Jep, Darker. That was my first thought as I heard the first tones from z3. Agree!

First impression, testet both with the same settings I alwas use.
The z3 sound is darker. This could have two reasons. 1.Bass improved. 2. Highs decreased.
It seems mids and highs are quieter with z3. Something is missing. Bass und lower mids are dryer, have more punch and are more present with z3. I like that. z3 sounds a bit more focused as z2. I feel overall the sound has improved. THX Peter!
Still prefering scheme-3.

Thanks but I checked it already and think from what I read that the Legato will perform better if you just looking at the main function, "converting" usb to spdif. The audiophillio 1 has nice features but nothing that I need. A direct comparison of the two devices would be interesting but it is not available in the net. At least I found nothing.
Greetings
Adrian

After some more listening I can quite sure say, that the 6db attenuation will help the hiface giving better sound. It is more involving, softer but no loss of details, a little more musik in the room and more 3D. But I will not buy the attenuator. I decided to buy an ART Legato. It is a much better design and will not need the attenuation. As peter said, the attenuator helps the hiface because it has no perfect design. But with a better designed device, reflections can be much lower. Example (from Pat): If you have 20% reflection from your dac input and 20% from the source you will get 4% reflection to the input to the dac again. The 6 db attenuator reduces this to 2%. Without an attenuator and a propper source, in this case the legato, you have 0.13% reflection that get into the (still 20% reflecting) dac ->no attenuator needed. It is not said that the hiface is so bad, that it has 20% reflection but it will be far from the legato. So I ordered one.
Greetings
Adrian

I tried this tweak. I chose a 6db filter because of two reasons.
1: The shop just had that one, and it isn't actually a attenuator but a splitter which reduces the signal about 6db and
2: the other thought was, that a 6db attenuator already reduces the signal to 50%, 12db would be 25% and 18db 12,5% of the original signal and that seems to be a little much.

I can say it changes the sound and I would agree with Keny, it is smoother. But smoother is not necesarily better. But in this case it seems to be better because the stage becomes more 3D. I recognised no loss of bass but I am not sure because of the dynamics. Without that tweak it sounds a bit agressiv and this is so far, not clear to me if this is good, if you think about dynamics or bad if you think about distortion. Without the attenuator it sounds a little distorted to me. I will listen some days and then decide if I order a proper attenuator.
If this turns out to be a good thing, there is the question if this is a hiface specific error or just a common problem with spdif signals. It might be both.
Greetings
Adrian

I tried a b test.
a: Direct plugged to the dac with 5m usb and
b: with 5m usb and 5m spdif.
Unfortunatly my system was not good enough in this config to make a clear statement. The long usb cable decreased the sound of my outofthebox hiface very much.
But I can say for sure, that it is better to use a long spdif (50€ type) cable on the hiface than a long usb cable (10€ type).

I didn't wanted to say this is the best or only way. Just an inspiration for people who have a similar setup as I.
In my case, I have about 4m from pc to dac (spdis input). If you consider boundary conditions like that, you just have to get there somehow. And in this case it seems to be good.
It is questionable if one can manage such a tight design. Even the best cables have about 0,5% to 1% deviation from 75Ohm. And the designers of the electronics are aware of this problem (at least some of them) and try to go as close as possible to 75 Ohm with theire input and output design. There are also different approaches for that problem. Audiophilleo tries to avoid the refelction problem with a very fast output stage. Art Legato gives a 5m spdif cable to his usb/spdif converter. Both serious designs I think.

@Raj
I think the hi-face power supply also suffers because of the usb cable, especially if they are long. I tried different length from 0-4.8m and I would say, the longer the worse for usb-powered devices.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

In my case I profit very much from using a 5m spdif cable and using no usb cable for my hi-face.
Greetings
Adrian

Yeehaa! 

You mentioned that you use all four cores with the appointment schemes. I just have two Do you think it could be worth to invest in a Quadcore?
I need more Ram too, so it might be a new machine

Sorry you spend so much time on this. I am using scheme 3 again too. But thanks for helping to disprove this!
It realy depends on the music. With some track I thought it would be better with scheme 2 but at the end this is not "true". Tight bass and dynamics is better with scheme 3 and that is one hearable criterion for a better digital source, that's my experience at least. !

 
@Marcin and Josef
I tried the tweaks on ciscs site about some month ago but meanwhile I have a new installation. If I want a pure-audio-setup I start with "msconfig" the debug mode. Very nice because most things are deactivated and you don't have to tweak your whole system. With dimr I get peak 2ms, I have a Logitech G5 But if the mouse rests it goes down to very differnt values (5-30ms).
Does the ciscs tweaks go further than the debug mode?

I might was wrong on this. It seems more, that scheme 2 softens the sound in a way that made me think it is finer. Tight bass should be a sign of low jitter, so this is a plus for scheme 3.

I am not sure too. Bass seems really better with scheme 3 and dynamics too. Scheme 4 has more the Bass/dynamics as scheme 3 and might be worth to be listened to again.

If you have gained sound quality with RAMDisk and the use of Special Mode, this might be interesting for you:

Since Scheme 2 is a little bit brighter than scheme 3, scheme 3 was the choice before the use of RAMDisk. But now, as things changed I experimented with the schemes and found, that with scheme 2 it seems to sound better. Especially the air between the instrumets is rendered finer. You have more the impression of instruments, playing in the same room. With scheme 3 the stage falls appart, compared to scheme 2.
What do you think?

Edit: The bass seems to be better with scheme 3, more punchy and clear.

@ Peter, I see you have changed from adaptiv to special. Did this come with playing from RAMDisk?
In my case, I always used adaptive because special sounded to nervous but now with RAMDisk it sounds relaxed and I can enjoy the details that special mode has.

thx, it realy improves sound quality!

I post here, so I don't have to start a new thread. I feel like I have to say you Peter, I enjoy my hifi-system very much and xx brings a important part to it.
THANX!