Amarra - anyone using it? - Page 37

I can't figure out how to upsample with Amarra without the music being sped up to sound like chipmunks

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

For me, even if Lion had delivered as promised, I would have kept SL on a separate drive as Plan B. Updates mid program can be sneaky. 

  The good news is ML *should* be a refinement of Lion, and less of a jump than SL > L.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pigmode 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

For me, even if Lion had delivered as promised, I would have kept SL on a separate drive as Plan B. Updates mid program can be sneaky. 

  The good news is ML *should* be a refinement of Lion, and less of a jump than SL > L.

Does anyone know if 2.4.1. was written with Mountain Lion in mind or will we have to wait a few months for this release?

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit 

I can't figure out how to upsample with Amarra without the music being sped up to sound like chipmunks

 Support so soon? Let us know what they say...

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinWolff 

Just tested the new cat gm with 2.2.3, It's no different than lion. Moreover, itunes alone in ML as compared to itunes alone in SL, is lacking. The bass is weaker, the soundstage is further off, not wider in a good way. I used my usual test tracks, Springsteen's Point Blank intro and Rush's YYZ (hdtracks). I can't speak for the overall sound, since the bass is the make or break issue with me. 

 

The culprit still seems to be core audio in mac os x. Maybe it will be different when someone tests 2.4, but my first impression is that snow kitty is still king of the mountain.

 What an indictment! I best refresh snow kitty's bowl of milk; let her watch whatever she likes on the tellie.

I really wanted ML to be my new pet cat, I really did. I had decided prior to testing that even if it was close and not perfect, I'd adopt it. As it turned out, I couldn't kick it down the mountain fast enough. It let out a loud screech on the way down, which consequently, was lacking in bass and tonal richness. 

But seriously, I'm going to try it again later with the latest version of Amarra.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

 

 What an indictment! I best refresh snow kitty's bowl of milk; let her watch whatever she likes on the tellie.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinWolff 

I really wanted ML to be my new pet cat, I really did. I had decided prior to testing that even if it was close and not perfect, I'd adopt it. As it turned out, I couldn't kick it down the mountain fast enough. It let out a loud screech on the way down, which consequently, was lacking in bass and tonal richness. 

But seriously, I'm going to try it again later with the latest version of Amarra.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

 

 What an indictment! I best refresh snow kitty's bowl of milk; let her watch whatever she likes on the tellie.

Each time I try a new program, accessory or tweak, caution falls over the listening room - keep your grubby lil' hands...off...my...Bass! 

Waaaaaait a minute....things are different with 2.4.1. It's not as bad as Lion after all. It's still different than SL but not as much as I thought last night. I'm getting more bass punch than with Lion, it's still different than SL, but not a deal breaker like I thought with Lion. In fact I'm hearing some stuff I don't hear with SL in the mid bass. I now think that everyone who's on SL should give it an A/B, and that Lion sufferers may indeed see some relief. It still has a slightly wider soundstage, but depending on your gear this could be a good thing, or even not noticeable.

I still can't say I like it better than SL, but for the first time in a long time there's hope.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

 

Each time I try a new program, accessory or tweak, caution falls over the listening room - keep your grubby lil' hands...off...my...Bass! 

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinWolff 

Waaaaaait a minute....things are different with 2.4.1. It's not as bad as Lion after all. It's still different than SL but not as much as I thought last night. I'm getting more bass punch than with Lion, it's still different than SL, but not a deal breaker like I thought with Lion. In fact I'm hearing some stuff I don't hear with SL in the mid bass. I now think that everyone who's on SL should give it an A/B, and that Lion sufferers may indeed see some relief. It still has a slightly wider soundstage, but depending on your gear this could be a good thing, or even not noticeable.

I still can't say I like it better than SL, but for the first time in a long time there's hope.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

 

Each time I try a new program, accessory or tweak, caution falls over the listening room - keep your grubby lil' hands...off...my...Bass! 

You'll likely need to spend a minimum of 21 days to domesticate your new kitty.  It's good that you, me and others continue to suggest people actually spend the time and listen. And listen to different configs, because each change made in our system may have us leaning this way or that with a particular version. Front-end; Source; Amp; Cables; Drives,OS; Surfaces; Footers and so on...

Obviously,  these are my views.

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit 

I can't figure out how to upsample with Amarra without the music being sped up to sound like chipmunks

Amarra doesn't have any means to up-sample on playback and never has as far as I know. The only thing they offer is to pre-convert tracks to different sample rates.

I am curious as to how this is being done...

grokit, what you could do is use something like Sample Rate Manager (iZotope). Export & save files first to 24-bit. Then upsample the saved files to your rate and liking.

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/samplemanager/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit 

I can't figure out how to upsample with Amarra without the music being sped up to sound like chipmunks

 

 Support so soon? Let us know what they say...

Just demo'ing it for now, no support...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Currawong 

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit 

I can't figure out how to upsample with Amarra without the music being sped up to sound like chipmunks

 

Amarra doesn't have any means to up-sample on playback and never has as far as I know. The only thing they offer is to pre-convert tracks to different sample rates.

I was just thinking along those lines, that maybe the "Audio Device Preferences" setting is to just for playing existing higher bit-rate files and not for actually upsampling them, which is a feature that Pure Music offers (playback software upsampling).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silent One 

I am curious as to how this is being done...

 

grokit, what you could do is use something like Sample Rate Manager (iZotope). Export & save files first to 24-bit. Then upsample the saved files to your rate and liking.

 

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/samplemanager/

Or just continue on with Pure Music for now, where I have been upsampling my 44.1 files to 96k (and this is only because of the 96k limitation of my preferred spdif converter). Not that there's any good reason to do so, and not that Amarra's 24-bit 44.1k playback doesn't sound great. I'm glad that I'm trying Amarra finally but I'm not sure I'm convinced that it's $200 better than Pure Music, for me, at this point in time. It sounds fantastic but so does PM.

Sample Manager looks like a great program as well, thanks!

edit: I am able to run both PM and Amarra at the same time, interestingly. I just switch between the Channel D driver and my spdif converter in Sound Preferences, then reset the appropriate playback program, while alternating between iTunes/PM and Amarra playlists for playback.

@ grokit

PM sent!

Quote:

Originally Posted by grokit 

 

Just demo'ing it for now, no support...

 

 

 

I was just thinking along those lines, that maybe the "Audio Device Preferences" setting is to just for playing existing higher bit-rate files and not for actually upsampling them, which is a feature that Pure Music offers (playback software upsampling).

 

 

 

 

Or just continue on with Pure Music for now, where I have been upsampling my 44.1 files to 96k (and this is only because of the 96k limitation of my preferred spdif converter). Not that there's any good reason to do so, and not that Amarra's 24-bit 44.1k playback doesn't sound great. I'm glad that I'm trying Amarra finally but I'm not sure I'm convinced that it's $200 better than Pure Music, for me, at this point in time. It sounds fantastic but so does PM.

 

Sample Manager looks like a great program as well, thanks!

 

edit: I am able to run both PM and Amarra at the same time, interestingly. I just switch between the Channel D driver and my spdif converter in Sound Preferences, then reset the appropriate playback program, while alternating between iTunes/PM and Amarra playlists for playback.

Audio Device Preferences lets you route difference outputs on your devices. If you uncheck the "Follow Core Audio" option, you can also use the Audio Device Preferences to set Amarra's output to any device you want (it normally just looks to your Audio Midi settings and mirrors them).

I think the selection for bit-rate in the Audio Device Preferences is only "relevant" when you have unchecked the "Follow Core Audio" option, as Amarra is no longer looking at the Audio Midi settings.

But one thing is certain, Amarra does not upsample music. It does not resample music for that matter, either (aside from the Sample Manager tool). It always sets your DAC to the sample rate of the song it's playing. It's a glorified sample-rate switcher :) I'm pretty sure this makes any setting of bit-rate (44.1k, 96k, etc) completely pointless. To see what I mean, play a 96k song and while it's playing open Audio Midi, you'll see the settings at 96k. Then play a 44.1k song, and open Audio Midi again - you'll see Amarra has changed the settings. You can't change this behavior - it's what Amarra does.

Oh btw, Amarra isn't quite $200 more than Pure Music anymore. Amarra is something like $189 now, which is now closer to Pure Music's $129.

I really liked Pure Music when I tried it. It was very hassle-free and simply just worked. But for some reason, I find Amarra to sound more analog/natural (less digital-like), and I think Amarra has an uncanny soundstage in terms of accuracy and size. Amarra has definitely brought some frustration though - small little bugs that take forever to be addressed. But with the last few releases, Amarra has made really huge steps towards a better user experience and becoming far more bug-free.

Lastly, I think the only time you can't run multiple programs at a time is when one is using a "Hog Mode." I think Fidelia has this option, and if I remember from my short time with Pure Music, it has something like that too. Amarra doesn't have a Hog Mode. I wonder what happens if you try to run both again, but this time with the Pure Music HOG mode on - I'm guessing things wont play so nice, haha.

Bought Amarra Hifi a few weeks ago. The interface is far superior to that of Pure Music and the sound is noticeably better on most tracks. Only problem is that it crashes a lot, anyone else having this problem? I'm guessing it is due to having too many programs running, which it advises against..