jon

I was really pleased when I saw this on HD tracks as I was trying to source the original DVD(a). I contacted HDtracks about this as it's unlistenable. I asked if it was the 5.1 mix and they did not answer the question but offered me a different download if I was not happy. They do not seem to care about the quality of their downloads or their customers and it is totally hit or miss if you get something worthwhile. It can't be difficult for them to contact WEA and ask for the stereo mix instead.

Why do people posting about dacs costing under £300 always have a friend with a benchmark dac (and never any other make) and their dac always sounds better?

This could be a permissions problem. Amarra is sensitive to ownership permissions for music files. Using finder locate a song and right click. Then click get info. At the bottom of this box is a section relating to permisions. What does it say? Which groups have ownership ie wheel read only system read and write. If your user name is missing then click the padlock and enter your password. Then click the + button and click your user name. Does this fix the problem? If yes then go to your itunes music folder and repeat above but then click the cog icon and select apply changes to enclosed files. This should fix the problem for all songs. If this does not work then contact sonic as im stuck.

I agree it's a bit shoddy. 2.0 was a big release and these bugs show a lack of beta testing. Sonic state the products works with rowmote and apple remote and the blame for lack of functioning must lie with amarra. I don't know why they don't allow a beta download or request more beta testers. I think that bugs like this detract from the great product it is (or could be). Great sound though

Downloaded 2.0 today, seems to sound better, has more definition and clarity. Not had a chance to test flac or mp3 playback though. Still a bit buggy - crashes with rowmote and won't playback hires downsampled with xld

Hi Clay, I'm in no way suggesting that less memory sounds better; hearing the mini using virtual memory (due to the amarra memory leak) was not a pleasant experience. If my mini took 4gig I would add it without hesitation but would not expect any sound improvement. I feel that with software, usb cables and SSDs explanations can be given that might be plausible either due to system noise or jitter but feel that unused ram lacks any explanation. I believe that if a mac can take extra ram then it would do no harm to max it but would not want anyone to be put off getting or using an old mac with a limit of 2gig unless there was perhaps more evidence (objective or subjective) for impaired sound quality. On a side note I've just discovered an old g4 power mac at work with 2gig of ram sitting idle. I might borrow it and see how it compares to the mini. Anyone compared the G4 to the G5? Sadly no G5s at the office at all.

It is my understanding that the virtual memory column is a theoretical maximum figure and does not relate to how much ram is required or an indicator if virtual memory is being used. I could well be wrong though.

It seems to have become accepted knowledge on this forum that for macs more memory equals better sound. Can someone offer a plausible explanation for this, other than stating macs like memory. I have a mac mini core duo with to 2 gig of ram. It is used as a dedicated music server. With amarra mini and itunes running it uses just over 1gig of ram. There is plenty of free ram and no swap files are used. (problems can occur due to the memory leak in amarra but thats a known bug). If I was using the machine for other tasks then 2 gig may not be enough but is plenty for a dedicated machine. As a test I installed amarra on my work mac book pro - latest model with 4 gig of ram. Using activity monitor the same amount of ram was being used as the mini (more or less). I tested playback of both machines and there was not a lot of difference - the mini sounding bettet but that had been stripped and optermized. Therefore i cannot see how 4 or 8 gigs could sound better unless using pure vinyl in memory mode.

Just noticed that Mobile DJ downloads has some of the 2009 mono remasters available as downloads in wav.

I download my first track from hyperion earlier today. I've only listened to it once and heard similiar to what you described. I thought it was a microphone picking stuff up. I have no other recordings by them so its hard to say. Will listen again later. What reply did they give?

Excluding ssds and obvious factors such as a fan/mechanical noise and reliability, in a world where 'everything matters', do different drives impact on sound quality? Ie is there any audible difference, or tendencies for drop outs, between usb , firewire, ethernet or esata or can power supplies and connecting cables add more noise to the computer and then onto the dac? Like the previous post, does speed matter or the size of the cache? I'm hoping the answer to all of this is no, it makes no difference but so far computer audio has not been so straight forward.

I personally prefer amarra - although i thought pv had a slighter clearer Mid range, amarra for me was more musical. Slightly annoying i bought amarra mini 2 weeks ago but sonic now have it on sale for 295 usd.

I've recently done this. The free utility onyx has a box to tick if you wish to disable journaling. Its under system info -disk.

Yes you can turn off wifi and just rely on the time capsule via ethernet. My mini is connected to an airport extreme via cat 5 and screen sharing works fine. Silverlight, did you notice an improvement using cat 7? Jon

Is the mini set to go to sleep? If so this may be why it's not showing up on the mac pro. Either turn sleep off or try ticking the box that says wake for ethernet access. This allows an ipod touch to wake it not sure about the mac pro - it should work. The apple remote can also wake a sleeping mac.