In my experience, the only advantage to going with Jriver has been operability. I haven't used iTunes with Jplay in a while, cannot remember if the time slider worked, if you could scrub it back and forth to get to a different part of the song, if the time stamp was correct when playing a track, etc. That did not work in JPLAY version 4.1, which is why I went to Jriver. You could also connect Jriver remote and control your playback via an iPad. As I remember, that did not work with the free apple remote app, if you're using jplay.
this could all be fixed in iTunes now, I don't know. I'm a Jriver guy. I did have some issues playing back apple lossless with jplay in iTunes, but that was fixed in jplay version 4.3...I am a jplay beta 5 tester, and I have not seen a single comment on the beta thread about iTunes. Most folks use jplay with Jriver or Foobar. Marcin and Josef have said that iTunes is massively difficult to work with, and doesn't play very nice with others. I don't think iTunes support is a big part of their business plan, so for that reason alone, I went to Jriver.
There are some issues with synching to your iPad and iPod, you'll have to keep your music library on an external drive and synch to it in both Jriver and iTunes. Rip your music using DBpowerAmp to that drive, use aif format, and synch to that drive in Jriver and iTunes. Use Jriver for playback in your main rig, use iTunes to keep your iPad and iPhone up. If you want to try the flac format, the apple store has a flac player for iPhone that is like $10. I don't use an iPod, but I will be buying a new phone and am on the fence regarding Samsung vs apple, so this would be my apple path. I use flac, so I'd get the player for iPhone and dump iTunes completely, except for the occasional iPad app backup.
this could all be fixed in iTunes now, I don't know. I'm a Jriver guy. I did have some issues playing back apple lossless with jplay in iTunes, but that was fixed in jplay version 4.3...I am a jplay beta 5 tester, and I have not seen a single comment on the beta thread about iTunes. Most folks use jplay with Jriver or Foobar. Marcin and Josef have said that iTunes is massively difficult to work with, and doesn't play very nice with others. I don't think iTunes support is a big part of their business plan, so for that reason alone, I went to Jriver.
There are some issues with synching to your iPad and iPod, you'll have to keep your music library on an external drive and synch to it in both Jriver and iTunes. Rip your music using DBpowerAmp to that drive, use aif format, and synch to that drive in Jriver and iTunes. Use Jriver for playback in your main rig, use iTunes to keep your iPad and iPhone up. If you want to try the flac format, the apple store has a flac player for iPhone that is like $10. I don't use an iPod, but I will be buying a new phone and am on the fence regarding Samsung vs apple, so this would be my apple path. I use flac, so I'd get the player for iPhone and dump iTunes completely, except for the occasional iPad app backup.