Okay...Beating a dead horse. Windows 7/J.River vs. Mac/Pure Music

[waas]

I'm keeping it simple here, due to my newbie status. I've been using a mac mini and a toshiba laptop and a Benchmark Dac 1 USB. All listening was done with AKG K 701 headphones.

I've found the mac/pure music combo to be more "organic" sounding especially with USB. The soundstage expands somewhat with pure music compared to itunes alone. On the other hand, I find the windows/jriver combo to sound more "clinical" either with usb or optical connections.

 

What are your experiences with these combinations? I was just wondering if I'm on the right track or going mental doing these comparisons!

 

[JR_Audio]

I would suggest, to run this test with a DAC that does not have a Sample Rate Converter running all the time. The Benchmark DAC has a specific sound, some like it, some not, but it chances the digital data for sure, before converting into analog.

 

The AKG 701 is a very nice headphone, without doubt, but you hear the music in binaural way and not in stereo, so it is impossible to hear the soundstage of stereo recording (non binaural). Nothing against the AKG 701, but trust me or ask some “Award Winning” Mastering Engineers, the also judge the sound only with loudspeakers.

 

I do not want to open a long discussion, I just wanted to address to the two above mentioned points.

 

Pure Music and Amarra on a Mac, or JRMC and Foobar on a PC, (just to mention some of them) all of them are good programs but make sure that under Windows 7 you are using exclusive WASAPI (or KS) and not Wave Out or Direct Sound out, for evaluation.

 

Juergen