It does UPnP gapless - so it’s totally dependent on the UPnP renderer implementation. I verified Lumin hardware gapless, as well as volume control, work correctly with this app.
In the unlikely event there are Lumin users here who are not using Roon but want to try JPlay app, please contact me to get a beta firmware and state your Lumin model.
Search seems to default to streaming every time which is very annoying. It doesn’t have a global overall search just a combined one for you library which you can’t seem to set as the default. Also seems to be missing most of my album covers where all other apps using same UPnP server have them.
No, copyright applies to actual literal code. And luckily so because otherwise nobody could ever program anything to interact with other software. E.g., there would be no Samba and macOS and Linux would not be able to connect to Windows SMB shares
You can’t really trademark UI but you can trademark symbols and such. UX is a bit different concept that you can’t trademark at all. I am a UX researcher here haha 
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Shame they didn’t look to ape anything else as its a dire app when I gave it a whirl.
I might be a bit slow, but what’s the contention here? That the menu is on the left, and the play/pause buttons bottom right, or that it has a dark mode? There are only so many ways you can roll it. It doesn’t even support RAAT 
Well, some 10 years ago they tried a similar strategy with JRiver. They got hit hard.
Now they try to copy Roon, by appearance.
It’s too close not to be a rip-off, like the album/track/artist number boxes on the home screen. But yeah, whatever 
395 albums, 291 artists and just 3 tracks doesn’t want to make me try it, anyway
How does jplay even work?
For local files it is just a UPnP control app for a local UPnP server that you need separately like so many other apps. Plus apparently API-based control for Tidal and Qobuz.
Not very well from my experience. It puts a layer on top of your UPnP server but its mainly a a glorified UPnP control app like Mconnect, Kazoo or Bubble UPnP.
You can add Qobuz or Tidal. It will merge these into your local album library but like others that try and copy Roon in this regard it’s just messy and has no concept of versions, grouping etc. No advanced organisation or search parameters. You only get metadata on streaming versions of albums not your own which is very lame. No editing of anything metadata related. It also doesn’t seem to auto update the library have to manually do it. It has a free trial so give it a go. I didn’t last long before I lost patience with it.
Just a revisit here! I recently gave this a shot, as my curiosity got intrigued.
JPLAYFemto + JPLAY Classic is a software suite that contain three parts:
JPLAY Femto is a lightweight UPnP Server+Renderer for Windows.
They build upon the JPLAY audio driver which can use ASIO or KernelStreaming, which is also available to Roon as any “driver” on the Roon host.
This part i can’t seem to make work properly, lot’s of instability and poor configuration options.
Then there’s the JPLAY App, which is a souped up UPnP controller with “integrated” Qobuz/Tidal clients. This fits i to my established infrastructure with Minim2 providing UPnP services for my devices which do not/don’t like Roon-ish.
After some initial futz i have found it stable enpugh to actually be useful as a Roon alternative for my local playback.
Yes, it IS a blatant Roon copy, the highest praise, and confirmation that the UX works in my book. Of course, some creativity wouldn’t harm, but that is of less concern for me.
Anyways, it is worth a two week trial, if you have a UPnP server and any UPnP renderer on your network. And you know, it doesn’t require Internet access! 
Usability & UX wise it’s a great app. Wish functionality like smooth scrolling would work more consistently on the iOS app of Roon.
Fully agree, and in some aspects JPLAY betters Roon Remote. In others, not so much!
One thing that doesn’t work well is the “Top albums” from Qobuz, it show lots of “yoga music for dogs”, “contemplatin and relaxing” new age crap. Things that people play, but doesn’t listen to (i sure hope like background music.
The scrolling, oh sooo smooth! Returning to Albums/Artist view where i left off! Oh sooo smooth! The agility on a library of 200K files, oh sooo smoooth!
Does it sound any better, that would seem to be the claim
Oh, i wouldn’t dare to venture there! 
I like what i hear, and perhaps there are slight differences for some ears. I mean, we’re moving from RAAT/TCP to UPnP/UDP and i suppose there might be mechanisms that have an effect there.
I strongly disagree that a UPnP control point would have an effect on sound quality though, unles we’re comparing with mConnect as an example which does some activities on the remote part of the implementation.
Compared to Lightning DS (my Auralics native OpenHome/DLNA controller) i cant hear any differences.
My reccy to try it is purely based on the quite good and “nearly there” graphic interface and the nice UX, not sound quality.
Well it works sort of. You have to manually resync after any changes to your library it’s not automatic. No advanced metadata for your own library files only those from Tidal and Qobuz. UPnP playback is also not particularly stable to all my UPnP endpoints.
No it doesn’t and doesn’t sound any different to any other UPnP controller, why would it exactly? This network polling they claim causes lower sq is just fud. I tested it on my FiiO DAP and heard zero difference between it and Roon and between bubble UPnP and mconnect. It’s not worth the subscription fee in my book, I didn’t carry on subscription after trial yet it still works on my phone for some reason not that I ever really use it.
Seen quite a lot of hate for Jplay in the thread. Expensive for Upnp, rip-off, and the like… a bit simplistic IMHO.
Come on… you are putting on a dedicated Roon server to listen to your subscriptions and stuff you have on your Nas, which usually has a free DLNA or UPNP server. And you basically pay another subscription fee for listening to your subscriptions and owned music….Same with Jplay but without a server and far cheaper…
And it is fast!!! Reacting faster than my Roon. Much better than Audirvana which basically cannot handle any library size still… Jplay indexes my Nas in no time compared to Roon. And I know people are again going to say that it is my fault that I do not have fiberoptics throughout the whole household with a half dozen of high end Ethernet converters and audiophile switches and silver network cables and at least the top of the line Nucleus or a Mac Studio as a core… 
Roon has not fixed the iOS freeze issue in quite some time now… and it costs… a lot… but yes, it sounds better still in my setup than Jplay. But don’t knock something like Jplay which brings easy Qobuz and Tidal to so many older and newer devices… It is really good that MConnect is not the only alternative on iOS anymore. And it is so close in sound to Roon, it could be a preference issue and in many setups probably not noticeable.
Competition is good.
