[maplegrovemusic]

Where to begin ? I have been using a Macmini and Audirvana+ with iTunes for years . Just today my 1tb hard drive filled up . I took the hard drive to Best buy to have them transfer my music to a bigger 2tb drive .I came home and wanted to listen to some music so I decided to try Spotify .I have recently been buying a lot of gear . In my setup right now is a Primaluna Dialogue one intergrated with a pair of Thiel cs7's . My dac is a Ayre qb9 . The reason I am using such a small integrated with the Thiels is I am waiting for a 500 watt MF integrated to arrive that I recently purchased . Here is my problem ,Using Spotify with the setup the amp seems more powerful . The sound has improved immensely . Before when using iTunes with  A+the volume would increase immediately and sound strident . My guess is there was to strong of a signal coming from iTunes A+ . Is this possible ?  Please ask questions so I can better describe the situation if needed . Thanks,mike.

[abernardi]

I think we would need a little more info here like:

What format are your music files on the 1TB hard drive (WAV, AIFF, MP3, etc)?
What format does spotify stream (I think it's mp3, but I don't know)?
What do you mean your amp seems more powerful with spotify, are you getting more volume?
I'm not sure what you mean when you say the volume increases immediately with Audirvana, could you clarify?

What comes to mind off the top of my head is if you have higher resolution files on your hard drive, the lower quality files coming over spotify could actually have softer "edges" than a full res file.  I know in my system I have some room issues I'm trying to solve where I get some nasty peakiness at certain frequencies and the better my front end gets, the more intense or "worse" the peakiness gets as well.  Maybe something like that... 
BTW, it's generally recommended for highest quality, you ought to max out the volume on Audirvana and use the preamp to control volume

[maplegrovemusic]

Files are AIFF
The Primaluna integrated is rated at 36 watts and before spotify I could not turn the amp past nine without sounding nasty . I assumed it was because of clipping . Now running Spotify There is no nastties when turning volume up . Can turn volume up as loud as I can stand and still sounds decent
It is obvious to me the sound quality is compressed . I do not want to continue to use Spotify once my hard drive is back . Just has me wondering about iTunes and A+ .
Using the integrated mode on A+
I have owned quite a few different dacs which have run the gamut in output signal power . Higher volt models have tended to limit volume range . Do software programs affect this ? I think I will try some different programs also .

[maplegrovemusic]

So , now i have installed Tidal on my Mac Mini . Same results as the Spotify . The primaluna integrated can power my King Sound Electrostat speaker better . No longer does the sound become strident when volume turned up past nine oclock. On modern recording the sweet spot for volume is around noon - two . Soft dynamic music with less tracks in the mix, the volume can get maxed out and still sound the same . I had thought the Macmini and Audirvana combo was foolproof . Thought the sound was great . Had no idea something like this could happen . What is going on here ? There must be some logical explanation ?

[srb]

Have you tried iTunes by itself using it's internal playback engine (without Audirvana)?  Does the volume / stridency issue still persist?

Steve

[maplegrovemusic]

Have you tried iTunes by itself using it's internal playback engine (without Audirvana)?  Does the volume / stridency issue still persist?

Steve

I have not , but i will as soon as my hard drive gets back tomorrow .

[abernardi]

this is definitely weird...  It sounds like A+ is pushing too hot a signal to your DAC.  I'm assuming you're going USB from the MacMini to the QB9?  I'd try a few things and see what happens.

1 - Are you using any third party plugins with A+?
2 - Uninstall and reinstall A+
3 - Try iTunes without A+ (as srb suggested)
4 - Try A+ without iTunes (this should make no difference because A+ is only using iTunes as a front end for the library, and it shouldn't care if it's in integrated mode or not when it comes to playing back the files)
5 - I'm not sure how to check this, but I've noticed it's possible to push the audio output from the Mac Mini beyond the 100% level.  I've done it using VLC by mistake when I was trying to get more volume from a movie file and I inadvertently spun the mouse wheel and found I could push the volume up to 200%.  Maybe that's just a VLC thing, but maybe there's something similar in A+
6 - The last thing I can think of is checking the Audio Midi Setup and make sure you don't have some third party driver in there that's screwing things up.

Please keep us advised on what you find.  I'm having similar stridency issues, but it's in all my sources, so I'm looking more at my room acoustics.  But it helps to know what solutions we all find, you never know what will help the rest of us.

[maplegrovemusic]

this is definitely weird...  It sounds like A+ is pushing too hot a signal to your DAC.  I'm assuming you're going USB from the MacMini to the QB9?  I'd try a few things and see what happens.

1 - Are you using any third party plugins with A+?
2 - Uninstall and reinstall A+
3 - Try iTunes without A+ (as srb suggested)
4 - Try A+ without iTunes (this should make no difference because A+ is only using iTunes as a front end for the library, and it shouldn't care if it's in integrated mode or not when it comes to playing back the files)
5 - I'm not sure how to check this, but I've noticed it's possible to push the audio output from the Mac Mini beyond the 100% level.  I've done it using VLC by mistake when I was trying to get more volume from a movie file and I inadvertently spun the mouse wheel and found I could push the volume up to 200%.  Maybe that's just a VLC thing, but maybe there's something similar in A+
6 - The last thing I can think of is checking the Audio Midi Setup and make sure you don't have some third party driver in there that's screwing things up.

Please keep us advised on what you find.  I'm having similar stridency issues, but it's in all my sources, so I'm looking more at my room acoustics.  But it helps to know what solutions we all find, you never know what will help the rest of us.

Thanks for the suggestions . I will look into them tomorrow .