[polar316]

Is there anything for my iMac that will produce a higher quality sound than iTunes? Also, are there any programs that would let me see the analog signal being produced from my Cambridge Audio DAC that is connected to the iMac via USB?

[bunnyma357]

For the Mac there are 2 programs that use iTunes for the interface, but handle the audio processing on their own - Amarra and Pure Vinyl. Amarra seems more popular, but is expensive, requires a hardware dongle, and I believe only works with certain DACs. Pure Vinyl is cheaper, has more features (many of which you may not want or need), and doesn't have hardware copy protection. There are free demos of both which put silent gaps in the audio, but you can test them out to see if they work for you.

http://www.sonicstudio.com/amarra/index.html

http://www.channld.com/pure-vinyl.html

Personally, I am going with Pure Vinyl, since I can't afford Amarra and have an aversion to dongles. They also just released a new preview release of Pure Vinyl 3 today which adds some features to how it integrates with iTunes, that address the few issues I had with the program.

There is also the stand alone player application "Play" which bypasses iTunes altogether and is free.

http://sbooth.org/Play/


Jim C

[Crimson]

Here's a list of audio-related software for the Mac.

[jaywills]

Let me put in a vote for "Play."  I run an optical out of my iMac 3.06 into a TacT 2.2x DAC and it sounds appreciably better than either iTunes or Squeezeserver.  Another popular audio player is Songbird although, personally, I prefer Play.  Haven't tried Amarra, due to the cost.  For those of us with audio nervosa, I suspect that the next tweak-fest will be different, "better sounding" software options to go along with our hardware upgrade-itis.

[mackortoyota]

VLC has a mac compatible version. It's the best player I've ever used, but I've only used the linux version. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html