Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...

Blindjim, you have accused me of a few things, and with no justification. What is it you have to hide? The statement that bits is bits does say it all. Timing of those bits is critical to great sound and I am surprised there are still people that don't get that.

Let's take just one of your accusations - that I am biased towards Macs. I have owned computers since the first PC in 1980 and the first Mac I purchased was about six months ago I think. I am typing this post on a PC, because I like it better than the Mac. I have always very much disliked Macs as I am an old DOS-head who knows how to wring every last bit of performance out of a PC and I am pretty ignorant when it comes to Macs. Those are facts. The only reason why I have a Mac in the house is that I had just spent months comparing different PC builds, file format and software player combinations, including the cMP builds, and then tried a bog standard Mac and was utterly surprised to hear what a Mac could do without breaking a sweat. Not anywhere near perfect but detail resolution, dynamics and PRAT were superior to any iteration of PC I had tried to date. So much so that it was screamingly obvious that the Mac had something very important going for it. That fairly standard Mac did in fact suffer a bit of glare compared with the PC and so I set out to see what could be done to remove it.

This is a forum Blindjim - a place where people state their opinions without the need to state their scientific evidence, or have to repeatedly say IMO ad nauseum. Your attack of me for stating my opinion says a lot about you buddy. Your accusations of bias and some percuniary motive show you up for what you are. No I don't sell Macs. Do you accuse everyone that has an opinion that is different to yours of being a vendor of what they like?

I stated my opinion on my conclusions about what sounded best to me following man months of effort to try just about everything I could. You stated your opinion, not about equipment, but of me. Where do you get the right to do that Blindjim. You don't know me or anything about me. Search my posts and you will see I have declared my interest as a designer and marketer of cables. I refrain from commenting on cables in any way that might be a conflict of interest. I do not have anything to do with any computer audio products. At one point I looked at doing that but have decided against it - so I feel I should be allowed to post my opinions without personal attacks.

Lets just take one last point from your rant. You state you disagree with me that we should attempt to create a sound system in its own right. I believe that deciding an USB device should perform well on anyone's PC is counter to just about anything else audiophiles seem to agree on, therefore I use a Mac for music (only) and PCs for everything else. Your position is that that is unreasonable. Do you, Blidjim, insist that your speakers should be good plant stands too, use your DVD player as a CD transport because they jolly well should be able to do both jobs, insist on a teflon coating on your amps so that the fried eggs don't stick? So why insist that computer audio should be dumbed down to run on your workhorse, general purpose PC?

I have to say I am a bit stunned at how expressing opinions on Audiogon that others don't like or don't agree with gets personal attacks, accusations of bias, of not having actually heard what I have expressed a view on. Is this normal here? Why is it not easy to just express a contrary view without making it personal?

I apologise to you Blindjim for getting angry at your attacks. I will try harder to keep my shirt on. Please make an effort too.

Chadeffect, you can also tweak the Mac (much as I haven't enjoyed that much - Apple does not make it easy), and with the latest versions of OS X, you can install it on a PC build. I do agree that the way Mac vertically integrates the OS and the box is a pain as none of the standard Macs are ideal. I came to the conclusions that I did by trying OS X on similar, and sometimes the same hardware as the hardware that worked well with PC builds. That may not be practical for the average joe - but that is true of the better PC builds too, and arguably true for all high end computer audio at the moment. There is a long way between the best builds and plug and play, sadly

Antipodes, I guess that I'm an anti-DOS person. I have had Apples since the Apple II and the 128 Mac. I could never understand why anyone would tolerate a 1960's operating system. But I digress.

I have a music server presently that uses Foobar and Exact Copy. I have to use VNC and a remote desktop to run it-an HP netbook, the only MS computer I have owned and the last. All of these programs work okay although with disinterest in being intuitive. Overall the server sound it quite good. I am told by a friend, however, that a Mac Mini running Amarra and using the Minerva handily outperforms my Exemplar server. I must say that I will rejoice in the convenience of Amarra and the Mac.

Hi Antipodes_audio,

I have had the same experience. I have found that sending cds ripped as AIFFs on the mac in itunes without Amarra, with the digital output settings set to 24bit 44.1, and sent to my upsampler causes quite a change in "air" to the presentation when compared to 16/44.1. That is just one setting change! Obviously some recordings can suffer, but most well recorded tracks sound much better.

On the PC, which is custom built and running Vista, I have music production software which uses its own ASIO, and depending on which software is running, the same computer with the same interface etc sounds very different. So hardware changes are a whole other story!

To be honest I have given up for the time being with my source. The flexibility I have now far out weighs any slight changes in presentation. At the moment my system sounds great and I cannot really complain. I stay interested and listen to what new equipment I can, and keep my software up to date. I think this computer source quality situation will run for quite some time. I guess Amarra with a firewire interface is the best compromise at the moment.

The non pro music playback software on the PC still seems a little under developed to me. Sonics aside.