Peter - are you properly booted in EFI? i.e. are you booting from a GPT disc?. It sounds to me that you are not. I had similar problems until I properly booted into EFI i.e. I could boot from a GPT disc.

I have a 4T Seagate and there are (now) no problems I can have as many partitions as I want and copy anything over. I copied over my 2T music directory without problems.

To boot into EFI a W8 install DVD MUST be in the DVD drive (W7 is no good it has to be W8). When it is go into the UEFI ("BIOS") screen and look at the devices being offered to boot from. There will now be two offered for the internal DVD rewriter - one UEFI and the other the ordinary BIOS option - select the UEFI version. I forced a boot from this by removing all other options.

So then continue out of "BIOS" to the W8 install options. You need to let W8 format the HDD - there was something wrong because I was not able to find any way to set up more than one partition at that time. However, as it turned out it was not a problem because I continued with the OS install got everything working and then afterwards used the Windows tools to reduce the OS partition size to 100Gb and create a new 2nd partition of 3.7T.

Also even though I had already formatted the HDD as GPT W8 would not install onto it until I formatted the HDD from the W8 install disc.

Before I actually got the PC properly booted in EFI I had a number of problems with the 4T Seagate that sound similar to the ones you find.

Cheers

Paul

Mouthwatering indeed!!

There is one further aspect of speaker performance that I would be interested to hear your view on Peter particularly in relation to the Orelo MKII.

As I have posted elsewhere I have now built three IPL transmission line speakers S2, S4 and S5. IMHO they are superb and there is very little "out there" that is as good particularly in the bass. The S5's are a special case they are big and it took me a long time to get them to work in my big odd shaped room. But now they do and the bass performance is special.

Having heard the speakers in 3 very different size rooms what is clear is that in the smaller rooms bass generally is tighter even though I have no complaints at all about the sound in my big odd shaped room since I managed to get big improvements in that area by room placement changes.

The question is though what causes this very noticeable effect. Now I guess you (Peter) are going to say that it will not be problem with the Orello MkII but it would be interesting to know why.

Cheers

Paul

Since getting EFI working properly on my PC there is one advantage that I was not expecting.

Playing music over my dynamically stop / start LAN there are now no delays at all in fact with 1Gb LAN speed I can't tell any difference between playing music over LAN and from a local HDD. Even after a reboot the LAN is immediately available.

There may have been a problem before I was not aware of (although to be fair the delays were not too bad) but it could be because the LAN is now "handled" by EFI rather than by W8 - whatever it is a welcome improvement!!!

Paul

At the risk of going  it would be interesting to know what these "experts" think they are comparing. IIRC pure DSD does not really exist because it has to be (kind of) converted to PCM so the studio can work on it. The only "pure" DSD would be to record it direct not do any mixing etc and just play it back (like the old direct to disc) - that won't happen in real life. And all of that is before you even start to look at the "imperfectible" DSD as opposed to "perfectible" PCM as Stanley L puts it.

Looks as though sorted now - the problem was getting the PC to boot in EFI which it now is. I also had to install in one large partition and had to configure partitions after the OS was installed. So far so good.

Cheers

Paul

Thanks Guys  -  As far as I can tell the disc utility allows to set the disc to GPT (I can do that anyway no problem) and if the disc is MBR then it can "trick" the OS into seeing all 4T. Those are not really my problems.

I am sure (as far as I can be) that the PC is booting with UEFI on top of BIOS (and I guess that is the case for most people) - so many of the UEFI features are available but it is not a "proper" fully fledged UEFI boot. For that reason only MBR discs can be used to load the OS.

It seems that for years Apple have been using UEFI and even at this late stage Microsoft still have not been able to get it sorted out properly.

Cheers

Paul

This is not super important but I just wondered if anyone has any experience of this.

My PC is the same spec. as the XXHighEnd PC. So it is UEFI and all "BIOS" changes I make are in the UEFI menu. I recently bought a 4T Seagate disc which I have set to GPT.

All fine so far and with the OS on another disc (using a smaller MBR disc) I can see the 4T Seagate (all of the 4 T in one or more partitions).

The problem arises when I attempt to install W8 on the 4T disc - it will not install on the GPT disc. If I set it to MBR then W8 will install but then I do not see all of the 4T on the disc.

It seems that the PC cannot be booting into EFI and so I  removed all bootable devices apart from the internal DVD rewriter and in "BIOS" I noted that the DVD writer was listed with two boot option one was UEFI. So I then selected the UEFI and inhibited the other selection. So then the PC could only boot from one option ie the UEFI DVD rewriter. But it will not boot returning an error message that there is a problem with the boot device.

I just wondered if anyone had trodden this path before?

Cheers

P

Certainly my experience is that the "room effects" I had here with my previous Audio Note system have been greatly reduced. The reinforcements / cancellations are very significantly less with NOS/XX.

I look forward hearing Orelo MkII and my expectations are even higher now.

Which year would that be? ha ha


I would say that is not the case with what I hear at Nick's they sound very good particularly in the large space at Nick's and particularly following all the work that Nick has done in tracking down problems in his system. They do show up problems in the front end though but that would be (I guess) what all horns do!!.

Cheers

Paul

Peter,

Very interesting write ups on the Orelo and very interesting technically. Mouthwatering definitely. However, do not take this the wrong way but I am not going to get too carried away just yet - some convincing is needed and my ears (being the ultimate arbiter) are the only things that are going to do that.

I am very impressed with the design and originality and potentially I am anticipating that they could be the best sounding speakers. However, there are two problems that concern me. The first one is - well - it is "horns" in general and how my ears perceive them.

I have heard many horn setups (including Orphean) over the years and without exception what I hear is - well I hear a "horn". A very distinctive sound the horn has to my ears. Very impressive, very dynamic, very forward, very fast - but at the end of the day they always sound to me - well they sound like "horns". The other thing is that it always sounds like one is listening down the throat of the horn (not a nice perspective) and I have not yet heard anything like decent or natural imaging from a horn set up. So from what I have heard to date I am not sure I could live with horns. But I really do want to be proved wrong.

The other thing I find is that horns never sound quite right in that I always feel I need to get up and tweak - so maybe they are too just revealing of the source - in which case I have to assume you have sorted that because well I know you would have to!!!  Or maybe it is an inherent problem with horns. I just don't know and I shall wait to hear them before I make up my mind.

But now the biggest problem of all and that is the sound of the room. Now I know that the lack of a rear going wave is just total genius and is going to reduce some room interaction problems. But I also know for sure that the sound of any speaker is to a large extent going to be dominated by the sound of the room. Nick's room is one of the best examples (and by no means is his room going to be typical - no way!) but in the middle of Nick's listening room is a big stair case in a stair well - so there is a very high ceiling right in the middle of the room. The result is a very substantial lift in the upper base that does dominate the sound. It is inconceivable that any speaker could overcome that particular room problem. So whilst one could anticipate that Orelo's would sound very good in that situation one could also anticipate that there would be very significant "room" interaction problems. And I suspect that will be the case in other different room shapes (X-Fi?). That of course applies to all speakers but I for one would not invest such a large sum of money without knowing for sure that the speakers would work in my particular room. After all they are going to pump more bass energy (room excitation energy) into any room than any other speaker.

So it would be very interesting to get some feedback on what the Orelo's actually sound like in other more typical listening environments some "normal" rooms, if there is such a thing - after all your room is not typical at all.

How for example do they sound in Bert's room compared with yours? what other rooms have you listened to them in? and what steps have you had to take to get them to overcome room interaction problems.

Don't get me wrong but when a pair of speakers cost more than many would pay for a car I think these are relevant questions.

I really look forward to hearing them and I hope that they fulfill my expectations!!

Cheers

Paul

Ha!!!! Elvis sings in person to me any night upon request!

Seriously though - how good do bad recordings sound now!!! I don't know how that works but for sure it is very welcome.

There is one thing though if I change any one of a number of things (like switch on page filing etc.) it really is noticeable that something is wrong.

So what will happen if the SM PS was replaced for linear? I understand one will be launched soon by a UK supplier - it will be interesting to find out.

Paul

Maybe I should have said "Physically Incompatible" well anyway I am sure you get my drift.

A few nights on listening with the 0.25m USB cable installed (and it was very cheap at £1.86 inc delivery!) I am surprised by just how good the sound quality is now. It sounds as though my system has had a big injection of "analogue" maybe as though the amp has been changed for the biggest most expensive tube amp available. The speakers really have disappeared there are sounds popping out all over the place - there are seagulls all over the ceiling (ha ha!).

The sound is so good (well to my humble ears anyway) that I am beginning to wonder if I have done anything else at the same time. A note of caution is that after I finished building the new PC I made a lot of changes and tweaks one after the other (BIOS & OS settings etc.). So maybe this is tied in with other things I have done. But for sure this is a level of sound quality that is well above anything I have heard here before.

Tonight I will try a few things like comparing long versus short USB cables in both the dexa and non dexa positions because I cannot quite believe yet that this is just down to the USB cable.

I ordered a 4T Seagate internal HDD for my XXHighEnd PC "clone". This is just a note to say that the 4T disc does not fit in the removable slots at the front of the Silverstone GD06 case. It will slide in and connect into the sockets at the back OK (so it will work) but the door covers do not close. This is because the disc is about 2mm longer than all the other HDD's  that I have tried and that fit no problem.

The 4T disc will fit in the internal position inside the case. Maybe not a major issue but I thought it worth mentioning.

Paul