Audirvana Plus vs. BitPerfect vs. Fidelia - Page 2

My 2 cents.

Audeze LCD2 rev2 > Schiit Lyr w 1964 Amprex USN-CEP > Schiit Bifrost.... S/PDIF Optical >MacBook Pro Retina

Mac Mini with Promise Pegasus R4 4T RAID.

I have not tried Audionirvana Plus.

All the others ..yes.

I have the full license of Amarra for my room system and I like it.

I purchased another license for my can system until I discovered it doesn't work with shared libraries.

Sonic credited the purchase.

This is a big problem because I can't get iTunes to create a local library from a remote NAS.  Some of the content is index and some isn't.

I can't put 1T of music on 4 Macs

BitPerfect sounded OK to me but has the same limitations with shared libraries.

I thought that Pure Music had a very harsh sound compared to Ammara.

Lastly, Fidelia.  IMO the music sounded neutered.  Mush.  All personality was gone.

I've been too bashed in to try Audionirvana yet.

Will it work with streaming?

I have set sound output to Airplay in Audio MIDI Setup utility to stream all sound outputs in Mac OS 10.8.2 on iMac to latest generation of Apple TV. iTunes 10.7 work properly but not Audirvana Plus. Since Audirvana Plus bypasses many higher layers of audio processing in Mac OS X (direct/integer mode), I guess that is the reason why it does not work.

My Synology Diskstation DS212 NAS come with iTunes server and Audio Station to play song files hosted on the NAS in local LAN and external WAN through cloud service. In my home wireless network, I make use of Sonos zone players to distribute music from the NAS throughout the house thus no need of support from the NAS (just function as SMB file server).

The optical S/PDIF of AppleTV and the latest Airport Express do not support 24bit 96kHz

iTunes can play the files fine.  I'ts BitPerfect, Ammara, etc. that can't

Sorry I have missed Airplay setting of Preferred Audio Device option in Audio System window for Audirvana Plus. It does work with Airplay streaming from iMac to Apple TV perfectly. Apparently the developer has built support for all types of audio devices within the application and setting in Apple Audio MIDI setup has no effect on this application.

This application operates truly independent of many software layers in Mac OS X.

You are right, Amarra sounds warmer than Pure Music though I did not sense any high frequency harshness from speaker output. I guess there are differences among different models of headphone and speaker (in term of frequency response and sound signature).

There are always tradeoffs.

I like the AppleTV / Airport Express (A Lot) but I want 24/96.  If that was there I think I'd Almost be banked.  I suspect the library might be a shared config.

Both Amarra HiFi and Full Amarra will not play streamed/shared libraries.  I thought they did until I notices that the "blue" Amarra wasn't there and that iTunes was playing a file from a remote library.  Switch to a local iTunes library.... Blue light comes on.

This is the same behavior with BitPerfect.

I just looked at DSM and the show that the NAS creates a shared library.  This would be out too.

Then I found this article on setting up iTunes on NAS.  I had some success with this and I'm going to try again.  I believe if the iTunes library index is local Amarra will work.

My question with Audionirvana.  Will it play files from a shared library?

Thanks

Audirvana Plus can operate in either standalone or iTunes integration mode. In iTunes integration mode, whatever song file can be played in iTunes should be available to Audirvana Plus as well. I guess the best way is to download trail version (with full functionality for a month) from following site and try it out.

http://audirvana.com

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iamnothim 

My 2 cents.

 

Audeze LCD2 rev2 > Schiit Lyr w 1964 Amprex USN-CEP > Schiit Bifrost.... S/PDIF Optical >MacBook Pro Retina

Mac Mini with Promise Pegasus R4 4T RAID.

 

I have not tried Audionirvana Plus.

All the others ..yes.

 

I have the full license of Amarra for my room system and I like it.

I purchased another license for my can system until I discovered it doesn't work with shared libraries.

Sonic credited the purchase.

 

This is a big problem because I can't get iTunes to create a local library from a remote NAS.  Some of the content is index and some isn't.

I can't put 1T of music on 4 Macs

 

BitPerfect sounded OK to me but has the same limitations with shared libraries.

I thought that Pure Music had a very harsh sound compared to Ammara.

Lastly, Fidelia.  IMO the music sounded neutered.  Mush.  All personality was gone.

 

I've been too bashed in to try Audionirvana yet.

Will it work with streaming?

Can you mount the iTunes folder on the NAS on your Mac? Then you can hold down the Option key when you open iTunes and select the library on the network-mounted disk. That will work with any of the programs as far as I know. The only problem with this is that you can only do it on one computer at a time.