Det går dessverre ikke å linke rett til posts på Computer Audiophile. (Jeg sitter med et glass rødvin og lærer en del av å lese meg gjennom trådene der borte - mange innspill fra alle mulige slags synsvinkler.)
Men Nugent får på pukkelen. Siden jeg ikke kan linke rett til et innlegg der, så legger jeg hele innlegget inn her. Det er å finne på denne siden, og er nok mest tragikomisk:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Amarra?page=4
hazards of totally subjective 'testing'
Steve has posted different comments about Amarra recently on another site (AA), but has NOT 'corrected' the mis-perceptions he posted on this thread. I'll attempt to sort this out, with some rather interesting conclusions.
[June 01, 2009 at 12:28:03 on AA]
"In fact, only yesterday I compared an XP laptop with unmapped Foobar 0.8.3 to Mac iTunes and Mac iTunes with Amarra running native 24/96 tracks, and the PC matched or beat all of them, albeit by a small margin against Amarra."
[June 02, 2009 at 21:49:55 on AA]
"I just realized that Amarra was not fully functional. It's not easy to tell when its working if you have not seen it before. A new download and now I'm getting the full effect.
It leaves the PC and Foobar 0.8.3 in the dust."
Steve said in an earlier post [Sun, 05/31/2009 - 19:09] here on CA:
"Okay, I just downloaded Amarra test software and it works with my Tascam US-144/PAce-Car 2 reclocker combo.
On to Amarra testing:
Pre-Amarra: Playing iTunes from the Mac Mini through the Tascam/Pace-Car combo is not quite as good as playing the same hardware using PC and Foobar0.8.3.
When I install Amarra, however, the result is identical. Both have highly focused, vivid presentations. Very live and 3-dimensional.
Because both are going through the Pace-Car 2, I know that the difference is not jitter. They are using the same identical clock in the Pace-Car 2, not the computer clock.
So, I conclude that these sound virtually identical:
1) PC with Foobar 0.8.3 (unmapped) driving Overdrive DAC or Off-Ramp USB with Axis or Polestar cable
2) PC with Foobar 0.8.3 (unmapped) driving Tascam US-144 into Pace-Car to good S/PDIF cable
3) Mac with Amarra/iTunes driving Tascam US-144 into Pace-Car to good S/PDIF cable
What this says is that not only is the jitter a problem with iTunes on Mac, but the Mac Core Audio is also mucking up the data somehow, like kmixer does on a PC.
Unfortunately it costs $1500 to get the the same place you can get to for free on a PC, but after all it's iTunes."
So, what to make of all of this!?!
First off, Steve's conclusions posted here before he got Amarra working properly are just flat out wrong.
You can see from the posting times at AA that he definitely posted his results here BEFORE he got Amarra working properly.
Secondly, anyone who has downloaded Amarra would probably agree that yes, it might be difficult, as Steve says, to know when Amarra is playing versus not playing, BUT, play it does. To wit, even if the Amarra software is not ACTIVE, it will still play music - using the standard iTunes player.
[note: the key is to look at the VU meters in the Amarra window, if they move, you're listening to Amarra. This is an intentional feature so that Amarra can revert to iTunes for compressed music, as the Amarra sonic engine can not yet handle compressed music, even if lossless]
IOW, when Steve thought he was listening to Amarra, he was actually listening to iTunes/CoreAudio. :0
Now, hopefully you'll understand the title of this post - hazards of totally subjective testing.
If we go back and look at Steve's conclusions - substituting iTunes in place of Amarra - we get some interesting information.
"Pre-Amarra: Playing iTunes from the Mac Mini through the Tascam/Pace-Car combo is not quite as good as playing the same hardware using PC and Foobar0.8.3.
When I install Amarra, however, the result is identical. Both have highly focused, vivid presentations. Very live and 3-dimensional."
However, even after installing Amarra, the music was being played via iTunes, without Steve's knowledge. hmm....
Steve goes on the say:
"So, I conclude that these sound virtually identical:
1) PC with Foobar 0.8.3 (unmapped) driving Overdrive DAC or Off-Ramp USB with Axis or Polestar cable
2) PC with Foobar 0.8.3 (unmapped) driving Tascam US-144 into Pace-Car to good S/PDIF cable
3) Mac with Amarra/iTunes driving Tascam US-144 into Pace-Car to good S/PDIF cable
What this says is that not only is the jitter a problem with iTunes on Mac, but the Mac Core Audio is also mucking up the data somehow, like kmixer does on a PC."
So, Steve claims to have heard a difference between iTunes and, well, iTunes, AND, is stating that not only was there a jitter problem and a data integrity problem in iTunes (in the first instance), but that iTunes (which he thought was Amarra) is virtually identical to his preferred PC configuration in the second instance (of listening to iTunes), and therefore superior to iTunes.
Steve,
if you're out there, perhaps you'd care to explain?
clay