Bezerkely

To go with the WaveLink. Too bad your local dealer wasn't more helpful, or offer you a grace period to return a purchase. Just out of curiosity, what's your set up? Song to Bobby by Cat Power on now....sublime even in redbook. Leath

Hi J-maxx, As I understand it, the battery charges via USB when not playing music. My Mac Mini is always on (sleep disabled) and the WaveLink is getting power 24/7. It would be helpful if Gordon chimed in with more info about how he works his battery magic and if I should be powering it down from time to time to assist with break in. I don't have a BNC cable, so I'm using the stock cable supplied with the unit. I did not see any markings, but suspect it's Wire World since the color matches the supplied Wire World USB cable. My Mini is last revision before going to the aluminum enclosure, late 2009? It has a 32GB SSD and 8GB RAM. Music on a NAS connected via wireless network (5GHz N). I've been listening to 24/44, 24/88, 24/92, and 24/192. Lot's of stuff from HDTracks: Sharon Jones, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jazz at the Pawnshop, Keith Jarret & Charlie Haden, Ella & Louis....(HDTracks is like crack to me). Also lots of indie rock, most of which sounds terrible, except in the noisy car where compression and brickwalling do have a function. Okkervil River, Antony and the Johnsons, Josh Ritter, all make great sounding releases. And then there's my Dylan problem...I'm also partial to Debussy and Chopin piano pieces, and I have to say that the WaveLink really shines with piano. Most realistic presentation I've heard with my system. A loaner is a no-brainer, but you'll probably want to keep it. I'd love to hear your thoughts if you do give it a try. Leath

The Offramp is an excellent product and I've been using it for over a year very happily. My system is Mac Mini w/ Amarra>Offramp>Tact 2150 amp>Zu Druid MkIV. The Offramp 3 is limited to 24/96, and impatient for moving up to 24/192 capabilities of the soon to be released Offramp 4, I sprung for the Wavelink 2 months ago. Out of the box, I was surprised that it bested the Offramp by a hair or two. Slightly more dynamic and a little more pronounced low end. It's improved a bit in that time, but not much. I recall the Offramp had a long break in time and it was a very dramatic, sudden increase in dynamics that caught me by surprise one day. The Wavelink has stayed in the system and the Offramp will move to the office system (or I'll upgrade to version 4 which I expect will better the Wavelink). The Offramp has more output options vs. the single BNC of the Wavelink. But the Wavelink has an internal battery charged via USB, 24/192 driverless (on Mac) async, and comes with nice Wireworld cable (the purple one). I have the next step up Wireworld cable (red) and stuck with that. The Wavelink also provides BNC cable with an RCA adapter if you don't have a BNC input. Both USB converters are about the same price, and I have to give the Wavelink the edge on features/performance. It's been rock solid, no issues using it with Amarra (and AyreWave), and leaves a big grin on my face when listening. Whatever DAC you own, it will sound the best ever with the Wavelink. And that's my humble opinion, Leath

A/B'd a few tracks this weekend and the bass/low end is more prominent on the hirez. Imaging and instrument palpability also improve, but dynamics are about the same. The hirez also seems a tad lower in volume overall. I did toss the last track into audacity, and the waveforms look identical with no hard limiting/brickwalling. Doing the little transform thingy show energy up to 44kHz on hirez, 22kHz on redbook. So, the hirez seems to be a faithful copy of the master tape for both based on my limited sleuthing.

Even tho I have the CD already, I downloaded this minutes after getting the HDTracks email. Not enough time to listen yet, but I just saw her and the Dap-Kings at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this past Sunday (for FREE). Do yourself a favor and look up a few YouTube clips from the show. Stunning performance on a drizzly Sunday eve in SF. Words and YouTube clips just don't do it justice. I watched Patti Smith give an (also) stunning performance just prior, and I've been on a high ever since. I'm very happy to support music this good. Don't miss Ms. Jones next time she's in your town. It may be hyperbole, but if you've seen clips of James Brown in his prime, Sharon isn't far off. Those HDTracks boys need to get me 100 Days, 100 Nights in hi-rez too!

Hi Fabrice, Please, keep working on yTrack. The latest version of Remote is nice, but it's starting to bring the feature bloat/one app to do everything of iTunes to my iPad. My first thought after loading Remote 2.0 was "what is all this $4!7 cluttering up the sidebar?" I would say keep yTrack simple, don't add a bunch of features to try and best Remote. Cater to the guy in his listening chair (Me) that just wants to listen to music, not futz with his library or watch videos. I don't need to make playlists within yTrack, I can do that with Remote when I need to (basically, never). I'm happy to use both when I need a particular feature that one doesn't have. What would be killer features for me would be (1) access to PDF liner notes (like those from HDTRacks) while the album is playing and (2) have the volume slider control Amarra's volume without having to switch out of yTrack and use Rowmote. I think those of us with Amarra or PureMusic would like to access their unique features (memory play, etc.) from within yTrack. Leath

You're right. I forgot iTunes and audio midi had such a strange relationship. I should redo the comparison with audio midi set to 16/44.1. However, I still think Play will win. iTunes has always sounded flat to me. As far as I know, Play is just a front end to allow easy playback through core audio and any manipulations of the digital signal (other than the volume slider) would have to be through Audio Unit plugins. I suppose I could buy an AU upsampler instead of using the core audio upsampler via Audio Midi. Tact was Boz & Lyngdorph, who parted way several years ago. Boz is still going under the Tact moniker, while Lyngdorph has spun off his own designs using his work at Tact as a starting point and now has a distinct line of his own.

Hi Peter & Chris, Let me explain a bit more about the Tact 2150 amp (http://www.tactlab.com) and this should make my upsampling choice clear. The Tact is a class "D" digital amplifier. Tact calls itself the only true digital amplifier in that it uses a TI chip that takes a digital signal and turns it into a signal strong enough to directly drive speakers without changing it to analog. Panasonic makes home theater receivers based on this same TI part. In simplest terms, it is a "power DAC". However, this is not quite true since a DAC is creating an analog waveform (that then needs amplification to drive a speaker). It is my understanding that whatever bit depth/sampling rate that is feed to the Tact is transformed to 24/96 internally and that signal is fed to the TI chip. The 24/96 signal is then upsampled to 384Khz and output as PWM (pulse width modulation) signal-essential a burst of voltage that varies in length-that drive your speakers. Somehow this sounds like music coming out your speakers, and is wonderful sounding to my ears. To summarize, if I feed the Tact anything other than 24/96 it will be converted to 24/96 automatically by the Tact. I have no choice there. Where I do have a choice is where the upsampling occurs: on the Mac or in the Tact. Listening to the Tact with a 16/44.1 signal vs. 24/96 upsampled on the Mac (by core audio), I prefer the sound of the Mac doing the upsampling. The two are close, but the Tact fed 16/44.1 sounds a tad more cold/digital/clinical to me. Therefore, in my listening test, upsampling was always in occurring and unavoidable. Only when listening to the Amarra demo was the upsampling taking place on the Tact. In all other instances the upsampling was happening on the Mac through core audio. From my past listening experience, the difference in upsampling between the Tact and Mac are small. The differences in hear in software, iTunes vs. Play, is due to the playback engine since both are being upsampled by core audio. This playback engine difference is far greater and much easier to distinguish than the Tact vs. Mac upsampling. In my Play vs. Amarra listening, I suspect that the Tact upsampling hurt the Amarra playback slightly, leading to my wish to allow Amarra to upsample or not change sample rate and allow core audio to continue to upsample. This would allow me to do an apples to apples comparison of Amarra vs. Play, rather than the apples to oranges that I am doing now where two variables are changing at once (playback engine and who is upsampling). I hope that I have made my choice about upsampling and the rational behind that choice clear. To address some of Peter's questions directly: bit-perfect is kind of a red herring in my current system, it will never be possible unless I buy a separate DAC and amplifier to replace the Tact. I agree that Rumors wasn't the best choice of 24/96 material, but my selection of high rez is extremely limited and I wanted to stick to music I was intimately familiar with. Maybe I'll listen more to the HD Tracks sampler I downloaded and give the 24/96 iTunes/Play/Amarra bake off another spin. I would like to reiterate that the difference in 16/44.1 playback was very clear between iTunes and Play with core audio doing the upsampling for both. Poor choice of 24/96 source material made the difference smaller, but Play was still preferred over iTunes. Chris, I'm in Berkeley and if you have any spare time during the symposium weekend, I'd be happy to have you drop in for a listen. I would encourage all the OS X users out there to do an iTunes vs. Play comparison. If you find that Play is the superior playback engine, then I think you will like Amarra as well and may hear additional improvements. The main benefit of Amarra is that it maintains the functionality of iTunes, but adds superior playback. Even though Amarra isn't ideal on my system, it's very close and keeping the iTunes functionality may, in the end, persuade me to buy. Plus, my wife owes me after all the in-law visits these last two months. Thanks again for reading.

Hi All, A few pages back I suggested Quicktime/cross platform issues were the reason for iTunes poor performance. My listening test won't prove or disprove this hypothesis, but I'd like to post my comparison of four OS X applications for music playback: iTunes 8.1.1 (or whatever the latest version number), Songbird (ditto), Play by sbooth, and iTunes w/ Amarra in demo mode. Of course, all EQ, soundcheck, gain, etc. were off and volume of all players was at maximum. First, a little about my system: white dual-core Intel iMac, 2Gb ram, 5Ghz wireless NAS, Audio/Midi set to 24/96->Belkin Gold USB->Empirical Audio Offramp3->Kimber Cable silver digital XLR->Tact 2150 (Maui Mods+)->Zu Ibis->Zu Druid MkIV (2008). iPhone as remote if using iTunes w/ or w/o Amarra. This is dedicated to music, and one day I will get around to stripping down the OS, add an SSD boot drive, etc. Maybe when Snow Leopard arrives. Source material for comparison (all files AIFF): Fleetwood Mac, Rumors (DVD-A version, 24/96), Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (16/44.1), Lyle Lovett, Joshua Judges Ruth (16/44.1). First up: iTunes vs. Songbird. I started all tests with Rumors, specifically "The Chain", wanting to test out 24/96 material first. Well, couldn't really tell the difference between these two and gave up on Songbird. It's sluggish response time and all the extra garbage they add to make it the uber-iTunes is overkill for me. Who needs all that extra crap? I just want to play music, not look at a band's annoying MySpace page while listening. Next: iTunes vs. Play. Not sure what I expected here. I had tried earlier versions, but wasn't impressed with the basic interface and lack of iTunes-like organization abilities, built-in CD extraction, no remote control, etc. It's support of AudioUnit plugins was interesting. If you need high quality EQ compared to iTunes, then this was probably your best bet. However, since everything else was lacking, I never gave it a serious listen until now. Again, I started with "The Chain" and while I could clearly hear differences-mostly in tone and sound staging-I wasn't quite convinced which was better. So, browsing the library I hit the Fleet Foxes and thought how I had always been disappointed at how this album had sounded. The first track starts out a cappella, then you get some guitar chords coming in...well, I was shocked. I wasn't hearing a guitar anymore. I was hearing strings, frets, a resonant box. Went back to iTunes-flat, dull dynamics, everything was less distinct/smeared together. There are hints of what I hear with Play, the difference is I don't have to listen for it with Play like I do with iTunes. Flip to Lyle Lovett, well recorded, but somehow never quite as satisfying as I expect. Once again, Play to the rescue. Dynamics, better. Tone, no contest. Sibilants, gone. Piano is a hammered instrument. I'm suddenly thirsty for ice water. These things are obvious in live music, we've just forgotten since we listen to music in cars, over crappy iPod headphones or over cheap computer speakers (I have Klipsch Heresys in my office w/ NuForce Icon). I have to say I haven't gone back to listening to vanilla iTunes since. Recordings I've listen to a hundred times seem fresh again and I can't stop listening. Okay, I did go back briefly, just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself, but it was immediately obvious something way wrong. It's almost like after starting your car up for five years, you finally take it in for a tune up and when you drive it that first time you suddenly realize the sound/performance is changed in a subtly but very positive way. Your car pool buddy may miss the difference, but to you it's like night and day. Interface hasn't changed, and no remote. But the playback is so nice, I'm starting to thing more in a vinyl mode-set up the playlist and sit your butt down until it's over-rather than my hyper-I can access any track at any moment mode-with iTunes. Last: iTunes w/Amarra demo vs. Play. The main difference here is that Amarra switches to the native sample rate of the source material whereas Play is always outputting 24/96. In my system, the Tact accepts up to 24/192. However, internally, everything is processed as 24/96. Some time ago I compared 16/44.1 vs. 24/96 upsampling on the Mac and determined that I preferred that my iMac do the upsampling (core audio) over the Tact internal upsampling. Fleetwood Mac, not much difference. I don't think I could A/B Amarra vs. Play for this file. I must confess that I find the frequent Amarra dropouts very distracting for the purpose of making a comparison. Amarra vs. vanilla iTunes and the difference is clear. Amarra vs. Play, I can't quite call it. Moving to 16/44.1 material, Amarra loses on my system. The internal upsampling of the Tact defeats Amarra's native sample rate switching. I e-mailed Jon at Sonic about this, and he suggested Amarra wasn't the product for me if I wanted for force 24/96 output of all sample rates. This leaves me a great conundrum. I really like iTunes and being able to remotely control iTunes from the couch. Adding Amarra seems to be a no-brainer for me if only I could fix the sample rate at 24/96. One option would be to upsample my entire library, but this means more $$ on top of Amarra and an extra step in the ripping process with every new CD purchase. For right now, I'm stupendously happy using Play for serious listening and switching over to iTunes when I need remote capabilities for parties, etc. I'd love to hear feedback from others concerning iTunes/Play/and Amarra. Many here scoff at Amarra's price, and I find that Play is very close if not as good as Amarra. Again, the demo mode makes it hard for me to declare Amarra the absolute winner, but I am very willing to give the Sonic guys the benefit of doubt. My modest equipment probably doesn't hold a candle to the gear they listen to day-in and day-out, but I can say that the difference between Amarra and iTunes alone is very clear on my system. I don't really care why it sounds better and I appreciate everyones hard work at making computer audio better. I also want to add I quick endorsement for the Empirical Audio Offramp3. This gizmo took a long time to break in, but once it did, my system became a living, breathing, natural, dynamic monster and I fully give credit to the Offramp as being the heart of my system and why I am able to clearly hear differences on the software end. Thanks for reading this long post and happy listening.

but isn't Quicktime at fault? As far as I recall, iTunes is from the OS 9 days and was built on top of Quicktime. Core Audio came later with the introduction of OS X, but iTunes remained bound to Quicktime, which is the middleman to Core Audio on OS X. Quicktime is what allows iTunes to run of both PC and Mac. If iTunes weren't cross platform, Apple would probably have iTunes talking directly to Core Audio. Amarra is simply allowing iTunes to talk directly to the sonic audio engine, thus producing better music. I've heard anecdotal evidence that Play, by the author of Max, also sounds better than iTunes. And this may be due to talking directly to Core Audio, and not going through Quicktime. Snow Leopard is supposed to have a major rewrite of Quicktime, perhaps that will make iTunes sound better? In laws are visiting, so I don't have time to do A B C comparisons with iTunes, Play, and Quicktime to make any judgements myself. If anyone can jump in and confirm that Quicktime is still involved with iTunes, that would be very helpful. Cheers