[omasciarotte]

You said:

  …I want to boost 3db Freq.range from 1000khz to 5000khz.  What's the best way to do it? 
I'm assuming you would boost 3000khz and what "Q" to get the left and right of it? 


 

 
 
What I would do is first find the "center" of your frequency range. To do that you need to find the range itself. So, 5000 - 1000 = 4000 Hz is the range. The center is half that or 4000/2= 2000 Hz. then take that and add it to the lower frequency limit so 1000 + 2000 = 3000 Hz. That's your (center) Frequency setting. Then set your Gain to +3 dB and you’re done. No need for Q at all.
 
One other setting you may need, depending on which Amarra (or other equalizer) you have, is the Order. That setting determines the slope of the filter’s “skirts,” or what happens at the two ends of its range. Another way of thinking about Order is to ask, “How quickly does the filter transition into and out of affecting the audio?” Most filters, unless specified, are “1st order.” That is, they transition at 6 dB per octave, which is quite a wide range of frequencies. 2nd order filters have 6 x 2 or 12 dB per octave slopes so, the filter’s gain “happens” over a much narrower range of frequencies from no gain change to full gain change. Amarra Symphony as well as sQ have multi–order filter, so you can specify 1st through 4th order. 1st order filters are rounded and sine–like, whereas 4th order filters have quite straight, vertical sides. The look like a mesa in Utah, rather than an old hill that’s been rounded off by a glacier…Sorry for the geological simile!

 

[sling5s]

What I would do is first find the "center" of your frequency range. To do that you need to find the range itself. So, 5000 - 1000 = 4000 Hz is the range. The center is half that or 4000/2= 2000 Hz. then take that and add it to the lower frequency limit so 1000 + 2000 = 3000 Hz. That's your (center) Frequency setting. Then set your Gain to +3 dB and you’re done. No need for Q at all..

One other setting you may need, depending on which Amarra (or other equalizer) you have, is the Order. That setting determines the slope of the filter’s “skirts,” or what happens at the two ends of its range. Another way of thinking about Order is to ask, “How quickly does the filter transition into and out of affecting the audio?” Most filters, unless specified, are “1st order.” That is, they transition at 6 dB per octave, which is quite a wide range of frequencies. 2nd order filters have 6 x 2 or 12 dB per octave slopes so, the filter’s gain “happens” over a much narrower range of frequencies from no gain change to full gain change. Amarra Symphony as well as sQ have multi–order filter, so you can specify 1st through 4th order. 1st order filters are rounded and sine–like, whereas 4th order filters have quite straight, vertical sides. The look like a mesa in Utah, rather than an old hill that’s been rounded off by a glacier…Sorry for the geological simile!

I'm really a visual learner so I would help if I could see it. My understanding is that parametric eq is a bell curve. So the Q controls the range of the bandwidth curve. I'm still confused about how to control the range using the Q with the center freq. I'm mind

 

[omasciarotte]

I'm really a visual learner so I would help if I could see it. My understanding is that parametric eq is a bell curve. So the Q controls the range of the bandwidth curve. I'm still confused about how to control the range using the Q with the center freq. I'm mind

 
Humm, tough one since apparently the EQ version your using doesn’t have a gain versus frequency graph associated with it…EQ is either set “by ear,” in which case you don’t really care what the values are, or because you have a problem you want to put a bandaid on.
 
Since you must be in the latter camp, and you’re an Amarra user already, try this; Head to sonicstudio.com and download the demo of sQ. Install it and play with it. It has a visual component and will give you a good feel for what a basic, 1st order paramet “looks” and sounds like. The presets have more exotic topologies but, if you set it to Flat and start messing with the four control points, you’ll quickly see what corresponds to what you’re hearing. The white spline is the aggregate response of all four filters working together.
 
By grabbing the blue control point, centering it on around 3k, and pulling it down 3 dB, you’ll get the -3 at 3k response we talked about above. What you really need is a 2nd or 3rd order paramet, since you’ll notice that the filter skirts (edges) don't extend far enough to hit your 1k and 5k targets. The gain at those two frequencies is less than 1 dB, which is negligible. A higher order filter would help to nail your gain versus frequency requirements. Set sQ to Rock, then grab the yellow control point and try setting your filter with that…See the difference? The current sQ version doesn’t expose all the controls that you have in Sonic EQ. Maybe they’ll be uncovered in a future version.

 

[sling5s]

   
Humm, tough one since apparently the EQ version your using doesn’t have a gain versus frequency graph associated with it…EQ is either set “by ear,” in which case you don’t really care what the values are, or because you have a problem you want to put a bandaid on.
 
Since you must be in the latter camp, and you’re an Amarra user already, try this; Head to sonicstudio.com and download the demo of sQ. Install it and play with it. It has a visual component and will give you a good feel for what a basic, 1st order paramet “looks” and sounds like. The presets have more exotic topologies but, if you set it to Flat and start messing with the four control points, you’ll quickly see what corresponds to what you’re hearing. The white spline is the aggregate response of all four filters working together.
 
By grabbing the blue control point, centering it on around 3k, and pulling it down 3 dB, you’ll get the -3 at 3k response we talked about above. What you really need is a 2nd or 3rd order paramet, since you’ll notice that the filter skirts (edges) don't extend far enough to hit your 1k and 5k targets. The gain at those two frequencies is less than 1 dB, which is negligible. A higher order filter would help to nail your gain versus frequency requirements. Set sQ to Rock, then grab the yellow control point and try setting your filter with that…See the difference? The current sQ version doesn’t expose all the controls that you have in Sonic EQ. Maybe they’ll be uncovered in a future version.

Thanks for all your help.  Will try.

 

[longboy]

Check this out:
 
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/hear.php
 
I've used Hear happily since the time when it cost sixty bucks and Amarra Symphony cost 725 bucks. Hear makes it unnecessary to hold an advanced degree in audio engineering from MIT in order to tweak your sound.
 
Of course, since your mileage may vary, Hear is free to try.

 

[crixnet]

Amarra makes music sound great. But my 3.0.3 stops outputting sound after 30 minutes, or so. The progress bar for the track continues to move, but no audio is sent to my phones.
 
I have set all settings as suggested by Sonic: Cache=3GB, Disable All, Bypass Gain, Finder Off, Playlist (No iTunes), EQ Off.
 
I'm playing FLAC files in my playlists only. I created them by dragging them from the Finder. I've read something about using XLD to create virtual disks of albums, but I'm not sure what the deal is with that. Any thoughts on whether importing a bunch of FLAC files into XLD and creating virtual disks would be advantageous?
 
I've trashed Amarra's pref files. I read where the Apple Help file should be trashed as well, but there's no script that specifies deleting Apple Help, and I don't know where it's located. Is this possible? If so, where is the Apple Help file that should be deleted when deleting the Amarra prefs file?
 
Is there anything I've missed in my setup, or is there anything else I can do to prevent Amarra from not outputting sound randomly after playing for 30-40 minutes?
 
Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[longboy]

I paid $725 for Amarra Symphony, back in the day. That struck me as kind of expensive... till I found out that Symphony once had cost more than a thousand bucks! OTOH, I did pay only $29 for the upgrade.

 

[dallan]

Yep, i got it back before the days of symphony and so upgrade was 29. as well. When i got it the price for normal Amarra had come down from $1500. to $1000. and i think was just about to drop to $750. which is i what i paid. Pricey but then the upgrade to Symphony cheaper was a good deal. I just recently did it from a very old version, wow! Sound is really superb. 

 

[Balroggg]

Too expansive for me. For the moment I'm very happy with audirvana. Isn't the same, but audirvana is affordable for me. Thanks for the review.

 

[tgdinamo]

Too expansive for me. For the moment I'm very happy with audirvana. Isn't the same, but audirvana is affordable for me. Thanks for the review.

 
I bought Amarra about a week ago (3.0.3 version for $99) and after exclusively using it during last week I feel it's significant improvement in terms of SQ over Audirvana Plus.
But Amarra stability is an issue as the recommended settings do not produce stable environment in my case. To be specific, to get reliable performance I had to turn off cache and preloading completely, as well as not use itunes integration at all (it is so buggy it should be completely removed from the app and/or completely re-written). Also I find not loading the last playlist during launching of app makes things more stable (app reliably comes up right away). Also, pointing to folders on network drives or even regular external usb3 hard drives seems less reliable than loading tracks into playlist from internal SSD drive (ie on my macbook pro I had some random crashes when connected to anything other than internal SSD hard drive - does not make any sense to me but the fact is I have not had any crashes since I switched to exclusively using the SSD). Finally, sometimes when I reboot the computer I have to go back into Amarra settings to re-assign the output to correctly point to my DAC (does not happen every time I reboot which makes no sense).
However, all of these headaches are still worth it to me because the SQ is amazing.

 

[longboy]

   
I bought Amarra about a week ago (3.0.3 version for $99) and after exclusively using it during last week I feel it's significant improvement in terms of SQ over Audirvana Plus.
But Amarra stability is an issue as the recommended settings do not produce stable environment in my case. To be specific, to get reliable performance I had to turn off cache and preloading completely, as well as not use itunes integration at all (it is so buggy it should be completely removed from the app and/or completely re-written). Also I find not loading the last playlist during launching of app makes things more stable (app reliably comes up right away). Also, pointing to folders on network drives or even regular external usb3 hard drives seems less reliable than loading tracks into playlist from internal SSD drive (ie on my macbook pro I had some random crashes when connected to anything other than internal SSD hard drive - does not make any sense to me but the fact is I have not had any crashes since I switched to exclusively using the SSD). Finally, sometimes when I reboot the computer I have to go back into Amarra settings to re-assign the output to correctly point to my DAC (does not happen every time I reboot which makes no sense).
However, all of these headaches are still worth it to me because the SQ is amazing.

In my case, pretty much the only way that I use Amarra is in conjunction with iTunes, though I do have a couple of Amarra playlists. I don't bother about the recommended settings. To make a long story short, I use Amarra on a nearly eight-year-old iMac with 6 gigs of RAM and I have absolutely none of the problems that you cite. If I did, I'd be *seriously* butt-hurt, since, as a fairly-early-adopter, I paid $725 for Amarra and not that give-away $99! I *heartily* agree with you, WRT the SQ, though!

 

[WNBC]

Congrats, I like Amarra as well but I never tried Audio Nirvana.  I have no problem with preloading a playlist and cache unless I load over about 70-80 FLACs.   Around 30-40 FLACs is pretty stable.   No issues with external USB3.0 USB drives or external SSD drives.  Never tried external USB2.0 thumb drives or spinning disk drives with Amarra.  Rebooting and Amarra has not been an issue unless my DAC is off, but that is understandable.  I'm using a 2013 MBPr with 8 GB RAM.   At the time I was being a little cheap and did not buy the 16 GB of RAM.  I see the new ones come standard with 16GB RAM.  I looked at the trade-in value of my laptop.  Definitely would take a huge hit so no upgrades.  The 16 GB RAM might help with stability and the pre-loading of large playlists and cache.  
 
Are you running a lot of programs while you use Amarra?
 
 
 
 
Quote:

   
I bought Amarra about a week ago (3.0.3 version for $99) and after exclusively using it during last week I feel it's significant improvement in terms of SQ over Audirvana Plus.
But Amarra stability is an issue as the recommended settings do not produce stable environment in my case. To be specific, to get reliable performance I had to turn off cache and preloading completely, as well as not use itunes integration at all (it is so buggy it should be completely removed from the app and/or completely re-written). Also I find not loading the last playlist during launching of app makes things more stable (app reliably comes up right away). Also, pointing to folders on network drives or even regular external usb3 hard drives seems less reliable than loading tracks into playlist from internal SSD drive (ie on my macbook pro I had some random crashes when connected to anything other than internal SSD hard drive - does not make any sense to me but the fact is I have not had any crashes since I switched to exclusively using the SSD). Finally, sometimes when I reboot the computer I have to go back into Amarra settings to re-assign the output to correctly point to my DAC (does not happen every time I reboot which makes no sense).
However, all of these headaches are still worth it to me because the SQ is amazing.

 

[tgdinamo]

Originally Posted by WNBC /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Congrats, I like Amarra as well but I never tried Audio Nirvana.  I have no problem with preloading a playlist and cache unless I load over about 70-80 FLACs.   Around 30-40 FLACs is pretty stable.   No issues with external USB3.0 USB drives or external SSD drives.  Never tried external USB2.0 thumb drives or spinning disk drives with Amarra.  Rebooting and Amarra has not been an issue unless my DAC is off, but that is understandable.  I'm using a 2013 MBPr with 8 GB RAM.   At the time I was being a little cheap and did not buy the 16 GB of RAM.  I see the new ones come standard with 16GB RAM.  I looked at the trade-in value of my laptop.  Definitely would take a huge hit so no upgrades.  The 16 GB RAM might help with stability and the pre-loading of large playlists and cache.  
 
Are you running a lot of programs while you use Amarra?

 
I'm not running a lot of programs - just Amarra and typically browse internet while listening. I'm actually at a pretty good place right now in terms of stability - my current setup is stable. Given that I have a pretty recent and loaded laptop (in terms of cpu and memory) and everything stored on SSD it turns out that I don't really need cache or preloading at all. Everything runs very smooth and quick with it turned off. What is weird is that with that same laptop I had frequent crashes especially during Amarra startups, and even more so if also loading the previous playlist during app startup. Once I turned cache and loading that off everything comes up very quickly and no more crashes. I also only use the playlist mode (at least 50% of my albums are 192/24 and most others are 88/24 or higher as well - I listen to very few CD resolution files at this point so I don't have any need or benefit in terms of using itunes to manage files.
One annoying thing still for me is that with Amarra all of my wav files don't show any metadata other than name of song when loaded into playlist window. I know people say wav files don't support metadata but Audirvana displays all the info from wav files (song name, album, artist, composer, resolution) in it's playlist window so I know for a fact all that is actually available in the wav files (just that Amarra developers chose not to bother with it).
But again, the SQ is most important so I will put up with that and hope maybe down the road they decide to improve the user interface.
By the way, the reason I heavily use wav files is that my portable dac Tera player only plays wav (so I always buy wav when available, or convert flac to wav to use with Tera player).

 

[omasciarotte]

Hey sling5s,
 
Well, your visual learner ship has finally come in! I got an e-mail last night from Sonic, Amarra sQ+ will ship by the end of the month. See: http://j.mp/1HKFCuc
 
This version has complete control over EQ, as well as what’s called “broadband noise reduction,” a.k.a. noise removal. Won't go into that feature but the really kewl thing for you (and me!) is the full–on EQ that you can patch into whatever your listening to.
 

 
Take a look at this screenshot: This is a compensation network that I built based on Siegfried Linkwitz’s discussion on his web site. It's designed to work with my Etymotics. Specifically, take a look at the color coded parameters for each “section” of the EQ…The yellow section is a 1st order parametric with a Q of 2, while the narrower green section is also a 1st order but the Q is 9.
 
By setting the Q to its minimum of 0.5, you can create a mesa-like EQ shape that may work for your original posting. Take a look at this:
 

 
The green section is a 3rd order, having very steep “skirts” or sides, a flat top, and the 3dB boost centered on 2k that you had wanted. Give the demo a try when it's available…

 

[omasciarotte]

Whoops, forgot to mention that, as you increase Q or Order, you degrade the temporal response through the filter. (this is one of the reasons that old CD players and DAC sounded so crappy. They used “high order” filters). So, transients, liked plucked strings and percussion, are smeared in time. This is true for analog or digital filters, with one exception which I won’t go into…Anyway, the moral of this story is: used the lowest settings of Order or Q (Quality Factor) that will get the job done…Have fun exploring!