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http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Amarra?page=4Sat, 06/13/2009 - 21:57 — cfmsp
CG,
I\'ve grown tired of trying to figure out why Amarra sounds better than iTunes without manipulating the data. If this is even true (the non manipulation part), I do NOT think that they know why. If they do know why, they seem especially poor at articulation.
The information seems to be going \'round in circles, with apologies to Billy Preston. See below a recent response to a question posted on an Apple Core Audio forum that basically inferred that the move to 64 bit architecture in Snow Leopard might improve iTunes and reduce the gap between iTunes and Amarra. This is a VERY logical inference if you ask me. Below is the response from an Amarra sales rep.
"I have gotten some response from Jonathan Reichbach. He says that Core Audio currently uses a 32 bit data path, when they go to 64 bit in Snow Leopard, it will increase the data path to 64 bits, and they will simply double the math. But the data path does not affect sound quality, unless it is below the sample rate! Sonics products do all their math in 64 bits and that won\'t change in Snow Leopard.
So simply going to 64 bit will not improve sonics. Apple would have to decide to improve the algorithms and math in Core Audio, and that is a separate issue, and nothing we could speculate about."
Amarra has been claiming for some time that it is the precision (an example of extra precision would be 64-bit floating point vs. 32-bit floating point) with which they handle the data that separates them from iTunes. Now they appear to be saying that if Apple doubles the precision it will not affect sound quality. They appear to be wanting to have it both ways, i.e. it’s good when Amarra do it, but of no benefit if Apple does it.
Amarra go on to say:
"I suspect that the 64 bit version might sound better because Apple may take advantage of the re-development to add in some little efficiencies of processing etc. Indeed Apple says that Snow Leopard is more efficient on the whole. I believe that the more efficient the OS is, the better the potential for sonics. In this case, it would raise the bar universally and iTunes AND Amarra would sound better. We found that Win XP 64 bit sounded better than XP 32 bit, and the same for Vista."
Again, they seem to be wanting to have it both ways – They claim that they don\'t use CoreAudio, i.e. their most basic premise is that they bypass it and use their own engine, and yet at the same time, they want us to believe that moving to 64bit architecture in OS X COULD ONLY \'raise the bar universally\', i.e., that iTunes could not close the gap.
Let’s look at this claim a bit more – they are saying that 1) we don’t use CoreAudio (where most of the ‘efficiencies’ and improvements that could possibly affect audio processing would actually occur), 2) 64-bit upgrade of OS X will NOT improve the sound of processing in CoreAudio/iTunes, and YET, 3) CONVERSELY there WILL BE efficiencies that will effect both iTunes and Amarra the same (i.e. universally). The juxtaposition of these comments boggles the mind, at least my mind.
And, they also say above - "We found that Win XP 64 bit sounded better than XP 32 bit, and the same for Vista." Note that this is counter to their earlier claim that "So simply going to 64 bit will not improve sonics."
If it happened with upgrades from 32-bit to 64-bit on XP AND Vista, then it (i.e., sonic improvements) will likely happen with an upgrade to 64-bit on OS X. And unless Sonic are actually relying on CoreAudio, I\'m having a hard time understanding how (they can claim that) Amarra would improve universally (aka equally).
Is it just me?
Do these comments from Amarra seem to be going \'round in circles?
