XXHighEnd

Last week-end I tested XXHE against an older version of Amarra. I used my normal setup and replaced my PC by an Apple macbook pro which had Amarra installed. The comparison didn't took very long because the difference in soundquality was quite obvious. XXHE on my PC was much better. I just had to listen to the first 3 seconds of Amarra playing and knew that this is not as good. It sounds clouded, like there is a nebular before the speakers. Especially clarity and "3Dness" was improved a lot by using XXHE. The comparison is not valid to judge the software alone because the hardware was changed too. But at least this combination can be ruled out if you want the highest sound quality possible.
Greetings
Adrian

PS.: There was another listener, the owner of the macbook pro. He thought the same about the sound quality.

You can't be right Adrian. There's whole crouds using that !

haha.

Thanks ...
Peter

I almost went Mac route a couple of years ago before I discovered XXHighend. I compared my dealer's Macbook/iTune/Amarra to my PC/MediaMonkey and it was obvious that Mac sounded better. So I started converting all my flac file to Aiff. Luckily during that time I discovered XXHighend and the improvement was significant enough that I did not switch to Mac. Then at the end of last year, I had another round of PC/XXHighend vs Macbook/iTune/Amarra both through Weiss INT202 and I preferred XXHighend also, perhaps not by a wide margin but I have to say that using iTune/Amarra with iPad as a control is very very tempting :)
 

I don't know by hard which version of xxhe was released as you made the test last year. But I am sure that 0.9z5.2 ist the best sounding xxhe we had and that maybe explains the big difference. One year ago, I can imagine the difference would have been not so big. I have no idea if amarra has improved the sound quality with their newer version 2.x but they would have to improve a lot to compete.

It was October-November, I think so it would have been 09z.3 or 09.z4. I Have not heard the latest Amarra. I also heard that new version of PureMusic is also much better than older one but have no inclination to try yet. Since then, I tried Qsonix music server (the one that Wadia helped designing) and XXhighend/PC is still better. Tempted to try the new Weiss media server but still a bit afraid of the cost :)
I think xxHighend must be the best 79 euros I ever spent on my stereo :)

Haha, thanks guys. But wait until you hear what I am hearing for the last month or so. :teasing:

Problem is : there is so much programming involved to let happen what I can do manually, that I'm hesitating to start on it for that same long month.