MAC Playback software - Why?

[Alan Brown]

Hi Chaps - 1st post here, but what a great resource this place has been over the last week or so. I am partway through setting up my first computer audio system, and will doubtless have more questions later on. I was computer-illiterate a couple of years ago, having a fairly good set of basic skills now - however I am a MAC noob, and am slowly playing around with my (2009) MACMini to familiarize myself.

 

As the setup isn't really ready yet (no NAS drive yet - I will follow the CA ripping methodology) I have only had an idle play; using the (unsatisfactory) minitoslink via an adapter into my old Theta DAC. It is not yet superior to CD replay, though I am borrowing a HiFace shortly on long term loan so as to use my favorate coax cable. I plan on auditioning the Westlake - designed Audiolab DAC at the turn of the year. I ripped to AIFF using dBpowerAMP to a shared file on my old lappy, then I copied the file to the Mini (It was Lyle Lovett's 'Joshua Judges Ruth' on RBCD).

 

My Question: What would something like the Amarra mini or Pure Music players add to the setup (or remove?) - isn't iTunes up to scratch? I have a good friend, a former HiFi magazine reviewer who uses iTunes with no additions quite happily, even controlling the volume this way.

 

I appreciate that trying these options out is the best way to go, and likely I will. As a newcomer to all things MAC however, I don't fancy spending my first few months solely struggling to set up & configure software...I'm sure you can see my point.

 

 

 

My setup: MACMini (2.26ghz, 2GB, 160GB), Theta DS Pro Basic III, NVA P90 passive pre-amp, NVA TSS Power amplifier, Royd RR3 Speakers - NVA cabling throughout.

 

MAC controlled with Blutooth keyboard & mouse, will look at Apple remote, using TV as monitor.

 

[BobH]

and welcome. I'm feeling quite controversial today, so here goes!

 

What would Amarra or PM bring to the party? I would say probably nothing at all if you don't want to spend you time playing about with software! There are many threads on this forum discussing the various issues people have had with these two bits of software - happy reading!

 

I use iTunes on a PC, which is roughly equivalent to listening underwater, or stoning puppies, if you believe half of what is written on here! I use it because it is the least of all of the current evils, as far as I'm concerned. It works. I cannot hear a significant difference, reliably and repeatedly, between iTunes and anything else. For me there is no reason not to use it.

 

Having said that, I'm emphatically not saying that either Amarra or PM would not be better, I'm saying set yourself up using iTunes. Use it for a while and then decide if your curiosity is worth the 'possible' gains, when weighed against the 'possible' pains!

 

Most of all, have fun listening.

 

[Purite Audio]

As Bob said you have to try ,both Pure Music and Amarra have demonstration versions available,listen and decide for yourself.

There isn't much 'playing about' with either software,imho both PM and Amarra sound best through their 'memory' play options,both are prety much plug and play.

Keith.

 

[wgscott]

My general suggestion is that you start with the basics and get a good feel for what is baseline, and then you will be in a position to judge if additional software or hardware really makes an improvement.

 

There is nothing BAD about ripping a CD in iTunes in Apple Lossless and playing it back via iTunes through toslink, USB, firewire, or whatever connection your DAC prefers. My suggestion is that you get a baseline doing that, and then make comparisons from there with free trial versions of the software, loaner Hiface, etc. at your leisure.

 

I myself have yet to find a compelling upgrade (I've only been playing around with that for a couple of months), but your equipment may reveal improvements that mine masks. But is is a good idea to get to know your baseline and be very familiar with the sound quality first.

 

One piece of software you might want to pick up is Play.app, as it is free, and the sound is at least as good, perhaps better than, iTunes, and it has two additional merits. First, it automatically changes the sample rate (download the latest "unstable" release -- don't worry, it is fine). Second, it provides a cleaner interface to the various Apple CoreAudio functionalities, so if you do decide you want to play around with volume, graphic equalizer, parametric equalizer, and so on, it makes this easy.

 

In the case of both iTunes and Play, start out by having the volume turned all the way up and all of the sound "enhancements" turned off, so that you get bit-perfect output. (The problem with using the software to control the volume is that the music gets resampled, which you probably should avoid, at least at first).

 

 

 

[Alan Brown]

Thank you Bob & Keith,

 

I will almost certainly use iTunes exclusively by default to start with, and I won't rule out having a dalliance with either Amarra or Pure Music later on. They seem to offer a subtle benefit, no clear winner or clearly understood reason why one option might be superior....unless people are being very discreet!

 

Am I to understand these programmes bypass iTunes' volume control & output & use their own driver to output the digital signal? If so, is this not what ASIO drivers do on windows machines?

 

I understand Amarra & Pure Music also automatically adjust sample - depth (correct term?) when listening between say high-rez & redbook files.

 

[Alan Brown]

@WGScott -thank you for another interesting tangent. I shall lurk with interest to see the prevailing opinion of the 'Play' app. It certainly seems worthy of investigation later on.

 

I agree with the rest of what you say, KISS for now (Keep It Simple Stupid).

 

[Audio_ELF]

I agree with wgscott that in most cases there is nothing wrong with ripping with iTunes, I would suggest your download XLD and use tat for the ripping. It's benefit over iTunes is that it reports any errors/problems it encounters so just gives you that extra level of confidence that your ripping is good.

 

I can't remember if you commented on format, but make sure you rip in a lossless or uncompressed format (Apple Lossless or AIFF).

 

Eloise

 

[Alan Brown]

I intend to follow the CA ripping strategy, in fact although I am still lacking a NAS drive I have already installed & partially configured dBpowerAMP. It was that programme (using secure & accurate rip) I used for the rip to AIFF, just as a trial run. The files are saved on the hard drive of the MAC for now.

 

My question was really with regards to playback software as opposed to vanilla iTunes - ripping is pretty well sorted in my mind.

 

[wgscott]

Here's a screen shot of Play.app from the website:

 

 

I don't know a lot of French, but from what I can tell, the song is something about the hemoglobin of a concubine.

 

[uwe061]

no, its about the concubine of hemoglobin ;-)

 

[psjofors]

I've used iTunes connected to a good DAC ever since it came out. The simplest. Here is a good simple instruction if you want to play HiRez files in iTunes (and retain the full quality).

 

http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-studio-master-downloads-itunes.aspx

 

[Alan Brown]

I was unable to reply to you for a while due to an issue with cookies, so please accept my apologies for not replying sooner.

 

It is late in the UK now, but I will look carefully at these suggestions soon, thanks again for your time.

 

ATB, Alan.

 

[psjofors]

In addition to the instructions at the Linn records website, there is one more thing to do. In the Midi-setup application under "global" applications/utilities (not "user" applications/utilities) you need to set the output bit-rate and number of bits. Default is 44.1kHz/16 but in 10.5 you can crank this up to 192kHz/32bits. In 10.6 only to 96kHz/32bits.

 

This setting forcers the bit-rate; so CDs will be up-sampled and empty bits added.

 

So.... now I'm happily playing true 192kHz/32bits audio in iTunes!

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi psjofors- I recommend playing your music at the native sample/bit rate. Or example if a track is 24 bit / 96 kHz I recommend using 24/96 as the output setting.

 

[psjofors]

Yes of course.

 

[Alan Brown]

Isn't this what the play.app does - automatically recognizing & selecting the sample rate as appropriate?

 

I have yet to get myself up & running (I am a little frustrated at the moment by how busy things are - I can't get the time to sort the system out) so I can't really compare yet, but is there any opinion as to how good this app is? Also - does it work with an iTunes library or is it a stand alone player in it's own right?

 

 

 

[wgscott]

Play.app sounds at least as good. Some claim better. I can't hear a difference, but I seem to have that problem with a lot of stuff. It is certainly no worse.

 

As far as the program itself goes, its main advantages are:

 

(1) it is written in Cocoa, which means no OS 9 legacy code like iTunes. In practice this means a cleaner, more standard interface, and easier access to things like CoreAudio

 

(2) it uses playlists that you can define on the fly, so if you want to choose what to listen to for a few hours, you just queue stuff up

 

(3) it does automatic sample rate adjustment (unlike iTunes)

 

(4) none of the iTunes bloat is present. It just plays music

 

(5) it plays FLAC.

 

(6) it is free and open-source.

 

It's main disadvantages (as far as I know) are:

 

(1) it can be a bit buggy and occasionally crashes or in my case it sometimes skips over songs, especially 96kHz. Also I don't think it can play stuff over 96 kHz, although I might be wrong about this.

 

(2) no album art, so if you are visually oriented, you will find this acutely frustrating

 

(3) I don't think it is readily controlled remotely

 

It is being actively developed, and a 2.0 version is on the horizon.

 

[sr1329]

I was going to post this same question here and I'm glad I found this thread right on the first page. Most of the answers excepting one (I didn't know that iTunes was still coded in Carbon) didn't really answer the question.

 

I would prefer using the iTunes interface and remote and genius and all that good stuff since I feel that if I'm going to switch from physical disks to computer audio I might as well all the way in terms of convenience.

 

However the question I have revolves around core audio. I mean what exactly does Amarra or Pure Music do that iTunes/Core Audio won't do?

 

I mean don't all software players decode the file and present the output as PCM to the DAC via firewire? What could go wrong here (of course assuming no OS based sample rate conversion)?

 

Doesn't iTunes or any other player on a Mac basically output bit perfect audio?

 

When using Firewire (2 way interface) doesn't the DAC control the data rate and basically pull the data at whatever rate it needs?

 

Can anyone explain?

 

[blueixus]

I am no expert on the goings on inside a Mac but there does seem to be a real improvement in SQ with both Pure Music and Amarra over Native Itunes.

 

Aside from their ability to switch sample rates, I think Amarra does not use Core Audio but the engine from SoundBlade which was built initially for use in recording studios, not sure about PM.

 

So that's a difference, they both also use much more sophisticated software in their volume controls, than itunes which some consider to be poor in this area, so that's another difference, and I am sure the list goes on way beyond my patchy understanding!

 

As has already been said the thing is to try the demo versions of them both. Nothing ventured nothing gained...

 

 

 

 

 

[wgscott]

iTunes is capable of bit-perfect output (turn off all sound modifications and prevent upsampling).

 

The question then generalizes to the following:

 

"If two bit-perfect sources output the same information via the same hardware, how is it physically possible for them to sound different?"

 

Personally, I've never seen compelling evidence that it is possible. I, however, don't seem to hold the majority opinion.

 

I don't know the inner workings, but some of these programs I think bypass some or all of CoreAudio and interact with the Hardware Abstraction Layer directly. Perhaps therein lies the answer, but if both pathways output the same stream of 0s and 1s, I don't understand how they can sound any different.

 

I've only very briefly tried the Pure Music demo. It sounded identical to me, and the interface was grotesque in design, so I didn't pursue it. The only advantage seemed to be the automatic switching of the sampling rate.

 

[sr1329]

Well of course I will try Pure Music and see if it does anything. I wish the authors of these programs would explain what exactly it is that their design intent and goals were when coding the software.

 

"Personally, I've never seen compelling evidence that it is possible. I, however, don't seem to hold the majority opinion."

 

I think you do hold the majority opinion, it's just fringe existing audiophiles who fall in a small minority that would question such things IMHO.

 

I think this is sort of a parallel to the FLAC/ALAC vs. AIFF/WAV discussions. Nobody has an explanation for why it sounds different but people will swear that it does. The human mind is highly suggestible and I see in myself as well. I am very likely to believe something sounds better if someone gives me some rhetoric beforehand as to why it should sound better.

 

Does decompressing a file make it sound different?

 

Does a file change when it has been zipped and unzipped?

 

Does the extra 1% of CPU use while decompressing a FLAC file make it harder for the computer to send data out of a firewire port with data rates that barely hit 3% of the capability of that interface?

 

Does the increased CPU load somehow generate extra noise in the digital signal? Does it matter?

 

That having been said I will try both players, but some explanation of the raison d'etre for this kind of software from the designers would be nice. What problem did they find and how did they go about solving it. The answer better not be: "we can market anything to these audiophiles if we make up good enough stories".

 

 

 

[wgscott]

There are many such questions that get debated perpetually, with no obvious outcome, eg:

 

1. How can a 3 ft power cable make any difference in sound when the household wiring remains unchanged?

 

2. How can two speaker wires with the same length and diameter of wire, the same capacitance, resistance and inductance, sound any different?

 

3. How can files that can be interconverted and back while preserving the same checksum differ in sound?

 

4. How can sampling the music at a frequency greater than twice the threshold of human hearing change the quality of the sound?

 

etc. The list is quite long.

 

Turning to the example of Pure Music, from their web site, it isn't clear that they ever try to make the claim that the music sounds better or even different:

 

Automatic sample rate switching (16 / 24 bit, 44.1 to 192 kHz)

Gapless track playback and Memory Play

Dithered Volume Control

Includes 64-bit Adjustable Subwoofer Crossover, much more

Supports CoreAudio Compatible Sound Cards / DACs / Audio Interfaces.

Supports all iTunes Compatible Audio File Formats

 

Even for the "memory play," there really isn't an explicit claim that this improves anything.

 

If there is a volume control, and it is being used, the output is no longer bit-perfect, so all bets are off. Then you could just attribute any difference in sound to whatever digital signal processing is taking place. This would be no more controversial than the claim that using the equalizer in iTunes changes what the music sounds like. Whether it is an improvement is of course a subjective judgement.

 

 

[sr1329]

Some features there sound good, and I'll definitely try the software out.

 

Dithered volume control sounds nice, but ideally I wouldn't use any digital volume control but in practice I sometimes have to.

 

The sample rate changing is one thing I don't understand. iTunes won't do that by itself? That's a little problematic. However for the reasonable price of Pure Music I would just get it.

 

 

One thing I wonder is if it works with all playback software. I will use iTunes as well as Squeezeplay software. If it works for both I guess buying the program would be a no brainer if only for the automatic sample rate changing.

 

In the end I suppose I'll let my ears be the judge.

 

[wgscott]

Play does the automatic sample rate change for free.

 

 

 

[alfamatt]

My admittedly very little understanding of these matters is standard itunes uses quicktime as the last part of its chain, ie the bit that sends the music out to the dac.

Programs such as Pure Music & Amarra amongst others takes over that final part of the chain & presumably does it a bit better, leaving itunes to take care of the downloading, archiving & artwork etc.

I too am a noobie to computer audio & a very recent pc-apple convert.

All I can say is that my system of mac-mini/Pure Music/HiFace/Lavry dac sounds pretty fine to me.

Matt.