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Peter - I'm sure you have good knowledge in this area but you are a little biased to be taken to seriously. You sell a product that competes with Amarra on some level and you're bashing it without much information. I think you are looking for a level of information that virtually nobody around here would understand. Just because you found the Podcast uninformative means little in terms of the entire CA readership. I'm having a hard time understanding your English about the bit perfect comments. I can say that Amarra is bit perfect as I have tested it to the best of my ability.

 

"I guess it's a matter of how things are brought. And this one is brought wrongly."

 

I'm totally lost and have no idea what that comment means.

 

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The Amarra concept is great.

 

There is some very good sounding computer sounding software around, I think MediaMonkey sounds great and I am sure Peter's software is also very good, although I have to admit to be too frightened of it to use it!

 

But itunes has by far and way the best user interface, it has the itouch remote, multi room capability, ipod compatibility, it is just in a completely different league for the average low tech user like me, BUT the sound is a shocker - either on PC (Vista or Xp) or Mac. I have all three.

 

So this would be the perfect combination if Amarra sorts out the sound. The question is that worth $1495+.

 

As the Amarra people have not replied to my email I guess I will have to wait and see. But I think that may be the best strategy, see what the market does... Podcast 2 was great but I am going to try not to get swept away by either Amarra Hype or Amarra bashing...

 

Trying to make sense of all the bits...MacMini/Amarra -> WavIO USB to I2S -> DDDAC 1794 NOS DAC -> Active XO ->Bass Amp Avondale NCC200s, Mid/Treble Amp Sugden Masterclass -> My Own Speakers

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Mantissa (as used here) is basically scientific notation - the representation of very large numbers (both positive and negative ones) into a more compact amount of digits. The use of scientific notation is usually based upon an agreement of how 'accurately' you want to represent the numbers. .. kind of like MP3's in a way. I think that Peter is saying that the explanation given in the podcast (#2) is not adequate to explain any differences in sound. - I don't agree with Peter in fact, but I do agree with him in principle. There is more to it. .... If there actually IS an "it". That is what copyright and trademarking is all about though, isn't it?

 

- markr

 

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I'm totally lost and have no idea what that comment means.

 

What it means is kind of up to you and my speculations on the oter side. Don't blame too much on my english although I know that is a problem for some.

Please note I changed my last sentence because at reading it back I did not want to suggest something you might have read in that. But you just missed my change. Sorry for that.

 

Chris, I am not biased. Please read my earlier post for that. Also I am not bashing Amarra. I am not even bashing the interview, and as I said, it is a nice (and fresh) thing from you to to. However, the things not obvious at all and questioned by most, should not be taken for granted in an interview which is just about that. It is just the atmosphere I sense from it which includes *my* interpretation first.

 

What do we all want ? there may come a time you interview me, and in the atmosphere of the Amarra interview I will be telling you that I can do my math even better ? would you dig *that* ?

Of course you wouldn't. Not anymore. At least that's what I'd hope.

 

You are genuinly surprised about better math, and I say "come on now !", just because I know a little more.

I said "genuinly" and I say this because it is obvious. So there is nothing wrong with that. But isn't it so that a little while back each and every thread ended with the questionable "fact" about software making a difference, and how that is possible and it should come with measurements etc. etc. ? "I can do my maths better" would not satisfy me (although it *does* matter, as I said earlier). And no, I don't say you ever asked that question, but if anything the interview could have gone about that, and while the subject was there anyway, it deserved more than that little second.

 

I removed that last sentence because I thought you might take it as you were to blame, while I guess you are not. I am really sorry if you got the impression afterall, which of course is my fault because the sentence was there.

 

Lastly, please try to see that for some like me it would really be interesting how people get it done with the first question if they really got it done. This is not bashing. It may look biased because of the outcome of the interview which was not under my control.

 

Peter

 

PS: Maybe it helps you if I tell you that if Amarra would sound better than my own software, I'd instantly buy it. In order to understand that I'm afraid you have to dig into the history of XX.

 

 

 

 

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I think you missed something about Amarra. The code has been being developed over the last 30 or so years. Plenty of development time for them to be able to claim some sort of superiority. We are probably talking hundreds of thousands of hours here.

 

Don't misunderstand me, I don't think that $1500 is warranted for their product either. In reality, it should be sold for a tenth of that - even with the 'one trick' of adjusting the bit and sampling rate on the fly. It is just player software after all and most of the development costs must have been absorbed YEARS ago. I won't be one jumping on this bandwagon. I much more favor the approach that you take in your pricing. Though I know that it isn't the return that you probably deserve for your efforts, It is however more fair to consumers.

 

Too bad that you don't develop for Mac, or I would already be an owner of your product. Maybe I will be able to get some benefit from your product when Windows 7 is released and I run it on my MacPro.

 

No more hubub needed bub....

- markr

 

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I don't agree with Peter in fact, but I do agree with him in principle. There is more to it. .... If there actually IS an "it". That is what copyright and trademarking is all about though, isn't it?

 

Exactly right Mark. I didn't want my before last post to be too long, but since you are at it anyway, this is what it might come to, indeed *if* an "it" is there.

 

For me this is the most recognizeable, obviously because I receive the question regularly. Also, for me it is 100% clear there is more, because I know what I'm doing. Also, I would never tell exactly what it is. Look for the questions concerned, and see how I answer them.

 

But it also works the other way around :

Assumed (which is what I do, derived from the interview) that Sonic just applies good math, I can guarantee myself Amarra will not sound better. Just because there *is* more.

 

Via some backdoors we are back to the (for me) super interesting results of measurements which ... well, can show differences. Remember, I feel it as an obligation to be able to do it, at not wanting to tell what it is that makes the software sound better. As a matter of fact, right this morning I obtained the first results that start to look reliable (for seeing differences).

 

Oh, before someone comes up with the question, on behalf of Sonic I like to explain a little more about that "math", which of course is not about math at all, and of which I hope at least I did not degrade that to some stupid thing everybody with a small degree is capable of;

 

First of all everything is about huge amounts of data, and it is a very tough job to verify things are correct. Only at switching (shifting) two bytes (for 16 bit data) you'd get static. But for example, switching the two least siginificant bytes in 24 bit data may not even be audible (without comparing).

 

Then it indeed is so that at working with floating point data, it is very easy to make mistakes and somewhere along the line - at one point - an integer is used by accident, which goes unnoticed for looking at the end result, but in the mean time the data is wrong.

 

An example of "unverifyable" would be the digital volume of XXHighEnd, which is propriatary (read : a "secret" though sure not patented) which can really be seen as lossless, and can only be proven it is by veryfying just that. Ok, I assume I have lost everybody right on this point, but I know how easy it was to design it, how more difficult it was to emulate it in advance, how difficult it was to really implement it, with no clues at first whether it really worked or not. Nothing to check, hence nothing to check design mistakes, and nothing to check programming mistakes.

 

In quite another leage is stuff like I'm telling analogue attenuation is wrong. This is not a secret, but on my own forum I once asked the question why people would think it is, and since nobody comes up with an answer anyway, I'd leave to to that as long as it takes. It may sound unrelated, but it really is not, because FIRST one must provide a decent digital volume, which I so far never saw anywhere. And this *is* about math.

 

I could go on with similar examples, but these kind of things can make software sound better, while in the mean time the bits are not mangled with. This is different from "bit perfect" of course, which is a phenomenon in its own leage, like Microsoft in XP making the stupid mistake of keeping on dithering while really nothing happened to the data. That is a design error, or programming error / bug if you want.

And as we all can clearly see, doing those things right help too.

 

But there is still more ...

Peter

 

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I think you missed something about Amarra. The code has been being developed over the last 30 or so years. Plenty of development time for them to be able to claim some sort of superiority. We are probably talking hundreds of thousands of hours here.

 

No, I did not miss this, nor did I claim (and hopefully not really suggest) Amarra is worth nothing much. As a matter of fact, I was the first to tell Chris "you see, software makes a difference" unconditionally, when Chris first reported about it. Chris will recall it.

 

Elsewhere I told, that at the time - to my findings Wavelab sounded the best. I think I also supplied a reason : those guys use other means to write playback programs than a normal, say, Foobar developer. They are driven by as few latency as possible, and one of the things making sound from a PC better, is low latency. Of course everybody is entitled to question this, but I say it does.

 

The one foremost thing these pro guys will have experience with, is getting everything into "low latency mode". The more years, the better it will get (I don't mean by faster hardware of course).

In the mean time much stuff is about keeping the data in tact at the several passes it takes to go from the original source to the end result (say, CD master), knowing that each step degrades (no matter what, it does). So of course all that experience is important.

 

Like I said earlier (similar) : Let Amarra sound as good (which means the best). But now the price ain't right.

In the beginning I was advised by some people (who even wanted to pay that) to ask 3000 euro for XX. I just didn't do it like that which is related to me liking to share. Asking such a high amount is not sharing anymore.

 

Peter

 

Lush^3-e      Lush^2      Blaxius^2.5      Ethernet^3     HDMI^2     XLR^2

XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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I don't know how much different Amarra sounds from soundBlade, but anyone can download the free demo of soundBlade from Sonic Studio directly or from any of the other download sites. Obviously the features are different but I think the sound shouldn't be too much different.

 

I happen to be a big advocate of try before you buy and I commend those vendors who offer free demos or the typical 30-day full refund no questions asked return policies. In a small niche market such as ours, it's often a good indicator that the vendor is confident that his product matches the hype and there will be few returns or negative product comments.

 

I really believe that Sonic Studio is really only interested in selling a complete hardware/software solution and thus $1.5K software with a $6K or $9K DAC is not unreasonable. I expect that 90% of the folks that buy the Amarra software intend to buy either the Model3/4 or Weiss DACs. The future development of Amarra and these DACs may evolve to compliment each other in a way that no other hardware/software combination could (PeterSt - speaking of that, where are you in the development of your DAC for XXHighEnd?).

 

A more comprehensive assessment of the Amarra software might have to come from those few using Amarra and other player software with a Berkeley, Wavelength, Empirical Audio, Benchmark, Bryston or Lavry DAC. We shall see.

 

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This is probably a terribly naive question, since my programming skills are modest, at best, but it seems reasonable to suppose that code written for Windows could be ported to Mac. If you did that, XXHighEnd might get lots of new customers.

 

$1500 for Amarra seems very high indeed, especially since a Weiss DAC2 (and many other DACs) is superb with iTunes. Could Amarra even conceivably make a qualitative difference? If it were possible to get Amarra as a 30 (or 10 day, or any day) Demo, then one could do the experiment. With a security key that should be easy; either it expires or one buys the product. A blind purchase (or a deaf one) does not seem to make any sense at all, even assuming one could afford it.

 

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I agree with lapaix on the trial deal. I feel that for general listeners the Amarra software would never be a consideration. For audiophiles sure it still seems like quite a steep purchase especially dropping $1500 on a DVD-Rom. Keep in mind though that the Sound Blade software Amarra is built on is and has been for awhile "expensive" at $1795 direct from Sonic Studio's site. I personally look at it like a CD Player swap/upgrade in the traditional mindset because on computers obviously software is what plays the music; crappy source = crappy results downstream. In the studio for instance a mastering engineer with the best speakers, pre-amps, amps, and DACs available matched with equal software uses these as tools necessary to get the job done the best they possibly can. A few grand in software is necessary for the studio to perform its duties correctly. So if they have always been serving their software at that price + quality; and Amarra is the only program of its kind, why would they suddenly feel the need to hand out something they've been putting time, effort, & money into for years at a price well below what it has always sold for? I am not saying it's right for software to be so expensive but it makes perfect sense to charge near what has always been so. Concerning expensive software look at Final Cut Studio @ $1200 or Adobe Photoshop Extended @ $999. Necessary evils. I have nothing against Sonic Studio and I applaud them for developing Amarra. Will I buy it in the near future? No, but I also don't have a $5k pair of speakers and $5k DAC it could mate with. Would it be nice? absolutely! It just wouldn't be a reasonable purchase for me personally, and I am fully content with that.

 

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Just to keep things in perspective the multi-functional, multi-channel, multi-mode, soundBlade at $1.8K is for recording, editing, processing, pre-mastering, restoration.

 

As stated before the principle benefit Amarra provides is that it automatically changes sample rates and provides a superior sound playback engine. These are strictly Apple iTunes deficiencies that are eliminated with Amarra. If you want the best out from iTunes then Amarra seems to be the answer and each user can decide whether it's worth $1.5K.

 

 

Finally, I as far as I know all Intel Macs with firewire jacks are capable of 24/192 resolution with firewire DACs. The 24/96 limit for the toslink jack on the Mac is a Mac OS limit as many have demonstrated by using the Windows OS instead to get 24/192 with toslink.

 

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audophilia is a nevrosis similar to many others, you can cure (or nurture?) it by talking and spending money.

The higher the doctor charges the better patients will feel.

Peter is clearly a patient rather than a doctor (he talks a lot and charges little) so I am tempted to trust him.

Now where is the music?

I hope we soon have many detailed reviews of Amarra...

 

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I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple fix’s the automatic sample rate in the soon to be realised Snow Leopard. If this is the case the main benefit is the improved sound/output. But at $1.5k I’m sure you would get a bigger sound improvement upgrading your speakers or amp. Sorry but $1.5k for this software is ludicrous. At half this price its still to expansive.

I can’t see them selling many.

 

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Amarra may be expensive but if it makes itunes sound very good rather than very bad which it does currently, the money spent will in the vaste majority of cases be much more beneficial that either upgrading speakers or amp, all this will achieve is making bad sound louder! Rubbish in = Rubbish out.

 

I think the price point and the lack of any sort of trial offer has probably misread the market judging from the posts on the site. That is a pity because as you say it was a nice idea.

 

Trying to make sense of all the bits...MacMini/Amarra -> WavIO USB to I2S -> DDDAC 1794 NOS DAC -> Active XO ->Bass Amp Avondale NCC200s, Mid/Treble Amp Sugden Masterclass -> My Own Speakers

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Now it's officially launched we know that Amarra costs $1600 (I think that's right) so is this expensive.

 

Added to the cost of a £500 MacMini running free music playbak software yes it is. But let's compare it to the price of some CD players in a complete system.

 

We need to obviously add a DAC so a good option would be the Weiss Dac2 which I believe is around £2500. That gives you a total of around £4500. Around the same price as a Naim HDX system, less than a Naim 555 player and PSU, Classe CDP502 or Meridian 808.

 

Now it can be debate till we're blue in the face if it's worth the cost, or if the sound from a pair of AudioEngine 2 speakers is just as good; but there is no doubting that there is still a market for such high end, high priced equipment and many more who aspire to it. So in that context, the Amarra system is looking less expensive and less out there.

 

I suspect Sonic Studio are not thinking about users of $200 AudioEngine speakers however good they are for the money. A poster earlier said $1500 would be better spent on upgrading speakers - well that depends on the level of the kit you currently own; there is a huge variety that the people on the forum use. While some users will spend several hundred dollars on a USB cable; others argue passionately that it CAN'T make a jot of difference.

 

Just a thought

Eloise

 

 

Eloise

---

...in my opinion / experience...

While I agree "Everything may matter" working out what actually affects the sound is a trickier thing.

And I agree "Trust your ears" but equally don't allow them to fool you - trust them with a bit of skepticism.

keep your mind open... But mind your brain doesn't fall out.

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Can the Amarra software work with USB DACs?

 

Wavelength Silver Crimson/Denominator USB DAC, Levinson 32/33H, Synergistic Research Cables and AC cables, Shunyata Hydra V-Ray II with King Cobra CX cable, Wilson Sasha WP speakers with Wilson Watch Dog Sub. Basis Debut V Vacuum turntable/ Grahm Phantom/Koetsu Jade Platinum. MacBook Pro 17\" 2.3GHz Quad Core i7, 8GB RAM, Pure Music, Decibel, Fidelia, AudioQuest Diamond USB Cable.

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Guys, as was previously mentioned, if you want to test the quality, just download a demo of Soundblade. I did. It reads .aiff files right off the bat, so I just installed it and opened a couple tracks with it. It really didn't make that much difference as of yet over itunes, but I might just not be listening closely enough. Anyways, I can definitely say that in my system, $1500 is better spent elsewhere.

 

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Wow, I have never heard an engineer use such an illogical argument: ....my product took X number of hours to develop so it must be better than any product that took less time to develop.....

 

BTW, I think it has already been mentioned that Amarra/SoundBlade has been developed over the last 20 years.

 

Coming on here and saying that your SW sounds better than anything else is just a naive statement.

 

Among this crowd, we live for nuances and slight differences and will argue to the death over them and then we are finally happy. So to say that one product trumps all others is just asking for a flaming response.

 

It would seem that after such lengthy posts you would have plenty of practice writing English, but I can hardly understand your statements. This leads me to believe that you post on here not out of the fun of being on a forum, but just for shameless advertising of your product.

 

If yours is the best, maybe you should charge $2000 a copy and see if you could get it into recording studios.......

 

Jeff

 

\"It would be a mistake to demonize any particular philosophy. To do so forces people into entrenched positions and encourages the adoption of unhelpful defensive reactions, thus missing the opportunity for constructive dialog\"[br] - Martin Colloms - stereophile.com

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It's going to have to do something extraordinary to warrant that price.

 

Paolo's comment above "what happened to the bit on it's journey from the hard disk to the DAC" .. Very very little I'm willing to bet. It's probably untouched.

 

Such sums of cash are probably better spent upgrading speakers and amps, not software. The more testing I do between software the more I feel there is little or no difference. Obviously that's just my opinion.

 

I don't suppose the Sonic Studio guys could record the output from Itunes and then from Amarra - say over a few tracks and show us a comparison of the output ? ... Proving to us there is a difference and explain why the difference we can see (waveform or measurements) would make it sound better? Not much to ask given the price.

 

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"I don't suppose the Sonic Studio guys could record the output from Itunes and then from Amarra - say over a few tracks and show us a comparison of the output ? ... Proving to us there is a difference and explain why the difference we can see (waveform or measurements) would make it sound better? Not much to ask given the price."

 

I have a feeling your wish may be granted (hint).

 

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Chris

 

Would be great if you could nudge them towards this suggestion, I am trying to work out how this 'taster'would then be replayed by a computer - am I being dim here?

 

Also do you know what Lynx equipment Amarra works with, they mentioned it in your interview. I have emailed the Sonic Studio guys without success.

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to make sense of all the bits...MacMini/Amarra -> WavIO USB to I2S -> DDDAC 1794 NOS DAC -> Active XO ->Bass Amp Avondale NCC200s, Mid/Treble Amp Sugden Masterclass -> My Own Speakers

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we all are speculating a lot without having yet real experience about Amarra... for the pricing I would not say more than if it cost too much for my (poor) commons sens, then I cannot buy it, and if it really works improving even a little my today iTunes osx plain player...well, I'll miss it.

But I learnt not to judge, especially in fields where I'm most ignorant. I know there's a free market and Sonic Studio can make the price they think is good for them and for the market segment they wanna address. Don't forget that going into the gross sw market needs to have in place the right support organization...think about the many calls the users will place to get help on something not working installing and configuring... any company has it's core business and target customer segment.

Then jumping from the commercial aspect to the technical... I also (my ignorance again) don't know why the standard operating system wouldn't be enough on carring the exact bit from the HD to the computer dig. out, (well we know some "creative" driver bottleneck, especially in WIN) but there are plenty of replacement drivers out on the market to send thrugh FW, SPDIF or USB. As well there are many audio recording/editing/play sw either for pro studios or passionate folks. And from my reading all along the PC audio forums I've been... all al them sound just the same for about 50% od forumers...or always with quality sonic differences for the other 50%.... well... damn confusion, isnt'it?

It seems also quite difficult to make assessment... it seems be must relay only on ears... mesurement cannot yet help. Infact, if we make a test, we can only check if any bit is lost or errored from HD to dig output path...and I'm damn sure no one is affected in a proper configured system. Then many call to blame jitter, but someone should explain me what impact can a sw driver, handling just registers of bit, on jitter. (do really memory buffers effects jitter in a digital-to-digital communication?) ...where's the clock reference in a sw routine?

Now just flying into a future vision.... I see in 10 years or so a standardisation of few sw players, and I guess the actors name would be microsoft, apple, adobe, sun etc... and plenty of plug-ins to let us play with sound flavours... like the amplifier sw emulation available today for music players. Maybe you like to listen to your audio tracks like they played by an old first generation Philips cd driver....or a NOS zanden player....or a belt drive CEC or a DAT....or (I see horrified faces) like a thorens TD-160 turntable with stanton cartridge ...or whatever emulated analog player... thermoionic tube sound emulation... taste a 300B WE or a Telefunken 6922 ... or you can get 128bit DSP perfec emulation of the La Scala concert hall ... or woodstock playground, right in your room. I'm having fun with the imagination... but I do feel we are still at the digital audio stone age.

 

Paolo

Paolo

 

MacMini->FW->Digital Konnect X32(AES->Weiss DAC1 mkII

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