I'm a bit confused what JRiver actually does when you turn on dithering. There was no sense of constraint or congestion any more with the larger buffer sizes.Īnother option to play with is dithering. Secondly, now it seemed like larger buffer sizes were sweeter and smoother with a lower noise floor. I discovered the setting in JRiver called 'exclusve access to sound device.' When I checked that, first of all the sound got much better. So basically lower buffer settings seemed to offer more speed and extension, while higher buffer sizes sounded a bit constrained dynamically and congested.īut then everything changed. I'm referring here to four settings:īy the way that's a hell of a lot of options and settings if I was to actually try all combinations, but I'm just trying things and listening a lot. So when I first starting using JRiver it seemed like lower buffer sizes were better.

I've tried both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt external drives to hold the music. My setup is a MacBook Pro with an iFi Nano iDSD DAC (custom modified by an acquaintance). I'm doing some experiments with buffer settings in JRiver.

Jriver setup audiophile