I wonder whether room acoustic treatment and the way their listening experiences have shaped what they listen out for/ their preferences have as much ( possibly more) to do with this than just the squeeze/its software settings. There’s perhaps also hardware / player sofware synergy. So lots of different variables. Best to experiment as much as possible ( including with reference level headphones/ headphone amps if one has access to these). I have heard roon and squeeze both sound better and worse than each other in different situations. And then there are those roon software updates that annoyingly appear to really muddy the waters.
I think i am realising the same in that these combinations are not consistent and there isn’t a one size that fits all. I have also just changed my DAC so am experimenting again with combinations to see which works best with the new DAC.
I don’t think this is so surprising. Some like the Vienna Philharmonic others prefer The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment playing the same repertoire.
I wasn’t sure where to post this but as it concerns Player/Server combinations on my Antipodes here seems as good a place as any.
Generally my preference for sound quality is to use LMS (Squeeze) on the server in my Antipodes Oladra and Squeezelite (Squeeze) on the player board in the Oladra. However the controls for this are either iPeng or the web based Material Skin and these are a bit clunky even though functionally they work just fine.
My attention has been caught a few times therefore by JPLAY used as the controlling app on my iPhone but to use this I had to use MinimSever + MPD player and I have not been impressed by the sound quality of this server / player combination.
Lately though I realised I could use Squeeze (LMS) + MPD (loaded from the Settings page in AMS 5.0 ) in conjunction with JPLAY and this seemed to sound somewhat better.
However I confess that was no match in sound quality compared to abandoning JPLAY and going back to Squeeze (LMS) + Squeezelite controlled either by iPeng or the Material Skin web based controller (they both sound the same).
But then this morning I started wondering if I was missing a trick and whether I could use Squeeze (LMS) + Squeezelite but controlled by JPLAY. It was easy to try because I already had the Antipodes Oladra set up with the Squeeze (LMS) server app + Squeezelite player app so I just went into JPLAY’s set up and sure enough there was an option to change from the upnp player to the Oladra player already loaded with Squeezelite.
These screenshots are from the JPLAY settings page.
So now I am listening to Squeeze (LMS) + Squeezelite controlled by JPLAY (the configuration with the 6.52 time shown top left in the screenshot above). And of course the iPeng and Material Skin also work with this combination of Server and Player apps so I can compare sound quality between JPLAY and them and so far as I can tell they all three sound the same but with the added advantage of the extra things that JPLAY does and the other two do not do.
Will I stay with JPLAY? Well the problem is that it does not give me access to the LMS plugins such as BBC Sounds but because I can also use iPeng with Squeeze (LMS) server that isn’t an issue because I just swop to iPeng when I want to listen to a BBC Radio 3 classical concert. So probably, yes, I will use JPLAY most of the time with LMS on my server and Squeezelite on my player. One advantage is its better Qobuz integration (from my short time using it).
Is anyone else trying JPLAY with Squeeze + Squeeze?
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That may be a new feature added as I never saw it discover LMS before when in Squeeze mode. I will have to give it a try.
I’m eager to try this on my K30 although I do like the virtual libraries in the Material skin. They give me a roon bookmark experience. I am getting very frustrated with the roon sound issues and the toxic environment on their forums. I will report back. Thanks Nick.
I should further add that I wouldn’t expect JPlay to influence the sound when just playing music from the internal drive. Qobuz could sound different though.
After remembering to enable the upnp plugin I got it to work. It won’t play my pggb files. Does it play yours? Maybe I need to re-enable 3cpo.
That might no longer work on AMS 5 as it requires an older version of Squeezelite.
Ah so that’s how it’s able to find it. Thanks for mentioning that.
As far as PGGB goes, I should mention that the next version will support outputting to DSD. I do hear a more natural presentation through my Gustard x26pro when playing tracks scaled to DSD512. Unlikely that Chord DACs other than DAVE might benefit.
The change that Antipodes made that allows up to 16FS to be played by Squeeze without C-3PO also enables DSD512 playback. Unfortunately I’m hearing a click between tracks. Not sure if the issue is with PGGB as there are no click between tracks when playing these tracks with HQPlayer. Sound quality pales though with the latter doing the playback and it’s not subtle.
Unfortunately my TT2 deconstructs DSD. It is amazing the advancements he makes to remastero though. I am going to try playing jplay to my ropiee squeezlite with 16fs. I works fine with material. Then I’ll install upnp on my iMac 8.5 squeeze server and give that a go. I’ll report back.
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I haven’t been able to get any combo of jplay and squeeze to do 16fs 24b. Back to material:
This could be my next album to get pggb treatment.
Have got JPLAY seeing Oladra server and player after checking Upnp plugin in LMS on my iPad. However just getting garbled sound when playing out of JPLAY. Am I missing other plugins on/off?
@Progisus Unfortunately I agree with what you found. Strangely when I try to play a PGGB 768 file using JPLAY it seems to show that it is playing (ie the track progress bar moves and the time played is updating) but no sound. The JPLAY screen on my iphone correctly reports the correct file data as per screenshot below of JPLAY ‘playing’ the file but no actual output to the Dave.
When I swop to iPeng the track plays correctly to the usb input of my Dave and with the Dave screen reporting 768.
For my day to day use it is no hardship not having JPLAY being able to play 16FS files because I do not generally play PGGB processed files and output the 44, 48, 96 files to an mscaler using JPLAY.
Thanks @NickBacon for confirming this. I am finding I actually prefer Material at the moment. I am trying to get it to feel more like roon as I would really like to switch my exploring to squeeze as well. I am using the Kanta-Dark theme at present. With virtual libraries and online integration plugin it is getting there. The online search is quite a bit slower with Tidal being faster than Qobuz for me. I think I have roon sounding a bit better though by removing the server from the K30 and using an optical endpoint into the mscaler.
I am not sure if it was Antipodes’ intent to run multiple servers but with a single Squeeze server on the K30 and roon elsewhere the sound is awesome.
@Progisus When you say you prefer Material, do you mean SQ compared to JPLAY or do you mean user interface features etc?
I quite like the Qobuz integration in JPLAY but I admit that I mostly play locally stored ripped files anyway so that is less important.
@NickBacon , I prefer the Material skin because of the virtual libraries ( roon bookmarks ). I haven’t compared sound. But I am now a squeeze convert. Several people have brought up the roon sound issues on the roon forums. There is no room for conversation at all. Hopefully Harman hears us as they have for other issues.
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ROON
K30 > optical endpoint (what endpoint?)
Roon sounding a bit better compared to:
K30 > EX
(both non-Oladra?)
SQUEEZE
K30 > EX or optical endpoint (sounding the best?)
In all setups there is a direct connection over ethernet between K30 and endpoint?
Thanks for sharing your insights!
Here’s the setup:
K30 - squeeze server, squeeze player to mscaler usb in, dual bnc w storm to tt2
EX - squeeze player by direct stream from k30 then to tt2 usb in
iMac - roon server to several endpoints throughout house
New Endpoint for roon at main listening station - pi4 w justboom optical hat over wifi, to mscaler optical in. It’s power is from wall socket and not power conditioner for the rack. The wifi and optical give me the max isolation to the dac for roon.
This allows me to run only one server on the K30 while optimizing the sound from roon.
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I do not recall, your K30 is non Oladra?
The K30 is Oladra. The EX is original.
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