OK, so I get the Hayabusa (very, very nice) and the TVR (they never were my cup of tea - engines in the wrong place). But what's the red number? It looks like a true track car.

(I guess I'm showing that I'm not really much of a car nut.)

Mani.

Peter's post in the 'gainclone heaven' thread mentioning Nick's car(s) prompted me to start this thread.

Nick, I'm intrigued - what do you have? Any pics?

Peter, do you care to post a pic of that beauty you have sitting in your garage?

Paul, I think we could do without pics of the Hillman... hehe.

Anyway, here's a pic of mine. Unfortunately, it's all covered up in my garage and on trickle charge right now. It won't now see the light of day until March I reckon.

Mani.

UPS hasn't arrived yet


No, 4 boxes in total - 2x amps and 2x power supplies.


Yes, exactly.


XLR inputs only and balanced output at speaker terminals.

I really should have waited until I've at least tried them. It  could well be that my Quads don't 'like' being driven by an amp with balanced outputs. We'll see...

Mani.

PS. Nick/Paul, does this mean we all have gainclone amps housed in identical cases (sizes apart)? But I bet my amps are stronger than yours

Hey guys, listen up now. My 'super' gainclones will arrive here today!

Bert (BD-Design) built them for me, and from the pictures (posted with Bert's consent) you'll see he seems to have done a really great job. And Paul (Scroobius) yes, they really are Black Gate Ns - 8 per channel!!!

I just can't wait - actually, the last time I was this excited about hifi was just before my original NOS1 was due to arrive, around this time last year IIRC.

This post may be a little premature as I haven't even tried them (not here yet), but I wanted to give you all a heads up.

I wonder if I'm the first person to have tried driving electrostatics with gainclones?

Mani.

OK, I'd like to finish this exchange with something useful...

I have an internal SATA DVD drive that seems to perform as well as my expensive (and hard-to-find) USB Plextor Premium-U CD drive for ripping duties. It's a little bit slower when ripping, but the results so far have been identical. It works with FUA in dBPoweramp (I haven't tested it with EAC) and has so far matched the Accuraterip database perfectly with every CD I've ripped with it. Oh, and the drive cost me less than €20 (yes, twenty) from Amazon!

It is the Sony AD-7241S-0B.

I think this actual drive is no longer available, but a slightly newer version is, which costs, and I'm assuming performs, exactly the same.

Mani.

Here's what the developer of dBPoweramp has to say about the cache:

"Caching is employed by the majority of drives to improve performance, but caching stops secure extraction: when a secure ripper tries to re-rip the same section a 2nd time, instead of getting audio from the disc, audio comes from the cache (which is the same as the first rip). A secure ripper must be able to detect and invalidate the cache (by reading more than the cache value before the section of audio desired)."

Read that last sentence very carefully (the emphasis is mine)!

If you deactivate the 'Drive caches audio data', then the ripper will NOT try to read more than the cache value. This is perfect... only if the drive has no cache (99.9% do have a cache!) OR if you've bypassed the drive's cache using something like FUA.

Now look, I don't want anyone to get paranoid about the 1000s of rips they've made. If you're worried, check a rip with Accuraterip - it's as simple as that!

Mani.

Peter, I understood your post perfectly.

We both agree that we really do not want to use the cache during ripping.

However, you believe that all that is required is to deactivate the 'Drive caches audio data' box in EAC. I believe that this will give you 'disastrous' results... unless you really bypass the physical cache in the actual drive also.

And there's only one way I know of to really bypass the physical cache in the drive - get a 'real' Plextor drive and use FUA.

But look, I researched all this almost 10 years ago now, and maybe a lot has changed since then?

Mani.

Ah but that's exactly why it's important to get a 'real' Plextor drive and deactivate its cache using 'force unit access'.

If you untick 'Drive caches audio data', but don't actually deactivate the cache, you're in trouble...

The best thing to do is to use the 'Detect drive features' button. With 99.9% of drives, it will tick the 'Drive caches audio data' box automatically. However, with a 'real' Plextor drive, if you use FUA, it will automatically untick the 'Drive caches audio data'.

Anyway, as I said, there is an easy test. Get a badly scratched CD. If the drive does not slow down (almost to a stop) on ripping, then you're in the equivalent of burst mode.

EDIT: And there's always Accuraterip. If Accuaterip is verifying all your rips as accurate, then they are! In which case, totally ignore everything I'm saying...

Mani.

OK, to use the 'force unit access' command in EAC, this is what you need to do:

EAC shortcut
1. set up a shortcut for EAC (on your desktop, or wherever)
2. go into shortcut properties
3. add '-usefua' to target command line (see jpeg below)
4. go into Advanced, and select run as administrator (just to be on safe side)

EAC Drive Options
1. go into EAC drive options
2. Under 'Extraction Method', untick 'Drive caches audio data' (see jpeg below)

WARNING This method is only guaranteed to work with 'real' Plextor drives. Ordinarily, you should never deactivate the cache in EAC because 99.9% of drives have a cache that cannot be deactivated. In which case, your rip will go ultra fast, but you will be ripping in the equivalent of 'burst mode'... NOT GOOD!

Mani.

But isn't this supposed to be a 'mechanical' tweak?

I've always thought that the best way of getting some crossfeed is to toe-in the speakers 'aggressively' way past the central listening position right towards the opposite wall. This way, if you're sitting in the centre, you'd get the direct sound coming from the speakers (from let's say 45 degrees off centre) mixed in with the reflected sound from the opposite wall. But I think this will only really be effective with speakers that focus/beam quite a lot. Oh, that makes horns and my Quads perfect!

Earl Geddes has some interesting thoughts on this: http://www.gedlee.com/

Would this count as a mechanical 'tweak' though?

Mani.

Hey Peter, do you mean just in the last few weeks, since our visit? This would be amazing. I still remember the sound of Abdullah Ibrahim's piano from your dining room... (I've since bought the CD and it sounds great at my place too.)

BTW, I really wanted to post a writeup of our experience at your place. But I wanted to do this properly and haven't had enough time these last few weeks to do the writeup justice. It seems from what you say that my writeup would have been totally out of date now anyway. It's interesting that one of my very small criticisms was going to be about the lack of truly deep, tuneful bass...

Mani.

Hi Juan, I mention 'FUA' in my first post in this thread: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1821.0

My Plextor is the original external 'Premium' model. The PX-'230A'  is supposed to be the best internal model. But both of these are going to be hard to find nowadays.

'FUA' may well work with other much cheaper non-Plextor drives though. The way to find out is to get a slightly scratched CD that is definitely in the Accuraterip database. Set FUA on (as I describe in the thread mentioned above) and then try to rip the CD. If the CD ripping slows down and the end result matches the Accuraterip database results, then FUA looks like it's working correctly. However, the creator of dBPoweramp (Spoon) still strongly recommends not using FUA unless you have a 'real' Plextor drive.

FWIW, I rip CDs at maximum speed using FUA and my 'real' Plextor drive - a new CD normally takes around 2 minutes to rip, with the results matching the Accuraterip database perfectly.

Mani.

OK, so at least they admit that the results defy all logic - the files, irrespective of rip speed or ripping program, are bit-perfect, and yet still sound different to them - which I commend them for.

Now as us XX users all know, bit-perfect does not mean equal sound. Just change your SFS to verify this. BUT... this is at the playback stage, where loads of things seem to affect the sound. Two bit-identical files should sound identical when played back through XX. If they don't, then the only thing I can think of is that their location on the hard-drive matters. But I can't see how one ripping program could be consistenly better than another if this were indeed the mechanism that causes changes in the sound of bit-identical files.

I don't want to sound overly critical though because there's just so much that we don't understand right now. So the best thing is to probably try things yourself and see what you think. This is certainly what I do nowadays...

Mani.

Well this is just going to have to wait - the baby should be popping out in the next week or two and I'm not going anywhere unless I really have to - wife's orders.

But the changes you describe sound amazing. I'm not sure how good my 'aural memory' is, but I think I'll be able to tell how much things have changed for the better. But as I've mentioned before, I already thought your system sounded great when I heard it.

Looks like 2012 might be full of audiophile surprises!

Mani.

Peter, I think that you still need to adjust the XX code so that 'Peak Extend' is automatically disengaged when 'decode HDCD' is activated and an HDCD file is being played. At the moment, I need to disengage Peak Extend manually, otherwise the sound is terrible.

Mani.