[agentsim]

Cool, I been eagerly awaiting his paper, should make for a good read!

 

[iamoneagain]

Well I'm back to using Audirvana for now.  I find the it sounds very close to Amarra and probably in a blind test, I wouldn't be able to guess which is which.  I'm still having problems with songs lopping in Amarra even with XLD converted tracks.  Need to see if I can find another converter besides XLD and Max because I found this on Amarra's site for know issues:
 
"Apple Lossless created in Max and xld may not play correctly"
 
I can easily live with Audirvana but still like Amarra's integration with iTunes, so I'm hoping I can find a fix or they come out with an update that fixes this problem.
 
Edit: Just realized I already found a fix which was to convert WAV in iTunes and then convert back to ALAC.  This is a little more time consuming the just XLD but I pretty sure it works. Damn, even this is not working.  I guess goodbye Amarra.

 

[KingStyles]

Iamoneagain - Have you tried aiff files yet? It might be time to go to a 2GB hd.

 

[bulmanxxi]

BetterSound also offers Integer Mode and integrates with iTunes very well eliminating the need for external to iTunes playlist and library management difficulties.  It is a rather elegant approach similar to Amarra Jr. and PureMusic but with an even simpler interface or lack of an interface compared to either one.  It is a very good, if not the best approach, so far out of all players.

 

[iamoneagain]

Quote:

Iamoneagain - Have you tried aiff files yet? It might be time to go to a 2GB hd.

The problem is I already have a 1.5TB hd and it's half full.   I also don't believe there's any real difference in sound quality using uncompressed files.  So yes, even though AIFF files don't have a bug in Amarra, I think it should be on their end to fix it and not mine to convert my files.  Also, no other player has any problems with MAX or XLD converted songs.
 
by the way, when's the next meet  
 

 

[iamoneagain]

Quote:

BetterSound also offers Integer Mode and integrates with iTunes very well eliminating the need for external to iTunes playlist and library management difficulties.  It is a rather elegant approach similar to Amarra Jr. and PureMusic but with an even simpler interface or lack of an interface compared to either one.  It is a very good, if not the best approach, so far out of all players.

Think I'm going to give this a try.  I'm done with Amarra for now and would like to try an integrated program. Pure Music still does nothing for me musically so let's so how this does.  Hopefully not too many bugs.
 

 

[WarriorAnt]

Quote:

Think I'm going to give this a try.  I'm done with Amarra for now and would like to try an integrated program. Pure Music still does nothing for me musically so let's so how this does.  Hopefully not too many bugs.
 

Audirvana is a nice sounding player.  I really enjoy it.   I prefer Amarra but if Audirvana could update my playlist the way amarra does I would use it for more often.  
 

 

[leveller1642]

I been using PureMusic 1.8 for the last week or so. I think i prefer its SQ to iTunes. The only downside is the very slight interference when i am using a browser. I have both a USB to coaxial converter and a USB drive with my ALAC files on it so will be changing it over to FW800 soon, in line with pure music's recommendation. My set up is Macbook with  ALAC > fancy USB cable > Onkyo ND-S1 ipod dock > coaxial > Lavry DA11 > balanced cables > Adam Sub7 > balanced cables > Adam A5 monitors. Haven't tried it with my HP set up yet. 

 

[KingStyles]

I know some people were having problems using alac in pure music, but the aiff files were playing fine. I figure maybe amarra might be having a similar issue with alac.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

Quote:

Damien Plisson, developer of Audirvana OSX music player software,  has published a white paper (in conjunction with AMR Audio of UK) explaining the importance of player software and Mac's playback Integer Mode.  As of writing, only Audirvana and PureMusic v.1.8 offer such capabilities with compatible DACs.
 
 
http://www.digitalaudioblog.com/2011/06/interger-mode-explained.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DigitalToAnalogConverterBlog+%28Digital+to+Analog+Converter+Blog%29

 
And BetterSound in beta form. He's working on it.

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

While Amarra MINI 2.01 worked well for me, I was getting some skipping with Amarra MINI 2.1
 
I just upgraded to 2.23 and it's working well again. 

 

[Currawong]

I've long been wondering what the reason for any improvements would be, so that whitepaper is very helpful in explaining it. Thanks for the link.

 

[iamoneagain]

I had no luck with BetterSound yet unless NO sound is better.  Like the idea that there is no real interface except going into a menu to change preferences.  But I've played around with the options and still can't get it to play.  I'll see if I get any feedback here or in the other thread.  Not giving up on it yet.
 
I have the latest version of Amarra mini and it's more stable than the last one but the looping is still happening.  What's weird is right after a reconvert with XLD, it fixes the problem but it eventually comes back.  Only using AIFF files completely fixes it but I believe the files are more than 3x as large and then would have even less space synching with my iPhone.

 

[mrspeakers]

​

Personally, I found e white paper to mostly be a rehash of other explanations that have been given, it's a nice summary. What would be really interesting would be for a manufacturer or reviewer with jitter measurement equipment to actually test and compare the results to relate theory to real-world.

Ir true, these claims should all produce measurable results.

 

[uelover]

Quote:

I had no luck with BetterSound yet unless NO sound is better.  Like the idea that there is no real interface except going into a menu to change preferences.  But I've played around with the options and still can't get it to play.  I'll see if I get any feedback here or in the other thread.  Not giving up on it yet.

Try to turn off integer mode.
 
Mine kept crashing until I realized that integer mode was the culprit. I could run integer mode on Audirvana and PM nonetheless.