Pure Music vs. Audirvana Plus

Wait a MacBook?

You mean the new one?

With a single USB-C port?

Avoid that.

Get a MBA at least.

Ideally use something like a USB DAC - and use FireWire (Thunderbolt adaptor) or Thunderbolt HDD for your music files since it is unlikely you can keep all your music on the small internal HDD

Or use a Thunderbolt-Ethernet adaptor to get your music on the network.

Another vote for Audirvana. I also have Amarra...

Thanks all for your comments - I have the newest MacBookPro, with two Thunderbolt and two USB ports. I bought an external hard drive that has both hookups. I do not have a network set-up, everything is hard wired.

I downloaded a free trial version of both software programs, and I must say that Pure Music sounded significantly better in my system, and I have pretty much decided on it already on just the third day of the trials. Quite a bit bigger soundstage, and better imaging are the biggest differences. I also had some issues with the library portion of the Audirvana software.

I am by no means done experimenting yet, but so far Pure Music seems quite a bit better.

When I was using a tricked out mini as my server, I also found Pure Music to sound more musical with better body and dimensionality than Amara or Audirvana. Later I came to enjoy the flexibility of the onboard parametric EQ in Pure Music. I did not find it to be at all susceptible to drop outs or pops.