Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...

Still very relevant though Audiofun. The interesting thing I found, apart from the Mac sounding better, was how they also sounded different. The best sound I could get out of a PC sounded a little hazy and soft, which I relate to the sound of a coaxial SPDIF cable. The sound of a Mac without Amarra sounded like you had swapped out the Coax cable and inserted an AT&T cable - cleaner, faster, better dynamics and PRAT, but with the downside of a touch of glare. Amarra more or less removes that glare, depending on how you get the bits out of the Mac.

Thanks Dan, I will keep an eye out for that new Weiss INT202. As you say, the Vesta is hard to justify. Paying similar money you can get Weiss to throw in a DAC, it would seem.

I tried a Lynx card briefly (it was only on loan) and slightly preferred the Empirical Off-ramp 3 with Superclock, so bought the Off-ramp. But I may have been hasty there so may buy myself a Lynx card and give it some more time. Particularly as I run 3 way active speakers and may want to do the crossovers in software and use six of those output channels on the AES16.

All: I've been playing around with the Sample Manager demo version this weekend and think I like the files I've upsampled. I first converted to 24 bit, then upsampled that file to 96k (I'm limited to 96k as I use the MW Transporter; Transporters won't play 192k files). My question is whether anyone has experimented with the various dither options and if so what their reactions are?

Thanks in advance,

Randy

Rrsclyde,

I convert 44.1k/16 bit files to 44.1k/24 bit, then that output is sent to my upsampler which upsamples it again to DSD. Aside from the DSD upsampling, the 44.1k/24 bit seems to make the high frequencies have more air and sound generally cleaner. Just dont ask me why?

Antipodes_audio wrote:
"The sound of a Mac without Amarra sounded like you had swapped out the Coax cable and inserted an AT&T cable - cleaner, faster, better dynamics and PRAT, but with the downside of a touch of glare. Amarra more or less removes that glare, depending on how you get the bits out of the Mac."

I agree with this almost 100% except I am not sure I am willing to agree with the "glare" portion. I am still new to Amarra, but what I hear so far is a bit of a fuller sound at the expense of a seeming loss in very minute phrasing. I am really big into capturing the phrasing of singers, especially females correctly such as Eva Cassidy (Song Birr/ Somewhere Over the rainbow) and Jane Monheit (Lovers, Dreamer & Me/ Slow Like Honey).

On the Jane Monheit piece mentioned above compare if you will the track (slow like honey) at 0:50 seconds with Amarra and without and let me know if anyone else hears a slight loss in information through the very subtle phrasing when Amarra is used. This may seem like I am being overly analytical, but come-on this is highend and I am talking about spending a grand. If it doesn't do EVERYTHING better than the native Core Audio Engine, I may have to reconsider.

Thanks,

Don

I have a question about the best software for ripping and organizing music files on Win XP.

I rip CD's via a Sony DVD payer, into Apple lossless, into iTunes with library storage in a NAS Netgear storage unit. I access these music files by SONOS (modded by Rick Cullen) into my Northstar 192 DAC.

My question is...I'm not that excited with iTunes software in sorting and managing the files. Does anyone have suggestions about a better, more effective software to replace iTunes on Win.

Thanks