Erwin S

That's very nice to hear! But I will wait for the full version. I will try to double the RAM memory asap as I really want to keep using this good old iMac for a bit longer. Edit: my son will look into it and we will go for 16GB probably.

If I understand correctly, people who have switched from A3 Symphony with iRC say A4 without iRC sounds better, not? As a firm believer and 100% daily user of the former, I find that very hard to believe... I will probably upgrade to A4 with iRC (I presume no premium has to be payed for the continued use of iRC with A4 after A3) after my old iMac gets the extra 4GB RAM as suggested. I have never sonically compared Amarra to anything but iTunes as at the time in 2010, Amarra was recommended here to be the best in sound. My good old Weiss DAC2 is still holding strong too. The user interface has of course never been the best. When my wife wants to hear music in my absence, she turns on the radio instead. I mean: start iTunes AND Amarra, select album in iTunes, add album in Amarra, wait, wait more, then hit play... Awful really. But I am used to it I suppose. I do maintain another playlist. Just one. Every month I pick the newest bestest music and then synchronize it to the iPod from my car. That's one time hassle when with Amarra it's every album. But let's hope the new version deals with that (after some debugging)...

Not only is Pearl Jam one of the great rock bands ever, Eddy Vedder is simply a great person. I don't think there's a nicer guy in rock music. There are enough jerks, wannabee's and non-talents around to appreciate a true man like him. Oh, and I also loved the music he did for "Into The Wild"...

After I sent a mail to Mediarte (the EU online store for Sonic Studio) expressing my annoyance that they were advertising the price without mentioning VAT before checkout, they actually corrected the info on their website. If you have Amarra, the upgrade comes to €441,65 incl VAT. That's not cheap for software, but Dirac standalone for stereo is €389, hence I get Symphony upgrade for €52. I just completed the order. I was told yesterday that the codes have to be generated manually meaning it could take until the next day before the activation code is sent. EDIT: I already received the activation code, so it was only 45 minutes! This promises to be a good weekend!

I received the e-mail from Sonic Studio that Amarra Symphony iRC is available for $789 (found out on their website that the introductory price is $645). The upgrade price for me from Amarra is $489 until Sept 30. Fair enough... But much to my surprise, 21% VAT is added upon check-out! When I turned to the EU on-line store Mediarte, it's the same, instead of €365, 21% is added upon checkout. This way of advertising fake prices (without VAT) is simply illegal! Very disappointed! I was all ready to order (one Paypal click away), but now I am not so sure anymore.

Bummer! We will see then. I also just found out that this is actually a Dirac product (exact same diagram). It's called Dirac Live Room Correction Suite and can be purchased for €389 (stereo version) or €650 (8 channel version). There's a 14-day free trial! And unlike Amarra, it exists for both PC and Mac. And the recommended microphone happens to be the UMIK-1 I already have. I will wait for Amarra Symphony though. Dirac RCS | Dirac Research

I will probably upgrade to Symphony with iRC from Amarra if the prices remain the same. Prices now showing are €349 (down from €379) for Amarra Symphony and €139 for Amarra. This means upgrade for €210 or €240. I already own a miniDSP Umik-1, which I didn't got to use this far. I bought that for my 5.1 set. That should be adequate. Looking forward to it! Been ages since I visited this forum BTW.

As far as sound isolation goes, you cannot beat detached spaces obviously. Here's a link from a space in Holland. It's dutch, but the pics speak for themselves. http://www.htforum.nl/yabbse/index.php?topic=75065.0 Jean Sibelius, the owner, and his wife had a contractor build a space and then he made all the acoustic devices himself. It's glorious. I had a meeting with the acoustic designer because I want a to go a little bit in that direction (ie, diffraction rather than absorption). He will come and measure our space when the drywall is up. Then he will propose the necesary acoustic devices. I don't believe in the acoustic "package deals" you can order via internet since a measurment and analyse is key... Difference is our space is not detached and it's multipurpose with ample glazing. That's an extra challenge and some compromises are evident, but I don't see ourselves "withdrawing" in a cave to enjoy music or a movie. To encounter sound proofing problems, I decided to build a room-in-room on top of a floating concrete floor. It's not that difficult, you just need to take a systematic approach and make sure no "hard" connections (which would transfer the sound) are made between the inner room and the rest of the building. Also tripple glasing helps, especially when various panel thicknesses are combined: each thickness is purposeful for a limited frequency range. A basement is also an option, but IMO has one big acoustic downfall that it is made of concrete. Hence, low frequencies are being bounced back effectively into the space causing peaks and nulls. I prefer wood framing. The forementioned acoustician confirmed that woud framed constructions are rather good for bass. So take a look at that attic in stead...

As in post #4: BUMMER ;-)

Eloise, Thanks for the info, I got some more reading to do! I didn't even know multiple ATV could pull music independently. Nice suprise that the Naim UnitiQute is now only £1,000 (I noticed €2,000 before). My wife wants a simple device in her home office (not that she's not capable!) and I would build another set of DTQWT speakers (Troels Gravesen design) for her. These are 95 dB, so the 30 Watts would be more than enough for office purposes. This could be it for that zone. Need to look into Linn. Syncronisation a la Sonos is nice, but no biggie. Knew Vortexbox (heard of it is more correct phrase) but Serviio sounds totally new to me. I noticed that the Cambridges only supports AIFF at 16/48! That's not good, Cambridge Audio!

Those are "boom" boxes. Are you serious, or is a proper replacement for the Touch imminent?

Eloise, I presume the OP wants to be able to play different music in each separate room? Does the Apple TV let you do this, unlike the Airport Express? How? Also, the Apple TV is restricted to 16/48, not? I would be interested in this myself, but it should handle AIFF at least to 24/96. Sonos is also limited to 16/48 (or is it 16/44). A real bummer that Squeezebox has ended. Naim is offering AIFF support, but those prices! Linn Sneaky DS is a good tip, I thought it was more expensive. I believe the UPnP streamers you mentioned also do not support AIFF? Would a central Mac mini server + NAS offer a sollution?

Ah yes, thank you Chris, I just didn't see it and since Neil Young was mentioned... I probably saved the link after seeing it here but only now read it in depth. Off to there! BTW, this time this "Audio_ELF" character is completely off it, ofcourse. Neil Young is one of the great and deservedly so. Dunno, maybe she's still mad because Neil made a song called "A Man Needs A Maid" sound so darn good. I love Harvest, one of the best albums I have. "Are You Ready For The Country?" is one of my favourite tracks of all time. There, that should put her straight! ;-) BTW bis: Neil Young has been against CD's since at least fifteen years if my memory serves me right.

24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed I don't know if this article was discussed here? It's about the (non-) sense of 24/192. I believe these are the folks behind "Ogg Vorbis"? Indeed, when I am performing SPEK on 24/96 High Resolution downloads, in most of the albums the frequency tops at 20 to 25 KHz. So why not stick to 48 KHz such as the article suggests? Or am I seeing this wrong? We can debate over the fact whether we can here or "sense" 48 KHz or not, but what if it's not even in the recording? And what about the bit depth? Is 24-bit beneficial for production, but 16-bit more than sufficient enough for playback? I have to say: I have a Serge Gainsbourgh vinyl rip to 24/96 download from the reissue of "Melody Nelson" and I have the famous early Rolling Stone 10 album LP rip to 24/192 and both sound fabulous. OTOH, I can't distinguish between some 16/44 or 24/96 downloads I have from the same album (such as Tom Waits' latest) The article claims that during blind listening tests of the same high res music sample when it's played natively or downsampled on the fly to 16/44 is undistinguishable.

After all the mid-thread semantics I want to add, hopefully helpfull to the OP, that I started out with 128AAC on an ancient Macbook Pro but after coming here I soon turned to ALAC on an iMac before finally turning to AIFF on a dedicated Mac mini based system. To be honoust, I never heard difference between ALAC and AIFF. I just assumed AIFF would be a more "durable" (less proprietry) format than ALAC. Not so sure anymore since some playback devices do ALAC and not AIFF and others do the oposite. Finding devices that do both is neigh on impossible! Important if you have whole house audio distribution aspirations. Seigh! I can always convert all to FLAC ofcourse! BTW Daniel Weiss ensured me, in his own words, that "ALAC is fine". To my ears, Amarra did provide a substantial aural quality leap. But only with ALAC or AIFF, not so with 320 MP3/AAC. Don't ask me why.