Pure Music 3.0

[Tone Deaf]

v3.0.1 is available for download. Used it with headphones for about an hour this evening and it doesn't seem to be a step backwards in sound quality. I've made too many changes in my system recently to state with any confidence that there are improvements. Appears to have a large number of bug fixes and improvements.

 

I would be curious to hear thoughts from any of the other Pure Music users.

[Bob Stern]

Upgrade Price

Everyone who purchased the 2.0 upgrade gets 3.0 for free because the 2/2014 purchase date entitling you to a free upgrade to 3.0 preceded the release of 2.0.

 

New Features

The website does not list the new features in 3.0, but they are listed in the user guide included with the application download.

 

Here's the list from the 3.0.1 user guide:

 

3.0.1

• Corrected issue where grace period wasn’t granted for a demo using an old version license code

• Corrected issue causing generic user information to be displayed in splash window

• Correction to memory allocator causing an insufficient memory alert to be thrown on certain computers that had enough physical RAM

3.0

 

A message for our DSD Power Users: missing from this release is the long awaited Gapless DSD support. It unfortunately was pulled (again) due to a performance related issue detected at the last minute. The decision was made to freeze the code at this stage rather than delay releasing the other beneficial improvements found in Pure Music 3. However, we pledge to have Gapless DSD implemented in a free dot update to be released within two weeks. In the meantime, we hope you will enjoy the many other improvements in Pure Music 3. Thank you for your patience.

• Extensively redesigned and rewritten iTunes interaction code with extensive optimizations “under the hood,” leading to snappier response and greatly improved performance

• In response to Apple’s addressing (in iTunes 12.2.1.16 and later) of the CPU blocking bug introduced in iTunes 12.0 for the Column Browser view, we’ve eliminated work-arounds introduced in Pure Music 2.0.3 / 2.0.4 devised for iTunes 12 which produced undesirable side effects. This also has resulted in substantial performance improvements in Pure Music for all iTunes versions

• Reveals (after several seconds) the currently playing track (default behavior in Pure Music 2.0.2 and all earlier versions); this is now a new option provided in the Preferences, and is disabled by default. If enabled, in iTunes 12 we call Reveal (the “Go To Current Song” function, command-L in iTunes) at a non-critical time. This is special cased for iTunes 11.4 and earlier to perform the Reveal more quickly. This will still deliver good performance with prior versions of iTunes 12, or in the unlikely event a future version of iTunes regresses back to the beachballing bug. If you are running iTunes 12, we strongly recommend updating to iTunes 12.2.1.16 (or later, should a newer update be released)

• No longer jumps to the previously played track in iTunes after launching Pure Music

• Addressed the “the first track selected after launch wasn’t played” issue

• Corrected an issue which could cause Pure Music to become unresponsive after playing tracks for awhile (confirmed fixed by testing in continuous Shuffle or linear play for several days at a time)

• Addressed track skipping issues

• Added “Save” button to the Audio Setup window’s Audio Plug-Ins tab to save a plug-in’s settings and window position, because some plug-in UIs were hiding the Save button

• Added menu options to the Music Server menu to Hide All, Show All, or Save All audio plug-in settings and window positions

• Restores Upsampling setting when playing PCM after playing a native DSD track

• Restored functionality to play/pause button in Less is More mode

• Improved memory optimization in Mavericks / Yosemite / El Capitan OS

• Improvements to setting track played count and last played

• Enabled automatic switching to Streamthrough for Home Sharing music

• Display an alert if the output was muted by the user

• Fixed issue in which the first track played did not scrub the playhead correctly in iTunes if the track was a DSD track played as PCM

• Display an alert if insufficient memory is available for playing high-resolution audio files (higher than 16 bit 44.1 kHz)

• New automatic performance optimization to disable iTunes Scrubbing if track position scrubbing is not performed by the user for a user-settable interval (15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 8 hours or Never) leading to improved overall performance. Displays floating alert window when this is activated

• Updated open source FLAC library to latest 1.3.1 November 2014 version (provides faster track loading and bug fixes)

• Via a modification of the Bookmark feature, Memory Play playback now supports FLAC tracks containing more than about 2 GB of decompressed audio (previously limited to about 30 minutes at 192/24, 60 minutes at 96/24, and so on)

• Memory Play playback now supports iTunes-compatible track formats for tracks which in previous versions of Pure Music were larger than could fit into RAM (necessitating disabling Memory Play to play such tracks). Previously, attempting to play such tracks would cause an Unexpected Quit

• New mechanism for locating Bookmarked music files in the event the link to Bookmark is broken by an incorrect iTunes preferences setting

• Improvements to prevent stalling of playhead (track play position indicator)

• Corrected issue where changing the volume with the Jog control didn’t correspondingly update the iTunes volume control

• Converted to flat installer format for Streamthrough for OS 10.10.3 and later, now will install Streamthrough without needing the stand alone Streamthrough installer

• Corrected issue where the bookmark creation operation would fail with a disk not writeable message if the source tracks were in folders or a file path with escaped / multi-byte characters

• When the LINK button is not engaged, will remember the position of the Pure Music window across launches

• Shows Hybrid track loading progress for all PCM track formats (previously only FLAC format)

• Displays media reading throughput in MB/s during memory load

• Improved Reset Window Positions command (moves control window to top left of main screen and sets transparency level to opaque, then resets Handshake)

• Option to tile the controller window instead of overlapping with iTunes window

• Streamlined and faster startup, especially for native DSD devices, and ability to commence playback as soon as the Pure Music window appears

• Automatically reduces CPU footprint when iTunes is not the front-most (“focus”) application

• Cosmetic improvements during startup and quitting

• Numerous improvements to automatic switching to Streamthrough (and back) for iTunes-hosted content

• Fixed an issue with FLAC playback in OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) that silenced the output, and an issue with the audio file converter in OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) that prevented FLAC file conversion from working properly. The issue was (painstakingly) traced to a change in the behavior of a certain Apple API in El Capitan

• Separate window for setting Streamthrough options, instead of crowding options into Audio Setup window

• Option to check for Shuffle play (off by default), which will improve performance if iTunes Shuffle mode is used (although Pure Music will use work-arounds if this option is not enabled). Activating this option requires allowing Pure Music access to System UI Preferences in the System Preferences control panel (Security and Privacy panel, Accessibility pane, Privacy tab). (With iTunes 11 and later, there is no way to determine if Shuffle is enabled in iTunes other than by using System UI Events)

• Fixed regression bug of not saving dither word length (it would be very unusual anyway to need to change this from 24 bit; and even MORE unusual to set 32 bit, even if you have a “32 bit” DAC; and should not be changed from 24 bit if the stream reported in Audio MIDI Setup is “32 bit,” because that only represents a 32 bit float holding 24 bit audio: 24 bit is the correct setting)

• Resolved issues regarding the left side of the iTunes window being positioned off the left of the screen, or too close to the top to accommodate the Pure Music window (would cause Pure Music window not to be displayed)

• Fixed an issue with the FLAC file converter for input files with an odd (as opposed to even) number of samples. This caused the last sample in the output file to be corrupted

• Fixed an issue where making a simple switch between native DSD and DSD as PCM by unchecking the DSD check box in the Special Options tab of the Audio Setup window didn’t work

• Automatically recognizes downloaded Apple Music tracks as Protected (because only iTunes can play downloaded Apple Music tracks) and automatically switches to Streamthrough mode to play them (provided Streamthrough was installed and left at the default Automatic setting)

• Honors state of “Don’t show again” in reminder dialog to reduce volume when quitting with Streamthrough active.

[Teresa]

Do you know the upgrade price for those of us who acquired Pure Music prior to 2/2014? I couldn't find it on their website.

[Melvin]

Do you know the upgrade price for those of us who acquired Pure Music prior to 2/2014? I couldn't find it on their website.

 

Teresa .. clicking on link to purchase activation code shows:

 

"UPGRADES: Pure Music 3 is free to users who purchased a Pure Music license during or after February, 2014 (the Activation Code contains puMa-19000- puMa-20000- or puMa-21000- and will automatically be recognized by Pure Music 3).

 

Previous purchasers can upgrade at the discount price of $74.95. "

[Teresa]

Thanks Melvin. (:-)

[Panelhead]

Rob rocks!

[Panelhead]

Mine updated for free, guess the upgrade in Pure Vinyl covers this.

I may be me, but seems to be a little lighter weight. Some of the richness playing 96/24 files from playlist do not seem as warm. This may have been a coloration from PM 2, but was very pleasing.

[scintilla]

I have PureVinyl 4 and I have not had anything update automatically. Are you using a separate instance of PureMusic?

[church_mouse]

I have PureVinyl 4 and I have not had anything update automatically. Are you using a separate instance of PureMusic?

FYI I have just PM but it did not auto update to PM3, so I downloaded directly from the site.

 

PM3 sounds no different to me.

[edwardsean]

Pure Music 3 sounds significantly better to my ears. Imaging is slightly clearer and less confused with more distinct separation between elements.

[Panelhead]

Well of the ones who have commented on sound quality, one for the same, one for better, and one for worse.

I can see where in some systems and preferences it is better. PM 3 does sound cleaner and has increased clarity. PM 2 from playlist or Less is More has a richness and holographic quality than maybe artificial. In my system it is very pleasing.

Less is more and 96/24 files from playlist are some much better than playback from iTunes that I never listen anymore direct from the iTunes library. So cannot comment on normal use sound quality.

[Raym87]

Mmmmm! Pure music is running and I can access the menus but I dont see the pure music window. It is now supposed to dock automatically with iTunes but I dont see it.

[Raym87]

Tried all the obvious like Reset Window Positions etc and I do get the small message that says Channel D Pure Music when I Hide Server Controls. When I select Show Server Controls I get nothing.

Ahaaaa! But wait ...... I had to reset preferences by selecting Defaults in Preferences. I opted to save registration info. Seems OK now so something must have got screwed with my config. Now I have just got to reset my preferences to how I like them.

[Melvin]

I'm really liking this latest release (3.0.1) .. seems a bit more stable and quite robust. The sound quality is fantastic. Is it better than 2.0.4? Perhaps, but I've always found the neutral and effortless sonic signature of PM to my liking. Nice work Channel D!

[church_mouse]

Is anyone else finding gapless play no longer works at all on PM3? There is a delay of about 1 second whilst the next track loads in to memory (I have 8Gb of RAM).

[Melvin]

Is anyone else finding gapless play no longer works at all on PM3? There is a delay of about 1 second whilst the next track loads in to memory (I have 8Gb of RAM).

 

Just checked .. damn!

[Tone Deaf]

Is anyone else finding gapless play no longer works at all on PM3? There is a delay of about 1 second whilst the next track loads in to memory (I have 8Gb of RAM).

 

Gapless is working for me, but I am using "link to next track". I never managed to get gapless to work seamlessly in PM2 using integer mode without this.

 

The issue I have noticed in PM3 with my configuration is that albums "auto repeat" - they never stop at the end of the album, but either automatically restart at the beginning or jump to some previously played album. OSX 10.9, integer mode, using aiff files.

[church_mouse]

The issue I have noticed in PM3 with my configuration is that albums "auto repeat" - they never stop at the end of the album, but either automatically restart at the beginning or jump to some previously played album. OSX 10.9, integer mode, using aiff files.

 

Not having that issue. So far, apart from the BIG failure on gapless, for me PM 3 has been pretty solid when in i-Tunes linked mode. Less is More still has long standing issues of no gapless (either) and continual repeat at the end of a playlist unless one manually presses Stop.

[gcorley]

 

The issue I have noticed in PM3 with my configuration is that albums "auto repeat" - they never stop at the end of the album.

 

Same here.

[Panelhead]

Less is More still has long standing issues of no gapless (either) and continual repeat at the end of a playlist unless one manually presses Stop.

 

Still using Less is More. It does repeat the last track. I am sure Rob can fix this.

I have not listened to any gapless tracks with PM3. I fact no tracks from the iTunes library.

All tracks so far have been ISO files converted to 96/24 PCM. Will try a long symphony to see how it deals with it.

Got a lot of RAM, largest converted files are 4-5 GB. This should be no issue.

[AudioDoctor]

I can not even get Pure Music 3.0 to start without an error/crash on OS X El Capitan

[Raym87]

I can not even get Pure Music 3.0 to start without an error/crash on OS X El Capitan

 

Try delete and reinstall then delete preferences as I have detailed above. Hope that wotks for you

[brucknerdoc]

Is anyone else finding gapless play no longer works at all on PM3? There is a delay of about 1 second whilst the next track loads in to memory (I have 8Gb of RAM).

 

Yes, I have the same issue - tried several gapless tracks/albums and they all have a gap. Ran my copy of PM2 and it still plays those tracks without a delay.

 

Also, having some weird occasional quirks that I think might be related to controlling PM on a headless MacMini via Screen Sharing or my version of iTunes. Sometimes it takes more than one click on play/pause to be recognized. And switching from list views (such as from a playlist to main music) while a track is playing causes PM to skip to the next track every once in awhile. My MacMini is running OS 10.9, but I run an older version of iTunes (10.7) because of the preferred interface. Maybe this is causing problems with PM3 - PM2 doesn't have these issues with the same setup.

[Melvin]

I emailed Channel D support yesterday and heard back from Rob. He seemed genuinely surprised due to their extensive testing prior to release. Basically he suggested to reset prefs to "default" and restart, making sure all the settings for gapless are engaged. I did all that and more (deleted plist files) to no avail. Short of deleting the program and reinstalling I tried everything I could think of. Hopefully Channel D has a fix soon.

[brucknerdoc]

Same here - since PM preferences are less-than-user friendly, I've been in the habit with every new version of resetting the preferences and starting from scratch - so that wasn't the issue for me either.

 

Just sent them an email - maybe they need to hear from people to know there are some overlooked issues.