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What's your favorite Apple-based music program?

The J.River Media Center comes highly recommended and was at or near the top of most of TAS's sonic evaluations in their 4-part series about computer-based audio (Dec'11-Mar'12). However, looking over their website and some supporting forums, it appears that it's really a PC-based program. According to what I read on a JRM user forum, JRMC works on a Macintosh if you use Bootstrap to install Windows 7 and run it from there. That runs into a bunch more money and I'm not all that enamored of running the music software in a non-native mode.

OTOH, there's ChannelD's PureMusic. It's $129 vs. JRM's $50, but it's very Mac-friendly.

Any other insights, recommendations, or warnings? I just got an AQ Dragonfly asynchronous USB DAC and want to feed it the best data stream without spending several more hundreds of dollars. I also want to be able to download some 24/96 and 24/88.2 files from HDTracks, so the music-handling s/w has to be comfortable handling FLAC files on a MacBook Pro (OSX Mountain Lion).
johnnyb53
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bpuklich
11 posts
 
Check out Decibel over at sbooth.org. Plays from memory, direct HOG mode, FLAC playback to my asynchronous USB Ayre QB-9, etc. Worth more than it costs. And it just works very well.
doggiehowser
672 posts
 
I also second Audirvana Plus but make sure to get the new beta that supports Direct Mode as well.

I have Pure Music, BitPerfect, Amarra and now A+. I bought Amarra when it was about 600 bucks and the only thing they gave me when they dropped the price was a second licence (I should have had 6! :))

I used to prefer PureMusic but Amarra 2.3 onwards was a big improvement (I think rev 2344?) and it became my player of choice. The new 2.4.2 seems to have gotten that magic back from the releases post 2344.

But A+ is still my preferred player especially since it is the other player that can play back DSD files.
soix
9,800 posts
 
TAS did a brief comaprison of Audirvana Plus, PureMusic, and Amarra in the September issue. Sound quality sounded like pretty much a wash with very small differences between the three, but the Audirvana Plus had a couple features the others didn't -- ability to play higher rez DSD files (Amarra could "only" do up to 2.8) and ability to switch/compare DACs without shutting down). Best of luck.
doggiehowser
672 posts
 
Amarra does DSD??

ps I think PM does full 2xDSD too
johnnyb53 OP
3,510 posts
 
What does "integer mode capable" mean? I've seen it mentioned on some of the music software websites, but not explained.
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