Treb74

Have to agree with Melvin. I feel Fidelia doesn't have the resolution of Audirvana but has a bit of the warmth from Amarra, so I think it sits in between as well. With just a little more resolution, it would be my 'it' player but for now, that sits with Audirvana for me.

Is it just me or does this version sound fantastic to anyone else? I've just spent the last hour comparing it to the latest versions of Audirvana+, Fidelia and Amarra. I have to say that it was a toss up between iTunes 11.1.3 and Amarra for me. I thought iTunes was a bit more neutral and natural sounding (on vocals, piano). Amarra had more immediacy and warmth. It was especially evident on a track called Knotty Pine by the Dirty Projectors/David Byrne (great track by the way -- lyrics are some old scribblings of Byrne's form the 70s). PS forgot to say I'm on Mavericks.

Sorry, don't mean to bang on about this but I just found a review of the Apple TV digital out that mirrors my experience: 'Now beyond convenience, there was one huge benefit that I wasn't quite expecting—that the music server folks were right. Digital via the Apple TV sounded dramatically better than digital via the digital output of a CD player. The server crowd isn't lying—within seconds it was starkly easy to hear how much better the music sounded. For simplicity, I am going to assume it is the lack of jitter (as they claim), but whatever it was, the soundstage immediately broadened and deepened and the music sounded smoother—not rolled off, but rather more as though it was missing some jagged distortion that previously went unrecognized. Kind of like my previous epiphany regarding differences in CD player sound, I was shocked at the difference. There were simply no caveats or tradeoffs in that regard—only superior music playback. Call me converted. Music server folks claim to never want to go back to spinning physical CDs. I know I won't.' apple tv

I've recently tried the Apple TV with a Rega DAC connected with a silflex optical cable and I've been impressed with the results. It certainly beat the Rega connected to my MBA (2011) through USB or USB (wireworld starlight or Graham Slee Lautus USB cable - which is a great cable by the way) Vlink Rega Dac connections. To my ears, the imaging has been more precise, the overall sound 'cleaner' with more bass and more body to it than direct to the DAC from my laptop. I could more easily distinguish players such as Amarra, Audirvana + and Fildelia. For the record, Fidelia streaming through the ATV (3rd gen) sounded the closest to my DAC been fed from my Rega Saturn cdp as a transport (which had been about the best performance I could get out of my DAC previously). However, as I imagine streaming the output of these players to Airplay involves streaming PCM data, I needed to connect the MBA and the ATV to my router with CAT6 Ethernet cables to avoid drop outs. One interesting thing I found was that the ATV has a setting to force 16 bit output (I wonder if that implies in can output 24bits?). In any case, I was wondering if this setting would also force 44.1k output instead of up sampling as has been noted on these forums (I was actually wondering if it upsampled PCM data in any case on the fly) - no way for me to test. Overall, I thought using the ATV was a really good way to connect to my DAC and better than the other alternatives I had.

Hi all, Thanks again for the suggestions. I just went ahead and bought an Apple thunderbolt Ethernet adapter for my MBA and a few meters of Belkin Cat 6 cable to connect it to my router. I also have another cat 6 cable to my ATV from my router. Well, no more dropouts!!! And the sound quality using either Amarra or Audirvana and 3' of silflex toslink cable from the ATV to my Dac is stunning. I have never heard the Rega Dac sound so good - imaging is precise, detail is all there and non-fatiguing (detail better on Audirvana+ but more body to instruments and voices on Amarra with plenty of detail still). I really recommend people giving the Ethernet, ATV, Toslink combination a try with either Amarra or Audirvana. I also would question the reports of the ATV up sampling from 16/44. On the audio MIDI settings, which I think both A+ and Amarra use, it lists the output as 16bit 44.1k. I'm wondering if those who have observed upsampling were streaming through iTunes (which seems to use certain APIs instead). Thanks again...

Hi, thanks. Yes, I have. Unfortunately, there's a dense cluster of houses where I live and we all have wifi! So no quiet channels.

Hmm, interesting thought, thanks!

Thanks for the suggestion -- I've just checked and my router only does 2.5GHz at the moment. I should say that an ethernet cable from the router to the ATV has helped a little. Thinking of going ethernet from my Macbook Air to the router as well (of course, this defeats the wireless streaming thing. But, I like the SQ so much, it might be worth it -- without having to go the Mac Mini/toslink route).

Hi, thanks for the suggestion -- does accessing the iTunes playlist on the ATC involve using iTunes Match though? And if so, I think it's limited to 256k res files. I'll be happy to contribute to the thread. I have to say that I found that streaming Audirvana through the ATV/Airplay (except for the drop outs!!!) to have the best sound I've heard so far from my system full stop. I've tried USB, USB/VLink2/Coax, etc. The imaging with Audirvana and streaming was more precise and instruments sounded more 'full' with less 'glare'. I've been using Amarra/Audirvana/Fidelia for about 1 1/2 years now and when I tried streaming Audirvana through Airplay/ATV3 (and toslink to my Rega DAC), I had a definite, solid 'wow' moment.

I know, that doesn't bother me -- I like the sound and it's convenient. Drop outs with Audirvana/Amarra/Fidelia and AirPlay do bother me, especially when iTunes seems to output it with no issues.

Hi, I'm experiencing what I think is an odd problem. I have an Apple Tv (3rd gen) and I've been using the optical out to my Rega DAC via iTunes and AirPlay with no problems (no dropouts, no clicks, etc). However, I've just realised that I can use Audirvana, Amarra or Fidelia via AirPlay by selecting AirPlay as the source (I think they select AirPlay from the Audio MIDI Setup list). However, whenever I use the latest versions of these players (I prefer Audirvana but this problem occurs on all three players), I experience frequent dropouts through AirPlay. I'm playing the exact same tracks -- all 44.1k 16bit ripped in .aiff or alac (but the problem also occurs on smaller MP3s or AAC files). So, I think I can rule out the network, the optical out on the ATV, the cable and the DAC as it works perfectly with iTunes. Has anyone else experienced this? It seems strange that AirPlay would work fine with iTunes but not the other players. Thank you, Treb

Ok, I've heard back from AE. Yup, very responsive - got emails on both Saturday and Sunday. It turns out they're awaiting a fix from iZotope, and couldn't say when it would be ready. On an unrelated note, a new beta version, 1.4.1, is being tested internally, so we may see that soon (but it may not include the fix for this upsampling static issue).

Hi Melvin, Great, thanks for taking the time to try this! I did the same with Audirvana+ and didn't find an issue either (and I even shut down, restarted, etc). I'm glad the issue could be replicated (I found the same with upsampling at different rates) and I've logged a support item for Audiofile Engineering. I can update the thread with its progress if interested. Thanks for the help!

I've returned to using Fidelia after a long while and upgraded to the latest version (1.3.1 I believe). I think it sounds great and rivals Amarra, my usual go to player. When using the iZotope resampler, up sampling to 96k, I'm noting a bit of faint static on all the tracks. Interestingly, this is not always the case (happens about 4 out of 5 times) and if I use a different resampler options (like the Apple ones) I don't hear any static, and if I drop it down to the original sample rate of the track I don't hear any static. Has anyone else experienced this or resolved it? It's a shame because without the static it sounds almost as good as Amarra to me but with a bit more PRAT. Thanks!

Downloaded 1.3.9.10 last night on a MBA 13" with ML -- sounds fantastic with a scary degree of realism on vocals. Only a couple of dropouts on only a couple of tracks over a few hours. I've not experienced these with other betas but maybe I wasn't listening for long enough (I wanted to go back through old music in my collection with this release). Well done Damien.