPI - Event Style'. This depends on the Windows OS. If you are using Windows XP, then you will have to click 'Direct Sound'. I am using Windows 7, so I can click either 'Kernel Streaming' or 'WASAPI' or 'WASAPI - Event Style'. In my experience, the music stuttered when I used the 'WASAPI' setting. I googled and found out that it depends on the DAC. With some DACs, you need the 'WASAPI - Event Style' setting and that's what I did. I have no more issues with stuttering music. 'WASAPI' sounds better than 'Kernel Streaming' setting.

In 'Audio Output', click 'Output mode settings' and in 'Buffering' 100 milliseconds is recommended. I set mine to 250 milliseconds.

In 'Settings' click 'Prebuffering'. Six seconds is recommended, but I was advised to set it to max - 20 seconds.

In 'Settings' click 'Play file from memory'. This is vital otherwise you may encounter data drop-outs. Playing from memory also makes music sound smoother and less 'stressed'.

In 'Track change' unclick 'Do not play silence (leading and trailing)'. I have always found it annoying that digital music players would start playing a song before the previous one has ended. Unlike playing a CD, there is no silent gap between songs. With other players I could not find any command that could include silence between songs. J. River has this command and when you unclick (the default setting is not to play the silence) this, there will be silence between tracks (thankfully).