JPLAY

JPlay, an iOS-exclusive app, comes with a hefty price tag of $50, which raises expectations high. On the plus side, the app offers a bit better sound quality than the competition, enhanced by its intuitive feature that suggests similar songs based on your listening habits, particularly shining in niche and/or sub-genres. The ability to access detailed artist and song information, not commonly found in many other players, adds value to the user experience. However, JPlay's drawbacks are hard to overlook. The app struggles with resuming playback, particularly frustrating with Raspberry Pi devices, and often fails to identify players on the same network swiftly. Most critically, its inability to play DSD files, despite being a fundamental feature for many high-end users, is disappointing. Overall, the steep price tag feels unjustified, leaving me feeling let down after spending $50. Update (July 2025): After extensive experimentation with this app over several hours and days, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s indeed an excellent app for high-fidelity streaming. I can happily live without DSD through this app and without using it on my Raspberry Pi. The app plays exceptionally well on my esoteric streaming DAC, and I can also use it with various other streaming devices. Ultimately, I’ve decided to purchase the lifetime license, which I highly recommend. 👍

This app is just awesome. After trying almost a dozen other apps, this is the only one that does exactly what I wanted. I was able to seamlessly stream Qobuz to my KEF speakers with less than a minute of setup. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, and has some features that I love that seem basic but are surprisingly hard to find - like the ability to sort playlists by name and easily navigate through them (I have almost 1500, so good navigation is highly appreciated). Sound quality is far better than Airplay (and doesn’t bog down my network). Well worth the cost of the subscription. Update April 2025: After a little over a year of use I continue to love this app. I even use it to play music over Bluetooth headphones, even though they’re not hi-fi, because the UI is so much better than the native Qobuz app. Also, the developer has been highly responsive and has added / adjusted features based on feedback. I’d give 10 stars if possible!

Revising my review. This app out of the box did not work well. Tracks would stutter at initial play, lag for 10-20 seconds or just wouldn’t play. This still happens intermittently but much less after a few days of experimentation with settings and rollback of renderer firmware to a more stable version. Now streaming on both Qobuz and Tidal are stable. Enabling proxy also helps with stability. The interface and sound quality are really excellent and merit the extra work to get this app working. This also has native integration for HQPlayer control which just adds to the value of the app. I’ve come to believe running this with HQPlayer is the ideal setup. It’s very stable and sounds glorious. This app is highly recommended if you’re willing to have some patience. You will be rewarded with pristine sound and a beautiful interface.