New Amarra 4

[Dreaming Jester]

Huge changes coming to Amarra!

 

Amarra 4

 

Amarra 4 Luxe

[One and a half]

Thanks for the news, but will it work?

[Dreaming Jester]

Thanks for the news, but will it work?

 

Meaning?

[DancingSea]

Yeah, new Amarra. I really do love the Amarra sound, use it every day. Just hope they spent more time on ironing out the bugs than expanding the feature set. I'd rather have a tight functioning ship than many new features that only add to the existing bug list.

[Dreaming Jester]

Yeah, new Amarra. I really do love the Amarra sound, use it every day. Just hope they spent more time on ironing out the bugs than expanding the feature set. I'd rather have a tight functioning ship than many new features that only add to the existing bug list.

 

Agree. But these new features look really new (and important) for Amarra. Independent library management, DoP (!), Windows version to name a few. That's why I posted it.

[DancingSea]

Thanks for posting it. It does look really good.

[One and a half]

Meaning?

 

Amarra seems to attract bugs, like moths to light. When I used Amarra many years ago now, the sound was very good liked it a lot, but no DSD of course, and it had clunks and bugs, and the free standing version was no better looking than Foobar. It was a 1/2 assed effort.

This version looks promising, I will be keen to trial, but anticipating a rough ride, we'll see I suppose.

 

I hope they have an EQ for HD-800S.

[Dreaming Jester]

Amarra seems to attract bugs, like moths to light. When I used Amarra many years ago now, the sound was very good liked it a lot, but no DSD of course, and it had clunks and bugs, and the free standing version was no better looking than Foobar. It was a 1/2 assed effort.

This version looks promising, I will be keen to trial, but anticipating a rough ride, we'll see I suppose.

 

I hope they have an EQ for HD-800S.

 

Yeah, I know. Right now listening to Symphony 3.0.3 (evaluation). Buggy, laggy, no DSD without conversion to PCM. And the price tag...well, no thanks. But the new ones look promising. If only they would be more stable.

[Dreaming Jester]

To be fair, Amarra sounds nice with PCM.

[paul30d]

I paid a lot of money for buggy software that looked like it was stuck in the computer GUI dark ages. I did that because, at the time, it sounded great. But there is too much competition now. They will need to produce something very good for me to consider upgrading.

 

Paul

[Musicophile]

The new version looks interesting. They were really falling so much behind all of the competition, this was really overdue.

 

However, from past history, I just hope (but am not very confident), that they improved the overall reliability of the software.

 

Without doubt, the SQ was always their biggest advantage.

 

In any case, for me, only Tidal, no Qobuz integration, so I'll stick to A+ for the moment.

[beerandmusic]

non-starter for me....

 

no native dsd (dop only)

no support for 4xDSD (64/128 only)

[bobbmd]

how much? any credit for what we already purchased?

[Dreaming Jester]

non-starter for me....

 

no native dsd (dop only)

no support for 4xDSD (64/128 only)

 

Isn't DoP 'native' enough? At least it's not converting to PCM. How is Audirvana different (except for DSD256)? I think it's a pretty good step ahead compared to the current versions.

[Jucun]

Apple iOS for some reason don't support real DSD, only DoP, therefore it's limited to DSD 128, nothing we can do anything about.

DSD 256 playing in Amarra 3.0.3 and Audirvana Plus 2.5

 

 

[SteveS1]

Any more known on this as we head into Q4? Looks very interesting, I love the idea of losing the iTunes connection while using IRC. A lot will depend on cost and user experience, as my Amarra Symphony works flawlessly. But it looks a very neat interface as iTunes has become a bloated pig of an App.

[xtraktz]

Does anyone know the Amara's 4 exact release date?

Whether the Folder View Browsing mode in this version or only by tags?

[Arnoldhasmail]

I don't know but Q4 is almost done...looks like they're taking a page from Apple's book...and missing the holidays...

 

I emailed them last week and never heard back...

[Toddc2]

Funny timing: I have been listening to Roon almost exclusively lately, and for some reason last night I dusted off my MiniDSP microphone and took a new measurement set for Symphony. I had forgotten how much I like (and prefer) Symphony with IRC, the SQ is fantastic.

 

However, my laptop is on the bottom shelf of my equipment rack so I also spent a considerable amount of time crawling around to manually update the crappy playlist view (I don't use it with iTunes). I am hoping the new version adds a better UI and remote control outside of the iTunes integration.

[Raym87]

Amarra have just sent me a notification email and looking through their website I'm struggling to see the difference between 4 and 4 Luxe.

Can anyone enlighten me pls

[Dreaming Jester]

Amarra have just sent me a notification email and looking through their website I'm struggling to see the difference between 4 and 4 Luxe.

Can anyone enlighten me pls

 

Don't know about library management differences but 4 Luxe should bring pretty significant things like DoP; upsampling; TIDAL; iOS Remote, to name a few. Looks like it's finally getting on par with the likes of Audirvana and JRiver. But what about the sound quality and the reliability. I suppose we'll wait and see.

[jiminlogansquare]

Amarra have just sent me a notification email and looking through their website I'm struggling to see the difference between 4 and 4 Luxe.

Can anyone enlighten me pls

 

4 Luxe also appears to allow use of iRC, which regular Amarra 4 does not include. This is Amarra's house implementation of the Dirac software, and as noted above by Toddc2, iRC greatly enhances the Amarra experience. That said, I've switched over to Roon with Dirac (used to run Amarra Symphony with iRC), and I've been happy with the change.

[Confused]

I am a Windows user with an unfortunate love of iTunes. Why unfortunate? Well, I also use Roon and sometimes JRiver (both feeding a microRendu) and these two both have noticeably better sound quality than Windows iTunes. The reason I like iTunes is that it just so happens to do more or less everything I want from music software, in terms of playlists and so on, plus I have more or less fully track rated about 15000 tracks. So Roon or JRiver get used for 'serious listening', when sound quality is paramount, but iTunes does get used more than it should, because personally I prefer it's functionality. I am not that familiar with Amarra, but seeing that Amarra 4 now offers a Windows version, I am wondering if this could be a way of getting decent sound quality out of iTunes? Any advice from anyone with a bit of experience of Amarra? (mindful I'm feeding a microRendu via Ethernet) I did have a quick look at their website, but I must admit this was not much help!

 

Also, I am a little wary of dragging this thread too far off topic, but maybe there is another alternative that would extract the ultimate sound quality from Windows / iTunes / mR? Any thoughts?

[GregWormald]

IMO iTunes co-ordinates well with Amarra 3--at least on the Mac. I prefer the playlist sound but 'feed' the playlist from iTunes.

 

Again, IMO, Amarra is the best sounding player although it's been a while since I used BitPerfect, Audirvana +, Pure Music, or iTunes alone. There are a number of players out there that I haven't tried, and some are quite popular.

 

I gather 4 will have its own track browser, so it may work and sound differently.

 

Amarra has had a trial period so you can decide for yourself, hopefully 4 will too.

 

Greg

[Confused]

I think I've answered my own question, it does not look like Amarra will work with the microRendu, so I'll need to keep looking!