Amarra - anyone using it?

[boblauer]

  Just importing my 11,000 albums now into Amarra 4. I did get to play with it at RMAF and loved the GUI and quick interface. Should be ready to use by the time I head off to bed. 

 
I have the opposite experience. I got Amarra 4 bundled with my Cavalli LC and it's never worked on a windows PC. I'm running Win 7 Pro, work constraint cannot upgrade, using a USB 3.0 2 TB external, when I initially contacted Sonic Studio when I got the amp they said it should work. Foobar loads but not Amarra. I've opened a ticket, they have not tested on a Win 7 machine. I have @10,000 songs 3.1 gb library, all flac files 44.1 thru 96 no DSD or higher res flac. Was looking for better sq than Foobar and this simply does not work, stay away if your a Win 7 PC, at least it was sort of free. Can't comment on SQ or GUI. What are other's alternatives for a Win 7 PC  

 

[jcn3]

   
What are other's alternatives for a Win 7 PC  

you seem to have rejected foobar as an option -- with the right configuration it sounds quite good.  jriver is a very popular alternative and very good software.

 

[MacedonianHero]

   
I have the opposite experience. I got Amarra 4 bundled with my Cavalli LC and it's never worked on a windows PC. I'm running Win 7 Pro, work constraint cannot upgrade, using a USB 3.0 2 TB external, when I initially contacted Sonic Studio when I got the amp they said it should work. Foobar loads but not Amarra. I've opened a ticket, they have not tested on a Win 7 machine. I have @10,000 songs 3.1 gb library, all flac files 44.1 thru 96 no DSD or higher res flac. Was looking for better sq than Foobar and this simply does not work, stay away if your a Win 7 PC, at least it was sort of free. Can't comment on SQ or GUI. What are other's alternatives for a Win 7 PC  

I'm using my iMac with it and its been quite good.

 

[aamefford]

Amarra 4 is a pretty decent interface.  It really needs drag and drop play capability for times when you want to play music that is not in your regular library, and it needs a simple 3 or 4 band parametric EQ, or at least a 10 band or so graphic eq.
 
My biggest gripe though, is sometimes I want to play something from a memory card or something, and it wants to import the info that into my library database as well.  I don't want it in my library database, I just want to play it from the current location.  I haven't played with it too much yet, so hopefully it has this capability, and I'm just missing something.

 

[WNBC]

Same gripe as well.  Maybe I've also missed it, but with the previous version we did have that option.  
 
Am I missing the custom 3 or 4 parametric EQ function like in the previous version?  Everything seems to be presets.
 
 
Quote:

 
My biggest gripe though, is sometimes I want to play something from a memory card or something, and it wants to import the info that into my library database as well.  I don't want it in my library database, I just want to play it from the current location.  I haven't played with it too much yet, so hopefully it has this capability, and I'm just missing something.

 

[mwhals]

I tried Amarra 4 with my 9400 song library. I found it very lagging on my Windows 10 machine that has a fast 6 core processor and 64 GB of RAM.

When scrolling, the software was slow to respond.

Anyone else seeing this issue?

 

[WNBC]

I only have a portion of my library on my laptop, maybe 3000 songs, and there is a bit of lag when scrolling or switching to a new song that is say far down the playlist.  There is some cache so skipping to the next song has no lag.  I imagine if I added the full library everything would slow down a lot more.  Overall, a little slow, but so far not bad enough to make me regret it.  Seems like the cache is smaller compared to the previous version.         
 
 
 
Quote:

I tried Amarra 4 with my 9400 song library. I found it very lagging on my Windows 10 machine that has a fast 6 core processor and 64 GB of RAM.

When scrolling, the software was slow to respond.

Anyone else seeing this issue?

 

[mwhals]

I ended up buying JRiver Media Player 22 today. I listened to both Amarra 4 and Media Player and they both sounded great. The inability to select music by genre with Amarra 4 was the reason I chose Media Center.

 

[Mediahound]

I hate the new Amarra 4 in terms of the interface and lack of custom eq. It sounds pretty good though no better than the prior version, IMO.

When trying to use it to add albums to it, etc., I keep thinking to myself "What were they thinking? Did they not test things?" Because sometimes you try to add something and it doesn't even show up in Amarra 4. I'm glad I got it free because I would never pay for something this faulty.

 

[Denio]

I hate the new Amarra 4 in terms of the interface and lack of custom eq. It sounds pretty good though no better than the prior version, IMO.

When trying to use it to add albums to it, etc., I keep thinking to myself "What were they thinking? Did they not test things?" Because sometimes you try to add something and it doesn't even show up in Amarra 4. I'm glad I got it free because I would never pay for something this faulty.

I got the exact same feeling while demoing several players. The last two of the bunch were Amarra and Audirvana (a few months ago) and it was a no-brainer. Amarra was extremely slow with a 35gig library I have setup for test purposes. I tried the same setup from SSD and from NAS over Wi-Fi. The interface was lagging like crazy no matter what I did and I was using a Macbook by the way. In terms of features I wanted to see custom plugins to be enabled, a bit more meta editing features, upsampling modes, yada yada. I felt this was more oriented towards new listeners or people who want a hassle-free software without any advanced settings that looks cool. But even for them I highly doubt it is nice to see the interface scrolling through albums in slow motion. I have written down my experiences to them and I was told there is a new version of Amarra 4 coming out and will notify me when it comes out. It should bring improvements. Let's see..

Right now I am sticking to Audirvana and I suppose it won't change (for my desktop playing) anytime soon.

 

[mwhals]

I got the exact same feeling while demoing several players. The last two of the bunch were Amarra and Audirvana (a few months ago) and it was a no-brainer. Amarra was extremely slow with a 35gig library I have setup for test purposes. I tried the same setup from SSD and from NAS over Wi-Fi. The interface was lagging like crazy no matter what I did and I was using a Macbook by the way. In terms of features I wanted to see custom plugins to be enabled, a bit more meta editing features, upsampling modes, yada yada. I felt this was more oriented towards new listeners or people who want a hassle-free software without any advanced settings that looks cool. But even for them I highly doubt it is nice to see the interface scrolling through albums in slow motion. I have written down my experiences to them and I was told there is a new version of Amarra 4 coming out and will notify me when it comes out. It should bring improvements. Let's see..

Right now I am sticking to Audirvana and I suppose it won't change (for my desktop playing) anytime soon.

I have been told for months that improvements are being made. I got tired of waiting and am enjoying J River Media Center.

 

[aamefford]

Amarra 4 is a pretty decent interface. It really needs drag and drop play capability for times when you want to play music that is not in your regular library, and it needs a simple 3 or 4 band parametric EQ, or at least a 10 band or so graphic eq.

My biggest gripe though, is sometimes I want to play something from a memory card or something, and it wants to import the info that into my library database as well. I don't want it in my library database, I just want to play it from the current location. I haven't played with it too much yet, so hopefully it has this capability, and I'm just missing something.

I've been playing with Amarra 4 Luxe trial for a couple of days now. Tidal integration is pretty decent. So is the option to show all local and Tidal "My Music" together at once. Sort of. I kinda like having my local stuff and Tidal stuff separate, which is a quick drop down menu button to change.

Luxe has a 4 band parametric EQ with a bunch of preset quality type filters with names that don't mean anything to me, and no documentation. Good news - 4 band parametric EQ, finally. Bad news - if you don't work on the Amarra development team, you have no idea What any of the stuff really means. Hopefully, the Amarra team will develop documentation for the EQ at some point. The EQ hides behind an "advanced" link on the 16 slightly useful to useless presets.

All in all - I like enough I think I'll pony up the $50 and upgrade from Amarra 4 to Luxe.

 

[mwhals]

I've been playing with Amarra 4 Luxe trial for a couple of days now. Tidal integration is pretty decent. So is the option to show all local and Tidal "My Music" together at once. Sort of. I kinda like having my local stuff and Tidal stuff separate, which is a quick drop down menu button to change.

Luxe has a 4 band parametric EQ with a bunch of preset quality type filters with names that don't mean anything to me, and no documentation. Good news - 4 band parametric EQ, finally. Bad news - if you don't work on the Amarra development team, you have no idea What any of the stuff really means. Hopefully, the Amarra team will develop documentation for the EQ at some point. The EQ hides behind an "advanced" link on the 16 slightly useful to useless presets.

All in all - I like enough I think I'll pony up the $50 and upgrade from Amarra 4 to Luxe.

Have they improved the responsiveness when scrolling through large libraries? I really like the sound, but the sluggishness resulted in me getting J River Media Center. I am using a Windows machine, not a Mac.

 

[aamefford]

Have they improved the responsiveness when scrolling through large libraries? I really like the sound, but the sluggishness resulted in me getting J River Media Center. I am using a Windows machine, not a Mac.

Hmmmm, scrolling seems responsive enough - probably 100-ish GB library at the moment. Opening the program is slow from click to ready to go. Switching from local, to Tidal, to All is a bit slow. I use a mid 2011 macbook air with a 1.6 gHz i5 and 4 GB of ram, so pretty low powered hardware. It is definitely "good enough." I haven't gotten my whole library in one place, that might get it up to 250 GB or so. I'll report back once that's done.

 

[mwhals]

Hmmmm, scrolling seems responsive enough - probably 100-ish GB library at the moment. Opening the program is slow from click to ready to go. Switching from local, to Tidal, to All is a bit slow. I use a mid 2011 macbook air with a 1.6 gHz i5 and 4 GB of ram, so pretty low powered hardware. It is definitely "good enough." I haven't gotten my whole library in one place, that might get it up to 250 GB or so. I'll report back once that's done.

Thanks. I am using a self built PC with 64 GB of RAM, a 6 core processor and mid range gaming card and my 227GB library is more sluggish on Amarra 4 than any other software I have ever used.