Indeed with a reboot.

Peter,

I have the same problem, the error message that appears after clicking the paypal button states the following: "This app can't be activated when UAC is disabled."

I checked UAC settings, the slider is at the bottom.
Setting it one level higher and rebooting is fine, but when I start XXHE it gets changed back to the lowest level again.

Hope this helps ...

Diede

I have heard these speakers and must say they are probably ‘best in class’.
What particularly struck me was the level of detail they produce. If you like the sound of diamond tweeters then you will probably love these with their diamond mid-range.

I have also heard the Orelo however, MKI mind you, and although I think the RC 11 is a fantastic speaker, I personally prefer the Orelo’s.

Why? Well because if you would do a blind test between live music and both speakers I’m sure you’d pick the Orelo as the one that comes closest to reproducing the live event, and in the end that’s what it is all about for me.

Although I couldn’t identify anything particular wrong with the RC 11, somehow they didn’t quite sound natural to me. When listening to live music you wouldn’t say ‘Wow, what a great level of detail!', it would just be there. With the RC11 it seems perhaps over-accentuated (like looking through binoculars), and with long listening sessions this can become fatiguing.

What I love about the Orelo/NOS1 system is its neutrality, transparency and finesse, a three dimensional soundstage, detailed accuracy, and speed & dynamics, but always in a very natural and musical way.

Obviously both speakers are great and I would be very happy to live with either one of them. At this level it also becomes a matter of taste, but for now I can’t wait to hear the Orelo MKII/NOS1a 

Diede 

Hi Juan,

I've been using W8.1 on my desktop for a couple of months now in preview version and I'm happy with it in terms of performance, in my experience a lot faster than W7.

I can confirm however that the W7 shell does not work in W8.1. When I installed it all I got was a black screen when I tried switching, and had to delete Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell parameter just to get the normal W8.1 screens back.

However the same guy has developed another small program called startisback+ (http://www.startisback.com/) that he sells for 3USD for two PC's.

It works very well, but is not the same as the W7 shell, you can now actively switch between both, so the W8 shell is still active.
That is why I didn't install W8.1 on my audio PC, and as such can't comment on SQ.

Diede

Hi Mani,

This is what I wrote on the BD design forum regarding the Orelino's: http://forum.bd-design.nl/index.php?id=17322

If you like the Swing's than I'm sure you'll love these.

Just my humble opinion of course ...

Best regards,
Diede

Hi Mani,

I wouldn't dare picking on the NSX, it was a great car, and I actually owned a few Honda’s in the past (not the NSX though), I love those V-Tec engines. The fact they produced it for almost 15 years ..., and a new one is coming in 2015 

The GTR a is a lot more practical though and seriously quick, I also take it to the track (Spa-Francorchamps) about twice a year 

Boys and their toys ...
Diede

Hi Mani,

Maybe irrelevant as we are about to be shocked  , but there is one combination you didn't mention which is both PE and HDCD 'OFF'. This is my personal favorite, as to my ears the sparkle is there without leaning to aggressive.

Cheers,
Diede

I get the same error message "Playback stopped because data didn`t arrive in time" in 1 out of 3 (more or less) cases.

Even worse, sometimes XXHE shuts down completely in the middle of a song.

Disableling the page file didn't change a thing.

Like Juan, without changing the settings it can sometimes work or not.

My settings are the same in W7 as under W8 (see signature).

Diede

Paul, you're not alone on your findings of W8 vs. W7, I almost 100% concur.

After all these contradictory messages on the forum I've decided to do a clean install of W7 and W8 on separate partitions of the same hard disc.
I use the same XXHE settings for both, see my signature.

After some listening to both OS's I again have to confirm that the clear winner for me and on my system is W8.

I'll try to report on the differences:
In W8 there is more detail, better timing, better attack of cymbals, strings etc, more black background, tighter bass, less distortion and the overall soundstage is more balanced;
For example during applause in a live recording you can hear much more the individuals clapping hands, and the soundstage is less blurry;
The kick of a bass drum is clean yet full and deep;
cymbals sound very detailed and very well positioned without getting harsh;
the snares of a guitar have a better attack and still sound full;
a contrabass is well defined, has just the right weight, well positioned and never gets blurry;
and voices are well defined, detailed but not overly so.

W7 has a fuller midrange, which I personally don't like; it's just too much to my liking, the mid-low in voices seems too much present. Furthermore the overall sound is more veiled even with the lower SFS settings.

I've tried different genres of music and recordings to see whether it makes a difference, and obviously as there is more detail, when a recording is bad it will be more revealed.

In terms of the soundstage and stereo-effect; Yes there is a clear difference between W8 and W7. In the sweetspot in W8 everything is fine, well positioned (I don't experience too much panning as reported by some) as is with W7, although the instruments are a bit larger (less pinpoint).
Outside of the sweetspot things are more different however, W7 has a better soundstage overall, and I experienced some strange effect in W8 where the bass was perfect in the sweetspot and more close to the loudspeakers, but behind the sweetspot it lost weight somehow.
Was this due to my room acoustics (I haven't treated the room at all), the positioning of my speakers (I let the speakers cross in the sweetspot) I don't know, but this was certainly a lot less in W7. Changing the position of the speakers certainly has a more profound effect in W8 (and I don't use horns), and it may be related to what some reported as phasing issues in W8.

So why are my findings so different from others (no horns, not an ideal audio-pc, the room, ...), I don't know, and I may indeed be fooling myself, but I sure do enjoy listening to music via W8.
Like Paul I'll ask some friend's ears to help me out, just to make sure I'm not going crazy   

Diede

Yesterday I installed W8, XXHE 0.9z-8-1, and received the NOS driver from Peter. By the time I got everything up and running it was too late to listen as the children were already a sleep.
This morning I had a first chance to listen for about an hour and a half, and Oh boy what an improvement to my ears and my system.

I’ve been a NOS1 owner for over a year, and have been using XXHE since v6.
Although I didn’t post much (and this being my first posting on SQ), I have been reading all new posts on a daily basis. 
At that time most peoples on the forum were using Peter’s settings with high SFS (430) and Q1 = 30.
I personally never liked these settings as they represented a very sweet and delicate sound, very musical and with lots of transients, but somehow to sweet and not realistic to my ears.

Having had some experience with live music (playing and mixing) the attack of the strings or cymbals just wasn’t there, and the sound as a result became a bit dull or veiled. I found myself more and more listening to live recordings as these are more vivid than studio recordings, I guess to compensate.

I had my SFS down to 4 and Q1=14 (this was back with version 6). But the trade-off was that some of those transients and musicality got lost.

Even if to me XXHE was the best in the market for SQ back with V6 already, these last few months it has been getting better and better, and with each new version Peter brings out a vast improvement in SQ (PA, XTweaks, and now W8).

Although I haven’t been able to fine-tune the XXHE settings yet, as of the first note I could hear more detail, better timing, better attack of cymbals, strings etc, more black background, tighter bass and less distortion, but this time without the trade-off of musicality, transients etc.

To me W8 is indeed more sensitive to the sweet spot phenomenon, but this also depends a lot on the recording. As I always listen in the sweet spot, this doesn’t bother me much, on the contrary timing and position of each instrument has improved.

This is just my impression in my system and with limited listening time with W8, but I would encourage everyone to try for themselves, as for me it was certainly worthwhile.

Given the fact that my audio PC is clearly not the most optimal for XXHE, I haven’t tweaked the XXHE settings yet, and we just got started with W8, I have no doubt that there is still room for improvement in my system. Now isn’t that something nice to look forward too while enjoying the great SQ from 0.9z-8-1 and W8 in the meantime.

Thank you so much Peter!

Error 01

Yes.

Let me rephrase, my user account has administator rights, and the UAC is at never notify.

I am running as administrator Peter.

I just manually rebooted my PC, and all of the sudden I'm in Minimised OS. 
XXHE opened automatically, and I got the following message:
Check OS State: Something went wrong with the OS state!
The Minimise OS button as you see it now reflects the current propoer state.

The other problems remain however.