My sanity is highly endangered. I am playing without ramdisk at the moment and I thougt, try z2 from harddrive again. It was an old setup I had on my harddrive. It was still set to adaptive mode. I pressed play and it hit me like a lightning. It can't be. But it seems it is...Before I say what I will say later, I sum up how "we" or "I" proceeded:
There was z2 and adaptive mode as "common standard".Then ramdisk was in discussion. We checked it out and then it was z2 with ramidsk and special mode. Then came z3 with sfs.ini, which turned out, I would say, to be not good. Now it is z4, again with memory management. Then it seems, ramdisk does no good and it is better without. Now being back to the harddrive it seems...z2 was the best xx we had. Maybe I am, or we "all" are a case for the psychiatrist. But the background is realy black with z2. No background noise like from z4 and no harshness like from z3. It is just the closest to how it should sound.
z4 still has an outstanding resolution in the highs. They are very fine and well expressed. But there is very much of them, so that it fills every part in space with this "noise". The background looses its blackness because of that. I think z4 has potential but z2 should be a reference where z4 is tuned to, because z2 adaptive is closer to reality and better in most aspects (coherence, dynamics, balance, tonality, color, 3Dness, solid instruments,...).

It is tricky. Because with ramdisk, there are more fine highs. You could think, it has more air or more resolution. Without, it sounds a little darker. You might think, the highs are damped in comparison to ramdisk. But, listenning to the right record, it can be realized what is going on. I used "trio bravo +" "menschen am sonntag". Here the difference becomes noticable and judgeable. With ramdisk, there is more "air" but in comparison to no ramdisk this air seems more to be a fog. Without ramdisk, every instrument is better defined and there is more space between the instruments because there is less of this "air" or you could call it hf noise. The whole sound is not so bright. Microdynamics are better. It is not easy to judge, because there are records you can think it is the other way round. But I still would say, it is better without ramdisk.

It sounds also great with ramdisk. But I found that without the sound has more precission and bite. I will check ramdisk later again!

I am using z4 without ramdisk and I think it is better like this. Ramdisk does a smothing that limits the dynamics. I think it is better without. The sound is so great, it is unbelievable. Even old records like judas priest has such a depths and punch... wow....chicken skin  (if you can say that in english like that)

Today I receifed my Digital Interface from Audio-GD,  that has now replaced my stock Hiface. I will tell more about it in another thread but want to post z4 related news. First interesting thing was, that I found, as I played with the settings of z3, that now with the DI, the the sound changes different if I change sfs. I would now say, it changes in the opposite direction. Means, smaler sfs -> better sound (How crazy is this?). Then, of course, the next thought was to try z4 again and...Yes it works! Now the balance is there, the DI seems to keep the same tonality no matter what settings I use, it is more the quality that changes. With SC sfs=1,0 z4 sounds very beautyfull. It is MUCH cleaner than z3. All the "metal" has gone. Crazy, but I like it to be like this At the moment my impresseion is, z4 is MUCH better than z3. 

Maybe my post sounded to destructive...sorry. But you know how I mean it. At the moment, it is like this but it can change. I tweaked so long on z3 to get it sound like today, it would be a miracel if z4 was better from the start. Hey, and on the other hand, z3 sounds great. My fantasy might be limited but getting it even better can not be easy
Keep on listening!

After some times testing SC with sfs=10 I would say, I don't like it. It is cleaner than MC, has a very transparent sound. But it lacks deep bass or you can say it is tonal not balanced. I don't like to listen to it. I miss the ambience that z3 creates. It is a little bit, if there is no recording room, you just hear each instrument and every instrument is made of metal . My ears don't want that. To be fair, I set sfs in z3 also to a very low value (sfs=12). I don't like this sound either. Balance was still there but it sounded a little distorted. There was also one evening, where I liked SC and thought thats it. But after longer time, it just is not. At least as long as I can not use higher sfs. So I can join the listening comparison again, if z4 SC will allow higher sfs sizes. At the moment z3 is still on the top for me.

I think you are right. I have to reboot quite often. I can listen to a playlist of about one album and then the "connot find track" error appears. But this is because of my tiny ramdisk. If I have worked a little with the pc, for example start z3 to compare, then I cannont start z4 in SC mode again. But at least it works with very little ram for a short time.

But it seems not the only reason. I just have 2gb of ram and have ramdisk of 512mb. So I just have 512mb of free ram if you substract the amount that windows consumes. And I can use sfs 10 after reboot.

I can not go higher as sfs=10 with straight contiguous. With mixed contiguous I use sfs=100. Listening to Paco de lucia, I like z3 better than mixed contiguous. It sounds unnatural and to bright. SC is hard to tune, as I can just use up to sfs=10. But it sounds cleaner than MC. So far...

Me too.

I was very happy for a while with straight contiguous yesterday but in the end I ended up listening to z3 again. Not a final opinion but z4 sounds very clear but also thin. A little bit like jplay.

ok, next time there will be a new topic. Deactivate stop services prevent xx from shutting down the explorere. But maybe there could be a button, like z3, when you activate stop sevices it just stops services, that are not needed for using the pc in a normal way. And a second button that makes the explorer inactive like unattended. With the actual setting, attended is like unattended if stop services is activated. In both the pc is audio only.

Came home late this night but I had to try it. short check: same settings like z3.  mixed contiguous sfs=1,0. It sounds a little more real than z3. It seems to not need the ramdisk or even sounds better without. First impression is good. But, peter can you manage a button that prevents the explorer to be shut off in the final version? I normaly use my computer while listening to xx
greetings and 

Still z3 is the best sounding player for windows, by far. It don't think it was wrong at all. But I am curious what z4 will bring and understand what you are planing.

The point that not every album sounds good is no problem because not every album is good. Ok, it should sound acceptable and with z3 it does. So no problem. My actual setting gives me the most accurate highs so far and I don't think that is wrong. It is not overpresent but accurate. z2 seems nicer but it is also less accurate. It is the "analog effect". Softer sound, less details -> more pleasent. I think in the end, the 100% untouched way can't be done, simply  because we might get ahead in sound quality and listen, what some old engeneers could not listen back then.  So after it is done perfekt and untouched, it is allright to sound the system to make different systems sound good. But before the sound is altered, everything should be perfekt and untouched. And that is why I am think your way was right.

Try disable UAC