Gregg12y

I had this problem several months ago. I installed a new version of Amarra 4 Luxe and it fixed the problem. I get a good soundstage with IRC engaged.

I wrote to Amarra Product Support recently about how I cannot get IRC to work with A4L, even though it works fine with 3.0. I get a confused soundstage when I enable IRC in A4L. They replied right away and told me that they are aware of the issue and are working on a fix. Ralph at Amarra says they expect it to be fixed soon.

I notice that the soundstage seems to become vague when I enable IRC in A4L. One track in particular, the phase test on the Sheffield/XLO CD, illustrates this quite clearly. IRC works fine with Amarra Symphony 3.0.

Thanks, ckpiv, I will try your suggestions this weekend!

Thanks for the response, lolligagger. I had considered the Spatial system, but, having used the Tact RCS system, I wanted a system that I could run myself, so I could re-run it when I wanted if I change the speaker location, modify room treatment, etc. The Amarra IRC system works quite well, measuring at about 9 separate points and creating a good composite correction curve. I already have ProQ as a Pure Music plug-in, and when I try to create an EQ curve that approximates the curve displayed by the Tact system or by Amarra IRC, I don't get a good result - no doubt Clayton Shaw has some great skills. But I have this performance issue even if I dis-engage the IRC, so I was hoping that there is an answer that involves doing something with the settings in Amarra Symphony.

Forgive my typo above. What I meant to say is that what I don't want is to make these possible improvements and get a only minor, incremental improvement in performance.

Since 2011, I have used a Mac Mini as my primary music source. Until late 2013, I happily used iTunes/Pure Music, with a Tact 2.2 Room Correction preamp for DSP, running digital out into a separate DAC. Last October, I installed Amarra Symphony with IRC to take advantage of integrated room correction and EQ, eliminating the need for the Tact unit and its attendant wires/power cord. My Mac Mini is a 2.4Ghz dual core with 8GB of ram. I am still using Snow Leopard, the OS that came with the Mac Mini when I bought it. I run my music off of a Fire wire external drive, and I connect the Mac to a Berkeley USB adapter to a Berkeley Alpha Dac 2. I run no other programs when playing music. Things work well so long as I stay at 16/44.1, but if I try to switch to an 88.2 or 96K hi-rez source, the “pinwheel” turns, and the tracks will eventually load. If I try to switch from a 44.1 to play a 176 or 192 source, I usually have to force quit Amarra and restart it. And if I pause during a track on a hi-rez track, it will not resume – I have to force quit again. This happens whether I use the Amarra Playlist or iTunes. I usually use the cache mode, since I want to take advantage memory play. I have tried disengaging IRC and Cache mode, but I still have the problem. I never had these issues when I used Pure Music, but of course it does not have room correction. As I see it, I have several options: 1) a newer Mac with a higher speed processor, 2) updating from Snow Leopard to the current Apple OS, and 3) installing a solid state drive for the operating system and apps. What I is to make these improvements and wind up with only a minor, incremental improvement in performance. A final option I might consider is investing in a standalone Correction software such as Dirac (since I have the right microphone already), and if it can run it with Pure Music. I am very interested in anyone’s thoughts and suggestions. Thanks Greg MacMini-Berkeley USB Adapter-Berkeley Alpha 2 DAC-Mark Levinson 431-Magnepan 3.7’s. Audioquest USB, Analysis Plus Digital Crystal Balanced Digital, MIT interconnects and speaker cables.