Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...

ntipodes_audio
Blindjim, you have accused me of a few things, and with no justification.

Me>> Accused? Do tell.
Please do tell me exactly what I have acused you of and where I made such an accusation in my posts here? You’ll have my most profound and sincere apology for it/them. Truly. I’ve looked over it/them a few times and only see where I asked a question, and indicated a feeling you might be biased towards Macs as my worst comment…. So? I’m biased towards tubes. Life moves on. No harm no foul. Sheesh..

Nothing else did I see which could possibly have been intended or considered to be untoward.

You>> What is it you have to hide?

Me>> Chief, I’m an open book. Ask anything of me and you’ll get the truth as I know it to be.

On my personal page I list where I live. That I’m a private member… not a dealer. Did you?

Nope. You didn’t.

I list my system and keep it updated. I get involved. I learn, listen, and share what experiences I have had, and have done this for some time now. I participate regularly to those ends.

When one reads between the lines they then, become the author. As you have done here.

If there is indeed a rant herein, it is your own… and quite an invalid and persistent one. In fact you make me out as accusatory, and then escalate your errant perspective of my commentary to be a personal attack!

You do understand the meaning of the words you choose don’t you? That’s kind of important.

Take a few deep breaths Anti… and only put those words back into my mouth which I’ve spit out…. Not your ill conceived inferences of my statements. Just copy and paste them below if you wish. That way it’s undeniable.

Need another ex of how you try to bend my words?

You>> 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.

Me>> My attack. Of you. That’s rich. The English language obviously poses some challenges for you, huh buddy?. You might want to get used to that IMO too… it’s very prevalent around here, among other web shorthand phrases.. SOTA, FWIW, RMV, RWV, lol, etc.

You>> 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?.


Me>> OK. At the risk of further slander and as my curiosity now has the better of me, just what am I, given it sure seems as you do know?

Asking a question is not an accusation.

Good we know, or better still I know you are not a dealer of anything other than cables. Super.

In this thread I’ve noticed your stance for computer based audio has an emphatic nod towards use of Apple computers with a noticeable disdain for pcs used to the same ends. To wit your orig intimation that only a Mac is designed/able/configured, in fact you chose the word ‘optimized” for music streams. I believe you said optimized. I wasn’t sure as it was misspelled but it fit spelled right or not. That’s no biggie really… I got the drift of it..

**I’ve included further proof of this noticed condescension using your own words below. Eg., copying and pasting.

You>> …so I feel I should be allowed to post my opinions without personal attacks.

Me>> You so like that word, ‘attack’. Grow some thicker skin or take the measures necessary to diminish your paranoia. I’ve not yet attacked you. And probably won’t. It’s not my bag dude.

If anything I’ve found forum posts quite resemble emails… neither venue conveys tone, or intent nearly as well as spoken communications. But there we are… entirely open to being misread and therefore misunderstood. One can also fall prey to another whose ego seems to have been injured, be it truly the case or not.

you >> 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.

Me>> Disagree? Yep. Ya got me there. It’s OK to do that right? Disagree, I mean. I disagree that ONLY one road leads to Rome. Simple, huh?

You>> 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.

Me>> Well, there it is… USB SUCKS ON just about anyone’s PC. Where exactly did you come to divine this golden nugget from? I suppose there has been some published concensus which says that somewhere. You should forward this info to Gordon Rankin, John Stroncher, and all those other designers which are pretty well vested into audio via USB, ASAP

Whenever someone contends that one particular methodology is ‘best’ they profess their own prejudices and intolerance for some other.

In this hobby/forum the word best is both chocolate and vanilla, for it is in the ear of the beholder what truly is best. If those ears aren't full of ice cream, they'll know!

You>>. 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?

Me>> bingo! We have a winner in the condescending predisposition of computer based audio hierarchy AS YOU SAID, AND I’LL QUOTE
“… Computer audio should be dumbed down to run on your workhorse, general purpose PC?”

Me>> Nope. And if that ain’t attitude I don’t know what is. How's it feel to have just slighted any number of pc USB audio users and designers all in one fell swoop?

Now that you mention it I do have two open ports on my main speaker, but they are in the rear of them, so I’ll nix the notion of placing plants in them… but thanks. I’d never have thought of that before. Good Idea… well for front ported speakers maybe.

Eggs on amps? I do applaud the novelty but I see only poached as being viable and I’m not keen on Eggs Benedict anymore.

I’ve also almost completely stopped using the cup holder on my disc player for beverages. Well, almost. Now and then I'll use it as a TV dinner tray for like a Hot Pocket or something. Do remember, I use a pc for music and it has no cup holder, anymore.

I’ve no idea what has gotten your goat so profoundly here…. However I’ll not stand for anyone who twists words or pulls them out of thin air to make something poor out of something that is not…. As you obviously have attempted to do here…. To me. You are simply dead wrong completely. Infatically off the beam, as it were.

I’m no pc advocate and have no true allegiance to them at all. I’ve said as much in this very thread. Were circumstances different, I’d likely have a Mac in addition to the few pcs I already have. I’ve spent some length of time and energy to devise what I feel is my own personal SOTA hard drive based audio solution and it’s far more than merely pluggin and playing different devices into them.

I’ve arrived at my solution as compared to other one box CDP s previously and now available as it is to me to do. There’s more to it than plug and play. Period. If one takes the time to shut down services Bill Gates thinks are needed which aren’t actually, not for audio playback anyhow. So streamlining the OS is important and I’ve done that completely with my main audio source pc… My “workhorse” pc doesn’t receive those levels of attention. Nor is it needed or necessary.

Memory, front bus speeds, CPUs, drivers, etc. and which media player works best with all that... it's all important. It's all been addressed in my dumb ol' PC.

My take on anything is that it should be made available for everyone at least on some level and at some point. That was my main reason for posting here … to ask ‘when’ for pcs, in this Mac oriented thread. Mainly because no one else had asked yet.

Anti your veiled apology is not accepted. The only injury you’ve endured herein is by your own hand. By misconstruing the Audiogon membership and me personally, that anyone would think of promoting an attack on another posters comments. No one does that sort of thing here and sticks around too long.

You’ve not been a member long enough to see this as a reality yet. In fact you don’t even post what country you consider home. You don’t post your system, any reviews, etc. you’re as anonymous as they come. You’ve only served up input on a few instances.

Additionally as a self proclaimed cable dealer you failed to list even that info on your page here.

Why? What do you have to hide? No declaration of country, none of being in truth a proclaimed dealer. Well compared to me you have apparently something to hide, so you must feel everyone else does too.

I wish no one here any harm, injustice, or libel of any kind. Ever. I feel you should seriously rethink all of this and try to be less paranoid… So keep your shirt on, buddy. This is a pretty safe place and the people here are informed, informative, and friendly most all of the time. Get a grip. Dig some tunes and try to not read to much into what is posted as being personally invasive, it seldom is. It wasn’t here. That’s for sure… well, not on my behalf anyhow.

I apologize to the other posters here for having to take up your thread to vindicate myself from innocuous unfounded, and arbitrary comments made to me by another poster. Sorry.

Good luck Anti Pod

Oh my goodness. There is just too much irrelevant BS there to respond to mate. Let's get back to topic.

In my experience I have gotten better sound from MACs than PCs, despite being prejudiced against MACs. Particularly when Amarra is brought into the equation - provided you use an appropriate device for getting the bits off the computer. And I have found the MAC is better to be fairly powerful and have 8GB of RAM. All of this is IMHO of course.

Now its your turn. This time, instead of wondering about my biases and motives, and my insistence on spelling using English rather than an American version of it, how about you let us know what you think sounds best.

You're very special indeed. I thought as much. Probably just a child too.

You're right on one point, all of your commentary as it pertained to me, was irelevant BS... or you would have substantiated it with facts as anyone would. I dispatched each one of your statements in turn.

you had your opportunity to stand up for yourself and you chose to ignore it. it should be quite clear now you are the one full of BS and not worth another moment of my time.

Good luck.. and IMO, BTW... I'd not bandy about that English vs. American business around here very much, or keep using it as a crutch. Relations, good manners, and all that. Do try to show a better face down the road. Right! Carry on mate.

Incredible.

Sorry Chadeffect, we must have posted at the same time and then I got distracted. I agree that it is hard to see the current state of the art of computer audio being at all mature, and that is one of my concerns about Amarra. Right now it is worth the price, for what it does, but who knows whether something might hit the market for under $100 or even free that can do most of what it does. The good news is that being immature computer audio will only get better.

I agree big-time with one of your other points too that close to the best with an interface that fits your needs is better than accepting a poor interface. One of the things most people that use computer audio talk about is how they get more out of a large collection when they have a computer audio interface then when they have to find, handle, catalog etc physical CDs.

The interface I prefer is Foobar, and I don't like iTunes at all. And interfaces like J River make me really angry, especially since its sound is so good. But I am getting so much better sound with iTunes/Amarra that I am putting up with it for now.

My feeling is that ethernet will dominate in time, and that its implementation will get to a point where the precise setup or flavour of the computer will become unimportant. This will mean DACs will be more like the Sonos and Squeezebox but with much better interfaces, or perhaps the player interface could still reside on the computer because of its interface superiority, and it will signal the DAC what to play. For now the ethernet interfaces aren't that flash given their theoretical advantage. Perhaps the PS DAC with ethernet bridge will be the first of the new breed.

Can I ask what pro audio music interfaces are worth having a look at?