[twentyHz]

Hello.

I am in a state of discovery! Has anyone heard of software that apparantly turns your Mac computer into the ultimate high fidelity player?

I am itching to try these when I get home from my vacation in the Okanagan.

1. Amarra Symphony
2. Pure Music
3. Bit performer


Any of these work or are they just gimmicky?

 

[twentyHz]

Forgot to mention, I came across these programs by total randomness. Could this be too good to be true?

 

[paullindqvist]

These software players are just one part in the chain, installing them will not magically make all your music to sound better.
 
First in the chain is the source, meaning the music files you will play. If they are low quality MP3 your off to a bad start. If they are FLAC or ALAC your haven taken care of that.
 
Second is the software player and they player do work, how well depends on the rest of your chain. Which ones is best ? Only you can decide that after testing them on your system. Most of these players offer trials so why not download them and try them out for your self.
 
If your running Mac there is a excellent thread on different players here
 
Amarra is waste of money in  my opinion. Not that it doesn't sound good, it simply doesn't sound better then the other players, yet it cost an arm and a leg. To boot it's interface is dated back to 1998 and it's buggy for quite a few people.
 
 
 
Third is the DAC (digital to analog converter) this is the thing that convert the digital files to an analog signal. You either use your computers onboard soundcard or have a dedicated internal soundcard. If it's the former you could improve this link buy getting a decent internal Soundcard or a good external DAC (which basically is a external sound card)
 
 
Forth and last is the speakers/headphones, if you have a pair of cheap speakers/headphones you won't take advantage of the rest of they chain being up to par (just as with any other link being weak in the chain) 

 

[twentyHz]

Ok.

I have all my files in uncompressed .wav or m4a already.

I have a macbook as my source.

I have a apogee duet 2 audio interface DAC.

My headphones on order are D5000's and currently I use UE triplefi 10's and hd280's


I plan on trying the demos yes. Does anyone use these programs? Would they warrant any use with flac alac or wav?

 

[paullindqvist]

Quote:

I plan on trying the demos yes. Does anyone use these programs? Would they warrant any use with flac alac or wav?

If you read the thread i linked to you see there are a lot of people using other software then itunes to play their lossless music.

 

[twentyHz]

I had read that yes. Not really a review of quality or feedback but informative thx

 

[paullindqvist]

Im not sure what your after, there is no point for us to tell how the software performs, as it just a mouse klick for you to try them for your self with your own setup and compare to the player you use at the moment.
 
 
I'd say the thread contains a lot of feedback on the different players and what people find works or not.

 

[twentyHz]

I am not near my mac for a few days. I will try when i get home.

I am just really skeptical that there would be any difference and am researching it in advance. I was hoping someone would make a convincing statement one way or another. Maybe spark
A debate

 

[mtkversion]

Most of them have a simple advantage to iTunes by just offering native FLAC support.
 
Others have certain plugins and add-ons like resamplers, VST plug-ins, headphone crossfeed features.
 
Amarra is probably the most talked about when it comes to 'audiophile' players but I think most of that comes from marketing hype. I believe it originally sold for $1,500 and had a GUI that looked like it was designed by a first year CS major.
 
Also add Decibel, Fidelia and Audirvana to your lineup and have fun with their demos.
 
You might find that some of them are worth their $20 price tag for the UI alone.
 
IMO I think most of them just add their own EQ'ing and pass it off by using buzzwords and technical jargon. With that said, I use Audirvana Plus because I like the stability, sound, features and I dislike iTunes.

 

[proton007]

There's no such thing as an 'audiophile player'.
The most basic thing a player does is to load the file and decode it with an appropriate codec, which is standard for a format. Beyond that its your DAC and sound card. 
So, something like Foobar would play MP3 as good as iTunes.

 

[twentyHz]

Thanks for all the info. I guess i figured it was mostly hype but knowing how awful itunes is to use, i figured maybe it is also sub-par as a player. I will try them out and see for myself. A diff GUI may be worth the look!

 

[Supperconductor]

http://www.amr-audio.co.uk/large_image/MAC%20OSX%20audio%20players%20&%20Integer%20Mode.pdf

Some interesting info there. I use Audirvana Plus in "integer" mode and I noticed a big improvement. The higher the quality of the file, the bigger the difference was over iTunes.

 

[twentyHz]

I tried Amarra, and Audirvana so far.

I did not give them a whole lot of time with my attention span, however, I found no difference when I A/B between ITunes and either. I ended up uninstalling them.

 

[proton007]

I'm not completely sure about audio codecs, but from what I know, the audio 'frames' can be dropped depending on the load, if your CPU does not have the resources to decode the frames on time. Its better to skip a few frames (not noticeable) than have stuttering audio.
So, I'm not really sure what a player can do to improve this, even if I consider it a bottleneck. I guess thats what WASAPI does, and again, its not the player but windows itself that enables it.