Other Hardware Recommendations

Sonic Studios maintains a list of the active approved hardware HERE.

Our customers are using many types of hardware and DACs with Amarra. Hardware products and vendors that our customers have had great experiences with include:

Amarra Model 4

Berkeley Audio Design

Empirical Audio

Wavelength Audio Ltd.

Weiss Engineering

Apple Macintosh Recommendations

It is recommended by Sonic Studios to use at least 2GB of memory when using the Amarra software. We have found that on most systems playing standard 16 bit (CD resolution) audio files, Amarra will usually work with 1GB of memory. But you will get the best benefit by having 4GB or more.

While it is not necessary to use an solid state drive (SSD) as your main system drive, there is a real sonic benefit to using one. An SSD drive is not necessary to hear the difference between your system with or without Amarra. Good SSD drives have come down in price recently and can be found for under $400 in the USA. The OCZ Vertex is a good all around drive.

We get asked a lot about which Macs sound best for computer audio. Different models and configurations of Macs do sound different. We have hands on experience with many different models and we have drawn some tentative conclusions. Keep in mind that your results may vary because of many factors including the fact that Apple changes actual hardware (motherboards, FireWire, power supplies etc.) over time within the life span of a product model.

So far our experience in which Macs are better sounding is :

1. Mac Pro G5 (This is theoretical to us because we have yet to try it, but enough experienced users have reported it is the best model).
2. Mac Pro Intel-based (This is better than the models below, but is a very expensive choice)
3. Macbook Pro (either pre-unibody or unibody)
4. Macbook (either pre-unibody or unibody, not much difference between #3)(the $995 White Macbook is the sweet spot for cost vs. performance)
5. iMac
6. Mac Mini ( a definite step down from a $995 white Macbook).

We are not sure that the cost of a new Mac Pro (3-4K?) is really worth it for the improvement in sound quality. But a used Mac Pro G5 is around $400 to $600 on Craigslist in the USA. We will be testing a G5 setup next month, and can give a more definitive recommendation then.