Pure Vinyl/Amarra

PV makes iTunes sound thin/weak and cheap sounding.

25% improvement over iTunes.

Gary, since I am a WiFi man, PV requires Airfoil (hijacks airtunes) to play via my modded Airport Express. Apple has some encryption at the AE interface that the channel D guys have not worked around yet (in the works). Amarra piggybacks some of the Apple code and thus does not need Airfoil. Anyway, when I tried Airfoil with PV it sounded constricted. I may be missing something with AF and will contact them....

To Liz, and others who agree with her: The OP asked for "any thoughts on the two". (Pure Vinyl vs Amarra). If someone reading that had no clue whatsoever what Pure Vinyl or Amarra were, then I guess they wouldn't have any thoughts on the two.

Glory's question was aimed at people with experience listening to both. Don't attack Glory because you don't know what the question means. Sit back, read the responses that follow and maybe you will learn something.

I made the leap to a mac mini music server. After getting all of the hardware and laboriously ripping a dozen disks with XLD I hooked it us to my music system using Pure Music. I have a very revealing Meridian based system that had been mainly HT via an Oppo BDP-83.

After tweaking the PM repeatedly, I just couldn't get the level of sound quality that I had through the Oppo with apodising in the Meridian system. It was nice but it fell short in many aspects. I was really upset that I had spent $$ on a system that I would not use.

I had initially rejected Amarra based on reviews and the price differential with Pure Music. Since they also offered a demo I downloaded the Amarra Mini. Whoa, what an improvement. Whatever their special sauce is, in my system, it is well worth the extra couple of hundred dollars. I am so thankful that they are both available for trial.

Dave, what DAC were you using?