I've just received a message from Cantatis and they say that Overture can't and won't work with 176kHz sample rate in Vista, because it's impossible. I guess, I'm gonna have to stick with no upsampling for 44kHz stuff 

http://www.madshrimps.be/vbulletin/f22/12-software-ram-disk-solutions-up-2358-1539mb-s-r-w-speeds-69781/
There you go - Dataram Ramdisk - free and the best

here is a comparison of different RAMdisk programs - http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2009/12/08/12-ram-disk-software-benchmarked-for-fastest-read-and-write-speed/

Peter, which read test is the most important for XXHE - sequential, 512K or 4K? I suppose it's sequential, but I'd like to be sure before I try a new software.

EDIT
But according to that test, RAMdisk is the best and not by a small margin. Raj.V - what did you install?

I was afraid that different ramdisk software would matter as well    Does your choice have ability to run from an image at Windows startup? What filesystem did you apply?

Cheers,
Marcin

Nick, you're awesome 

I'd also add cMP optimisations per cics' site - http://cicsmemoryplayer.com/ They're for XP, but most of them works the same in Vista/W7.

I also had an experience of better sound once I installed latest DirectX Redistributable (June 2010), but I'm not 100% sure.

So Peter, would you say that XXHE is a multi-threaded app? I'm asking because I may have another small tweak from a hardware side. My memories could work in two dual channel modes - ganged and unganged. Ganged means you will have a large 128bit pipe and unganged means you will have a 2 x 64bit pipes. Unganged mode is supposed to help multi-threaded applications. I wonder if there would be any difference for XXHE?

OK, so it depends on the system too. I have turned these off while XXHE was playing. I'll investigate that later, now I'm very happy with the sound and still have the usability of a normal PC.

I'm pretty sure that you don't need above once you have everything installed (sound card drivers, XXHE, ramdisk).


Best tweaks ever? This is unbelievable what happened after I applied these tweaks. Thank you very much!

I'm very happy that my work is appreciated I keep tweaking OS, XXHE settings, because sth is always wrong and I can't sleep at night, haha. To be honest, the reason behind this is probably the same with everyone - to achieve the best SQ. Now I must admint I enjoy music like I've never have before, but it's not just because of RAMdisk only. I applied series of tweaks and those that Nick http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1398.msg13228#msg13228 are amazing, I'm speechless. This is the new dimension of sound. I could only imagine what would happen if I turned network services off, etc... but I don't want another OS just for XXHE playback, at least not now.

SFS still matters, unfortunatelly, and I haven't found optimum for me yet.

Greets,
Marcin

Nick, I'm sure you're right about it. I'll just add that from my experience lowest latency works/sounds best.

Hi Nick, I was gonna asking about the services that you have running there, but I guess that's gone now? Or could you give us some recommendations? I'm back with fresh Vista installation, I have only sound drivers, ram disk and xxhe installed right now + the following tweaks:

- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Performance] Settings > Visual Effects > Adjust for best performance
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Performance] Settings > Advanced > [Virtual Memory] Change. Select No paging file and click Set. Click OK and restart Windows
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > Error Reporting. Select Disable Error Reporting (and But notify me when critical errors occur if this is wanted)
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Startup & Recovery] Settings. Deselect the System Failure options and set Write debugging information to (none)
- In Regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl, add a new DWORD, "IRQ8Priority" , and set the value to 1.
In that same key, look for "Win32PrioritySeparation" dword and set the value to 28 (hex). Restart a PC.

These are checked and worth applying. I'll proceed very carefully from now on.

Cheers,
Marcin

PS
Peter, Roy - how about your experiments with different Vista installation variants?

It's hard to make direct comparison if you don't have two identical PCs. However, I listened very carefully W7 right before I switched to Vista and then repeated the same album on a fresh system (about an hour later). Clearly- Vista is better.

But I wanted to improve the sound further, messed with tweaks and drivers and SQ is terrible now. Thankfully I did't install many apps and I'm about to reinstall my system again. Remember to be careful with your optimisations, better don't apply to many at once unless you're sure of them. This is very hard and requires time

XXHE + Copying to XX by standard ticked (it copies the tracksto ramdisk automatically)

Mani, did you try to install XXHE on a second partition, but on the same SSD? I think it's worth checking, if these improvements really come from better performance or is it related to logic only.

Yeah, a what about filesystem on ramdisk? :> And what if other 'ramdrive' application? Am I crazy yet? 

BTW, my thin vista build is ready, I'm about to install it, but I need to create another partition on my SSD. I assume that noone tried to install second Vista on the same partition? That's quite risky, is it? (or perhaps impossible, haven't tried though...)