Amarra or amarra symphony???

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

I used amarra trial for 2 weeks, I did not like it cause colored the sound
I rather listen via iTunes Aiff format trough DAC USB connection mo natural than with amarra.
Was my exp doesn't mean is not good.
My 2 cents

i just went through the amarra / audirvana decision process... went with audirvana. a 2009 mac mini and audirvana is resulting in the best computer based playback i've yet attained (have not yet tried amarra).

@Drubin - the next release of audirvana, v1.5, will have eq capability (and will be free for all 1.x users).

All of these players have versions that sound different. The best thing is to get advice from someone who has tried them all. I selected Amarra and I use an older version which can be loaded here:

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=105236.0

Once you have Amarra, just go to the "extras" folder, do a "clear preferences" and then install version 4318.

Full Amarra has the huge advantage of not only sounding superior, it has an EQ built-in that is the best on the planet. Totally transparent. I use it at home at at shows. Its like replacing your $10K speakers with $100K speakers. EQ is mostly useful for the speaker and somewhat for room bass resonances. Here are instructions on how to use EQ:

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/recommended-systems

Steve N.
Empirical Audio