Amarra or amarra symphony???

See my previous post on this subject. The problem with the basic Amarra HiFi software is it does not support HD (24/96 and above) FLAC playback directly. You need to either first convert FLAC to AIFF or upgrade to the full version of Amarra. In the end I went from Amarra HiFi to Audirvarna Plus to play HD FLAC files directly. To me, Audirvarna Plus was a very good $50 investment.

Mgattmch, thanks. I actually was not considering Amarra Hifi. I was looking at Amarra at $189 or Amarra Symphony at $495.
BTW, I did also try pure music, there was a problem with it through. After playing music for a few seconds, it started sounding very strange, kinda like spinning/skipping vinyl.

Audirvana is getting the spotlight these days. Less expensive and great sound, but no EQ, if that's part of your reason for choosing Amarra.

Take a look at their website and compare the different features to see which one will meet your needs.

Also try a free demo of both. I demo'd Amarra HiFi and Amarra and choose to purchase Amarra because it had the eq and gap-less play back, which is essential for my purposes.

I also tried Audirvana + and found that I liked Amarra better.

I understand the creator of A+ is now working on new plug ins for the next version so the EQ might be in the works but there was an offer to buy the software at the current price before it gets upped with the new features.

If you don't need DSD playback, I wholly recommend BitPerfect from the appstore.

I think A+ sounds better than Amarra when A+ runs in Lion with Direct/INT mode but BP sounds surprisingly close to A+ and is a lot cheaper