John
Twelve months ago we reviewed JPLAY Streamer: a playback engine for any music playback app running on a Windows PC. Catch up here. TL;DR? The lower a music playback app’s hit to the host PC’s system resources (e.g. CPU), the less electrical noise generated by the PC and the better any USB-lassoed DAC will sound.
This week the Polish software company has announced JPLAY FEMTO: “a complete network music software player for the most demanding audiophile”. According to developer Marcin Ostapowicz, JPLAY FEMTO will not only improve the sound quality of locally stored music but also Tidal and Qobuz.
But wait – there’s more.
Shipping as an extra to JPLAY FEMTO is JPLAY’s femtoServer, a SQ-optimised UPnP media server designed to dispatch digital audio to the JPLAY FEMTO client from the same PC or – for reportedly even better sound quality – from a second, networked PC.
As a UPnP Renderer, JPLAY FEMTO supports DSD256 natively and DSD128 via DoP. BYO remote control app: Bubble UPnP (Android), Kinsky (Windows, iOS, Mac), Glider (iOS) or mConnect (iOS).
Note: femtoServer will talk only to JPLAY FEMTO and no other UPnP endpoint.
According to Ostapowicz, JPLAY setup has also been streamlined:
1) Download and run JPLAY FEMTO setup
2) Select music folders
3) Restart PC
4) Select DAC in JPLAY Settings panel
5) Open UPnP remote app to select JPLAY FEMTO as the renderer and JPLAY femtoServer as the file server
How does JPLAY FEMTO sound? Windows users are invited to find out for themselves with a 21-day free trial, after which a full license (€149) applies.
Already have a JPLAY license? The upgrade cost to JPLAY FEMTO will be discounted to €49 until end of November 2018.
Further information: JPLAY
