amarra or pure music..?

Before making a final choice I listened to both Amarra and PM on my friends system, which consists of Vandersteen 5a speakers, ARC power and a Rega DAC which recently replaced the EE Minimax Plus DAC.

Using either interface was easy, so I don't really see an issue there. But PM had a small edge in soundstage depth and width. From top to bottom we could hear very little difference in sonic character, if any. Glare was not an issue and both did very well with creating a sense of space around instruments. Since my Merlin speakers are great at imaging and soundstage I went with PM and couldn't be happier.

I think people should try both. It is likely that this is more a matter of synergy and taste than one being clearly "better" than the other. They're pretty darn close!

Rob

Maybe the question of system matching is coming into play here with Pure Music and Amarra as other posters stated they prefered one of these computer programs over the other. I certainly don't consider hearing both PM and Amarra through Vandersteen 5a to be the ultimate test of the two programs--despite Vandersteen's strong virtues these speakers lack state of the art drivers.

I took another listen to both Pure Music and Amarra as I own both and I can confirm there definately is an audible difference on my system (EE MiniMax Plus DAC and Paradigm Signature S1 V.3)between these two FLAC player programs. Amarra sounds richer, warmer and more satisfying with Pure Music sounding leaner, especially in the high frequencies.

I've purchased both Amarra and Pure Music, but Audirvana Plus is my current player of choice.

Bbopman - The only thing that can change sound, if digital file is the same, is jitter (it was verified by Stereophile that Airport Express transmission is bit-perfect).

Music stored on the hard drive has not timing. Music is transferred to AE compressed (ALAC) in packets and buffered (few seconds buffer). Timinig is created by AE. I cannot imagine how playback program could change sound with wireless AE unless CD was ripped differently (Itunes does not rip bit-perfect).