Pure music software for Mac from Channeld

[admin_exported]

Just wanted to canvass opinion from anyone using this software for macs. I have been using it for a couple of days and I think it offers a noticeable improvement to the stock itunes sound, rendering a more natural sound with better bass, soundstage and separation and reduces glare in the upper-mid, which I think is a characteristic of playback via itunes. It needs a little configuration to start with, but comes with a detailed instruction pdf file and seems to work well via my imac's toslink output. It uses 64-bit upsampling to 96kHz software and uses itunes as a database, outputting audio via its own software, although upsampling is limited to the hardware you have. There is a free 15 day trial and I have been impressed so far.

Anyone else care to comment?

 

[Dan Turner]

I tried it and thought it sounded better too. It was a little annoying that I couldn't also stream to airport expresses in other rooms at the same time as using it in the lounge, and ultimately I decided that I wanted to get away from using my MacBook Pro as my source for other reasons. Automatic sample rate switching was convenient.

To take it one stage further a lot of people say that the built-in optical output does not give the best sound quality, and that by using a Hi-face USB to coax or Weiss firewire to coax converter that even better results are possible.

Certainly Pure Music is very cheap compared to something like Amarra, which performs much the same function (can't comment on it's sound quality) and is recommended by a lot of Mac users.