Dear oh dear - Here I am with one Windows install already upgraded to 8.1 (I'm assuming no way to downgrade; original W8 install was a download I didn't save - let me know if this assumption is incorrect) and the other at W7, wondering whether to buy another copy of W8 to upgrade the W7 install.

So is 8.1 completely hopeless?  Has anyone tried it in the past week or so during which Peter has once again found some merit in W8?

Thanks Mani, I'd missed John's last article, which I was looking forward to, in the rush of the holidays.

I'm puzzled about Gordon Rankin's response as well, since he was very positive about John saying similar things on the Computer Audio Asylum forum.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas there in the future from here in the past where it is still Christmas Eve.   

I know you are excited about the data loss part of this, but please allow me to dwell for a minute on the other part, induced jitter.

What I have read from a number of people (going all the way back to Hawksford and Dunn, perhaps earlier) suggests jitter can be induced at the point where the DAC chip evaluates the "bits" and converts them to analog in at least two ways, by noise or by micro power supply fluctuations.  Would you consider any such power supply fluctuations to be lumped under the general heading of "noise"?

Argh.  Already on 8.1, and kind of a PITA to roll back.  But it may be quite some time to Win9!  What to do, what to do....  (I still have a Win7 installation on the same machine - wonder if I could "upgrade" to 8 there?)

Some conversation going on over at the CA forums I thought might raise interesting points for the people here who have been following along with Peter's progress.  Just to give the most general summary, at CA they are just starting to discuss some of the things Peter has been exploring for a long time in relation to noise, jitter, etc.  Anthony (acg) has made several excellent contributions.

The particular thread in which I made the comment I'm going to quote below has to do with "Superdad" (Alex Crespi) determining that his Mac Mini sounded better playing from an SD card than from an external or internal drive via any interface.  He'd become curious about this when I mentioned having bought a larger external HDD for my music that originally used a USB3 interface.  With my USB DAC playing from a Mac laptop, this did not sound as good as the old external FW HDD I was using.  So I bought the FW base for the drive (it's just a regular SATA drive, and which base you use determines what interface the SATA will be converted to) and things improved.

When Superdad reported things sounding better playing from an SD card versus an HDD, I decided to try it, even though with his newer Mac Mini the SD card slot is on the Ethernet bus, while with my older MacBook Pro laptop the SD card slot is on the USB bus.  I also ordered a slightly better FW cable (AQ Cinnamon, when I had been using AQ Forest), to see whether that would make a difference.  During my testing, here's what happened:


In that same CA thread and a related one, RAMdisks are also being heavily discussed.  Seems to me these measures (attachment of external drives via LAN rather than other interfaces; use of SD cards rather than external drives, and detaching external drive cables; application and/or playback from RAMdisks rather than physical drives) reduce one or more of electrical noise; resource use; vibration, and also can result in faster communication between app and music file with a memory player.

Also interesting to think that when a memory player plays a file from a RAMdisk, this is in effect "double buffering" the file in RAM before playback occurs.

I don't know enough to be reductionist about the possible ways the Mapleshade cable might influence sound quality.  One thing the designer mentions is that the power lead is not in such close proximity to the ground and signal leads as in most USB cables.

I can confirm what a pleasure it is to correspond with Alain (and Peter).  And it is good to hear the cable is working well for you, Juan.

Please note that the Explorer 7 for Win 8 software Peter has kindly bundled with XXHE does not work with 8.1.  Tihiy, the author of that software, has got new software called StartisBack+ (version 1.01 at the moment) that does work with 8.1.  Only $3 US for a 2-pc license, so I purchased.

The old Explorer 7 for 8 software made for a nervous moment or two, because if you try to start the program after installing 8.1 the desktop goes blank, and there is no way to make 8.1 start up normally short of putting Windows in recovery mode, which is what I did.

The 8.1 upgrade also wiped out my ramdisks - one the playback disk, one the XXHE install disk - so I will need to re-do them and reinstall XXHE.  (This is using Primo Ramdisk, with the disks set to be persistent across shutdowns.)

Saw you mention 38Hz twice, and mention a couple of tracks sounding the same - I wonder if one possibility is your room and how what you describe above would work within it.  Same room dimensions, same frequency evolving from the superpositions?

Yes, those are "kettle drums."  One of these is more formally known as a tympani.  (TIM-pun-ee.)

My go-to demo for the sort of live bass "rumble" you're talking about has always been the opening track of Keith Richard and the X-pensive Winos "Live at the Hollywood Palladium."

Ah, there you go.  Cheers on your enjoyment, and may you head on back after not too terribly long a time away.

First: I feel I should apologize, to Peter most of all, because it was my little throwaway comment about my Vandersteens that Peter closed quickly, before realizing it was the same page where he had been working on his magnum opus comment about the Orelino speakers.  I will try to make future comments more substantive, so at least if someone loses a comment while closing one of mine, it will have been a little more worthwhile!

Second: Peter, is there any way, without overmuch fuss or cost, to have the forum server(s) auto-save draft comments?

Third: This is I think at least the second time the particular room facilities at an audio show haven't allowed Phasure to perform near its best.  It might not be a bad idea to have a couple of "room treatment kits" (one each for Europe and the US), a few cylinders for corners, some first reflection treatments for walls and ceilings, at the show sites in case the room turns out to have such problems that you would really have to screw up the system response to try to deal with it otherwise.

I'm very much hoping either you have a show near where I live or I am traveling near where you are having a show in the not terribly distant future.   

Humm, says this Vandersteen owner.   

Would be interested to know what you think of the Mapleshade Clearlink USB Plus, which I use, and Alain did (not certain if he still does).  15 or 30 day satisfaction guarantee (not sure which).

Best I've heard, including one twice as expensive.  What made me think of it is the mention of separating the power leg.  In the Mapleshade, the power leg and the signal and ground legs (latter two twisted together) are loosely held within a sort of open weave mesh.