Barnaby

Thank you. I feared it might max out at CD quality or less. Good to have this reassurance. Thank you

Greetings all, I'm looking at an MXN10 and I stream music via Qobuz. Please could you tell me if I plugged this streamer directly into my amplifier and controlled Qobuz with my phone, would it play music at the highest quality? I know this is a real newb question but honestly, the older I get, the less I understand all this stuff. Thanks for your help

I, too, have given up on Amarra. It's basically unfit for any serious purpose and they don't seem to give a jot about their customers once they have your money. I had endless issues and they charge you quite a lot to ask a question. My advice to anyone considering buying into this atrocious piece of junk is to avoid it.

Well I tried a separate streamer and it sounded considerably worse than the Mac. I know many view Mac as a great streaming option including Hegel so with respect to all the hype surrounding hifi I’m not going on a spendy wild goose case. I’m not sure if it’s the way I perceive certain frequency combinations but I hear this grainy distorted treble on certain points in certain tracks on every system I listen to them. I’m just accepting it now and am settled with my Mac

Fair enough. Will Amarra SQ+ do it? It seems to suggest that it does but unfortunately, as they don't answer my emails when I ask, I don't know for sure. It's almost like Sonic Studio don't really like doing business with anyone.

Well Amarra SQ|+ was no good. It will only install if I trun off system integrity via the terminal which I don't fancy doing. If it's this difficult to install, I'm going to have to pass. I'm investigating the upnp options now.

No problem @botrytis :-) I've found this https://to-email.com/find-email/d5bf0b982694b46cd2159db23c1ea16d which seems to be a workaround but it involved disabling system- wide protection albeit temporarily. I'm a bit wary of mucking about this much when other options are available. This has clearly been an issue since last August so I'm disasppointed that it hasn't been fixed by now.

Hi @botrytisand thank you for your link. Unfortunately, this is the instructions I followed on their support page and they didn't work. My issue seems to be that the installer doesn't actually install the Driver. The message says its missing and I can't locate it in the Library. I'm not sure why this should be. I've emailed their support twice with so far no response.

Thank you @Rexp I'm going to give it a go and also keep trying with the SQ+ idea 😀

Hi, I'm trying to run a trial of Amarra SQ+ but when I try to install it I get the message attached. Can anyonw help wit hthis please? I'm running Mac OS 12.1Monterey on a 2018 intel mac mini. Thank you most kindly and Happy Easter

Thanks for these answers. @GregWormaldAmarra SQ+ it it works might be a good option. If I used the Music app I'm assuming it would be the same as using iTunes on it's own? Did Amarra by-pass the Apple sound stuff when you used it with iTunes and used it's own? Would the Amarra SQ+ bypass Mac Core Audio? This is the bit I'm not too sure about. @RexpRe the upnp idea. Does this do the same as Apple Airplay except it allows for hi-res streaming? I have an amp which I believe is equipped for upnp and also Airplay. I could stream from my phone to the amp in CD quality but no higher. My main misunderstanding is whether or not its generally still considered a bad idea to rely on Apple's audio in streaming.

Hi, Can someone please help me? In the past I used to have a library in iTunes. I had installed Amarra and also Aurdirvana, which ( I believe ) bypassed the core audio in Mac OS and used their own sound processors. Not sure if I’ve got that technically right but that was the general idea IIRC. Anyway, I am entering the world of streaming music on the Mac. I’ve been playing Apple Music on my iPhone and headphones for a while but now am going to use streaming for my main source at home on my hifi. I can’t use Amarra to stream from an Apple Music subscription and I’m now feeling pushed to Qobuz so I can enjoy Amarra’s sound engine. I won’t use Audirvana as I feel the new subscription model and in particular the price point for a player unpalatable. Anyway, I also have found Apple Music’s EQ and I’m wondering if it’s still a good idea to bypass the Mac audio or not? Also is Qobuz or Amazon the only way to use Amarra? If I stick with Apple Music does it mean I need to use an inferior audio route via Apple’s Mac audio or not? Thanks for your help. As I say I’m just beginning to try streaming on my hifi so it’s all a bit confusing.

Really that's the question. I know there's some way to use the Music app with music libraries you have purchased or presumably ripped from your own CDs and that you have on your computer but how about streaming? Seems odd that Qobuz and Tidal are good to go but I can't see an easy way to do this with AM.

I did as you suggested and the EQ is working now. However, I'm finding the Amarra experience mixed. I love the sound but I encounter crashes, odd behaviours such as the sound becoming very shallow and "weird" like from a small transistor radio until I swithc the EQ on and off, and so on. I'm finding it to be a frustrating program so I'm still looking for one that will give me the sound I'm after. I believe Audirvana is able to have filters dialled in that make it sound all right but when I tried it briefly, it didn't impress me much and is in any case disqualified for being conditional on paying a laughably high subscription price. Of the others, Bit Perfect and Pure Music, JRiver etc seem to have given up, so I'm mainly using Qobuz player. It's all right but I wish it had a remote control.

Thank you @GregWormald for your help. I will try these things today. I'm on a Mac and possibly you're on Windows so I'm not sure if that requires some different process. the other thing is that I don't have a music library loaded. Mine is on a hard drive and to date I've not connected it and just used Amarra for streaming from Qobuz. Maybe something that is affecting this control? Anyway I will go through these steps later and let you know how it worked. Thanks again