Pure Music can be used on multiple computers, but I have spent hours today going back and forth between PM 1.7 and Amarra Mini 2.1.1 (I have a 14 day unlimited trial with my iLok). While I think the price of Amarra is borderline criminal, I am definitely convinced it sounds better, especially when you use the playlist mode and not drive it from iTunes. PM seems airier and more spacious at first, but there is something wrong with the timbre of instruments - the harmonic texture is off. Amarra is clearly better on my rig if you get past the HiFi wow factor and listen to the dimensionality of individual instruments and the harmonic structure of them. PM ends up sounding "digital" to me compared to Amarra. And while my system is pretty good, it is far from being state of the art in resolution.
The ultimate test was when I quit concentrating on minute changes and listened to a song while I was working on something else at the other computer. With PM I all of a sudden was drawn back to the sound as being artificial and a little fatiguing. With Amarra, I forgot about the equipment for a few minutes and just enjoyed the music - when I snapped back to attention and listened to the sound (as opposed to the music), I was struck by how natural it still sounded.
Sorry about your wallet, but Amarra is the superior player IMHO. I'm tempted to use the tubes versus transistors analogy - while there are good SS amps and not so good tune amps, the difference here is similar to the stereotypical tubes vs SS sound.
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Is Pure Music single license or can I install it on all of my Macs? Is there an iTunes/Windows version? I run 5 different iTunes platforms...
edit: Never mind, I just found that the license will run on 8 machines but I don't think it "does Windows". Looks nice though, I think I will get it as I have been considering Amarra Lite which needs a frickkin' dongle and is only for one computer. It will run on all three Macs though, even the one running OS10.5.