Guess I'll reluctantly buy this one only to play back the tiny number of DSD files in the system. I wouldn't call its library management great to work with, compared to iTunes. Likely due to its independent-from-iTunes operation. (My iMac is loaded.)Īt least Audirvana is stable. Worst of all, PM occasionally stalls or stutters. Might as well buy an outboard player in hardware form instead. While they do visibly post instructions to minimize or disable many computer functions to optimize music playing, that's a non-starter for me. Worse, Pure Music is way too fiddly and finicky for my purposes. But when I played familiar classics, it became evident it was mangling the files somehow. Pure Music's upsampling was very compelling, at first. Seems to me any player should be sending the same 1s and 0s to the DAC. They both sound slightly more robust than iTunes, and that in itself is dismaying. Testing was done with a grab-bag folder of 4000 tracks. I've just recently tried the demo Audirvana, and am in the middle of a Pure Music trial. If this has been asked and answered someone point me in the right direction please. Before I try to untangle the mess of information regarding ALL of the "audiophile" players and make a choice between something like Amarra, PureMusic, jRiver, etc., I would like for someone to explain in terms that hopefully I can understand, what deleterious effect there is to just using iTunes by itself? Do these other programs just add features, that I may or may not have value for, or do they do something to make the music sound better? What? I think that might be enough background to finally get to my question. For God's sake, I don't think I need another format to support. I honestly think I will only listen to these Redbook files and I don't think I'm ever really going to get on the hi-res train. The other, newest option, is USB straight to an asynchronous USB connection to the superb DAC section of a Rega Saturn-R. One is to an Empirical Audio Offramp (with upgrades) and a digital coax out to preamp.
I have two choices from the Mac Mini to sound, both are via USB. I just love the convenience of having my entire CD library at the tip of my fingers using the Remote app with an iPad. Its not really for critical listening but I would like for it to be the best it can be within reason.
I do that for building playlists for iPod, background music, party tunes, etc. But I've also ripped my entire CD collection (~2,500 titles) to Redbook AIFF (using dBpoweramp). My main listening experience is vinyl and a keen interest in "audiophile" quality CD's (read Targets, W German, early Japanese pressings, etc.). It also seems to keep changing faster than I can keep up with. I get this technology a little bit, but not nearly as deep as some of you. I also hope that there will be some discussion that's less complicated and technical so that I can understand it. There's no telling what this question will stir up, and I really don't mean to create any kind of $hit storm.