[Hybrys]

Quote:

$1000? Oh my god! I rather buy a T1 for that money

Hey!  That's the conclusion I came to about not buying a Mac.  Nothingness for $1000+.

 

[SillyHoney]

Hey Hybrys, the JRMC is great

 
It sounds somewhat slightly better than Winamp. I will tell more on that after more testing. I like the playback from memory too (is that all you need to tick the option "Playback from memory instead of disk"?). That feature prevent audio skipping/popping/cracking/lagging etc...
 
It also has nice skin and GUI.
 
Thank for info

 

[Hybrys]

Quote:

Hey Hybrys, the JRMC is great

 
It sounds somewhat slightly better than Winamp. I like the playback from memory too (is that all you need to tick the option "Playback from memory instead of disk"?)
 
It also has nice skin and GUI.
 
Thank for info

I actually don't like JRMC, but it is a very feature rich player.  Yes, that's all you need to tick to play from memory, and cut the HDD from the audio line.  You should checkout some of the DSPs already in the program, they're pretty powerful, including some headphone specific ones, and you can tune the sound to be even more to your liking.
 
Good luck with it. = D

 

[SillyHoney]

lol so what you like

 
And do you mean by
 
Quote:

and cut the HDD from the audio line

 

[Hybrys]

Quote:

lol so what you like

 
And do you mean by
 

I like Foobar, pretty much.
 
Some people believe that noise/lag from the hard drive spinning can cause distortion or irregularities in digital playback, thus recommend playing music from a 'ramdisk' or using a function such as the one in JRMC.  (Play Song from RAM instead of Disk)

 

[waterlogic]

Quote:

$1000? Oh my god! I rather buy a T1 for that money

For what it does it is not worth it. And that stupid USB dongle. With insanely priced software what happens is somebody cracks it (if not already?) and it costs than 0 $ all over the internet.
 
T1 is worth 1 kilo$ for sure.

 

[SillyHoney]

It seems nobody hacks it lol. Because it's not worth it? Because it's on Mac? I think it's because of both. Another reason for T1 to be worth $1000 because you can always sell it @ $800

 

[waterlogic]

Quote:

It seems nobody hacks it lol. Because it's not worth it? Because it's on Mac? I think it's because of both. Another reason for T1 to be worth $1000 because you can always sell it @ $800

Wrong. PM me for details.
 
"Nothing is far away if you go there"

 

[t/sound]

I use my Macbook pro 15" as my main music server with iTunes, all imports to aiff. There are some great pieces of advice in the threads on how to optimise the sound qualty, just read and follow steps.
I bought Amarra mini $ 300 and initially thought it was useless using usb dacs. The big jump in sound quality came when I installed the M2tech Hiface as usb to spdif converter taking the
bits to my Audio -Gd ref 1. Besides the quality improvement just using iTunes I could clearly hear the difference using Amarra. The moral of the story is that there is nothing wrong with iTunes as a player, it is the detail where the devil lies.
Yes, carefull system setup pays, how you transmit those  bits to your dac makes the big difference. If you want to see whole landscape, you have to climb the hill.
 
Mac-shade.

 

[waterlogic]

Quote:

I use my Macbook pro 15" as my main music server with iTunes, all imports to aiff. There are some great pieces of advice in the threads on how to optimise the sound qualty, just read and follow steps.
I bought Amarra mini $ 300 and initially thought it was useless using usb dacs. The big jump in sound quality came when I installed the M2tech Hiface as usb to spdif converter taking the
bits to my Audio -Gd ref 1. Besides the quality improvement just using iTunes I could clearly hear the difference using Amarra. The moral of the story is that there is nothing wrong with iTunes as a player, it is the detail where the devil lies.
Yes, carefull system setup pays, how you transmit those  bits to your dac makes the big difference. If you want to see whole landscape, you have to climb the hill.
 
Mac-shade.

I use M2tech BNC from day one. The only advantage I have seen with Amarra (trial) is auto-sensing of bit/sample rate. (but this can also be achieved with Play (0 $)) .
I dare say it is impossible to compare two players if you can not match gain (loudness, volume) to at least +/-  0.3db. After we did this by measuring the sound pressure coming from the speakers nobody could tell any audiable difference to iTunes (three people were present) playing the identical ALAC, AIFF or WAV files.
 
So either we all are deaf or the "loudness trick" is playing the nasty game with your ears.
Everything that plays louder always sounds better.
Amarra modifies the loudness and whoever knows what else. But is it better sounding ?
I am not convinced ...but as said maybe I am deaf.

 

[etiolate]

I use iTunes.
 
Any Mac users that use iTunes might be interested in the following apps:
GimmeSomeTune
DesktopLyrics
 

GimmeSomeTune does a couple things:

• adds a play/pause/forward/back icon to the menu bar
• displays small pop-up in the bottom part of teh screen when a new song starts informing you of the song/artist/album
• checks the info file for that song to see if the lyrics are added.  if not, it automatically downloads and fills it in

DesktopLyrics - the name says it all.  It displays the lyrics to the song (the lyrics in the info of teh song that is).
 
Therefore, with these two apps combined, the desktop should always display the lyrics to your current song.

 

[Hero Kid]

Quote:

WHY would you order a Macbook Pro and run Windows, when you can instead get an ASUS with twice the specs, and half the pricetag?  -_-

I have always bought (made) PC's. This Macbook will be my first ever Mac (and laptop for that matter) so there is certainly no Apple fanboy bias going on.
Why would I get a Macbook and run Windows? Simply put, to get software that I prefer over iTunes. Using iTunes on Windows was a horrible experience and I am totally reluctant to use iTunes ever since.
As I said, I would prefer not to use Windows at all, the only reason I would would be to play music through JRMC and perhaps use EAC to rip music. Before I get Parallels and the whole sha-bang I will certainly look for a good music program that works on Mac that isn't iTunes. Until then I've got the Parallels plan.
Also why am I paying so much for a Mac when I could simply buy a PC? Simply put I'm curious.
I have had positive experiences with friends Mac's as well as in primary school and feel it's time to give one a go. They are beautiful, well made, offer a new OS (to me) and I can afford to get it. Why not is my question?
I know what I'm paying for, and that I could get a PC a lot cheaper with the same/better specs but it's not the whole package.

 

[eucariote]

Quote:

I NEVER use any EQ, enhacer or whatever. I also use USB output to feed my Gamma-2. But iTunes on PC is simply bad. It's just so obvious. iTunes on Snow Leopard is cool tho.

You might get better sound and (as DavidMahler noted) bit-perfect output with itunes if you added an optical input to your Gamma-2 or got a different dac.  With an optical dac you could also use an airport express with itunes (mac or pc) and get the same bit perfect goodness with no wires.  That's how I listen to music at home.  

 

[jeycam]

Quote:

I have always bought (made) PC's. This Macbook will be my first ever Mac (and laptop for that matter) so there is certainly no Apple fanboy bias going on.
Why would I get a Macbook and run Windows? Simply put, to get software that I prefer over iTunes. Using iTunes on Windows was a horrible experience and I am totally reluctant to use iTunes ever since.
As I said, I would prefer not to use Windows at all, the only reason I would would be to play music through JRMC and perhaps use EAC to rip music. Before I get Parallels and the whole sha-bang I will certainly look for a good music program that works on Mac that isn't iTunes. Until then I've got the Parallels plan.
Also why am I paying so much for a Mac when I could simply buy a PC? Simply put I'm curious.
I have had positive experiences with friends Mac's as well as in primary school and feel it's time to give one a go. They are beautiful, well made, offer a new OS (to me) and I can afford to get it. Why not is my question?
I know what I'm paying for, and that I could get a PC a lot cheaper with the same/better specs but it's not the whole package.

Actually, using any of the VM-stuff (Parallels Desktop, VMfusion, etc.) decreases sound a lot. I smell wrong implemented sound drivers in VM, but it means that you'll either have to use OSX or a Bootcamp.
 

 

[SOUNDinterpreter]

Quote:

I have always bought (made) PC's. This Macbook will be my first ever Mac (and laptop for that matter) so there is certainly no Apple fanboy bias going on.
Why would I get a Macbook and run Windows? Simply put, to get software that I prefer over iTunes. Using iTunes on Windows was a horrible experience and I am totally reluctant to use iTunes ever since.
As I said, I would prefer not to use Windows at all, the only reason I would would be to play music through JRMC and perhaps use EAC to rip music. Before I get Parallels and the whole sha-bang I will certainly look for a good music program that works on Mac that isn't iTunes. Until then I've got the Parallels plan.
Also why am I paying so much for a Mac when I could simply buy a PC? Simply put I'm curious.
I have had positive experiences with friends Mac's as well as in primary school and feel it's time to give one a go. They are beautiful, well made, offer a new OS (to me) and I can afford to get it. Why not is my question?
I know what I'm paying for, and that I could get a PC a lot cheaper with the same/better specs but it's not the whole package.

I bought a macbook pro last year because I, too, was curious about the Mac world. After my dell laptop broke, I decided to try a  Mac out after hearing pretty good things about it from my cousin who worked at Apple at the time. He was able to give me a 25% discount too. When I first got my Mac I was running VM Fusion to run Windows 7 RC and used foobar2000 because I hated iTunes so much. But I have a different perception on iTunes now. It is my default media player but I'll use VLC for stuff I don't yet have loaded in my library. It is easy to stay organized, and creating smart playlists is awesome. Genius playlists aren't bad either. I guess what I'm trying to say is you may hate iTunes now, but don't completely dismiss it just yet.