Pure music or Decibel?

Emre Üçöz

Well-Known Member
Aug 1, 2011
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Any ideas or comparison made on both of them.
 

Phelonious Ponk

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Jun 30, 2010
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I've not tried Decibel, but I've auditioned the trial versions of both Pure Music and Amarra. Even with headphones, I couldn't hear any difference playing 16/44.1, files but if I had a lot of hi-res files, Pure Music would be worth the price just for playing files at their native bitrates. You have to exit iTunes, change the rate manually, then re-launch iTunes. Not practical for hi-res users.

Tim
 

Emre Üçöz

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Aug 1, 2011
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MarinJim

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Feb 2, 2011
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I have tried both, and I prefer Decible by a wide margin. It is less expensive and they are always updating/improving the site. Highly recommended.
 

wgscott

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Sep 1, 2011
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Another one you might want to look at is Audirvana (the free version) or Audirvana Plus (the $50 version). The latter has a shockingly seamless integration with iTunes.

BitPerfect is another one worth looking at (which, at $5, is fairly low-risk).
 

Emre Üçöz

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Aug 1, 2011
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Well I have tried both of them and decided on Pure music. but will check on Audirvana for sure.
 

a.dent

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Nov 11, 2011
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I'm using the Audirvana + demo right now and it is shockingly seamless and, to me based on initial listening, sounds more silky than Pure Music.

+1

Audirvana Plus on demo at the moment. I'm hearing my music in a totally new light. Much more revealing than Bitperfect, iTunes, Clementine and less hassle to use than Pure Music. I'll certainly go ahead with the purchase.
 

Onepoint5

Well-Known Member
Sep 23, 2011
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Seems different players work well on different systems, or just people's impressions :)

Pure Music
If you have a FLAC collection, Pure music will add a smaller index type file to your library, an .m4a. This is in order for itunes to import the FLAC into it's database. If you play the .m4a in itunes, Pure Music directs the play to the real FLAC file. There is some delay, but not as much as adding the file to memory to play. For a long track, say 20mins+, this can take 5s, tough if you selected the wrong track, you have to wait until it is spooled to stop and select something else. If you have any other player installed, the player picks up the .m4a, so you end up with duplicates in the other player's library, which cannot be played. These are the main disadvantages of using FLAC with Pure Music. If you have wav/AIFF or another derivative of Apple code, you don't have the duplication problem.
Sonically Pure Music is very good, just wish they would divorce themselves from iTunes whch suffers from gapped playback, unless you change the attributes. For major libraries, that's awkward.

Decibel
Decibel plays FLAC au natural, as well as AIFF/ALAC mp3, ogg a heap of other codecs. For the two Decibel plays better in my system. Not night and day, but if your music is FLAC, the management of the library is simpler with Decibel, that is with no m4a index files.

For the moment I use Audirvana +, since it plays the same formats as Decibel natively as well as PCM conversion of DSD. Audirvana + puts some excitement into music, whereas Decibel is more analytical. There's still some work to do on the library to tidy up, but well worth the license. All three can use Integer mode with supported DACs on Snow Leopard only. Audirvana can supress services such as Time Machine when it is playing.
 

Lee

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Feb 3, 2011
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I prefer Decibel but both are good. Decibel was partly designed by Gordon Rankin and Charlie Hansen and those guys seem to have the midas touch when it comes to sound, especially digital. I like the clean user interface with Decibel. It also has a very clear and open sound. It was a noticeable step up from iTunes on my Mac Mini server. I using Mac Mini into AQ Diamond USB cable into Benchmark DAC1 Pre.
 

MarinJim

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For me Decibel is the best match for my MacBook Pro. Sounds awesome through my Wadia S7i. I am researching usb cables at the moment, as I am using a Wireworld glass optic to pretty decent sounds.
 

flez007

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Aug 31, 2010
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I have been using PureMusic with the Mach2 server and the Remote App at the iPad side, sonics are OK, but sometimes the remote app freezes when one is skipping from one track to the other - randomly and not so frequently I might say.
 

Lee

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For me Decibel is the best match for my MacBook Pro. Sounds awesome through my Wadia S7i. I am researching usb cables at the moment, as I am using a Wireworld glass optic to pretty decent sounds.

Jim,

I would highly recommend the Audioquest Diamond. It really lifted my performance over a Belkin Gold usb cable. I also know from experimenting at a friend's house that it beats the higher quality Kimber usb.
 

AudioExplorations

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Apr 5, 2012
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I personally prefer Pure Music, I have tested a number of iTunes based players as I am married to iTunes as a library management tool. Although Amarra sounds smoother, Pure Music to my ears sounds more transparent and true to source.
 

MarinJim

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I did a trial of Audirvana plus, and it is awesome sounding also.
 

Lee

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Feb 3, 2011
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I personally prefer Pure Music, I have tested a number of iTunes based players as I am married to iTunes as a library management tool. Although Amarra sounds smoother, Pure Music to my ears sounds more transparent and true to source.

I've heard several folks say this.
 

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