New Amarra 4

[mneveux]

I gave A4 a try after struggling a year ago or so with Amarra for Tidal and the Amarra 4 was just as buggy and was deleted in 30 minutes. I do use Sq+ which has been working fine. I took a chance and took a look at Audirvana again after more than a year and to my surprise, it has come a long way and functions well.

[mneveux]

Well, I own A+ and have tested A+ 3 extensively. The gain in A+ 3 is too high for my system. The result is substantial clipping on the deep bass or extended highs. Its awful. Since I bought A+ last summer, I have never liked the, what is for me, jagged digital like highs of A+. I can only take about 5 minutes of listening on A+ with any other type of music than new age. The new age does sound good on A+.

 

So its a combination of my system and my personal tastes. And yes, it is my honest opinion that, in my world, A+ is unlistenable on anything but new age music, or maybe smooth jazz.

 

I am not a fan of digital sound. I'm from the analog/ tube/ vinyl camp. Amarra's sound satisfies enough of the that need for me to embrace digital music. Audirvana +, does not.

 

Yes, I wasn't impressed with Roon's sound either, but loved what they're doing otherwise.

I am also evaluation A+ 3 and find it is good on some files and very harsh on others. Almost sounds like sibilance that you would get on a record. I also have amarra sQ+ which sounds very good with iTunes or any other media through my Mac. I will continue to play with both A+3 and Amarra 4 to see if I can commit to either of them.

[mneveux]

I am having the following issues with Amarra 4 purchased.

 

About 20 albums are being classified as "Various Artists" when they clearly are not. I open the album and edit the Meta Data to change from Various Artists to whatever the album artist is and then save. When I reopen, the album is still classified as Various Artists.

 

I cannot find a away to adjust the EQ settings even though there is a Custom and User radio button available.

 

The SQ is nowhere near as good as using sQ+ and iTunes.

[mneveux]

Its so funny how subjective all of this is. I considered purchasing SQ+ during the last Pi sale. I tried it with both iTunes and Tidal. I thought the sound of Amarra 4 was so much better, that I decided to wait for Luxe and continue to use Amarra HiFi for iTunes.

 

Its like we're inmates is some sort of asylum with nice audio equipment, chasing windmills only seen and heard by ourselves.

I want out of this audio asylum!

 

Well Amarra 4 is new and hopefully they work out the bugs. For me, A4 is not even close to sQ+ in terms of sound quality. I feel a little better since I did buy A4 during the PI sale.

[mneveux]

The current release of Amarra 4 is fairly stable for me but the one thing that bugs me is it classifies 42 of my albums as "Various Artists". No other music player does this include iTunes, Fidelia and Audirvana. I put up with the quirks because it simply sounds the best of them all.

[mneveux]

THe frustration with A4's library management is too much to deal with for me. I hope they sort it out sometime soon. I ripped the Judas Pries collection box set of 19 CD's and iTunes indexes it perfectly. In A4, all the songs are out of order so I cannot play an individual album.

 

For me, the best solution is iTunes with Amarra sQ+ as the sound engine. My 2015 iMac does support 24bit 96k files so I don't even use an external DAC and it sounds awesome. I think A4 straight up may be a little better but hat may be because I don't have the sound tweaked exactly the same in sQ+. In sQ+ you have full control of the EQ unlike A4.

[mneveux]

55 minutes ago, xtraktz said:

Where is Luxe version? I bought A3 just because of $5 upgrade possibility to A4 Luxe. Now is end of April 2017 and still coming soon... This, and ongoing users comments about the A4 make thoughts about wasted money ((

 

Hope that in "coming soon" Luxe version at least will be added navigation by folders))

Luxe is due in May sometime.

[mneveux]

23 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

Being iTunes centric, I rip all CD's to AIFF.  Because FLAC files are compressed, I convert all of those to ALAC (also lossless compressed) because there's no point in using AIFF for compressed files and it wastes HD space.  I maintain the FLAC files as a backup should iTunes go crazy.  XLD works great for the conversions.

 

I don't have many DSD files, just last summer's Dead & Company tour.  They are in their own folder from which I play directly, not using iTunes at all.

Why don't you rip directly to ALAC with XLD?

[mneveux]

24 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

I like Fidelia, and play it every once in awhile.

I like Fidelia a lot also but again, it is quirky and crashes frequently. I really like the way you can tailor the sound in Fidelia with the various plugins.

[mneveux]

2 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

I do rip FLAC files directly to ALAC with XLD.  For physical CD's, I rip directly to AIFF.

Looks like you said you rip CDs to AIFF  and then convert to ALAC which is one step to many. Rip the CD to ALAC with XLD directly.

[mneveux]

15 minutes ago, ddalmas said:

ah you talked bout amarra SQ,that i have, but its sound is not even nearly comparable to that of A4...unluckily i mean  ,because in that case every questioning would be resolved in a while!! why don't you suggest i to SS too release A4 SQ?

sQ+ is very close to A4 for me. Perhaps you don't have it tweaked just right. I start with the Rock setting and make minor adjustments to it.

[mneveux]

13 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Upon further experimentation, SQ+ is similar to HiFi in terms of sound quality.  SQ+ does have perhaps a 10% - 15% decrease in volume which makes sound less full at first glance.  But both offer functional library management via iTunes, and thus are a reasonable compromise to A4's library issues.

 

I plan to use both HiFi, A4 and maybe SQ+ going forward.  This is Sonic Studio's masterful marketing at work, sell more product via inflicted suffering

The gain can be adjusted. You want the peaks to hit about 0 dB, if you go too much higher, it will clip. Just try to keep the peaks out of the red.

[mneveux]

39 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

What does the Audio Conditioner do?

Audio Conditioner filters out various noise that is associated mainly with streaming music. You can turn it on in preview mode to hear exactly what it is removing. I run mine at the medium setting. I am actually getting amazing SQ out of my iTunes from ripped CD's and simply using the audio out from my Mac. It is actually better than when I was using the Schiit Modi 2 DAC.

 

A few weeks ago I ran into a problem with sQ+ and submitted a help ticket and Ralph actually called me and walked me through the resolution to the problem. He then took a good amount of time to explain all the options of sQ+ and how they effect the sound. I couldn't be happier with my setup now. Awesome sound and the fantastic library management of iTunes.

[mneveux]

6 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

Cool.  If you have the time, would be interesting to hear in greater detail what good 'ol Ralph explained.

Mostly explained about the benefit of Audio Conditioner. Another thing he told was to just play around with the various EQ settings as you can't mess it up. If you don't like what you have done, just click another preset and then click back to the one you messed up and it is back to the default settings. Once you do find a combination you like, you can save it so it is always available to you.

[mneveux]

8 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

Does the Audio Conditioner do other things besides filter out noise from streaming services?

Yes, also filters out some digital garbage as well. I do use it while playing iTunes mainly. I don't really stream anything. Just play with the various levels available to see what sounds best for you.

[mneveux]

Just did some back to back comparisons between A4 and iTunes with sQ+. I used Steely Dan's Royal Scam. iTunes with sQ+ was far superior in SQ. If you work with sQ+ and get it dialed in, it is the way to go with Sonic Studio.

[mneveux]

11 hours ago, DancingSea said:

I did try SQ+ with iTunes and old 256 iTunes AAC files to see if the audio conditioner would help.  My ears have grown too accustom to the lossless world, the sound was weak with or without SQ+.  Apple should be ashamed of themselves for selling such garbage.  Its rumored Apple may buy Tidal.  If so, I hope they allow us to upgrade our low res AAC files for at least CD quality.

I don't have any Apple downloads, all my music in iTunes are CD's ripped to ALAC so that may be the difference.

[mneveux]

29 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

And given what a chore the Amarra 4 library system is, and rather than ask Sonic Studios to suddenly be able to produce an iTunes level library system - why not keep it simple and provide the iTunes integration mode that has been around for years?

 

It won't help you with FLAC files, still have to convert to ALAC.  But it is good for our sanity!

 

For me the best option is to convert FLAC to ALAC and the use Amarra sQ+ with iTunes. This way I get the superior Amarra sound (even better than A4) with the superior library management of iTunes.  

 

[mneveux]

8 hours ago, quark said:

Also making A4 as an optional plug-in is an excellent idea

all this frustration of having an audio player that sounds so good but doesn't function properly is almost making me want to learn how to program.

This already kind of exists. Amarra sQ+ runs as the sound engine for iTunes or any other audio you use on your computer. You get the fantastic Amarra sound with the excellent library management of iTunes and to me...it sounds better than A4.

[mneveux]

6 hours ago, Lio_B said:

Sorry,

I have both, SQ+ is fine for streaming sounds but is not as good as A4.

 

In my setup, sQ+ beats A4 by a long shot. There is no customization available in A4. With sQ+ you can tweak to your liking.

[mneveux]

Deleted

[mneveux]

23 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Last night I listened to DIana Krall's "Live in Paris" as well as The Grateful Dead "Go To Nassau" (best Althea ever) using Fidelia and the Wave Arts Vintage Tube simulator (free).  I preferred this combo to A+ with the plugins.  Actually never realized Fidelia could use plugins ala A+, figured it out by accident, duh!

 

How do I add this to Fidelia? Thanks!

 

[mneveux]

59 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

On the front of the main interface, on the bottom left is an "effects" or "sound effects" option.  Something like that.  Anyway, it access the same VST/ AU plugins that Audrivana uses...  Do you know how to add such plugins?

Yes, got it...It is the same as the AU plugins. Gonna play around with it now...Took a detour in the pool.

[mneveux]

4 hours ago, Data said:

I Just don't get it why ammara or dirvana do not bring out a simular version of there own audio engine, basicly that would be the best way to go about it if you ask me when playing music on the mac .

 

Sonic Studio does have their sound engine in a stand alone product that work with iTunes and all other Mac audio sources. For me, using Amarra's sQ+ along with iTunes gives me the best sound and the best library management. sQ+ does not have all the bugs and problems of A4 and A4 Luxe. I use XLD to rip CD's directly to ALAC format and then use Metadatics to update all the metadata. I have tried every available Mac player and service and this combination provides the best sound and ease of use for me. Fidelia comes in at #2 in terms of SQ.

 

 

[mneveux]

5 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

According to Sonic Studios, the A3 and Amarra SQ sound engine is not the same as the A4 engine, which is the next step forward. 

For me, sQ+ is much better sounding than A4L...SQ is a very subjective thing though.