Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...


As my listening habits are split about 70% from iTunes and 30% vinyl I was pretty excited to see Stereomojo report on the new Amarra software for iTunes that can increase the sound quality of your digital music.

http://www.stereomojo.com/Rocky%20Mountain%20Audio%20Fest%202009%20Show%20Report%20/RockyMountainAudioFest2009ShowReport.htm

I was somewhat less excited to see that the price tag on this software add-on is almost $1k. Has anyone heard the Amarra software and have thoughts on if it's worth this price? Are there any similar products out there for a more reasonable price?

Happy listening!
jmleonard400
You never know. Changes to a PC's BIOS are claimed to have a burn in time. I have better things to test than that one. But when I first tried Amarra, I heard it as different, but was not convinced it was better. It seems more like an EQ difference at first. The more I tweaked the whole Mac thing, the more it became clear to me that it was indeed better at capturing the full harmonics of an instrument or voice - and without it the harmonics were slightly grayed-out and flattened. I think this was due to me improving the performance of the Mac, but hey, there may have been some burn in, maybe...
I worked at one time for the pc board manufacturer American Megatrends on bios systems, the burn they are speaking of is a hardware burn in to make sure that there are no hardware failures within a certain period of say 24 or 48 hours of intense tests being performed on the board.
Well, again I agree with your comments. I too first thought it sounded like maybe some EQ tricks were going on. I am not fully convinced yet, but I just ordered (this morning) 4GB of mem for my mac mini Core2Duo and I will be doing further tests after the mem arrives. I am beginning to think it may be more than just an EQ change taking place, further listening sessions are required.
The BIOS burn in comments I was referring to have been made by guys making CMP PCs, and their claim is that to assess a BIOS change you need to make the change and then let it burn in. This is after the hardware burn in you refer to.