OSX player choice

[steve33]

Hi,

 

I am a long time reader of this forum but this is my first post. For now my source setup is Itunes ALAC rip -> Itunes -> Airport Express -> DAC with Ipod Touch remote. This is a setup that is really convenient and a pleasure to use. I read a little bit about other players like Amarra, Pure Music, Ayrewave and Audirvana. Is these players really better than Itunes? I have difficulties thinking that a computer player can sound better than another one with the same settings in the audio midi setup. Of course the auto audio Midi settings is a good thing and If they can play FLAC is a good thing too but for this we miss the others advantage of Itunes: Airport Express and Remote. Ok there some other 3rd party software but the complete setup is not as simple as the Itunes setup. And a big plus, Itunes is Free. So these software must have a really better audio to worth their price. I just don't understand how can an audio player can sound better than and other if we only want to send bit perfect data to the DAC. And from what I know Itunes can do that.

 

Steve

 

[damien78]

and will remain free (GPL license).

 

For difference is audible quality: just try and listen!

Theory in a nutshell: electronic equipments including computers are a source of electromagnetic and other interference.Thus the more optimized the player, the less the HDD, the CPU, ... are used, and the less interferences are generated.

 

Damien

 

[weyskipper]

Hi Steve,

 

I would recommend you experiment a bit with the different players. You can download free and demo copies of all of them (Amarra, AyreWave, Pure and Audirvana).

 

They all exhibit different characteristics, so it is worth taking a few hours to test a set of reference tracks.

 

The sound difference between these players and iTunes is very noticeable in my system.

 

For convenience, you will probably choose Amarra, as they integrate closely with iTunes. This means that you can use your apple remote and the sound will go through Amarra.

 

There are quite a few people who have nearly religious views on these players, I think they are all quite good, so enjoy the experiment.

 

One thing you may want to test is to see if feeding your DAC directly from the Mac makes a difference. I can only imagine that the Airport Express can introduce quite a bit of jitter. This will make the tests easier to compare.

 

 

 

[4est]

Understand it or not, but it is true that players sound different. Add "Play" to your list. It is free as well...

 

[steve33]

Do you think that the Airport Express optical output introduce more jitter than the macbook one? In an article from stereophile the airport express seem not to bad about the jitter.

 

Steve

 

[roscoeiii]

I am not sure that I have ever come across jitter measurements of the Mac's optical output. But I have seen reports in many places of later Airports (using the n wireless protocol rather than g) having FAR worse jitter than the early model that Stereophile tested.

 

[souptin]

With the exception of iTunes itself, you will need to run another program in order to capture the output from your playback software and send it to your Airport Express. The usual recommendation for this is Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil - http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

 

For example if you are using Amarra + iTunes and you click on the remote speakers in iTunes to stream, you will be hearing iTunes and not Amarra through whatever system is connected to your Airport Express. I know that Amarra does support streaming via Airfoil, however I'm rather less sure of what the benefits of doing this might be. My thinking being that whatever advantages there might be from the 'better math' are going to be severely reduced by the extra processing that goes on in Airfoil.

 

Please don't interpret this as a cynicism about the benefits of Amarra / Pure Music / Ayrewave (I've become quite attached to Ayrewave myself) - it's just that, as has already been suggested, I think you should definitely try connecting your dac directly to your computer as part of your evaluation.

 

[steve33]

What I understand is that if I want to use the airport express I'm better to stick with Itunes than to use another player and Airfoil. If a want the best possible audio quality it is better to use another player than Itunes and connect my macbook directly to the DAC. With my Dacmagic probably using the macbook USB port with a hiface converter to the coax In of my DAC instead of the optical out. That make a lot of sense but if I could achieve the same quality via my wi-fi network that make me a lot more happy.

 

Steve

 

[willmanus]

balderdash!

 

[GoldenEar]

Steve, it also depends on what you are listening to. If you can live with 16/44, then you will probably be happy with iTunes and AE. However, it is worth giving AirFoil a try. It maintains the connection with the DAC even when the player is paused or between tracks. This is nice if your DAC drops the first bytes when switching on/off. In my experience AirFoil has its own sound, you may like it or not.

 

I personally decided for your second option and bought a Mac mini dedicated to music playback (cf. signature). I'm much more satisified with this setup, but remember we're talking about HighEnd systems, i.e. relevant differences are minor to normal people. YMMV.

 

Regards

Kay