New Amarra 4

[repliante]

It is a matter of personal preference but I like the UI and SQ of Amarra 4. Although it has some bugs, none of them is so big that it ruins my opinion.

Is it really so important that A4 shows a wrong number of tracks or that you have to refresh every now and again the number of albums? Not for me.

When music starts, I close my eyes and I enjoy with its great sound.

[DancingSea]

53 minutes ago, repliante said:

It is a matter of personal preference but I like the UI and SQ of Amarra 4. Although it has some bugs, none of them is so big that it ruins my opinion.

Is it really so important that A4 shows a wrong number of tracks or that you have to refresh every now and again the number of albums? Not for me.

When music starts, I close my eyes and I enjoy with its great sound.

 

I agree with this sentiment.  I had a long listening session last night, Amarra 4 is as good as my rig has sounded in the 20 years I've been at the audiophile game.

 

To further adapt to the bugs, I've implemented multiple "Amarra Selections" folders to correspond with existing iTunes playlists and smart playlists (see my player method earlier in this thread).  These folders are kept on a thunderbolt external hard drive.  I clear and load A4 with whatever playlist I'm in the mood for.  Have kept the largest folder at under 4,000 tracks, the smaller library seems to work better with A4.

 

This approach should get me through at least a week before clearing and loading, which I had been doing every day.  And having the folders preloaded saves time.

[DancingSea]

For instance, with my micro library approach, 3500 HD tracks took 8 minutes to import to A4, avoiding the overnight saga of attempting to import an entire iTunes library of 35K tracks.

[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.

[DancingSea]

37 minutes ago, mneveux said:

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.

 

Given we're listening on different equipment, the results may vary.  For my system, A4 was noticeably better in every regard.  I found the SQ+ audio conditioner to provide varying levels of muffling - and my equipment leans in the warm direction already.  I've decided to not buy SQ+ and instead wait for Luxe with hopes its remote will work well.  I still have Amarra HiFi for if I want to use iTunes directly, which sounded indistinguishably different from SQ+ w/iTunes.  HiFi has the same EQ options as SQ+, just no audio conditioner.

 

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.

[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.

[MemoryPlayer]

18 hours ago, DancingSea said:

For instance, with my micro library approach, 3500 HD tracks took 8 minutes to import to A4, avoiding the overnight saga of attempting to import an entire iTunes library of 35K tracks.

Did you test Roon?

[foodfiend]

I know this does not apply to people who do not use the library management function on A4, but have you seen how much space it eats up on your HDD/SSD?

[DancingSea]

5 hours ago, mneveux said:

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

 

I have about 1200 iTunes 256 AAC tracks downloaded from Apple.  The other 34,000 are all lossless.  Either CD's ripped directly to AIFF, uncompressed and lossless.  Or ALAC, many of which in HD, but the rest all lossless.  I was hoping SQ+'s audio conditioner would make the AAC tracks more palatable, but it did not, thus they are now permanently relegated to the car. 

 

I have a YBA Integre Amp, PeachTree Audio DAC ITx, Supra USB cable, all DH Labs Silver Sonic cables elsewhere, and brand new Sonus Farber Chameleon T speakers handmade in Italy.  Speakers are on IsoAcoustic stands.  All connected to a MacBook Pro.

 

Through this arrangement, the Amarra 4 sound is noticeably superior to either SQ+ or HiFi using iTunes (not that they are bad, still sounds good).  Through my previous speakers, Meadowlark Audio Kestrel Hot Rods - which are great speakers - the difference was still there, but less pronounced.  The Sonus Farbers are more revealing.  

 

I found the audio conditioner to be a detriment to all the lossless files, providing an unwelcome muffling.  With Spotify (tried for fun), the source was just too terrible for the audio conditioner to help.  The 256 AAC was better, but I'd call the audio conditioner more of a draw.  That's the problem with tasting the sweet lossless waters, one becomes a snob!

 

In the end, while we may be listening to the same audio players, even the same file types, the rest of our rig is entirely different, making our comparisons quite literally, apples to oranges.

 

[DancingSea]

2 hours ago, MemoryPlayer said:

Did you test Roon?

 

As mentioned, I liked the Roon library management.  But prefer the Amarra sound to Roon's, with or without HQPlayer - thus could not justify Roon's high price.

[DancingSea]

15 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

I know this does not apply to people who do not use the library management function on A4, but have you seen how much space it eats up on your HDD/SSD?

 

Where is the library management function located?  I looked in User--> Library --> Application Support --> Sonic Studios.  The Amara 4 stuff there only took up 2 kb.   I'm curious to what you are referring.

 

Even for my micro approach, I still use the A4 library functions - there's no way to avoid that.  So far my largest playlist is about 300 GB of HD stuff.

[foodfiend]

2 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

Where is the library management function located?  I looked in User--> Library --> Application Support --> Sonic Studios.  The Amara 4 stuff there only took up 2 kb. 

I am not too sure where they store it (haven't investigated), but since I only use my MacMini for music playback, and the music files are all on my external HDDs, it is obvious that A4 us using up my SSD space (boot drive and where A4 is installed) when I load more music in the library. This space reappears if I delete the library too.

[DancingSea]

Aha, I shall write The Ralph and report back.  I can say the Mac OSX, in a variety in incarnations, has been very spotty about accurately reporting HD space.  This is a known issue, one that I've gone around the bush on many times.  On my MacBook Pro, I've had OSX say I have 20 GB of space left.  So I moved my iPhoto library to an external HD (about 20 GB). One would expect OSX to now say I have 40 GB left.  It took a week for the reduction to appear.

[MemoryPlayer]

15 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

 

As mentioned, I liked the Roon library management.  But prefer the Amarra sound to Roon's, with or without HQPlayer - thus could not justify Roon's high price.

???

[foodfiend]

12 minutes ago, DancingSea said:

Aha, I shall write The Ralph and report back.  I can say the Mac OSX, in a variety in incarnations, has been very spotty about accurately reporting HD space.  This is a known issue, one that I've gone around the bush on many times.  On my MacBook Pro, I've had OSX say I have 20 GB of space left.  So I moved my iPhoto library to an external HD (about 20 GB). One would expect OSX to now say I have 40 GB left.  It took a week for the reduction to appear.

Do let me know what Ralph says! I am quite sure that the reduction in available SSD space is due to A4, since it only changes when I make adjustment to the library. I have a 256 GB factory-installed SSD on my MacMini, and considering that I have absolutely no real data on my SSD, and no non-music-related programs/apps, I now have only half of my disk space left!

[DancingSea]

As mentioned, I have little faith in Disk Utilities ability to accurately tell me how much space is left on my SSD drive - especially after things have been deleted.  That said, I did an experiment as I happen to have the A4 library cleared anyway.

 

Imported 3500 tracks (about 300 GB).  Disk Utility said my drive space was reduced by 500 MB.  Turns out its the art work which can be found here:

 

Mac - Macintosh HD/Users/{user name}/Library/Application Support/Sonic Studio/Amarra Artwork

 

When I checked the art work folder, it was exactly 533 MB.  The A4 manual says that the art work is not cleared when songs are cleared, thus can grow in size over time and its wise to periodically clear.

 

I think that may be your answer.  We'll see what Ralph says, but I believe the rest of the A4 library function is just pointers to the file locations, thus doesn't take up space.

[DancingSea]

18 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Do let me know what Ralph says! I am quite sure that the reduction in available SSD space is due to A4, since it only changes when I make adjustment to the library. I have a 256 GB factory-installed SSD on my MacMini, and considering that I have absolutely no real data on my SSD, and no non-music-related programs/apps, I now have only half of my disk space left!

 

Meant to quote you in the post above....

[foodfiend]

4 hours ago, DancingSea said:

As mentioned, I have little faith in Disk Utilities ability to accurately tell me how much space is left on my SSD drive - especially after things have been deleted.  That said, I did an experiment as I happen to have the A4 library cleared anyway.

 

Imported 3500 tracks (about 300 GB).  Disk Utility said my drive space was reduced by 500 MB.  Turns out its the art work which can be found here:

 

Mac - Macintosh HD/Users/{user name}/Library/Application Support/Sonic Studio/Amarra Artwork

 

When I checked the art work folder, it was exactly 533 MB.  The A4 manual says that the art work is not cleared when songs are cleared, thus can grow in size over time and its wise to periodically clear.

 

I think that may be your answer.  We'll see what Ralph says, but I believe the rest of the A4 library function is just pointers to the file locations, thus doesn't take up space.

Great work! I better try looking into that file! Thanks!

[GregWormald]

I have 1TB of music loaded into iTunes and indexed by A4. The music is on a 2TB external drive and the Mac Mini has a 500 GB internal drive. 

The music disk has 1TB available and the internal drive has 411 GB available.

Therefore: no major disk space taken by A4 with 35,000 tracks on board.

 

Greg

[DancingSea]

Amarra 4 Luxe beta has been released... 

[ddalmas]

i wish you a good luck with your A4 luxe !

[emuzaman]

15 hours ago, DancingSea said:

Amarra 4 Luxe beta has been released... 

Thanks for the info - could you please share the link?

[Progisus]

Even if I have to occasionally reload my library, the sound quality is so musical. It makes other software sound clinical. I have licenses for A4, A+3, JRiver and PM. My preference in sound at the moment in best to last order is A4, JRiver, A+3, PM. Usability - JRiver (media server), A+3, A4, PM. I am hoping Luxe will change that.

[DancingSea]

On 5/27/2017 at 4:54 PM, mancolh said:

Even if I have to occasionally reload my library, the sound quality is so musical. It makes other software sound clinical. I have licenses for A4, A+3, JRiver and PM. My preference in sound at the moment in best to last order is A4, JRiver, A+3, PM. Usability - JRiver (media server), A+3, A4, PM. I am hoping Luxe will change that.

 

I haven't noticed a sonic difference with the Luxe beta other than there's an EQ to play with.  It also has upsampling, but so far that hasn't worked so well.  But its just a beta....

 

Hopefully they'll get MQA support together to go with their Tidal feature...

[copy_of_a]

4 hours ago, DancingSea said:

 

I haven't noticed a sonic difference with the Luxe beta other than there's an EQ to play with.  It also has upsampling, but so far that hasn't worked so well.  But its just a beta....

 

Hopefully they'll get MQA support together to go with their Tidal feature...

Hi DancingSea,

 

may I ask... how is upsampling implemented?
Is it just on/off, as the screenshot of the interface suggests...

... or can you adjust the settings ... or select settings from a list of presets or so...? 

Many thanks!!