Amarra for iTunes at RMAF...

Thanks, Sidssp for your remarks. The phrasing that I refer to is not chestiness, it is phrasing much like a great trumpet player is able to do; sort of like Miles Davis. Their were many trumpeters with more power but I know of non that could phrase as he did. I do appreciate your' comments, I had a Rex so I am familiar with what a Bat pre will inject into the audible picture. I tend to think it may be a bit cleaner without Amarra, but I am still evaluating :)

Thanks again.

I joked about that too...LOL!!!

As a Windows software engineer for some 15 years now (independent consultant) I agree with Antipodes_audio. Windows has it's place, but OSX is a unix platform...read 40+ years of ongoing development. Unix in any flavor is inherently more stable and manages memory FAR FAR BETTER (and I would know) than Windows. I like Windows (heck, I make a living with it) but would I ever let it serve up my music ? AH! noway. It simply does not (fact not opinion) manage memory or the processor as well as OSX and every developer knows this. I write for both platforms .NET for Win and Objective C for iPhone apps/OSX. Bits are not just bits when you are dealing with irq's, threading stacks time-slices and the such. Again, I make a living with Windows dev, but I will tell you right now, if it came to a mission critical system...Ah Chuck I'll take the Unix based system for $200.00. I am always amazed when folks attempt to make Windows look as stable or handle memory or the processor (multi-cores) as well as OSX.

Not trying to start anything just saying that as an informed developer on how the internals of both work..., well I think you get it.

Opps, my comment was intended for the response dated 10/19/2009 of Antipodes_audio. i failed to take note that this thread was multiple pages. My bad.

Antipodes_audio wrote:
"The sound of a Mac without Amarra sounded like you had swapped out the Coax cable and inserted an AT&T cable - cleaner, faster, better dynamics and PRAT, but with the downside of a touch of glare. Amarra more or less removes that glare, depending on how you get the bits out of the Mac."

I agree with this almost 100% except I am not sure I am willing to agree with the "glare" portion. I am still new to Amarra, but what I hear so far is a bit of a fuller sound at the expense of a seeming loss in very minute phrasing. I am really big into capturing the phrasing of singers, especially females correctly such as Eva Cassidy (Song Birr/ Somewhere Over the rainbow) and Jane Monheit (Lovers, Dreamer & Me/ Slow Like Honey).

On the Jane Monheit piece mentioned above compare if you will the track (slow like honey) at 0:50 seconds with Amarra and without and let me know if anyone else hears a slight loss in information through the very subtle phrasing when Amarra is used. This may seem like I am being overly analytical, but come-on this is highend and I am talking about spending a grand. If it doesn't do EVERYTHING better than the native Core Audio Engine, I may have to reconsider.

Thanks,

Don

I don't know about better, but different maybe. Try Media Monkey. Also just in case you were unaware, the fastest way I have found to access my music in iTunes is the icon to the left on the top bar towards the right. You will see 3 iconic buttons which allow you to choose between coverflow, grid or list. I use the list and then I go into 'view' (on a windows box) and choose show browser. This way I can select via genre, artist or album. Typically I select via artist and it is so much faster as it only lists the artist once (unless they feature another artist then you will see it again), next to the right of it you can filter even further by selecting that artists' album. Hope it helps.

I worked at one time for the pc board manufacturer American Megatrends on bios systems, the burn they are speaking of is a hardware burn in to make sure that there are no hardware failures within a certain period of say 24 or 48 hours of intense tests being performed on the board.

Well, again I agree with your comments. I too first thought it sounded like maybe some EQ tricks were going on. I am not fully convinced yet, but I just ordered (this morning) 4GB of mem for my mac mini Core2Duo and I will be doing further tests after the mem arrives. I am beginning to think it may be more than just an EQ change taking place, further listening sessions are required.

I don't buy the bios burn in at all. Doesn't mean it's not true, just means I don't believe it. I know there is a lot of non-sense non-science as it relates to audio and I think the BIOS "burn in" lends itself to that camp :)

I left the BIOS argument alone, some things in audio are so far flung I just opt to stay away, but I would like to report that I have decided to purchase the Amarra software. After careful listening sessions I am convinced (well 95% convinced and that's good enough for govt work) that it does in fact offer tangible results as it relates to creating a more-real musical presentation.