Several releases of XX have had too much energy in the treble and upper mid. MB this is because Peter has tweaked it that way to suit his own PB chain and speakers, I don't know.
Pwew, difficult ...
Ok, some brief (objective I hope) remarks :
1. This should hardly be about my system, but then personal likings, if any. My high output is 16dB uplevelled already opposed to how it officially should be.
2. I don't recall to (wanting to) head into those directions by means of the software. By accident it does though, sometimes.
3. It may be useless to refer to my playback chain from what we heard those 15 hours, because that was SPDIF while the virtues of the NOS1 are with I2S.
The differences between SPDIF and I2S are rather large, but (or *thus*) SPDIF was used for both DACS to compare apples with apples better.
Important or not, I just copied the remarks of the visitors without any colouring of myself, and might the statement have been "the worst system" or "the best system" either wouldn't have said much because "the system" is so much created by the software already, let alone the DAC. But of course the rest of the chain does have its influence, and in the case of the visitors it may be good to say that both were explicit dipole lovers, which is quite some opposite from horns.
In the very end it is dangerous - or not a good thing anyway - to explain (XX) things through a system, no matter how truthful and logical that would be. We never did because we never felt the need to, and that is very very useful because we all could discuss about the same thing. However, I think that a. we all have become much more experienced on listening (I sure have in the past 2 years) and b. we may be reaching limits where the rest of the PB chain just can't be avoided anymore. Therefore, let me add to this "pwew" response my latest experience :
Referring to the post from today from SeVeReD (
Re: Q experiment anyone ?) he talks (including earlier posts in that topic) about "a wall of sound". Apparently he can encourage for this by means of Invert On;
Then, this week I visited the designer of these horn speakers, and by means of a small tweak in the filters (about eliminating a dip in the 120 Hz region) he created a massive wall of sound, which I "stated" to be way too much a wall of sound. Voiced and instruments became to big of it (imagine a voice to be over a meter in diameter).
Lastly, by pure coincidence (that it happened right tonight) I was able to play the NOS1 how it should be and how I want(ed) it : completely NOS withpout filter over I2S. Together with Invert now *that* creates a wall of sound in my room and PB system which I could not with this DAC so far (and the software versions since ??).
Now if you watch above alinea closely you see that "wall of sound" (which may be very deterministic for "a system") was created 3 times in 3 very different ways, the 2nd one actually changing "the system" really. The first is just a software setting, the third a change of the DAC including a software setting.
I can't speak for SeVeRed really of course, but if I didn't know otherwise, the other two means of changes would make me swear I was listening to complete different systems. And as you can imagine, more laid back opposed to a wall of sound just *is* completely different.
Btw, the most characteristic of the NOS1 operating really NOS (and filterless) I2S connected, is the unrivaled dynamics going together with the sweetness of I2S. SPDIF connected the dynamics should be as high, but as how it comes to me, is "smeared" again because of the roughness (opposed to sweetness) of the SPDIF connection. So, these dynamics come to you as very very clean. The fun is, this would lead to sterile without further changes, but including the wall of sound andthe warmth added because of that, just makes it a (3D 3D 3D) mixture I LOVE.
With normal sized voices. Haha.
The problem is that one versions good SQ is often ruined in the next version due to implementing more formats, changes etc. that has nothing to do with SQ in themselves.
I hear you very, very well;
As far as I can tell, those reasons for changes are behind us, because it just all has been done. At this moment I can only hope that the current version is good for SQ for everybody, and if not, the Q2-Q5 can do something to it. I am sure (!). The problem of course is how.
Right, having said this all, I think I only now see how to interpret this one :
But these are characteristics which also has come forward in my system, which is very different fra Peters.
... which makes all I just said unnecessary.
After proper interpretation (I think) I said the same as you wanted to express. I never like to scratch carefully typed words (can I ? hehe), but what it comes down to is that earlier versions sounded better, right ?
Hmm ...
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). Depending how serious you really are, I don't think you'll get anything most serious for that price tag. So a kind of advise is : you will be having everything under control including a good sounding "CP player" for a handful of euro's, now spend your time on the DAC !
