Dennis,


That won't be related to mentioned settings. Can be the "Use Remote Desktop" setting or possibly that you try this in Normal OS (W10 versions exist which do that but are OK in MinOS). Or the W10 version itself ...

If you have stuttering with these settings, then I'm afraid you'll need to back out a bit (try a lower xQ1 and see how far you can go with it, upwards). Or, try for your situation how the SFS relates (all works in combination with each other).

Regards,
Peter

Not particularly with these settings, but maybe two weeks ago 3 tracks from my Demo Gallery passed by and I wondered where the nastyness had gone (ADDC is not always the most friendly). But since I was just playing music from a larger playlist, I forgot to revisit it. So I guess I need to now !

I expect guitars with a lot of air in them and with a 2 fold more fundament and even punch. More slick too. Am I right ?

Regards,
Peter

Dear Ramesh,


Justified. And I set myself to solve it (today).

The culprit is this one :


Meaning : if one doesn't have the "senses" that this may end up in misery, then, well, it will.  And btw, this should trigger the alarm bells :


So if I see this, I will think "uh-oh" and next be in control (like quitting XXHighEnd would be the best solution, but which I do not do because I want to run into the issue (learning from it, so to speak).


If it would always be accompanied by this message, I would definitely have solved it soon. But people are telling that they don't see the message (after playback stopped !) so I better don't believe those people or otherwise I don't know where to start. And mind you please, this is completely different from the situation that playback continues after the noise.

Btw Ramesh :


There are two errors in that. 

Thank you for your clear description !
Peter

Hey Henk,

Nah, this won't be of much help. But as said in there, you can create such a leaner version yourself (with a lot of work).

Keep in mind that you'll need the Pro version, assumed you want to use RDC to the OS.

Thank you Henk,
Peter

Thank you very much Richard.

Yes, as I told ... people will have been encouraged by my own lower buffer settings and just like I calculated (in the other topic) how a 30x40 is 85 times larger than 14x1 for that buffer alone, there's a 85 higher chance that something goes wrong - thus minimum, other highered settings left out.

Kind regards,
Peter

Oh boy. I am not going to repeat the same again. So this time I will say : read again. And again. And again. Until you understand (not addressing someone in particiular and it is clear that the subject is difficult).

The program does not sort this out automatically. You must do it yourself with a button. The button is named Refresh. After that the program rememers that state. Until you restart the program, then the state is lost.


Only the proper aspect ratio of video is a more difficult subject. Almost nobody in the entire world understands that. Why it is so difficult I can not understand.
Haha.

Peter

So here goes for my Sunday morning blah :

Maybe we must all look beyond where we normally look, because I don't understand myself by now, where this SQ comes from. It is just too crazy, suddenly.

Last night, track after track, I was and remained amazed of what's all squeezed out for bass, mid and highs, mixed with totally unrecognizable tracks which are so familiar, as if they are played through an other system in another room, or live by the artists themselves, for that matter.
I repeat : I don't understand myself how this emerges. UNLESS - but I did not explicitly check that - it is all because I switched off the OSD texts (not the Wallpaper Coverart itself). So among all my by now wildest settings changes, that OSD Text being off, is really the only common denominator.

Help.

The last two days I played with :
Q1 x xQ1 = 30x40.
Q3,4,5, = 1,1,1.
SFS = 20.
ClockRes = 15ms.
Custom Filter = Highest for 705600.
And just mentioning : Appointment Scheme = 3-5.
And thus OSD Text = Off. Wallpaper (front and back) On.

The OSD Text thing should not be underestimated, as it will do something to the OS itself but also to the Sound Engine which does not need to deal with it (in the loop of Playback, which is what it comes down to). Also :

I did NOT solve the issue of the Volume not working when no Wallpaper Covertart is used since 2.08, because exactly there the SQ change may be implied. So instead I offered the old means of (slow) volume change (with a .tst file, see Release Notes of 2.09).

Anyway, and I think you all may agree, the SQ change is so crazy, it is crazier than ever before. And where you guys may see the largest change between 2.08 and 2.09, for me this is way more difficult because somewhere between 2.08 and 2.09 I will have done something which I implemented on day X and which in aftermath is not recognizable (what it has been). So I G-D don't know myself !
It feels (also on behalf of you !) like "we" played with some setting just for trying, and now something popped in all of our systems. And now all is good (or at least changed vastly). IOW, no matter what settings you dial back into, the base of the SQ remains as it is.

The level of detail is inifinite.
The bass is infinitely loud.
The highs do not observe like wrong - they don't observe at all (brain has to time to observe).
And this gag remains for me : when I am sure the mids stay behind, something happens which shows the mids as the most profound ever.

I also keep on feeling that all "frequencies" are infinitely detached now. So maybe you reall me telling about the electric bass player and his own amplification (which always is true in real life) ... this now happens to everything. But meanwhile each shifted something like an octave in their own domain.
All things which can't be.


So Yes Richard, these things happen as long as we can't find our "setting". This is very very tough to judge for real merit because who tells whether that Clark Terry is a decent recording ? I mean, man, if things change so wildly then we must re-learn to listen and this includes re-judge. But of course Clark Terry is fine (not that I ever heard of him) and so we wander for that other setting(s). Well, I just gave mine so maybe that helps you and others (but two days in only).


Richard, maybe not. I had the same for two (other) days with only the change of SFS to 0.9 and the highest custom or native Arc Prediction. This is not miles off from yours, so that really should have something, but also for sure not for all (and this is about the SFS of 0.7 or 0.9). So this could be the wildest stereo imaging effect, but if it does not work for all, then good bye (I forgot where it went wrong for me). The crucial general one is the 14x40 here, which is a kind of intuitive change because of how the dials present it, but anyway that for a base is not wrong at all.
And of course when I see that working, I overdo it with a 30x40 ...

That this 30x40 for "base" does not work out for everybody with descriptions as "bland" ... I tried to observe that and I think this could be about the same I just told about : highs ? what highs. And it could be the largest pitfall ever.
So yes, completely true, especially in retrospection it could be that the highs disappeared (sort of). However, just because I have my ever test signal music, I just know how much of highs there is, but now it looks like highs where highs must be. This may be related to my high sensitive mid/high of 118dB (which is also crazy of course) but the mentioned "infinite detail" - which btw is also about "detail where detail should be" can only spring from "perfectly rendered highs". In other words : it is also very unbelievable how no disturbing highs are present any more anywhere (someone told the same but I forgot who - maybe Nick) which somehow seem to give room for the not-fake detail and which very much includes the again "infinite" clarity which is suddenly there everywhere. Mind you, an album like Joe's Garage (Zappa) has always been a strange one regarding the highs and which always lacked fundament. Listen to it now. Ultimate clarity which ... now has fundament ? no, I don't think it is that what happend. But a boat load of hash disappeared (at least that is how it comes across to me).

The effetcs of the above should be encouraged for by the 30x40 of Q1 but with a quite special side effect : removing fake detail hence noise, now bringing forward what should remain (whatever that is). So, this is actually back to my hundreds of times expressed curiosity : The buffers should all be as large as possible and not as small as possible because the latter theoretically imply noisenoisenoise (and super much overhead). And for those with a pocket calculator : 30x40 = 1200 while 14x1 = 14. So something is more than 85 times quieter.
Previously we needed this "harpening" (same as with photos) to perceive sufficient detail, but while sharpening is done by adding noise, by now, everything in the environment improving, the sharpening expresses as noise. Remove that and the native sound remains.

Blahblahblahblah.
But I still don't know what happened, where.

Anyway, going this direction a kind of obviously also highered the CockRes (this one is dangerous because not really in the same realm, but for (less) overhead matters it should help) and what remains is the Driver Buffer size and don't I also recall a Kernel Streaming buffer size somewhere (I never touch that one and maybe it can't even be changed - I forgot). Of course we have a related XTweaks setting (the Nervous Rate) and the SFS itself at 20 should be high enough not to bother.

Most crucial could be the 30x40 which now even works (as I said earlier, I thought that it could not, ever back that is) which I could try to give a maximum of way more. We must of course be able to run into limits, right ?

Did I say Help ?

Peter

Thank you Henk.

I have a native 14393.0 (ISO) available for those who want it.

Regards,
Peter

(I moved this to a separate topic)

Charlie - a short and quite useless response just because I can't make up any longer (and correct me if I am wrong) :

I don't see how your responses to mine are relevant - but it is difficult to really see (through). You start out with "No, I wasn't using AI last night at all". This suggests that I stipulated that AI is causing the noise. I did not anywhere.

I do claim that AI is unusable for stability reasons, but you seem to avoid just that - or like to ignore it which is human.
You did not explain about "stability issues" outside of AI. I just can not make up what you are talking about now. This includes :


Of course it doesn't because the message is from XXHighEnd. But in the end you respond to me telling about the DAC being a possible cause and *then* you say this ? now all is beyond me because it happened to you ONE time in a million years and besides all you are in the middle of a topic which is about 2.08/2.09 so you can't be talkin about the same issue anyway, if there is one anyway. (but say there is one).


It doesn't look good that you don't know this. And the default is whatever you set it to yourself (could be 3 years back).
For a new, fresh install the default is 2.00 I think (maybe 4.00, depending on how it was for 2.07 vs 2.08 or 2.09).


Not really in combination with the Straight Contiguous Memory setting.


I use a tablet and drop my finger on the led. 


Good thinking. HQPlayer does not support KS. But your descriptions too much lead to "inherently XXHighEnd" and a few pilot errors. But "pilot error" is easy to say for someone like me who just "knows" what not to do. Just saying !

Kind regards,
Peter

There is one other out there of 3m and I don't have feedback from it.

What do I think ... that is difficult. As you know I had the idea already that 3m could be on the edge and I am glad it works in the first place. But how this works out for SQ I really can't tell (maybe I should have tried yours, but this is already difficult because of breaking in etc.).

In the far end I would not worry too much. Also see my next post (maybe posts).

Peter

Dennis, if that Education version is 14393.0 then it should be fine. However, take care that it can do RDC or otherwise you have no remote ...

Regards,
Peter

Hi Dennis,

Well ... that seems bad luck for you then. Maybe you don't really need the text ?
Is this in Normal OS already ? (if so, you can always try MinOS and cross a few fingers)

But maybe it was not a wise thing to do. There is no official support beyond 14393.0. I do have 15063.0 all right (for many months by now) but can't find the time to do something with it. Besides, the prospect is not good SQ wise (too much overhead in that build, of what I read on the Net).

Regards,
Peter

Hi Charlie,

Thank you very much for this extensive report.

You did not change Q or SFS settings recently ?

Did you find that message with "24 bit Crack Detect" on your screen somewhere, after playback had stopped ? If not, it is very probable that it was your DAC (or interface to it).

Let's also keep in mind that those who announced themselves (in this topic) have the issue with 2.08 or 2.09 and not prior to that (like 2.07). And even that possibly is not the reason because for me it is far more likely that it is the changed SFS (and more) settings people use since 2.08.

The reliability issues you have ... what to say. First off, there is totally nothing instable whatsoever. BUT, you use AI and it is for a reason I want to deprecate that. The way it works it just "unworkable" no matter you think it is. For example, you start playback, the conversion starts under the hood but you press Stop already. That conversion keeps on running though and when pressing play again, nothing will work any more. It is just an example of so many more problems in that (AI) area.
The least you should teach yourself is stopping the sound engine (Engine3.exe) before playback, which you can do by clicking at the blue led in the right hand border (it will go dark after that).

Kind regards and sorry about your pants !
Peter

Thank you for that, Juan !
And yes, such a chair (reflection right behind the ears) really makes a difference you would not want.

Kind regards,
Peter

Colin, so far it doesn't look like it. Personally I don't think it is a wise thing not to try it.
By now I have quite some MQA albums in my "Nice Stuff" Gallery, and the Demo Gallery also grows and grows. But it is a matter of finding them, and what your favorite genre is. And for example, I can not imagine that classical will improve from it (I never tried it, so this is just based onm experience).

Indeed it is so that NOS1 users can not use KS Special Modem, unless they have the very first NOS1 version (the one without USB interface). But if two are still round, I'd make up one already. But the other one regularly visits the forum, so he will ready this too ...
And just saying : KS Special Mode ever back was the best means of playback. That should still count for those not using a NOS1 DAC ...

Back to MQA - I guess it is difficult for people to even start thinking it might be for the better. I am positive it is, but it depends on the album. And let's be fair, once you found one for the better, you should be happy with it ?

Personally I would not approach this in the sense of "better sound quality". It is not like that and the dimension is a different one; it is merely about a "is working out better".
Gets into you better. Brings across messages better. Is more clear. Is NOT more refined.
And this latter would determine SQ. So when judged with that, we go wrong (IMO).

Is more firm. Has more punch. Is sounding more straight. Is sounding more honest. And yes, more real. And I hardly dare to say it : more how it ever was during the recording ... although I can't know that. But this is about the "more real" thing. You can sense it and you can see it.

One thing is quite crucial I'm afraid, and this is the NOS1 again. So if you'd know a but how MQA's filtering works (or destroys, name it as you like) then it actually requires the NOS1 including its filtering. Well, "requires" is a big word, but it suddenly brings out all the positives of MQA while any other DAC would not. But include the filtering, which lately for me is Arc Prediction, or Custom Filter - Highest (705600). I must experiment some more with this (it all goes way slowly), but the filtering is the key and the NOS1 does not filter anything. So it can all be tuned 100% in software.

For those who understand a bit more and now don't understand  : We are explicitly talking about "no MQA hardware" and use the decoder stage only, BUT replace the MQA hardware filtering (!) with our own in software. This is not because we lack the hardware (at least I myself don't) but because that part (named the Rendering part) is the bad boy of the MQA chain. So that's convenient.

Anyway, I really like people to try it, already because all the effort I put in it (all for free). So a little feedback would be nice, just like Colin just did. And if it is negative then this is OK because expected. But better would be if we could make something of it because it then will benefit ourselves.
Yes, it requires Tidal. But you can get a trial subscription for 30 days for free (the 19.99 subscription). And no matter you need to give your credit card, if you cancel then you're out of it (I tested that myself).

With settings I cant help because mine go all over the place, lately. Different settings matter in general but not specifically for MQA that I noticed.

Thanks !
Peter