New Amarra 4

[Dean358]

Hi All,

 

Having just gone through all 31 pages of this forum I must say, it's been a depressing read. I started building Mac based computer music playback systems around 2003 as a way of not having to carry CDs between our weekday and weekend residences. That has since evolved into much more essential part of every day's music listening. Never having stored anything in a compressed format, my iTunes library now has about 29K tracks and takes up a little under 2 TBytes.

 

I remember how thrilling discovering an early release of Ammara was. IRRC it cost around $950 US dollars at the time for the license. It was and still is IMHO the most musical, analog sounding of all the software players. And while I can't speak to the value of Ammara's iRC (I use Trinnov room correction) the Sonic Mastering EQ is really lovely. As many in this forum have pointed out, Ammara has never been the most bug free software. But Ralph always did / still does a great job of single handily supporting a large user base and helping solve problems. 

 

Typing this while listening to playback via Ammara Symphony 3.0.3 -- I'd certainly love to try A4 Luxe, but I can't. Why? Because in the 14+ years I've been building my iTunes library I've been adding my own metadata into the "comment" section of individual song files. These are various flags defining the music e.g., Space, Morning, Exercise, Dinner, Piano, Test, etc., etc. As the comment section is part of the Redbook CD spec this metadata becomes part of the music files and is carried across wherever a file is coped. By using smart playlists, e.g.," look for the dinner music flag," a library too large to memorize can easily be explored and enjoyed on any machine using iTunes. Combine this with years of custom playlists and it's just insane to think of throwing all that away.

 

So to Ralph and the good folks at Sonic Solutions: PLEASE make a version of A4 that works with iTunes!  Pretty much everyone posting on this forum agrees on how great your software sounds but is frustrated and disappointed with your file management. Why reinvent the wheel? Short of integrating with Tidal, iTunes already has file management that is highly functional and rock solid. You can even increase the price if you feel the audience is too small for an audiophile product that works with iTunes. (Given what Audiophile playback systems typically cost a few hundred dollars for playback software is not a deal breaker.) But please don't give up on iTunes as that will force many of us to abandon Ammara.

 

Best Regards,

Dean

 

[Dean358]

4 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

I think the idea is to have an option.  For me, iTunes has always worked very well.  For those that don't want iTunes, they can choose to live through the library management chaos that is A4!  Main thing is choice.

 

Exactly!

[Dean358]

16 hours ago, twist222 said:

In earlier versions of Amarra wasn't there a large number of people demanding Amarra get rid of the connection to iTunes. This in fact lead to the playlist function so that people could enjoy Amarra playback without the need to have iTunes running. No that Amarra has done what large numbers of people asked for and came up with a solution that does not require iTunes we get the other end of the spectrum asking for iTunes intergration !!!!

 

Huh?? Apologies if I haven't been reading these forums carefully enough but for me the connection to iTunes is an absolutely essential attribute for any music playback software. Not having it is a deal breaker and preventing me from upgrading to A4 :-(

 

16 hours ago, twist222 said:

 

 

[Dean358]

9 minutes ago, Amarra_Support said:

Hi All,

Sorry for the delay, got a bit backed up over the holiday with the Black Friday sale.

 

I wanted to give an update regarding iTunes integration with Amarra 4.  We are now looking into this and doing some initial testing.  If all works well, we'd provide a platform to use iTunes to select and manage your library and Amarra will be the playback engine.  It's still early, I don't have any other details other than we are looking at it now.

 

F

best

Ralph

 

Fantastic news, thanks Ralph!  Godspeed.

[Dean358]

2 hours ago, deeejeee said:

I don't want Itunes integration, think many users think this way.

 

With all due respect I completely disagree. For many of us iTunes integration is actually essential. And as DancingSea points out, if the option is there you can always chose not to use it. 

[Dean358]

For many of us iTunes integration is actually critically important, as described up thread. Regarding sound quality, IMHO based on running Amarra, SQ+, Audio Nirvana + and Roon,  Amarra produces the best sound quality hands down. Using my Trinnov room processor as an ethernet Roon output node is next best. But Amarra is the only player with that "damn, it's 2:00 AM but just need to listen to one more song" quality.

 

So Ralph and Sonic team, tnx for upgrading A4 to integrate iTunes -- looking forward to it!

[Dean358]

6 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

If this is the reason for a limited feature set they should first and foremost throw away the Equalizer.

Inexperienced and/or exzessive use of an equalizer is a pretty safe recipe to mess up the sound.

While for instance different SRC setttings only affect tiny nuances of the sound (unless you use really exotic settings).

 

Um, excuse me? With all do respect the Sonic equalizer is one of the best sounding digital equalizers out there in both pro and consumer gear. I tend to use it more for SQ+ than Amarra -- one or two dB of low frequency shelf boost goes a long way to helping bad streaming sources, e.g. 80's music videos on YouTube. If you're not into it no worries, don't use it -- but please don't encourage Sonic, a company with with limited resources, to "throw it away."