Hi David - I find that W8 is much better than W7 in my system - now!!!. However you need to be aware of the history. When I first listened to W8 I really liked it but after some time I had to admit that the sound was hard and ultimately I could not live with it. Then Peter sprinkled some magic dust on the software and there was an improvement. However in parallel with that I did some pretty extreme things to reduce noise in my system - no fans, "extreme" star earthing throughout and many many tweaks all over the place. It took a lot of time and a lot of wrong turns. The end result though is that W8 in my system is much better than W7 which now sounds "odd" to my ears.

However, W7 always sounded great before all this work so I would have been perfectly happy to keep it.

So I would say that if you are not in a position to make many changes and you just want to enjoy the music stay with W7 I fully agree with Peter on that one.

Paul

.....and now I am using a 0.25m USB cable and sound quality got better again!!!

.............. and CAT5 wiring is no problem at a Gig although theoretically rated at 100Mb mine is a 50m run (not much in network terms) but anyway just for information.

No - I have a new router now with all 1Gb ports. Before only one port was 1Gb. Anyway now data transfer measures very close to 1Gb.

It turns out that the router was the culprit. The 1Gb label on the back only applies to one of the network ports the others are all 100Mb. With a decent Gig router in place I can transfer at close to 1Gb with Cat 5 cable - so that's good!!!

Now I don't have time to make a cup of tea while waiting for XX to start playing music.

Paul

Ha good point  -  so I should definitely not listen to Mani's Orello's when he receives them !!!!!

Hi Peter,

Yes the "tuned" 24 MHz clocks are still in place.

Makes sense my initial thoughts were that such a marked difference in sound quality would not likely be down to the cable length per se (i.e. RFI etc) but timing does make more sense. Also I did not get any real differences in sound quality when I tried different USB cables before and that was a long time before the Dexa's appeared.

Anyway the difference in sound quality is surprising to say the least - the best way to describe it would be that my speakers have had a "horn" injection.

To say I am pleased with the SQ would be big understatement to so the least. The bass quality is simply superb but then again so is the rest. The smallest changes anywhere in set up now make a very easily heard change in sound quality.

Cheers

Paul

I recently built an XXHighEnd clone PC. A big advantage is that it fits in a rack immediately above NOS1. A much tidier implementation than having a PC standing on the room carpet. Definitely good WAF.

After getting all settings right with BIOS settings shown in my signature the sound quality has been really excellent.

But I was sitting down last night and to my big surprise the sound quality was very much better again. I mean really improved. More dynamic clear out in the room sound (and I thought it had that before!!!!) with better imaging and cohesion. Something fundamental had to have changed. Then I realised that I had changed out my old 3m USB cable for a 1m cable (both bog standard USB2 cable construction). I changed the cable simply to have a tidier cable run.

So then I removed the 1m USB cable and put the 3m USB cable back in. The sound really changed becoming "grey" less dynamic less clarity. This was a big surprise because always in the past when I have tried different USB cable types and lengths I could not hear any real difference. Something fundamental has changed and I have to wonder what.

No further investigations just yet though too busy listening to music.

But a 25cm USB cable is now on order!!!

Cheers

Paul

Hi Alain - yea that was what I was intending to try - PC direct to PC with a short network cable just to make sure everything working properly before I start adding back in longer cable and router etc.

Cheers

Hi Anthony - I installed CAT5 cable in this house a few years ago when we re modelled the house and did the terminations (maybe that is why it is slow ha ha!!). It would be impossible to replace the cables now as they are buried in the walls and under the floor boards etc. I will find out why it is slow though -and I still have a crimping tool somewhere!!.

Cheers Paul

I had a hardware problem with the mobo on my music PC which started to look as though imminent failure was a distinct possibility. I took the plunge and built a new PC.

The new PC is an XXHighEnd PC clone using the Silverstone HTPC GD06 chasis. The XX PC clone differs from Peter's in one respect though - there are no running fans anywhere. There are three inside the case but they are not switched on normally - they can be switched on if needed but so far the case internals are cool and fans are not needed. There is no fan for the CPU which is water cooled via my trusty Zalman tower taking all the CPU heat out of the case. And finally I managed to fit my Seagate fanless power supply inside the Silverstone case. That was quite a challenge because the Seagate ps is 160mm long and the max size that can fit in the case is normally 150mm. If anyone wants to do the same let me know and I will send some details. Minimal changes to the Silverstone case are required. With care a very neat result is possible.

After getting all working I had a good listen with the default BIOS settings. So far so good very little apparent difference compared with the previous PC (surprisingly - maybe! but a relief to be sure). But then I applied Peter's recommended BIOS settings and in particular the underclocked CPU speed setting.

What was clear straight away was that this was an improvement in Sound Quality and it was very noticeable. But now it sounded as though something was not quiet right i.e. the "Window" had been opened and I could hear something that was not quite right.

As it happened I was visiting Nick soon after and (among other things) we set up the Dexa USB clocks at either end of the USB link to run very closely in sync. This was using a Lissajou arrangement with Nick's scope and is something I have not done for many a year (like 40). Anyway on returning home the improvement was immediately obvious. The sounds here in my room have taken a step forward - wow I never thought I would hear sound quality of this standard in my room - this is "stop fiddling and listen to the music" good.

I know that tuning Dexa's in this way is no good - they will drift eventually - I also accept what Peter has said about the clocks but it does indicate that a single clock solution could be very beneficial.

Also I currently have two Silverstone PCIe USB3 cards in my XXPC Clone one is "Dexa'd" the other is standard. I can virtually "hot swap" from one card to the other in less than a minute.

By a country mile the Dexa USB clock setup sounds better in my system. And as it is sounding so stonking good there is no chance of it changing in the foreseeable future.

Just saying!!

I must change my signature as it is not now correct!

I have Gbit ports on the two PC's on my network and I have a Gige router and Cat5 cabling. The typical copy speed I get is about 90Mbps (bits). Disappointing as it means there is a fair wait while an album worth of files is copied over before replay starts. The longest run of Cat5 from the router to the XXPC is about 35M which is not very long for CAT5 really.

Unless anyone has any ideas I guess the next step is to get the two PC's close together with a short length of Cat5 (xover) and see what speed I can get. Then if that works I will work back from there.

Anyway any ideas welcome!

Maybe because the OS disc can still be spinning following a transfer of files to (say) RAM Disc? - the difference in SQ between network accessed music and disc accessed is not massive but certainly worth having. It is not as big as leaving a DVD rewriter connected.

If only I had cat5e!!!! - mine is just plain old cat5. Anyway from what I read on the World Wide Wonderweb it might be possible to push it significantly further than its 100mb rating.

Unfortunately I cannot easily rig up a direct link (with xover cable) to my main server and my router has only one 1Gbit socket. But I may be able to set up something with a 1Gig switch that I can borrow from my mate (Dave from "down the road").

What I don't understand is why music accessed over my local network sounds better than the same music accessed on a separate partition on my OS disc. Given that the files are copied to and then access by XX from RAMDisk and the OS disc stays connected so the source of noise is always there.

Or am I missing something glaringly obvious again like I did in my earlier post?

Cheers

Paul

RAM Disk in use no problems there.

More of a problem is the bog standard 100mB Ethernet set up. The PC's are no problem they can go to 1Gb but the wiring and router is more of a problem. I will see if I can get hold of a 1Gb router and see how far the standard Cat5 wiring can be pushed.

P