Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...

Opps, my comment was intended for the response dated 10/19/2009 of Antipodes_audio. i failed to take note that this thread was multiple pages. My bad.

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