Snow Leopard and audio quality

They have made only jitter improvements, like the jitter reduction effect instead making on the main core audio.

Win7 is on par with Snow Leopard. I just got through testing this with a USB Audio Research DAC7.

I purchased the MacIntosh under the assumption that it would sound better than the PC with Win7, I can't tell a difference.

Since the gear will make a difference, here is what was used:
Win7 PC (home built, quad core proc, Solid State Drive, 2gb ram)
Latest model 17" MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM (upgraded)
Audio Research DAC7
McIntosh C500 tube pre-amp
McIntosh MC501 monoblocks (solid state)
Wilson Sophia 2's
Transparent Super cabling (XLR interconnects)

Joelz... that's interesting. What were you using as playback sw? iTunes? or something else?

I used iTunes (x64 bit).

In the configuration settings for each OS, I made sure the OS (Leopard and Win7) was not doing any conversion by setting the audio output to 48kHz and playing WAV files ripped from CD.

Also, iTunes has the EQ on by default on Snow Leopard where iTunes on Win7 did not have the eq on, so I turned off the EQ on Snow Leopard before doing any listening tests.

Joelz,

How do you run iTunes in 64 bit?

I have SL on Mac Mini. When I run the Activity Monitor, I see everything is 64 bit except iTunes. I am running iTunes 9.02. Is there a 64 bit version of iTunes out there?