Audiophile Software Music Players for Mac OSX - Foo?

[sondale]

Sondale, How many gb ram do you have in your mac mini? I found my similar age mini played much nicer with A+ when i went to 2X4gb sticks from original 2X1gb sticks.
MacMini, A+ at 96/24 and using iTunes integration controlled by Screen Sharing via my macbook from the recliner - perfect.

allsorts,

I now have 2x2GB - when I upgraded I thought that was the max, so I may just go for 2x4GB. I am thinking of getting an iPad to replace my aging laptop, so I will have a look at ScreenSharing.

It does seem that A+ MAY be more affected by environment than PM - which is odd because a lot of comments about PM refer to 'glitchy' behaviour which is not what I have found!

[Sonority]

That is all very interesting to me - it is a road I fully intend to navigate within the next few months.
Thank you for sharing that - one further point - album cover art / flac / alac etc, they all work ok with A+?

Thanks again.
Steve.

[sondale]

That is all very interesting to me - it is a road I fully intend to navigate within the next few months.
Thank you for sharing that - one further point - album cover art / flac / alac etc, they all work ok with A+?

Thanks again.
Steve.

Steve,

I cannot comment on flac/alac as my files are either AIFF or WAV; so far all album art has appeared.

I will try checking some FLAC files - I want to try XLD to rip some cds so I can try some different formats.

ALan

[Sonority]

Hi Alan,
Yes, I have also explored XLD as a 'ripper' and from what appears on the web it looks well 'up there'.
I don't think it has been updated for some time now and may also be un-supported.

I have several aquantainces who have very, very nice setups, dedicated computers, nice dacs and the rest, but think I am somewhat mad when I try and tell them that the iTunes they have complete trust in may not be giving them the best that they could achieve from their kit. 'Bits are bits' is the inevitable reply. I reply with 'codecs' but that just gets a blank look..

[roob]

So I now really need to find why the occasional glitches, what is happening with Gapless playback and why Inter & Hog modes are off limits.

Integer mode needs to have Hog Mode and Memory Play selected before it becomes available, saying that not all usb interfaces are Integer capable.
I cannot see any reason why Hog mode does not work, have you made sure that you have selected a different output device in Audio Midi? ie use built in output and not your dac.

[Beechwoods]

I have my DAC connected via USB and Optical; route the 'Alerts' etc to the USB port and the music to the Optical. The optical supports 24/96 whereas USB doesn't... this achieves the same thing as 'Hog Mode' I'd have thought while allowing me to switch between PureMusic and Spotify without PureMusic 'hogging' my connection.

[sondale]

Integer mode needs to have Hog Mode and Memory Play selected before it becomes available, saying that not all usb interfaces are Integer capable.
I cannot see any reason why Hog mode does not work, have you made sure that you have selected a different output device in Audio Midi? ie use built in output and not your dac.

The only output device selected has been exau2i - there is a dashboard which shows what is happening - basically it cannot start the driver - something else is hogging its port!

I spent a lot of time listening to A+ and PM whilst monitoring performance; A+ uses twice as much memory as PM (24% vs 13%) but iTunes under A+ runs at 13% whilst it runs at less than 2% under PM. At times A+ went up to 135% - but oddly enough that was not when the glitches were obvious.
I think I have an understanding of why the Gapless play does not always work - but I need some more time to investigate.

For a bit of light relief I used BootCamp to setup a Windows 7 partition - loaded JRiver MC16 and my USB Dac drivers - sounds promising!

[sondale]

I have my DAC connected via USB and Optical; route the 'Alerts' etc to the USB port and the music to the Optical. The optical supports 24/96 whereas USB doesn't... this achieves the same thing as 'Hog Mode' I'd have thought while allowing me to switch between PureMusic and Spotify without PureMusic 'hogging' my connection.

Not to seem as though I am bragging but I get my USB port to run at 352.8!

Unfortunately my usb dac is just that - no other inputs. I do have a Twisted Pear 4MUX board which I could use for SPDIF (optical or coax) and use the I2S output - however if I could sort out the Integer Mode / Hog Mode problems I would be very happy with just the usb.

[roob]

Getting integer mode to work in PM gave a major sq boost in my case.