Yesterday, my wife was out at work and both the kids at nursery so I decided to bite the bullet and get W8 sorted out again on 'Le Monster', the music PC for my main listening room. I had installed W8 on this machine back at the beginning of February but couldn't live with the over-emphasized sound. I kept the HDD untouched but it seems that unplugging it from the SATAIII socket whilst in Minimize OS mode and with the Win7 shell somehow corrupted Win8. In any event, I had to resort to formatting the HDD and a totally new Win8 install. Most of it went pretty smoothly, but I then had major issues with privileges.
I've had W8 installed on the music PC in my office/study since the end of January and have, until recently, simply ignored the over-emphasized sound - OK for background music as I work. It's worked faultlessly and I've never had any privileges issues. There's only one user set up, set to Administrator by default. But with my install on Le Monster, I just couldn't get a single user account to work. After quite a while trying, I resorted to setting up another account, set to Administrator. This required going back and forth between the Win7 shell and Metro, and having to uninstall/reinstall the Win7 shell - I had to do this several times as I'm sure I made loads of mistakes along the way. But eventually everything worked. Phew!
Is Windows 8 and the new version of XXHighEnd (09-z9) the best combination so far between the OS and XXHighEnd?. The answer is, in my opinion YES.
I agree 100%. 0.9z-9b on W8 is a quantum step up in SQ compared to 0.9z-9b on W7. The latter is very, very good - probably the best sound I had achieved before yesterday. (I still have it on another HDD and will go back and take a listen at some point). But the 0.9z-9b/W8 combo is in another league... IMHO.
The main differences in SQ I detected with respect to other combinations of OS/XXHE are:
- Detail. The sound is the most detailed I've heard. I used, as always, a few albums I've listened literally hundreds of times. I have discovered new sounds that were hidden and it was an unbelievable surprise. Never before, in any case, I had heard certain sounds that are now perfectly audible.
Agree 100%. But this is 'real, full spectrum' detail, and not fake HF detail. There are no edges to the sound anymore, etching out and separating instruments. The sound is whole, and yet exquisitely textured.
- Density. The sound is dense and I wish I could explain, dense as I mean is not equal to thick, but a fuller sound with more information, I could define it, for lack of better words, like a more mature sound, more complete.
Agree 100%. This is like the 'whole' that I was talking about above.
- Bass. The bass deserves a special comment. At first it seems too large, even a little fuzzy, but if you get used to it youŽll be hearing a bass that seems to be more faithful to the recording than previously. That is, if the bass is exaggerated it appears so, however in well made recordings the bass appears with an almost perfect intonation and depth. In my opinion, if the bass has the right size and it is correctly reproduced, as it is the case in the 09-z9 version, it becomes an essential factor to give the sound that density to which I referred.
Agree 100%. The bass is just right. Switching PA on seems to destroy the fullness a bit too much.
- Palpability. The combination of the three previous sections gives the sound a palpability even greater than at other times. It seems as if the sound had a physical embodiment, as if it could be touched.
Agree 100%. I've just been listening to a whole bunch of female singers - glad the wife's not here
- Volume. With regard to the volume level I'm not sure if in other versions it is as important as it is now. I think that the richness of the sound is volume level dependent, and I guess that it will happen in each system (including the listening room), in my case with the 09-z9 version the better setting is -33db/-31.5db, that's the equivalent to 30db/-28.5db when PeakExtend was active in the other versions which is the volume that was using before most of the time.
I'm in two minds here. On the one hand the sound is phenomenal even at low volumes. On the other hand, I find myself wanting more.
The combination of all what I have said here makes a sound that IMHO is the best so far. I guess that to the extent that Peter will delve into Windows 8 will appear better XXHE versions, which, although it seems difficult, we all know from experience that it is possible.
I have no idea where we go from here. Peter has tamed the beast that is W8. Actually, he's gone even further than that. In my office system, I keep the LAN connected in order to use remote desktop (I use my work PC to control the music PC, which is just perfect for me) and to stream files across from a NAS drive in my basement, keeping the office/study free of whining HDDs and totally silent (an absolute must for me). I haven't done a lot of playing around with XX settings, but am certain that Q5 is helping to minimize any negative effects of keeping the LAN on. The sound in my office/study is simply superb (music PC -> NOS1 -> Sanders Magtech amp -> Celestion SL600 speakers... all fed off a balanced AC transformer).
I'd encourage those of you still on W7 to take the plunge. W8 is the way forward... IMHO.
Thanks for everything Peter.
Mani.
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