New Amarra 4

[church_mouse]

I have and liked the sound from Amarra 3, but stopped using it because of my dislike of i-Tunes and a decision to move all my music in to Flac format.

 

I even liked the Amarra sound enough that I experimented with using Audirvana or JRiver and sending it through SQ+ - however, I could never get it stable enough that I was not troubled by occasional mangling of the sound, or very unpleasant pops and clicks.

 

I tested the early releases of A4 but the library management was sub-optimal and stability was not good.

 

From what I am now reading, is it correct that A4 is actually best relying upon i-Tunes again (so Flac is out) and also by using browser mode (how does browser mode work with using the App on an iPad)?

[church_mouse]

@DancingSea.  Thanks.  I will stick with my decision after I tested A4 months ago to not purchase it.

[church_mouse]

An offer to buy A4 for 50% off convinced me to give it another go.  My experience with it over the last 2 days has been:

1. Scanning my Flac library seemed to work ok.  After a bit of playing music, I saved the results then closed and reopened the App - the tracks were there as songs but A4 showed no albums and no artists.  I deleted the songs, rescanned, played some music, saved but did not close the App - everything looked OK for Albums and Artists.  I closed and reopened A4 to discover Albums and Artists were again blank.

2. I had already created an ALAC copy of my library in case I needed to use i-Tunes, so I set that for i-Tunes and got A4 to do the i-Tunes scan option.  This worked and survived closing/opening of the App, but multi-disc albums are not handled well by A4, it seems, with track order switching to alphabet order for every multi-disc album (i-Tunes had the albums sorted correctly).

3. I downloaded the free Amarra Play App for my iPad and got it working, but then discovered issues with switching from tracks which have different sample rates - sometimes the track refused to play at the correct sample rate, sometimes A4 would switch but only after selecting the track 2 or 3 times (the only work around I found was to use A4 upsampling of everything to eliminate sample rate switching).  I also found trying to use the Play App with A4 in browser mode was a disaster - unreliable volume control, unreliable track control, sample rate issues.

4. I decided to try A4 in i-Tunes mode using the Apple Remote App for control. I still had issues with sample rate switching plus the A4 integration with i-Tunes seemed to screw up volume control in the Remote App - the volume would follow the control for half a second before returning to its previous setting. (The App did not give this issue if I just used i-Tunes with A4 closed.)

The sound of A4, when it worked, was very nice (less so in i-Tunes integrated mode), so all of the issues experienced were a disappointment to me.

I checked and I am using the latest official A4 release (4.2.427-184). 

My DAC is a Mytek Manhattan 1, using Mytek's driver for Firewire - I don't know if any of my issues may be linked to that or whether users of other DACs have experienced similar issues. (USB is not an option - Mytek never updated the USB driver beyond Yosemite).

I have had enough testing for now, so it is back to Audirvana at the moment. However, if anyone has experienced but solved any of the issues above, please tell me how and I may try again.

[church_mouse]

Correction - on further checking A4 has put tracks in alphabetical order, not track order, on all of my albums when using the i_Tunes scan mode to create a Local library.

[church_mouse]

I thought I would unarchive and update A4L to try out the Qobuz integration. I must be doing something wrong because, whilst I can play from “favourites” and “playlists”, if I search and click to play something in the right hand search returns the track gets selected, pops into “now playing” but then disappears yet in the right hand panel the icon for playing is showing.  

 

Any ideas?

 

I am sure I must have misunderstood the selection process but I cannot figure out how else to search and play in Qobuz.

 

Sadly, I also see library management is still astonishingly bad.

[church_mouse]

@Lio_B  I see you are searching by Artist.  That works for me too, but searching by Track fails every time.  Does Track search work for you?

[church_mouse]

Thanks for the confirmation @Lio_B.

 

i guess it was always too much to expect them to release an update which actually worked properly.

[church_mouse]

My final two penn'orth of confusion before I archive this latest release:

 

Initially, I was struggling to find my Qobuz Favourites within the UI but realised they get amalgamated with my local music in My Music (no problem there) save that when using the desktop software none of the Qobuz Favourites will play - I just get a message that Amarra was unable to find the selected album.  However if I use the IOS app, playing my Qobuz Favourites does work!

 

On the other hand, playing Qobuz Purchased tracks works in the desktop app but does not work in the IOS app.

[church_mouse]

9 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 I’m eager to try A+. 3.5.

@DancingSea

 

My recollection is that you were not a great fan of the sound of A+.  From my testing of the beta of A+ 3.5, I have not heard anything which might cause you to change your mind - it sounds like A+.

 

For me, Amarra is still a lovely sounding basket case - in my set-up, perhaps the most unrelieable piece of software I have ever used. 

 

As for Roon - I do not think I listen to music in a way which makes the USP of Roon attractive to me.

 

Happy listening.

[church_mouse]

My solution, though this may seem a bit combersome, has been to use SQ+ as the sound device.  My experience has been that to get this to be pretty solid, one has to upsample everything to the same rate because SQ+ does not handle well sample rate changes.

 

I use either Audirvana, now on v3.5, (when I am controlling using my ipad), or JRiver/BubbleUPnPServer controlled by the Bubble Android app on my Android tablet.  In both A+ and JRMC, I use SOX upsampling to the max rate my firewire output can handle (192).

 

A+ and JRMC are set to output to the Sonic device which then feeds my Mytek.

 

I don't experience crashes, but SQ+ does not allow me to save this as the default set up, so if my MacMini has to reboot then I do have to go back in to SQ+ just to reset the sound output device.

 

I like the sound this gives me which, at the end of the day, is what is important to me.

[church_mouse]

2 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

That’s interesting.  Do I understand correctly that you’re using Sonic Studio’s SQ+ app for the sound?  How does that work.  For instance, if you’re using A+ and its feeding through the Sonic Studio SQ+, are you ending up with Amarra like sound via SQ+?  Or is it a mixture of A+ and SQ+?

 

To qualify my A+ 3.5 endorsement, I really only like it with the WaveArts Tube Saturator to soften the A+ highs.  The plugin doesn’t seem to work with DSD.  While DSD sounds good in A+ 3.5, the highs are a bit much, no matter how I adjust them in the Sox/ Izotope settings.  The same files in HQPLAYER are silky smooth in comparison.

Feeding the sound through SQ+ does "flavour" it with the Amarra house sound (others more knowledgeable than I will no doubt have a better idea as to whether this is because SQ+ is avoiding elements of coreaudio, or simply that Amarra applies some proprietary dsp to everything fed through SQ+).  However, the upsampling settings chosen in A+ do impact too  - in Izotope terms, one can still hear the differences between a shallow filtered, minimum phase setting and a very steep, linear phase setting. 

 

Since I use SOX upsampling in JRMC (and one has no control over the SOX setting), I switched to SOX upsampling in A+ when it was introduced some time ago and played with the settings until I got the sound coming through SQ+ to sound pretty similar whether I fed it via JRMC or A+.

 

I do not have any DSD material, so I have no idea how my set up would handle that.

 

The Air Motion tweeters in my speakers are quite gentle (soft), so I am reluctant to suggest feeding A+ through SQ+ could tame the A+ sound enough for you.

[church_mouse]

@DancingSea - I have found that SQ+ can be temperamental in setting up (well, it is Amarra!).  Sometimes it can be worth closing and re-opening SQ+ before setting up a new input source such for the first time.

 

After setting up A+ and JRMC so that they both point to SQ+, I just leave my MacMini alone and control via iPad or tablet.

[church_mouse]

@DancingSea  I have never had SQ+ not play.  However, I seem to have jinxed my own set-up; I have everything set to upsample to 192 to avoid sample rate switching issues with SQ+, but for the last few days, without obvious cause, in my midi settings the rate will suddenly switch to 44.1 which makes the 192 unlistenable.   Taking SQ+ out of the path; stability returns.

 

 I know the default input/output settings for SQ+ are 44.1, but this sudden resetting to 44.1 without a restart is a new, and unexplained, instability for me.

[church_mouse]

I give up with this.  In an attempt to solve my sample rate issue, I rebooted everything.  Now, no matter what I do, SQ+ refuses to capture the audio stream.

 

Oh well, it was nice whilst it lasted.

[church_mouse]

21 hours ago, church_mouse said:

I give up with this.  In an attempt to solve my sample rate issue, I rebooted everything.  Now, no matter what I do, SQ+ refuses to capture the audio stream.

 

Oh well, it was nice whilst it lasted.

To be fair to Amarra, the "no sound" turned out to be my error.

 

I needed to go back in to OSX Privacy and Security settings and re-authorise SQ+ to use the microphone - without that authorisation, SQ+ is blocked from taking over audio.

 

At the moment, sample switching is stable and all running well again.