ANALOG vs DIGITAL - Ultra High Fidelity Magazine

to the Red Book CD standard.
The natural way to play music from
a Mac is to use Apple’s own iTunes
software, which comes free with OS X.
If you own an iPod, in fact, iTunes is
mandatory, either on a Mac or on a
Windows PC. And iTunes works well.
Very well.
But are there alternatives? We’ve
noticed that many show exhibitors are
running their demos not with iTunes
by itself, but with an additional software
package called Pure Music. It caught our
attention, because we were familiar with
the first premium playback software on
the market, Amarra. But Amarra was initially
expensive, at nearly $1000 for the
full-blown version. It has since dropped
to $695, and the “Mini” version, which is
perfectly adequate for today’s hardware,
is $295.
Pure music, on the other hand, is just
$129 (all prices in US dollars).
We wanted to listen for ourselves,
and to compare both Pure Music and
Amarra to the free iTunes.
Pure Music
This software is from a company
called Channel D, which we know well.
Channel D was the first to offer a software-based
audio measurement system
for Macintosh, with the quirky name of
Mac the Scope. We used it for a time,
eventually shifting to FuzzMeasure.
For users who have their music stored
in an iTunes database, Pure Music is
nothing if not convenient. Launch
iTunes, then launch Pure Music, and
you’ll see the Pure Music control console
and readout to the left and above the
iTunes window. Using it couldn’t it be
easier, because you can actually ignore
it and just use iTunes as usual. For
instance, if you click iTunes’ play button,
iTunes doesn’t play, and Pure Music does
instead. Talk about transparent!
But transparent doesn’t mean easy
to set up. Actually, the manuals of both
software packages require long study,
and it’s not impossible that you’ll emerge
with less hair than you started with.
Then again, software like this has the
sort of depth that is likely to require
followup sessions.
Full disclosure: one of our panelists,
Toby, owns a copy of Pure Music, and
uses it along with a pro-level box connected
via Firewire. He confirmed that
he didn’t find it easy to set up, but he
loves the sound he gets from it.
We installed both pieces of software
on a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard.
We ran a TOSLINK optical cable
to our Moon 300D converter and hence
to our Omega reference system. The
MacBook Pro was remote-controlled via
Screen Sharing from a MacBook Air.
We used four selections for this first
evaluation, two of them Red Book CDstandard,
two of them 24-bit 96 kHz
recordings from Fidelio. We might as
well say right off that all four sounded
wonderful with iTunes. But could we do
better by buying additional software?
The first selection was Haï Luli, an
art song by 19th Century composer
Pauline Viardot Garcia (Analekta AN 2
9903). The difference afforded by Pure
Music was subtle, but both Steve and
Toby preferred it. “The midrange was
less forward,” Toby said, “and it was
less congested in the loud passages. The
piano was lighter, and the accelerated
tempo carried me along.” Steve agreed,
finding that Pure Music moderated a
certain stridency in the higher notes of
the song. He too was drawn in.
We seem to have trouble doing any
reviews these days without including
Margie Gibson’s CD, Say It With Music.
We selected the sentimental ballad Soft
Lights and Sweet Music, which she does
so well. On this recording we could not
agree.
Gerard, who had heard relatively
little difference with the first recording,
was more enthusiastic about this one.
He praised the articulation on Margie’s
voice, and he also had good words for
the way the piano and the cello were
reproduced. Steve, on the contrary,
thought that the cello seemed muddy
and indistinct, and judged that the way
each note decayed was less natural.
Toby noted right off that he had been
enthusiastic even about the iTunes version
of the song, but he liked the Pure
Music version even more. “The relative
balance of frequencies is different,”
he said. “The sound was less forward,
and that made the instruments easier
to follow. Gibson’s lower register was
really good with Pure Music. On the
passage where she sings music must
flow, the instruments better supported
her voice. The harmonic interplay was
superior, and there was more detail and
coherence.”
What you might take away from that
is that Pure Music really does change
the sound, but our reactions were not
identical. Fortunately, there are demo
versions of these products, so that you
can try them.
We have several of Reference Recordings’
gorgeous HRx recordings, in effect
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 49
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