XXHighEnd

Yes, I think we all wasted our time and money on an under performing OS.

Let's start with this small excerpt from my topic from December 29 2009 Windows7 ? hmm ... maybe not ! (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1032.msg8620#msg8620) from the first post in there :



So, dear all, today we are working on the Split File size (SFS), and I think that to everyone who tries to vary the SFS there's a vast difference audible. Yeah, that's what you thought ...

But after listening a year or so to Windows 7, better try Vista again, and see how your system turns into the most delicate sounding system ever ...


As the result of a crash of my system (not bootable anymore), I had to fall back to an OS disk which (not coincidentally) was from December 29 last year, and it's a Vista (SSD) disk. With a new system bing build up at this moment, I thought to use that disk as a base again, because it will allow me not to reinstall all the development stuff. So, just like last December, I would clone that disk to a new one, and in there upgrade to W7.
Because the new system isn't ready yet, I thought to make it work (for playback) with the latest XX version. This was the case right before the evening's play time, and I played something which I played one time before only a longer time ago. So, this time I was not familiar with the contents;

In instantly could hear all the "beauties" of the sound I once had, but never could find back anymore. Those really really natural veils of drums, a totally analogue sounding trombone, the guitar like I ever heard it, but wouldn't come back anymore. New though, was a detail unheard, which I found later with more familiar material. Un-be-lie-vea-ble.

The most apparent thing jumping to you, is the total lack of aggressiveness. Compare that just as well with vinyl; with vinyl you can sense the enormous headroom available before things will start to sound wrong or harsh. You just can't get it wrong. This now, is the same, and therefore I referred to the SFS "tweaks" from today, because that will be totally irrelevant.


The major "mistake" I will have maken myself, is that at the time Kernel Streaming was completely new, *and* it evolved so quickly. So, because of that I could tweak my own listening pleasure into something acceptable again (see quote above) without actually realizing I was working on the solution to a wrong cause. Or let's say I could forget about it, because KS really improved SQ compared to Engine#3/WASAPI, and at the time KS was ready (April or so ?) I'm sure the net result was better than Vista/Engine#3 from earlier 2009. And most probably nothing changed to that as per today ...

But today we can use Engine#4/KS on to the Vista of before, and NOW you have to listen;
It is not only by far far far the best I ever heard (sense that headroom thing !) but it also brings back what I unconsiously missed : that refined sound. Delicateness, a string plucked on purpose, a voice brought with sensitiveness, not *that* much forward and more in balance. And that with all that cymbals and stuff floating through the air ...

This is about the Phasure NOS1 DAC too of course;
Since the gain stage is in there and the cymbals appeared, for me it has always been always tip-toeing between the cymbals being there in the first place, and the aggressiveness of it when not quite good. Say, like from a random earlier Deep Purple album ("Who do we thing we are" left alone, because that's an example of the better smashing around rock cymbals, like everything from the first 5 albums of Led Zeppelin is). So, with those earlier Deep Purple albums, I'm always squeezing my toes, and think that those bad sounding cymbals better stay away, next thinking "oh, but sure nobody will play this on this DAC". Yea, that's what I hope in such an occasion.

So, what's next ?
Let me first refer once more to my quote above;
Although many people had problems with getting Windows 7 to run without glitches etc. which were not there with Vista, "we" solved those things, but as my quote ends, with wrong appliances. We all used SQ "controls" to get our glitches under control, and lost those controls for SQ control. This is the first thing never to forget, and I have said it quite some times throughout time.
Next, I always try to imagine what "you" perceive from things, and for example, a more rough sound (which (now even the more) it clearly is from W7), will create more freshness. You may like that, because something is coming from your speakers which wasn't there before. You will hear details too, which weren't there before; this is all a matter of "roughening". Please believe me. How that really is though, can only be heard from, say, infinitely more resolving systems, and already my own system resolves infinitely more since the end of 2009. This is partly because of the KS (special Mode ahead), but merely because of the evolvement of the Phasure NOS1 since then;
If I would have heard the giant step backwards my system shows today, I would never have stayed at Windows 7. Of course, back then I noticed it, but as said, it could be tweaked by a coincidental new Sound Engine. But it sure doesn't mean it was right.

Up to yesterday I think I found exactly one response of someone who explicitly told W7 didn't sound right. Coincidentally -with this post already in mind- this morning I received an email from a second person. So, I guess only a few people are "able" to perceive what only a few do, but trust me, W7 is wrong. And not a bit.

I will use Vista from now on, although I'll have a second boot for W7. I advice all to do the same, and look for what you have missed. It's really crazy.

Peter

Peter, are you sure it's not placebo? Are you using the new PC now? Is the OS optimized? Could this be driver related? 32 or 64-bit Vista?

Cheers,
Marcin

PS
I'm trying Vista today  :grin:

You will see. We'll bet some Zywiec on it. :)

I kept all the XX settings the same, and the PC is just the old one (which still runs, but is "dangerous" so to say). XX plays from the "damaged" SSD, and/but the only real difference is that the OS is now on the old OCZ SSD and/thus that now two SSDs are in the system.
The SSD with the Vista OS is the exact same as when I made my first report about this and just hopped from Vista to W7.
All 'n all the only thing which really has changed (apart from the OS) is the OS being on that other SSD.

So no, no placebo. This time I thought to withold you from the common "my wife" story, but which story actually was there;
After a first track had played, I asked her "don't you hear a difference ?". She said "no, but I don't know this music". Me : "But it's easily audible anyway, so what do you say" ? and without further hesitation the response was "no aggressiveness".

And this is the one and only description which really covers it all, although it will be sheerly impossible to understand what I (we) mean by that in my system, and which is related to all those cymbals smashing around, while (and I mean that) 2 years ago I had nothing of that (at all !). "Nothing" means no explicit cymbal audible, except for some faint shht.
Hit cymbals *are* aggressive, but are even more aggressive when they are not right. Again, that over-freshness which actually comes from distortion, that by itself being too square waves while they shouldn't be.
It goes as far as a familiar synthesizer album I played later in the evening, that now showing normal cymbals, while earlier it came to me as badly sampled stuff (it will still be sampled allright, but not badly at all); I always refer to Enigma, who always show that very gray "cymbal" sound, which is so overexpressed that it has become part of the sound, already because this is audible in any system. But that too are normal cymbals in the end; don't ask me what it takes to let them sound so gray (compared to, say, a jazz combo). Same sort of mystery as the Beatles discussed in the "DAC" thread, I guess.

Let me know what you perceive from it, and don't forget to set all your settings the same ! Never mind the SFS, haha.
Peter

Thanks Peter,

Something good came from it anyway,

If people want to install Vista, consider vLite.
http://www.vlite.net/index.html (http://www.vlite.net/index.html)

Again - 32 or 64bit Vista? I'm already excited :)

PS
I prefer Brok Export instead of Zywiec  :smile:

Haha.

Sorry Marcin, I forgot : 32bits here. Drivers are exactly the same; all is the same.
But let's keep in mind : the observation from now is nothing different from my observation Dec 29 2009; that just bleeded to dead.
Unjustified.

Peter

Roy - good idea. I knew it existed, but forgot about it.

For everyone : Since I will build up the new system anyway, I will try this too. And this one is even "free" (at least that's what I got from it).

Thanks,
Peter

I've been using two SSDs for the last 6 months or so. Recently, I bought a couple of new 'faster' SSDs, with a view to using a single one in two different PCs. But you may recall that I had a problem with 'ticks'. It transpired that this actually had nothing to do with the new SSD, or indeed using a single instead of two SSDs in the PC - it was a bug in XX. But in trying to eliminate the ticks, I installed the second new SSD in my main PC also. So, one SSD for the OS and the other for XX, just like I had for the last 6 months, but with newer SSDs. AND...

Now this is probably a complete placebo on my part, but I could have sworn that the sound was smoother with two SSDs - less aggressive.

So Peter, is it Vista, or is it because you're using two SSDs???

Mani.

Its about months and months looking for golden settings, which are not there.

I think Peter is right, guys

Its free and could be shared among members, because everybody needs their OWN key to install anyway.

If you don't mind, I emphasized that little phrase. So, Roy's remark looks like a "I want to say something too" remark, but I think Roy knows what he is doing, and it *IS* about the ever and ever search because things won't be right one way or the other. Think about my own remark about the headroom again. I feel (but didn't try a thing yet) that it will be impossible to molest the sound I have right now. It even feels like Engine#3 will "do" it again. The difference is just so huge ...

Peter, do you think that there could be difference between 32 and 64-bit OS? (in terms of SQ, of course)

Or maybe both haha. Or the other type. Today or tomorrow I will have a third.
And indeed, you may recall that I have said a couple of times that just having an SSD in there seems to be sufficient to improve sound. So, two can improve more ? three ?

Of course I have thought about it, which is also the reason I mentioned it (that there are two in there now). But the point is : I recognize back the sound I ever had and never got back anymore. This is mainly about the veils from drums. They have a colour, a texture, and a, say, "impact" level. It is this latter which I ever had and one of the most beautiful things a song can contain, because it so much shows the "feeling" of a song, while the drummer is the conductor. So, he not only gives the measure, but also knows as the very first when to play loud, when more soft, when more sensitive. Now, if you first imgagine the colour of the various drums (toms) to be very well audible (and they are here -> one year ago not at all), then next you can imagine that the stiffness a stick hits the veil may become audible (which is a bit similar to the stiffness of the veil being audible or not). It is *this* what disappeared in my system, but I don't recall exactly when that was (at what occasion I started to miss it). Thinking about the time period it hasn't been there, it will fit the "over to W7" situation.

Maybe it is good to notice that this was the kind of single compromise I had in my system (which I reflect to the DAC of course), just because of having the reference, and it once worked. But compromises are not needed, if only first "things" are right. And therefore Roy's remark is of so much importance; if something doesn't allow things to get consistent, you can try and try and try, but always will have a compromise somewhere.

I now feel that a whole new months of work is ahead, in oder to find out whether maybe Special Mode with ultra low latency also works for stuff other than electronic music (that too is the nail on the head from Roy). So, super detail comes from it, but with Ray Brown it won't work ? come on.
No, the longer this all takes, the more measures come available which at least tell that something is wrong.

Brrr, I wish you could all listen to what I listen to.

If course I can say "yes" because everything matters (or at least seems to), but in the end I don't know. But I will install a 64 bit version of I-don't-know-yet as well.


Man, you have no idea nor clue how important it is to have a GOOD reference again. Sorry for my nagging, but this really is the most crucial.
So, I'm just imagining rebooting the PC for that 64 bit version and have a listen; if in one system not all (*ALL* !) is right, and in the other also not all is right, the decision on what is the best becomes arbitrairy (and personal, subjective). But if one is good (nothing lacks to your ears), it is so very easy to reject the other.

:heat:

We have to straighten this out, this of atmost importance.

Maybe spend some time on it, next week, when at your place, Peter !

Can you prepare some OS setups ?

PS: For me its come to the point of loosing interest in music completly. (yes, really)
      And its not me struggling alone, I see Mani, Boleary, Marcin etc ect
      Something is way off

Welcome back to Vista guys... ;)

The only bad thing about this otherwise positive step for sound it that I never migrated from Vista 32bit, so I will not be sharing in the recovery of the beautiful sound quality that Peter describes :(.

IMHO I do think the OS and PC's ability to run fast is very important. I would really like to hear your impressions Peter when your new mother board and processor are in. I suspect it will be quite important to your systems sound. If your results are good, I might spend a little myself on a new mother board, CPU and memory.

Mani hi,
With regards to your 2 SSD setup, I think that the extra performance the second drive brings coulds be the removal of a spinning drive motor and drive electronics from the system. My PC runs one SSD with my normal hard drive "parking" after a 1 min of not being used (it doesn’t spin back up at all during music play back). I got similar musical results to what you are describing, no placebo. I seem to remember reading that you have a fanless setup but hears one to try if I’m wrong. Temporally disconnect your CPU fan's power (and other case fans) and listen to a track before and afterwards (Sorry I know you know this, but others reading may not - be VERY careful with CPU temperature, I can listen to about a track and a half before my CPU get to about 60 deg C and I put the CPU fan back on). This gives simlar improvements in sound to adding an SSD in my system.

Does anyone know of any reasonably priced, good fanless heat sinks for CPUs, do they exist?


Nick.

OK, so I'll install x86 and x64 version of Vista on my SSD (fresh) and make some A/B tests with sound card drivers and XXHE installed only - no 3rd party software, default OS settings, same XXHE settings for both systems. I'll keep you posted

Marcin

Roy, part of it will be psychologically. Again this is about "a" reference you have obtained at some stage, hence learned how something can sound. That "something", sadly, is only part of the total music, and could be one instrument. So, having that one part right, but the others wrong, and you'll get crazy. Obsessed.
Because of my "absolute memory" I know rather well how things sounded before, and sometimes hear that back at other places. To me it is totally unimagineable how I could have ever been satisfied with that, but I also know that a large part comes from not playing as loud. I mean, I think we all experienced the being able to play more and more loud, when SQ improved. Now, when that degrades again, but you keep on playing at the same level, it will disturb as hell. But, decrease the volume again to earlier stages, and things could be quite allright again.

But it is true; No matter how others may think all sounds so great etc. at my place, the past few weeks so many times it was in my mind that I should have left alone the DAC at the moment I was completely satisfied. But I didn't know at what stage it went wrong, so nothing to go back to. But, also so much better it became on almost all aspects. So, the great danger is that once you're up to a certain level of sound quality, *all* which is not 100% right starts to disturb. For me this counts extra-extra, being afraid the DAC won't perform afterall, just because *I* hear things in some songs which are not 100%. So, throw out all those cymbals again, and it will be as good as one year ago, which is still crazily good - as it is just what you heard, Roy, back then.
But now ? now I am as happy as a child, because (as it seems) now at least I myself don't perceive those strangenesses. No curled toes in my shoes at every other minute, hoping it would be my horns over-expressing, you not having horns anyway (I know Nick, you have).

Yes, I will try to have various OSes ready for next week so I won't be alone at judgeing.
Peter

Hello Peter,

please see my post on December 30, 2009, 12:12:42 am under the "Topic: Windows7 ? hmm ... maybe not ! "

Starting with your scepticism about W7, I went back to VISTA 64-bit and it was strange to read all the problems with XX, W7 and the SQ.

09z-2 is running under VISTA smooth without any problems, great sound, no glitches, SFS is set to 25MB. Even no problems with 4 x arcpre with 44KHz / 16bit wave files with SFS=25MB.

VISTA is the absolute preference for XXH.

Joachim
--------------------------------------------
Acer PC , Intel i750, 8GB RAM, Windows VISTA SP2 - 64bit> XXHE 09z-2 - Adaptive mode -  Q1/2/3/4/5 = 1/0/0/0/0 / No Invert / Playerprio = Low / ThreadPrio = RealTime / Scheme = 3 @ UnAttended /4x Arc Prediction ; palying WAVE files only

Yes Christoffe, thank you. You were probably that "one" person I mentioned, but maybe there were two. :)

I just read back what you wrote in there (two posts), and I recognize everything.
Well, I can only tell you to be sorry that I have been so "ignorant", but I guess it just sneaked in, also knowing that already at that time more people were on W7 than still on Vista, and I had something to do about the support.

Peter

Also look at this one Peter:

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=548.msg10046#msg10046

Yeah, I can see how adding an SSD for XX alongside an HDD for the OS might improve sound, for the reasons you cite. To be clear though, I was adding another SSD for XX alongside an existing SSD for the OS, and still hearing an improvement in the sound... I think! But I will certainly remain open to the chance that this may well have been a placebo. In a way, I hope it is - I really don't want to use two expensive SSDs in a single PC. So, your idea may provide the ideal situation - use an HDD for the OS (which should spin down during playback) and an SSD for XX. Maybe...

Yes, I have a totally fanless/silent setup, with CPU/GPU heatpipes connected to heatsinks on the outside of the case. Set to max clock rate, my average CPU core temps remain ~50 Celcius, with the GPU even cooler. So sorry, I have no suggestions wrt CPU heatsinks.

Mani.

Weren't it that the OS HDD will never spin down. Not with W7 (that's about those three logging processes which remain active, and write to the disk).
But also, I don't think this was Nick's proposition;
Just OS and XX on the same SSD.

Yes, I've probably misunderstood.

In any event, it will be very, very easy for me to check whether 2 SSDs are better than one. I will simply install XX on both SSDs and figure out if there is a difference between them. Peter, I guess you could do the same with your current setup, no?

I'm not sure if this is important, but I have the XX SSD formatted as exFAT. Referring back to one of Roy's earlier posts, I will optimise the OS SSD, which is currently formatted as NTFS, before listening to the two.

But I'm bracing myself for a new Vista install...

Mani.

Oh, you are on exFAT !?, I have to dive in the subject again to see were I left it, exFAT why was that better ? (xp can do fat, w7 not)

Mani also use vLite, we on forum should make a proper pre-install (guide), that let you make your settings before install and THEN create a .iso (install)
http://www.vlite.net/about.html (http://www.vlite.net/about.html)

I will also make a .reg file for the necessary registry settings, this all will make an install much easier, cleaner, slimmer and more automated


Roy

I think that now you can assume vista32 as your reference OS, which is SP1, right? not SP2?

I think you should put two OSes (lets say vista32 and vista64) on the same SSD disk, hoping you have space and then do the dual boot. I dont have a reference-quality sistem to do this myself. :/

*blink blink*
I feel involved :)

Big tower ones that are built for low-speed fans -not many exist.
I use a scythe ninja mini (anything bigger wont fit my case, all fanless), the very best would be oh i forgot the name, it's one of the thermalright build for fanless or lowspeed fans, ultima-90 i think but i may be wrong.

Check on silentpcreview in the review session and on the forums. Beware that anything too fast wont be stable fanless. My E5300 is stable when playing music and video at no more than 55°C. But if i run some stress test such as occt it will go to high 80s and then crash - which is a thing to not repeat many times since it can corrupt the OS.

Yes, you are, hehe

I look forward to it, Telstar

 :soundsgood:

Thermalright makes the best heatsinks, capable of fanless cooling. I used HR-01 Plus, now I have Ultra Extreme True Copper - almost 2kg of weight!! But the latter one is designed to use with fan, as copper doesn't spread heat as good as alluminum. Copper conducts heat better. but works best with a fan. Anyway, I currently got rid of all fans in my PC - including the one on CPU and the one in PSU. And eventhough copper doesn't work the best in fanless configurations, I get 40*C max during heavy load (CPU is underclocked to 1.6GHz and set as dual core). My next music server will utilise Thermalright HR-02, the successor of HR-01 - currently the best heatsink for passive cooling. The other heatsinks worth mentioning are:
- Cogage MST-140
- Prolimatech Samuel 17

But if you want the best performance, Thermalright is the way.

Thanks all for the advice regarding CPU heat sinks. I’ve been looking at the products and there looks like some interesting options.


Peter,

I bought the SSD recently after reading some positive sound quality comments. I tried placing the OS on the SSD, but Vista did not install well onto the Vertex 2. What I ended up with is the HDD with Vista on it and all my music files. The SSD has only XXHighEnd installed. When XXHighEnd is started from the SSD the music files are copied to the SSD by highend using copy files before play.  Using a "thin" Vista build the HDD will spin down even thought Vista is installed on it. Very, very occationaly it does spin up for a moment briefly, but not often.

I guess this might not be such a good config for your development environment though as you probably need a lot of vista services / network etc running which might keep the HDD spinning, its an option for a “best play back” config though.

So I bought a 60Gb SSD and use about 150mb .... Still its the sound that counts :)

OK, absolutely NO PLACEBO!!!

Two SSDs (W7 on one and XX on the other) sounds significantly better than everything on one SSD. With two, the sound is full, fluid and totally non-fatiguing.

But I have not yet optimised the OS SSD. Will report back when I do this...

EDIT Just checked and NTFS is already optimised.

So,there is no question in my mind that 2 drives are better than one... and maybe it has nothing to do with Vista vs W7...

Mani.

Peter, we're home  :) The best word to describe the difference between sound in W7 is, like you your wife said - zero agressiveness. The sound is rich, I can play very loud and enjoy it very much, though it's 0.9y-8c and no upsampling. I guess I'll have to encourage guys from Cantatis to add 88.2 and 176kHz sample rates to sound card control panel - it's not there now and they claim that Vista doesn't support these frequencies (or they can't handle to enable them).

We can't say we didn't try !! (on w7)
 :)

Mani - I forgot to tell (sorry !) ... in my case the second SSD (XX on it) is in an external (eSata) enclosure with it's own (brick) PSU. I can hardly imagine *that* does something to the sound. But who knows ...

Peter, could you just load XX onto your OS (internal?) drive and see if there is a difference in SQ please. Before I start installing Vista, I'd like to eliminate the separate XX SSD from the equation (in your setup anyway).

There is a BIG difference in SQ in my setup. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because my XX SSD in formatted as exFAT and not NTFS... but who knows.

Mani.

Hello Mani,

I'm one of those manics who wants to have the newest release of the MS OS always, so the "Candidate Release" of W7 was installed on my PC, and upgraded to the official W7 as soon as it was available.
The first installation of XXH was on that W7 PC in October 2009. The SQ of XXH was good but no real  match to the Reimyo CDP-777.
I read Peters post in December and installed VISTA 64 bit.

The change of the SQ was "shattering" in a positive way. Amazing. The music was that involving and it was hard to believe what was going on. (I sold the the Reimyo in January 2010)

Best
Joachim

Yes, we did fell in the W7 pitfall,

Just came from back my clean Vista install,
Oh, boy.......... :yahoo:

Ciska is right, aggressiveness is gone - CONFIRMED

Way more headroom for volume - CONFIRMED

At points when playing loud, no more curling you toes - CONFIRMED

I guess, we say :bye: to W7 for audio purposes.
Peter you should only develop for Vista from now on.

Everybody should have a pretty good idea how w7 sounds by now, so hearing this difference is sooo easy.
I'am so happy that the aggressiveness is gone, this has always bothered me.
Vista is the foundation work from there.............

Roy

PS: if people are interested in slimmed and pre-configured versions of Vista, just PM me !!

Isn't it crazy ?
Have been playing for hours and hours last night, and from the beginning to the end there was a large smile on my face. Couldn't find anything sounding wrong at even one note.


PM PM PM !
But ... In my case I *need* to upgrade or something. So, I can't perform a clean install because I will be looking for days and days for all my install keys for all the development stuff (plus that stuff itself -> undoable).
I suppose that can't be done ?
Ok, if not I guess it will be another boot, just for playback.
Ah, but indeed, I guess I won't be able to "develop" much with such a slimmed system anyway. Ok.

Thanks,
Peter

Mani, I am sorry, but I rather don't do that at this moment;
I try to avoid rebooting the PC because that old SSD is really wack, and at one of the three times I rebooted so far, it needed a repair already (with 2 hours of a list with repairs). If all is right I have my new system the end of the day, and then everything can be done.

But if I were you ... just go for it. You won't be sorry.

Peter

Hi Peter,

good to see you back in the right yard. :)

"And  it is a great pity, you lost 9 month with real "State of the art" music replay.  :cry:

best
Joachim

Peter, please don't do anything that might jeopardise your refound listening pleasure.

But I'm not sure we're on the same page. I simply created an XX folder on my c: drive and extracted all the XX files into this folder and activated XX. That's all. No reboot required. So, I now have a version of XX on my c: drive (alongside W7) and a version of XX on the dedicated d: drive. Apart from restarting AutoHotkey each time, it's easy to switch between the two identical versions of XX. And what is unmistakable is that there is a big difference in SQ. Not subtle one... a big one. And remember that both c: and d: drives are identical - new OCZ Vertex 2 90GB drives.

It's my curiosity speaking here. I'd just like to know if 2 drives make a difference with Vista, as they do with W7.


Oh, I will. But I'd like to incorporate Roy's ideas first.

Mani.

Hi Mani,

Yes, I get the idea, but notice this is nothing like you said before (that implied detachment of the 2nd SSD).
So, since this apparently is a new situation for you, which one gives the best sound ?
And if it is true in the first place that this is your explicit intention, what happens when the 2nd SSD is detached ? This of course implies that you have the good sound from XX on the OS SSD, which I can't derive from your posts.

But ...
This is all not how I like to work. You know I don't like A-B stuff, you can guess it takes a lot of time, and annoying time as well (why listen 20 times to a same track), while in the mean time nothing makes me think that a 2nd SSD in an external drive suddenly makes the sound so good, *also* knowing that the character of the sound is the same is from before (when no two SSDs where in there for sure).

I also know it may take a lot of time to switch the OS, and I apologize in advance if it isn't going to help you. Otoh I promise it will, as that I estimate that no such thing as SFS "tweaking" will bring anything significant anymore (like do or die in W7).

It is also of utmost importance for me - and with that for you - that I think W7 is just totally wrong. I have been saying that right from the beginning including argumentations (it's all in that other topic); Between each "line of code" W7 seems to do something (my task switching story) and priorities and stuff don't behave normal. They are counter intuitive for a developer like me, and in the end things are out of control because of that. Add to this the SQ controls which most of you now use to eliminate glitches, and all is just WRONG.
So, all together I am now motivated to be on the right track again, and it should be for the best of all of us.

I am also quite confident that the "other" SSD again will make a difference, like SFS and other things still may. But now in the right environment, and not the the wrong one.

Lastly, and this is just an advice, try to listen to music more, instead of the ever and ever tweaking, because you'll get mad of that (although it can be seen as a separate hobby of course). But the real message is, and this is a measure, if this tweaking is NEEDED, something is wrong. It is nothing less like Roy tried to tell. Not only for the stress it eventually implies, but merely for that measure. Compare it with an impedance mismatch; you can tweak the whole world to improve on it (and it will), but the cause should be attacked;
What I have here now, is just right in the base, and is nothing like an SSD improving the sound a bit. All fits again. period.
And NOW try to improve again. And we will ...

Peter

I think I make a OEM version x64 (or x86) Ultimate, prepped for download.

With a little and easy guide to implement your OWN key and drivers (and your own regional and language settings)
So you can do a unattended install, without you having to answer all those questions coming along with every install.

With the result a personal .iso file, for your dedicated audio pc, that can be burned on dvd and used for a fast and clean install.

But I have to investigate a little more, in how slim it should be.
And do some testing here first.

- all unneeded stuff is removed (reducing the size from 4GB to < 1GB)
- Almost all services are set to bare-bone or are removed at all
- gpu drivers, mobo drivers, soundcard drivers can be implemented (and I think RAID/AHCI drivers, can be implemented too)
- Unattended install: meaning no anoying questions asked during the install process.
- No need to get on the internet after install to get updates (you wont be able to get on the internet anyway, its all gone)

Ill be back on this........

Oh, "we" will do some testing at Peter's to hear for any diffences between x86 and x64 and maybe SP1 vs SP2.
So maybe I have come back on some "things".

TRUE

I've never mentioned or implied detachment of the 2nd SSD! In my first post in this thread I said:


No detachment, just 2 SSDs. I think I've been totally consistent with this.

What's kind of frustrating for me is that it took me < 5 minutes to check the difference in SQ between XX sitting on SSD0 and SDD1. It's trivial to test, if you have 2 SSDs.


It kind of reminds me of the frustration I faced when I was trying to convince Romy (the Cat) to try slaving his Lynx card to his DAC - he just wouldn't try it, even though it would cost him no money and would take less than a minute, because he was convinced it shouldn't make a difference. But eventually he did, and you can guess what the outcome was.

But look, I have no doubt whatsoever that you're all right - that Vista is indeed better than W7. There is no question that I will try it...

Mani.

Thanks Roy, that'd be great!

Mani

Haha Joachim,

Afterwards I have been thinking about this. I'm not sure ... I mean, I did try all my best to make it work for the better, and I think it sure has improved along the way. So, without that "challenge" that wouldn't have happened. Or not to the extend it has been done.
OTOH, it just can be the other way around : I didn't improve a thing for the Vista environment, while that just is the good base. That is, not explicitly, so when done explicitly it could have brought more, and in that case, yes, 9 months are a kind of lost.

Oh well ...
Peter

Amen to that.

Mani.

So back to Vista.
But what to to with the SSD.
I remember W7 was optimal for this, but can it be used properly in Vista?
Luckily I can stil boot from a harddisk with Vista, only have to do some tricks to get Bios-information on the rigth screen...
After this better put Vista to the SSD or leave it on harddisk?
Or only put XX on SSD or...

Gerard, I would think "technical" here (which actually is functional) : Put the OS as well as XX on the SSD just for speed (regading XX for the Galleries).

Peter

He he Mani,

I realize I sounded a bit harsh, and that quote was already out of context in my post. I merely meant :

Please switch over to Vista, so at last you can stop tweaking and listen instead.
So, nothing of the kind "don't bother, listen instead". This would be the most stupid.

Anyway, when I'm normally up and running I will sure checkout all the combinations. :)
(as will you, haha)

Peter

Wouldn't it be easier to share vLite settings?

About 2 SSDs, I think the better sound of XXHE being on other than OS SSD, comes from I would call 'exclusive mode'. Notice that SSD with OS uses it all the time and it maybe collide with XXHE processes. That's my theory.

And regarding sound in Vista, it's very smooth and detailed, but I get the feeling that bass is shy? Or it's supposed to be this way. I can listen very very loud and I see membranes' dance, but I don't feel the punch from W7. Perhaps I got used to 'wrong' reproduction of low frequencies from W7 and I need some time to get it right. Invert improves things a bit. Oh, and SFS value doesn't matter or has a tiny influence :)

Marcin

Yep, I think it does  ;)

Hard to tell. The only thing I know is the worse the bass, the louder it will be.
A pitty you didn't know this in advance (or maybe you created a dual boot ?), so you could have felt the woofer. Or you don't feel a frequency at all (lousy, louder bass) or you do (and you hear the strings vibe). A string instrument assumed of course.

Also, the better your system reproduces everything, the more it will be apparent that at tuning out bass, the (vibration of the) strings will be more profound. Nothing more than logic, but you need a reference for this. And the ability to "tune" the bass opposed to the rest (XOver stuff).

Peter


PS: And I don't say you are wrong. I didn't notice anything for the worse though, although it is a kind of hard to explicitly judge, because all sounds so totally different.

Hi Peter,

that is correct. :)

I heard for a longer time XXH with the KS adaptive mode (Q1=1, buffer 2048) and one hour ago I changed back to engine3 (Q1=5).
IMO engine3 sounds still better than any KS mode. The instruments are more natural and have a smaller footprint, the room has more depth.
My reference CD is from Christian Straube "Grand Cru". (the CD has a lot of acoustic guitars, bass, horns and cymbals)

best  
Joachim

Well, the "problem" is, Engine#3 *is* better. This has always been clearly audible whenever I tried. But KS "worked" better. One small problem (for me at least) : the moment KS was developed in full I used W7, and I now guess that W7 can emphasize the "sterility" of Engine#3.

So, the next listening session should be with Engine#3, right ?

Ok ...

Hello Marcin,

try engine3 with Q1=5, the others Q's at zero

best
Joachim

If all is right, the bass will only be "less" with Engine#3. But, way better defined. So, much better in my book. From the start this has been THE difference between the two sound engines.

... but that is also responseable for the more sterile sound.

Geeze, you guys are stressing me out! Think of me as "Joe the Plumber" or whatever term you use in your various languages to describe your basic guy whose not too well versed in electronics/computers (but who loves listening to music!). Really, I just want to come home from work,   smoke a good one, hit the play button on XX and enjoy! Having just "upgraded" from a laptop with vista 32 bit to a box store desktop with Windows 7, (WITH WARRANTEE!) you are now saying that I need to go back to Vista!!!!!!! :heat:  :wtf: Okay, with that said, phew, let me tell ya what my ears say:

Fucking Vista sounds better than Windows 7......I think Peter described the sound of Vista as delicate. Here I would describe it as that also, but because of the wonderful separation between the instruments. Windows 7 sounds congested compared to Vista, though the base, as Marcin says, does seem to have more punch or heft to it in Windows 7. I am embarrassed though cause I ignored my initial impressions (we won't go into that) and thought Windows 7 was such an improvement...... I think that the operation of XX generally on the desktop, NOT ONE "ENGINE 3 HAS STOPPED WORKING" error,  is what got me......

So, I'm going to amazon to order Vista, any suggestions on what version? Home premium is what I would be inclined to buy so I could wipe my OS hard drive, (WITH WARRANTEE) and install Vista....  :wacko: I sure hope that XX operates as well as it does now.

One last thing, I first noticed the differences regarding SFS using my laptop/Vista, so it doesn't seem likely to me that that discussion is over. Just sayin'!

Brian, maybe wait then. Ok, so you noticed it yourself too. But supposed you can't live with that bass eh ? Just take it easy. Maybe it turns out all negative afterall. :nea:
:)

About the SFS ... I sure think that can be right. But *now* we must connect it to some lack of resources or something. All very vague, but if I "claim" that W7 is doing things in between which Vista does not, and this is about some limit of things which end up audible, any system which is not on par may exhibit the same.

Btw, to me the I/O priorities (which are new in W7 !) have to do with this somehow. Not that it is about priority which goes to the disk instead of playback or something, but I suspect that in order to let the I/O priorites work, the OS has to look regularly to "something", which it before (Vista) did not (need to) at all. It's just noticeable in everything (a.o. build up of screens), especially now it's gone.

Btw2, I sure won't rip out the new means of "SFS" for 0.9z-3. But I hope it's not needed anymore to mangle it. Also it might be good to know that in my opinion the SFS "tweaks" were not there to improve sound, but instead it could deteriorate. To my findings, the lower the worse (never mind you could receive more detail from the lower settings).

Blahblah. :)
Peter

Hello Bolery,

Home premium 32bit Service Pack 2 is ok (32bit for RAM 4GB, RAM more than 4GB a 64bit OS is recommended), and than tweak VISTA as proposed in the topic
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=548.0

The main target is, as Mani wrote a couples of weeks ago "speed, speed, speed".


best
Joachim

I tried, but I need more time with the new sound. As I get used to it it will be much easier for me to tell a difference between KS and Wasapi - like it was with going from W7 to Vista after few months.

Regarding bass, I reverse my previous assumptions. I listened to 'wrong' CD and should have waited a while before posting my impressions.

Thanks guys, I'll sit back and let this unfold for a while before I purchase Vista. Seems Roy's cooking something up that's going to be worth checking out.


Thanks for keeping those "options" in Z3. For me, the best sound has generally been from increasing the SFS above 70. (90-115) With older, what seem to me to be cr*ppy, recordings, lowering the SFS and bringing forward the details helps those recordings, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Oh yes this is the one I referred to, the HR-01.
If you dont have the space for a tall heatsink like that, the only other choice is the ninja mini like i have.

Yes i think you should use a separate, clean installed OS for playing only. The dev stuff with all MS ddls can impair the sound somehow :)
I never upgrade. It takes 2 days of reinstalling all stuff but it will be clean and put.

Well I did a (very) slimmed version install of vista,

And guess what, it has the sound i am looking for, but its way over-done, overkill, to much bass, over-emphasised.
Something is way off again, probably killed some services I shouldn't or something like that.
XX plays very smooth, it all runs like it should.

Although i run in demo mode, while i should use the "scheme 3", it think this shouldnt matter that much

Peter ?

PS: will do some more testing, and more listening, have several vista versions preped, hmmm
 :(

Hi Roy,

I'm curious as to what you mean by that. If you mean how to slim down Vista or how to pre-configure it's installation it might be good to make a sticky post of it, or at least post the process. I've slimmed down my installation some and it's been a pain; if you have a tried and true method, or any method really, I think it would be valuable info for quite a few folks.

I didn't want to bother you (pm-wise) for this, since I'm not sure what you mean, and others might feel the same.

Chris

Not bothered at all chris,

I will try to make something that can be of use for everyone.  ;)

I want, like many others, the OS question out of the way. (no mistaking again)

For sure its better to use Vista, but will try do make it as dead as possible. (if this is for the better !?)
Will take some time though.

If its good, Peter will make it sticky.

grtz

Hey all,

I hope this is kosher to mention, if not let me know and I'll delete it.

I also have J River Media Center and I recently installed it on a Windows 7 machine and thought to myself, "boy this seems to sound better." I didn't do any in depth listening but just got the overall sense....

I'm just wondering if the sound has less to do with the version of Windows and more to do with the combination of hardware, other running software/services and the ver. of Windows, not to mention what's enabled/disabled in the depths of device madness. If so, it will take a mighty lot of experimenting and a never ending battle with obsolescence, making even audiophile tweakheads seem sane in comparison.

Is it the quest or the music?  :dntknw: :xx:

Chris

Why I didn't want to reinstall Vista.  :(

It hasn't been an easy process and now I'm stuck.  When I run XXHE, it imediately "stops working" with the following error

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   CLR20r3
  Problem Signature 01:   xxhighend.exe
  Problem Signature 02:   1.0.3826.32428
  Problem Signature 03:   4c223e27
  Problem Signature 04:   XXHighEnd
  Problem Signature 05:   1.0.3826.32428
  Problem Signature 06:   4c223e27
  Problem Signature 07:   29bd
  Problem Signature 08:   106
  Problem Signature 09:   System.InvalidOperationException
  OS Version:   6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
  Locale ID:   1033

Any idea what's wrong?

Thanks,
Dan

Dan, have a look at this thread

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1254.0

Your problems appears to be similar.

Per

Hi Chris,

on my system the SQ of the "J River Media Center" is very analytical, in overall it is ok,  but there is a great lack with the room image. The music plays between the speakers only,the SQ has no 3D image with a higher SPL.
XXH with engine#3 under VISTA is superior on a very high level. The holographic replay is stunning. :)

best
Joachim

Dan, are you okay with this ? Don't hesitate to ask further because it's a nasty thing *and* my fault. :yes:
But better continue in the topic Per referred to, ok ?
Just ask or tell anything you think is relevant.

Thanks and sorry,
Peter

With so many Vista builds happening I thought my experience this weekend with vista SATA drivers could stop a few dead ends for sound quality.

I won't go in to the process of learning but the out come is this:

HDD and SDD installed in IDE over SATA MODE and using the default MS driver for this config.....music absolutely excellent and dpclat scores of 1us to 3us.

Set both drives to run in SATA AHCI mode and installed the Intel AHCI drivers......music really takes a step back, aggressive and not so smooth. The dpclat scores more than tripped to 7us to 9us.

My mobo uses an ICH10 northgate so the AHCI drivers are for that Intel chip, but to be safe when you build your Vista I would not install any drives in SATA AHCI mode.

I am trying to work out how to roll back my drive controller drivers to the MS default SATA IDE driver, not easy when one of the drives is the boot drive. Any suggestions ?

Nick.

Hey Nick thanks for your info,

for AHCI to IDE maybe try this:
http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/271218-switch-ahci-ide-tutorial-howto.html

Just Google a bit.

Roy

Yep,

I see your problem, cant find a bit about ahci to ide
on ide to ahci i see enough info.

hmm

Roy,
Fantastic, I spent hours yesterday trying to roll back. I almost reinstated my thin OS build, a real hassle !
Stay away from AHCI  :(
Nick

aha, his .reg download is at the bottom of the post, not use the link, it doesnt work
 :)

~ Good luck ! ~

Peter FYI,

Its the AHCI driver that makes, hotswap possible.
I thought you like to know this.

See ya soon,  ;)

Roy

Yeah, I know. But I guess it is the meassage to shut it off, right ?

Btw, this too might be such a thing like "looking forever and ever if a new drive was added, or has been removed". For W7 (and my observations) this would workout badly (something is badly implemented in there -> think of interrupt based as how it should be), but will it too for Vista ?

Btw, I had it off in my W7 install, as I have it off now (Vista).
Ehh, I think. But hot-swap doesn't work anyway.

Thanks,
Peter

Nick, would you mind sharing your vLite settings? (export the file)

I suggest we start another topic on system optimisations - one for software and other for hardware side.

Currently I play around with ramdisk and start XXHE from there, I'm quite sure it brings improvements.

Marcin

Hi Marcin,

that is a good idea. :)

My PC is connectrd via Firewire to the DAC (Weiss Minerva)  and I have no problem with the WEISS driver. (any W7 driver from other hardware vendors should work under VISTA too)
But Firewire (and the Weiss Minerva) is not recommended by Peter, therefore I'm waiting since month for his NOS1. :cry: :cry:

Joachim

I'm still having the same problem with XXHE not working.  I uninstalled the .dll's which appears to have worked fine. I re-ran XXHE and the .dll's appeared to install fine, but then XXHE stopped working just as before with the following error message:

Description:
  Stopped working

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   CLR20r3
  Problem Signature 01:   xxhighend.exe
  Problem Signature 02:   1.0.3826.32428
  Problem Signature 03:   4c223e27
  Problem Signature 04:   XXHighEnd
  Problem Signature 05:   1.0.3826.32428
  Problem Signature 06:   4c223e27
  Problem Signature 07:   29bd
  Problem Signature 08:   106
  Problem Signature 09:   System.InvalidOperationException
  OS Version:   6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
  Locale ID:   1033

I have UAC turned off, and my account is set up as Administrator. I downloaded a fresh veresion of 09-z2.  I rebooted between unistalling the .dll's and re-installing them.  Have I missed a step or something.  Sorry if I'm being dense.

Probably you need to do the same thing as I did. Refer to the proper topic.

Sorry, Marcin_gps... Can you be a little more specific?

Thanks,
Dan

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1254.0

Best route to get a clean delete of the OCX files is:

GO TO

A) START
B) "contol panel"
C)"programs and features"
D) uninstall "Phasure OCX"


and then start with the installation as recommended again

You should have wrote it in that topic, it's easier for everyone to find sth when they look for it ;)

Now back to sound again. I've done many A/B sessions between KS and Wasapi and I'm sure that Wasapi is better, but not with low Q1 values, which produce to much separation and too clean sound IMHO. With Q1 set to 14, there is great control, details and rich midrange. I have no complaints, really - I could live with that sound. KS in adaptive mode sounds blurred and grainy in comparison. It's not bad, I get a lot of fun listening to KS in adaptive mode, it makes me to believe that I'm not listening to a digital source. But Wasapi is more engaging. I'll stay with it for a while (Engine3, 1024 samples, Q1=14, Scheme-3, SFS=36 MB). I'm looking forward to your opinions. Enjoy!

Marcin

Before people are going to throw out their current install, and overwrite it with Vista, please read this, and the two posts thereafter :
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1334.msg13164#msg13164

Peter

Folks, I'm sure I have similar SQ gain to Mani here, but not with second SSD and puting XXHE on it, but using RAMdisk software instead - http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk. (copy to xx drive by standard ticked). I don't know if it is a matter of different file system (I have my ramdisk formatted to FAT16), but I can't be wrong - sounds better for sure!

Marcin,

I’m defiantly liking the RAM disk idea. I guess that the effect is to exchange music data disk read speed from SATA SSD speeds (already fast) to system RAM access speed (much quicker ?). Provided that the RAM disk driver is well written this could be an interesting solution. I’m going to take a look feed back any results.

I have been looking at how vLite works and getting an install working to have a play. I think my thin Vista build is quite a manual process though, lets see if vLite can help share a good thin build. The vLite experiment it might take a while though as I still have not solved the problem of rolling back the dammed AHCI disk drivers. Some times curiosity can be a real pain.....
Nick.

when we have a look into the Task Manager, we will see, that all processes and wave files necessary for digital replay are already loaded into the RAM.

Nick, why not create a new w7 install ?
Did the ahci-->ide guide not worked for you ?

I will do some work on vLite too, its not that hard actually, but it takes some investigating what to leave out or not. (just work from what we know)
I already managed to make several vLite installs, the program vLite works pretty good.
I also would like to create a .reg or .bat file, for all other tweaks needed (registry, logs, soundcard etc)
With the purpose of making it "all" somewhat easier and less time consuming, also for new members.
a 30 minute unattended OS install, that would be nice  ;)

Roy

Guys,

I think Marcin has come up with something REALLY significant using RAMDisk. I don't want to end up with egg on my face but I have just had an ear opening experience after setting up RAMDisk. I have only had a couple of hours listening but I think RAMDisk may become a fundamental component of the replay platform. Bear in mind that this could be specific to my system (HiFace etc etc) but this is what I am hearing;

Significant lowering of hash, harshness and noise floor, little if any discernable aggressiveness, deeper "blackness" between players and voices, really smooth top end, walk around staging, big improvement in timing and resolution levels. There is a small loss in midrange dynamic but I think this may be the loss of the digital aggressiveness which tends to raise mid to high sibilance and give the impression of more presence in my system.

I had to half my normal SFS from 80 to around 40 to somewhere near the sweet spot and there is more to come I, am sure.
I really could end up looking stupid by raving here but I am trusting my ears. It'a a 10 min install to get RAMDisk setup you REALLY should try it !

Great find Marcin  :goodjob:

I did setup RAMdisk,

I think I do have Vista sound on w7 now.

???????

I just put in Enya - Watermark (haha, will see)

Haha, told you :)

And I'm back to KS Adaptive mode again (Q1=1, 1024 samples) - I don't want that extra details coming from Engine3. I love the organic sound of adaptive mode.

Cheers,
Marcin

PS
I've just installed vLite and I'm on it, so stay tuned :)

Marcin,

vLite works very easy and speaks for itself, if you want your drivers installed too, you need to extract the drivers using 7zip, then load the complete folder.
I would first tweak it like we have tweaked vista/w7, then eliminate more.

You can also install vista directly from HDD, no need for burning dvd's

I'am at Peter tomorrow, so we will test RAMdisk too and 10 OS installs or something like that, its good we have 2 whole days.

Try KS special mode too btw, maybe not the best thing on rock music though.

Roy

Hi Roy,

I'll wait with my modifications until you came back with some results :) It will be easier this way and we could split some work.
I've experience with nLite (predecessor of vLite, but for XP), so no problems. But I'd like you to check these tweaks:

In Regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl, add a new DWORD, "IRQ8Priority" , and set the value to 1.
In that same key, look for "Win32PrioritySeparation" dword and set the value to 28 (hex). Restart a PC.

Also, make sure to set the "sound card's" PCI latency timer to 128, of course that's if your interface is PCI-based, haha

These are my favourite tweaks

Marcin, how to to this above XP ? is there a tool for it again ?

Thanks,
Peter

Sorry, forgot to give the link. Yes, there is a tool, but as far as I know it doesn't work in W7 - Vista/XP only.

http://www.madeinsoftware.it/openlab/Utilities/Schedevideo/LtcyCfg2.3.zip

I have that (but a year newer -> end 2005). Doesn't work for Vista either ...

I does for me  :scratching:

Peter,

You could also try this for PCI latency setting.

http://www.mark-knutson.com/dawg/index.html

It works for me under vista and helped to reduce levels of agression in music. When run it discovers the PCI attached devices (right down to individual USB ports) then you can then set the individual device you want to tune. When I was using USB for my Transit card I used to set the Transit's USB port to a latency of 248 (max value) and all other devices to 32 (min value).

There is an unusual choice of picture on the site  :o but the software seems to run fine. In addition to the free version there is a version that will apply auto settings when you boot. I never bothered with this but setting PCI latencies up for each listening session did become a bit of a drag.

I was meaning to ask you if your proprietary L2S interface for the Phasure NOS DAC has a PCI based interface at the PC end ?

Nick.

I'm interested in trying this, having heard the improvement in SQ when I use a fast SSD for XX separate from the SSD the OS resides on. But I'd like to understand it a bit more first.

Now, I have 4GB of RAM on my main machine (8GB on my second machine). So, how much should I allocate to the new RAM partition? I guess this depends on whether I'm using 'Copy to XX-drive'... but also on whether I'm using 'Normalisation of Volume' and whether I'm playing non-wav files that require conversion during pre-processing. I suspect large hires files might prove an issue if the RAM partition is too small.

I'm currently using W7 x64 on both machines. On my second machine, I'm assuming I can create a much larger RAM partition and still have plenty of RAM left for potentially large SFSs in XX.

Hmm... any thoughts?

Mani.

Copy to XX-drive is essential with RAMdisk, I think that's what the improvement is coming from. I have it set to 1300MB with 4GB RAM. Keep in mind that you won't be able to load many tracks...

Roy hi,

I'v had no luck rolling back the AHCI drivers, they are defiantly a problem, they will not let my disks spin down and there are small regular accesses all the time  :( I'v tried everything I can find including your link and spent good few hours making changes to registry settings but no luck. Im going to concentrate on the Vista rebuild now. As I re-discover config elements that may be helpful I'll post them.

Nick.

Thanks guys. At this moment (some 10 hours of subsequent listening and trying back and forth) we are as far as that the RAMDisk with Vista brings the least "distortion". But call it aggresiveness which today is just another word for that.

Tomorrow we will dive into the PCI latency, which in my case indeed is applicable. :secret:
Also, I know from movies (and "stuttering") how much this can influence. So I bet it will for audio just the same.
More tomorrow, and I sure hope that at least for Vista it can be applied.

Again, thanks, and the RAMdisk is really an eye opener. Don't ask me how it is ever possible, but it just matters (quite a lot in fact).

Peter (Roy, Telstar)

Yeah, a what about filesystem on ramdisk? :> And what if other 'ramdrive' application? Am I crazy yet?  :dntknw:

BTW, my thin vista build is ready, I'm about to install it, but I need to create another partition on my SSD. I assume that noone tried to install second Vista on the same partition? That's quite risky, is it? (or perhaps impossible, haven't tried though...)

Mani, did you try to install XXHE on a second partition, but on the same SSD? I think it's worth checking, if these improvements really come from better performance or is it related to logic only.

To anyone using ramdisk

Are you installing XXHiend on the ramdisk and copying the music to it, or are you just copying the music to the disk? I'm assuming the first, but since I can't find any mention of what exactly everyone is doing with the ramdisk I thought it might be useful if someone would clarify (as much as that is possible at this early point in "stage ramdisk."

Chris

XXHE + Copying to XX by standard ticked (it copies the tracksto ramdisk automatically)

I had a bit of a mammoth listening/testing session yesterday (but not quite 10 hours...) with a single aim in mind - to recreate perfectly the sound that I get from vinyl. (My vinyl is not perfect, but it has a 'sweetness' that is very hard to get right in digital.) I wanted to start with a clean sheet and question/test all of my current SW/HW settings. Everything was up for grabs. I think without a reference point towards which to aim, I would have gone mad!

I tried and tried, and although I could get close, it wasn't quite right. I just couldn't get the right 'colour' using XX. To my surprise, I could get the right colour using Foobar, but the resolution was very poor compared to XX. Close to midnight I was ready to give up. But I thought I'd try the RAMdisk (this was just before I saw Peter's last post).

Well what can I say? My experience was similar to all those who have already written about it. Superb clarity and yet beautifully smooth also. It was late at this point last night (actually early morning!), so I didn't get a chance to listen to much. I'd like to do some more listening today and very importantly for me, compare XX on RAMdisk to vinyl. But one thing is for sure - XX on RAMdisk is better than XX on a separate SSD. And the great thing is that the former is a cheaper (actually free!).

Let me add my thanks to Marcin for sharing his RAMdisk experience. Excellent!

Cheers,
Mani.

Just my experience from the best tweak done on my system...

I have only 1 HD on a unfancy Dell vista laptop. I created the ramdisk and had XXHE on it.
I did not even set "Copy to XXHE HD" option.

After listening to Ramdisk I could immediately hear the difference in a sec (so clean & smooth) and then going back to the normal HD after listening just 1 track, the soundstage & imaging just collapsed significantly and sounded "muffled". No placebo her for sure - 100%. Perhaps, the simple system (cr*ppy HD) that I have showed the change very clearly...

I can see how this clarity can seem "aggresive" for some but it is no problem for a warm system like mine... no fatigue
It will be difiicult to go back to the XXHE on normal HD playing again.

To everyone... it is free... so easy to install (mins)... so stop thinking so much and just try it! Perhaps it works for you... :yes:

Raj

Only when nothing has been converted, this setting does something. IOW, e.g. the result from a FLAC conversion will go to the "XX drive" always, but without conversion it will be copied to the XX drive with this parameter set to On.

Peter

Yep, that's right. I was not able to play flac files anymore. Error messages popped up...
Raj

Raj, I've loaded RAMdisk onto the slow Atom-based music PC in my office and flacs play fine here. I suspect you're trying to load too many tracks at once. (I have the ramdisk set to 1GB.)

Mani.

Even worse ... I did it with hi-res flac... ha ha! :fool:
Yes, there is surely a need for decent space in the ramdisk.
Learn something new everyday....

Raj

I'll be travelling for work later today, but I did get a chance to take a quick listen early this morning. What surprised me was that the SFS still makes a difference! But having optimised it (I needed to do this as I've switched from the RME AES-32 to the Weiss AFI1), I'm pretty certain that my digital and vinyl setups now sound very close.

In any event, I'm sticking with W7 and RAMdisk for now...

Mani.

PS. Even my Atom-based work PC sounds great!

Hey Marcin,

Thanx for this!!! Sound is great!!

I also nodiced that XX give's more errors or stops playing on the SSD/HDD.

Until now on RAM i have not experienced a single one.


 :)

Did somebody make a direct comparison between Vista/Ramdisk and W7/Ramdisk already?

(I like W7 more then Vista, more stable, less hiccups, hiFace-drivers...(?)).
Problem now is the sounddevice is not freed after an application used it.

It's hard to make direct comparison if you don't have two identical PCs. However, I listened very carefully W7 right before I switched to Vista and then repeated the same album on a fresh system (about an hour later). Clearly- Vista is better.

But I wanted to improve the sound further, messed with tweaks and drivers and SQ is terrible now. Thankfully I did't install many apps and I'm about to reinstall my system again. Remember to be careful with your optimisations, better don't apply to many at once unless you're sure of them. This is very hard and requires time

Anyone trying out / running XP?

Per

I could try myself if it wasn't for a virus bugging my right ear. :(
Although I think other programs sound better in Vista too.. (a.o. Dvbviewer and PowerDVD)

Marcin, Roy,

My sound quality is also not as good on my attempt rebuild a thin Vista platform. I have managed to get a DPCLAT reading marginally better than my last build (average of about 2us with lots of 1us readings) but the sound is way too sharp compared to the previous build. I am trying to recall all the stuff I did to my thin Vista build over the last year or more, I should have kept more notes !!!!!

I’ve not had much success using vLite. When I exclude the stuff I think should not be installed Highend and RAMDisk will not install. So, I'm concentrating first on making some notes on what a nice working build should be and then we can see where to go from there.

Its likely that I can post notes on services still running, registry tweaks and Autoruns.
Nick.

Hi Nick, I was gonna asking about the services that you have running there, but I guess that's gone now? Or could you give us some recommendations? I'm back with fresh Vista installation, I have only sound drivers, ram disk and xxhe installed right now + the following tweaks:

- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Performance] Settings > Visual Effects > Adjust for best performance
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Performance] Settings > Advanced > [Virtual Memory] Change. Select No paging file and click Set. Click OK and restart Windows
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > Error Reporting. Select Disable Error Reporting (and But notify me when critical errors occur if this is wanted)
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Startup & Recovery] Settings. Deselect the System Failure options and set Write debugging information to (none)
- In Regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl, add a new DWORD, "IRQ8Priority" , and set the value to 1.
In that same key, look for "Win32PrioritySeparation" dword and set the value to 28 (hex). Restart a PC.

These are checked and worth applying. I'll proceed very carefully from now on.

Cheers,
Marcin

PS
Peter, Roy - how about your experiments with different Vista installation variants?

Yes, we did (I think I told it earlier in the topic); Vista with RAMDisk is the best. Read : The least chance to run into albums which exhibit "failures".

On this last matter, it may be nice to know that the couple of crazies I'm with here (Telstar and Roy) thought to grab the opportunity and complain about each and every single note that sounds wrong in their eyes (ears). Now, with Vista/RAMDisk this didn't happen for the 6 hours we are continuously playing today. But they better tell that themselves at some stage. So, this is more demanding than I do (or ever did) myself, because it doesn't seem a realistic approach. Or didn't. In other words, I think I would be able to bear W7/RAMDisk quite allright under the same "conditions" I put to myself before. But if I would start looking for anything wrong, then W7/RAMDisk would be the looser within a couple of random tracks the people here are dictating. With Vista/RAMDisk they keep on failing that, so far.

Additionally, and not even OffTopic I think, we spent quite some time on comparing hires albums with their normal versions, and it has become quite easy to hear the differences. In 100% of occasions hires looses by not even a small margin. Moreover, we are able to recognize hires with closed eyes. Not only because of *that* spits out those "wrong notes" our nit pickers detect (so, "that must be hires"), but also the characteristic of what happens to hires is now known. I think I'll open a topic for that later; Some may know that I find this for a longer time from elsewhere, but in here I never made it known so explicitly. There are quite some things to tell about it !

Peter

Guys,

I have remembered the missing ingredient to get recreate the sound of my thin Vista build. The way this tweak works could also be one of the reasons be why Windows 7 dosen’t sound as good as vista (more on this below).

I did some reading about 18 months ago about the Audio system and Multimedia Scheduling Service (MMSS) changes that MS implemented moving from XP to Vista. I found a good MS technical briefing paper and came across these registration keys. I have suggested values below but to be honest I have not tried many permutations as they seem to deliver the musical goods. Again I am trusting my ears but I think this is a big sound quality tweak.

TWEAK PART 1

Use REGEDIT on the following.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
There are sub key tasks for;

Audio
Capture
Distribution
Games
Playback
Pro Audio
Window Manager

These KEYs are how MMSS prioritises music replay processes.
For the “Audio”, “Playback” and “Pro Audio” keys try the following DWORD values
Affinity = 3 (dec)
Background Only = TRUE
BackgroundPriority = 8 (dec)
Clock Rate = 1000000 (dec)
GPU Priority = 4 (dec)
Priority = 8 (dec)
Scheduling Category = High
SFIO Priority = High

A Note on Windows 7 performance;
The “Clock Rate” value sets the granularity of processor scheduling for audio. This was used for Vista but is not used in windows 7 !! “The maximum guaranteed clock rate the system uses if a thread joins this task, in 100-nanosecond intervals. Starting with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, this guarantee was removed to reduce system power consumption.”


TWEAK PART 1

Use REGEDIT to change;
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile there is a key “SystemResponsiveness” set this to “0”.
Don’t worry this value defaults to give all Low priority processes 10% of CPU time.

Here is a bit more information on what is going off. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247.aspx

Again I hope this works well on other peoples systems, I am dreading Peter saying that they have nothing to do with how XX works, if so it’s quite a placebo  !

Enjoy.

Nick.

Ps there are some interesting variables that can only be set in code referenced by the article above and in other I have read that might be useful to Peter in the code for XX.

Marcin, Roy,
If we are only running XXHighEnd and RAMDISK then these are the services that need to run for a relay Vista boot. This is for a none service packed build of vista but should be ok with later packs. Other services may be needed to install different sound cards. This list is fine for the M-Audio Transit and HIFace.

Watch your DPCLAT drop as you stop the other services  :)

1)   COM+ ENENT SYSTEM
2)   DCOM SERVER PROCESS LAUNCHER
3)   Group Policy Client
4)   Mulimedia Class Scheduler
5)   Plug and Play
6)   Programme Compatability Assistant Service
7)   Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
8)   Shell Hardware PRotection
9)   Software Licenceing
10)   User Profile Service
11)   Windows Audio
EDIT
12) Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
13) Windows Driver Foundation - User Mode Driver
14) Windows Management Instrumentation (needed for RAMDisk to work)
END EDIT

What I do is set all other services to "manual" then reboot. Look at services again and some of the unwanted ones will have started again. For these restarted services I just set them to "Disabled" which stops them getting in the way.

I’m still working on the Autoruns which I will post soon. Have a go with this services and the registry tweak I just posted. The Services and the regedit tweak deliver a lot.

Nick

Marcin,

Thanks so much for thinking of trying a Ramdisk (and finding such a simple and good implementation). I'm surprised that no-one, including me has thought of this before; it's really such a no-brainer. What better way to start a process that one wants to be as clean and isolated as possible then starting it from a ramdisk. I've worked in the computer business one way or another since the first floppy disk personal computers (pre IBM--basically Apples) and I've dealt with ramdisks in the past yet it never occurred to me to use one in this obviously ideal circumstance. So, real good thinking Marcin.

So, enough love already. I was actually going to ask or say something useful, but it's completely left my mind. :( Perhaps later. Maybe a good ramdisk inspired listen will resurrect said thought.  :soundsgood:

Chris

my impression with VISTA / 4GB RAM disc is:
- more speed
- more resolution in the heights, which is phenomenal
- more darkness betweeen the instruments
- clinical SQ


disadvantages
- less soundstage
- missing analogue SQ
-too much darkness betweeen the instruments with "Studio music" replay ; live music sounds good (Rippingtons "Live in L.A.)
-missing reverberant sound at bass drums and bass guitars

I'm quite not shure what I like more.

Best
Joachim

Hey people,

About the harshness of W7 vs not such in Vista.
I am at W7 for 6 month now and I cannot say the sound is harsh here. It is great and soft. It is fantastic and many of you have said so. Therefore I do not get why you mean saying W7 is harsh if compared to Vista?

Ivo

Hey Ivo,

I guess it is very well possible that in your system, with all the (OS/BIOS) settings involved, you don't suffer from what starts to be "commonly known" slowly now. But I'd say your chances are small;
I think you can only know when you tried Vista again. But :

If you really think nothing is wrong, I really shouldn't bother ! Then counts : keep on following what happens, but listen to music instead. Don't follow the crowd. Also, I think you have sufficiently enough knowledge on these matters to know what you are doing.

One more thing :
Day before yesterday we (me, Roy, Telstar) decided that the Vista/RAMDisk solution was the best, so we left it like that for yesterday's further sessions. For me it was clear this was the best sounding solution, but for the others this never had been *that* clear. So, this gave us the opportunity to get used to the sound, and all together music was on yesterday for 11 hours - almost only picking tracks which may not work.
At the very end though, we went back to W7/RAMDisk for one other time, and (really) within 5 seconds it was rejected by all. Completely "ugly" so to say. And this was the RAMDisk, which already was ever so much better than the SSD.
It's all a matter of what you're used to, and after the many hours listening to the smooth character (but with details) of Vista/RAMDisk, the W7/RAMDisk became unlistenable.

Things go fast ...

All 'n all, and again, just listen to "reports" like this, and don't follow the crowd. If you are happy, don't change !
Peter


PS:


Harshness is not the right description I think. It is aggressiveness. So called higher dynamics, but which are fake because of occurring distortion. A sax which goes in the direction of a trumpet. That's not harsh within itself ... it is "too square" (and trumpets sound square). A trumpet is aggressive (unless nicely played with a dampener and by someone who can do it). A flute is the opposite (it's a near pure sine). Put distortion on the sine, and you will go the trumpet direction.

I'm pretty sure that you don't need above once you have everything installed (sound card drivers, XXHE, ramdisk).


Best tweaks ever? This is unbelievable what happened after I applied these tweaks. Thank you very much!

Peter hi,

Indead things are moving fast.

I don't know if you have had time to digest the underlying concept behind the registry tweak I posted above. This could explain at least part of the Vista W7 difference. It seems in Vista Multimedia Scheduling Service DOES guarantee CPU time slots to audio. This feature has been dropped in W7 - so NO guarantee of CPU time slice length in W7 ! The reason MS gives for dropping dedicated CPU time slices for W7 is power management but I read a lot of complaints after Vista was released about network transfer speeds more than halving whilst playing audio in Vista.

The registry keys mentioned allow you to specify the CPU time slice length and associated priorities for Audio replay (quite important  :) )

I think this might be another fundamental parameter for playback, like use of RAMDisk. It would be good to get your thoughts on this. If your reference system improves like mine when using these setting with RAMDisk as well, I predict a rash of smiles breaking out at your house quite soon.

I am not sure people are working with these registry settings yet but it would be really good to get some feedback on them. I am worried that I have a dose of placeboitus  :)

Nick.

Because I saw someone writing about it (can't find it anymore, and possibly was in another topic), here's something I start to "learn" and which seems to be a rule :

The more aggressive, the more forward;
The more smooth, the more laid back.

Be careful, because "laid back" is (I think) the same as "in the back", while "forward" is literally more towards you; more in the room.

Over time I have learned to like the forward better, because it just fills the room better. It is more interesting. More 3D. But now it looks like that it is impossible to combine this with "the least distortion". This is not only the result from the W7 to Vista story, but happens to anything I do with the DAC, another amplifier, LS cables. It is always the same : the more forward it is, the more aggressive the sound will be. Too much in your face. Too much horn (which latter is two folded : horn instruments come too much forward, but horn speakers start to sound like horns).

Now, we could say that "laid back" is "in the background", and I think the term will be used for that normally. But NOW we need a new phenomenon : layers (not really new of course, but we now need it in the equation).

Actually by coincidence we "discovered" the layers, as them bing there with 16/44.1 8x Arc Prediction "filtered", while the same take, but in 24/192 or 24/96 does not contain any layers at all. Just nothing. And yes, this is about the applied filtering to the music data, at creating the files ... I am pretty 100% sure suddenly about that. It just sounds so similar to an OS DAC.

And now there is the difference between laid back and plain flat. Or maybe better : between the opposite of forward in the room (hence much more in between the speakers, if not behind them) and flat; Flat is always between the speakers (not even behind them), while the "laid back with layers" is just enjoyable because the depth is still there. Actually, the depth is there even better compared with forward, because forward is more messy in the plane from where you listen to where the speakers are. It's more fatigueing as well. More difficult to concentrate.

So, all I actually wanted to say is that changing from W7/SSD to Vista/RAMDisk for 100% sure will give you the huge change from rather (or very) forward, to very much laid back, but with the micro detail allowing the layers. But but but ...
This is in my system, and I am pretty sure with any random OS DAC you will loose those layers. This may (or will ?) leave you with a more flat sound, and you realy must wonder whether this is better than the aggresiveness from W7/SSD, which just will be more 3D compared to Vista/RAMDisk. So, be careful with your decision, and try to concentrate on the "all being dead" thing. Smooth but dead ? no good IMO.

Of course, decide for yourself, but now don't fall into a pitfall of smoothness which actually is deadness. Just watch for it, since I now I told/warned you.
Peter

THANK YOU Nick, much appr.

You will get feedback from me and many others,
BUT, I will first get used to Vista and RAMDisk a little bit more, then apply yours and Marcins tweaks.

Please people take the time for this all, do it step by step, so you can experience it for yourself,
and like Peter said: "don't just follow the crowd".
Even Peter himself made that mistake (this will not happen again !), it was Peter who started this topic afterall,
and we should have listen to him, WAY back in december 2009.
Windows7 ? hmm ... maybe not ! (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1032.msg8620#msg8620)

Respect the fact that Nick and Marcin spended a lot of time on it, so they DO deserve PROPER feedback people.

Roy

Marcin,

GREAT !!!!

I think the MMCS regedit is another fundamental component of the playback platform :)

I was thinking I had a case of the placebos, so it would be good hear your detailed on the change. For me it changes almost everything in the sound and takes music very big step closer to vinyl.

Ps don't take the Mulimedia Class Scheduler MMCS service out, its this service that implements the registry values that you are listening to  ;)

Nick.

Can we please make another topic on registry settings and such.
With the purpose of ending that topic, with some .reg files.
And ofcouse improvement in sound, AGAIN.
 :)

Its fital to find the information that is shared fast.

PS: the same counts for the vLite thing that we got going.

Thank you

Hi Nick,

Thank you very much for stressing the importance of this, and I sure think something will come from it.
I have always been aware of these settings, including the W7 change. However, I recall playing with this (or wanting to do it), but didn't see the sense because I kind of work around it in the first place, and (from off) the new Vista Audio stack these things are arranged for automatically. So, say overruled.

BUT (don't laugh, don't cry) ...

What I am only thinking of right during making this post is ...


... this counts for WASAPI ... which we actually don't use anymore. :oops:
So for Kernel Streaming (I now think) this really should matter, be it Vista or W7, but for W7 probably more. IOW, Kernel Streaming (never officially supported, but now officially dropped although still there) for 100% sure won't know about audio priorities. And *now* the Registry Settings will be important. But still ...
At this moment I can't be sure whether these settings will ever influence. So, what is "audio", and how does the system know "audio" is occurring ? Will it be supported by KS in the first place ? And thus *again* I have the feeling not much can be done with it, untill the opposite has been proven (didn't Marcin just do that in his last post ? -> I'm not sure ... Marcin ?).

In either case, I want you to know that I digest everything, and moreover try to combine it with my experiences so far. Things can get rather complicated, and usually one such an element doesn't bring me much (to proceed on) just because I may have things against it (like what I just said above), and I usually can't find the time to play around with whatever it is. So, if you only look at 0.9z-3 which I want to put up nearly every single day for over two months now, you can imagine that I can't play around in between. But if it has been proven, then it's no playing around anymore. Then I dive into it instantly. Ok, still when time permits.
Also, I usually need the time to interpret things by means of stupid listening. And just for fun :

What was my impression about W7 ? (Dec. 2009)
What did I repeat again last week ?
What did Josef find out now ?

You see ? what Josef came up with, was just what I could hear, and with some "PC knowledge" I can kind of predict what will be happening. But, I *never* could find the time to sit back and even thing about a tool (+ proper settings) to investigate it. But as soon as someone else does it ... here I am.

This post is a bit vague to you perhaps, but what I actually want to say is : now it is known (or proven) that this "task swicthing" whatever thing actually is there - hence in between each other lione of coding so to say 1000s of other lines of OS code is processed which I sure doen't want, we now must get that out of the way first. It just deserves all the priority, because it has such a heavy impact. And yes, one of those Registry Settings may even be able to "undo" this crazy stuff, but I still like to learn why it happens in the first place. For example, why is this influenced by some stupid SFS parameter which does NOTHING. But does to a super high degree. This *is not* about I/Os. It is only about using more or less memory, and that by itself does something. Something which to my best knowledge shouldn't do anything at all, unless it is about internal memory mapping (like old DOS days could use more memory by means of indirect addressing. Is it still in there ?).

Additionally, and almost off topic, I had the great "opportunity" of not being able for the life of me to get my Asus Extreme-EVO whatever with i7 running without super distortion. I just gave up on it. In the mean time though, it has been the greatest opportunity to just clearly listen to what happens with what SFS because it just influences. With 12 ? there is no way I can get sound other than trrrrrrrr. With 70 ? MMMV but ALWAYS after 4 minutes the trrrr started to jump in, ending in only distortion a minute or two later. With 220 ? chances were very very small I could come through those first minutes. Why ? why why. It's just the same thing (I'm sure), but this time without any escape. Yes, I better spend a week to find out, but for me myself and I, I better exhange the lot to something which works. OTOH, you will be buying that same Mobo/processor, and you'll end up with the same.
And W7/Vista was not a single difference, except for the processor speed in W7 being constant at 40%. Is *that* good then ? I don't think so. But Vista ? that for 100% sure is wrong, the speed always being at max, just because the SFS is large. So, load the whole track into memory, and suddenly something thinks it must go at work. With what ? sure not those I/Os. Doh, sequentially search for that memory address. That is what it looks like. The more memory, the longer it takes.

Ok. Summed up, suddenly so many things are going on, that I can't tell head from tail. In the mean time we *do* improve significantly, but I promise you it will really happen when I understand what is happening, and how to really eliminate it. Just give it some time.
But also : keep on finding out yourselves, because that is the REAL thing which helps. Time time time.

Thanks,
Peter

Oh boy ... Ehm, for Nick, a small follow up on my previous post, after following the link from Roy to my own Dec. 2009 topic once again, this time actually reading what I wrore in there :


You see ? I knew that too (by emperical finding).
But also : I forget things some times. :aggressive:

The heat of the battle ... :)

Hi there Roy,

It may sound counterintuitive to you, but I rather keep this "mess of things" in this one topic. I already am sorry that I didn't "join" the RAMDisk topic from Mani into here;
It is all about the same purpose, and already know I have difficulties in what topic I read which.

In general you are very right, but please not this time (no, you are still right, but I prefer to have all in one topic for now).

Thanks,
Peter


(I may change my mind later :))

All,

I thought of it before, and now think I really should mention it :

While we're debating about W7 vs. Vista - or may think by now that Vista is the solution - pure from theory W2008 should be the better solution;
It is Vista, it is more lean, it is more decent/stable, it is more towards "server" activities (hence less fancy stuff), *and* those who tried it, were ever so enthusiast; I didn't do it, but I guess a search for "2008" may come up with some posts about it.

I am sorry if this comes as additional confusement to you, but better late than sorry.

Peter

OK, by me  ;)

If all can be find just here, its FINE and works for me too !

Its gonna be a VERY nice topic then

I may still merge these two topics. Just look at the last few posts in the RAMDisk topic. It's just all about the same thing ...
But I don't know how it will look like (the merging will take place on date/time).

Btw, this sure is not Mani's fault, who only created the topic for its specific subject, which IMO is justified (but nobody responded to, so far).

Peter, please merge whatever makes sense.

Why do all the really interesting developments come when I'm away from home and can't get involved? FYI, I'll be away from home a lot in the next few weeks - SQ should improve in strides :)

Mani.

I had to do a second test last night to be sure of that and, it's true. Peter is right once more. Vista and ramdisk is the way to go. The differences on a resolving system like Peter's are huge, from fatigue to enjoyment.

It remains to be checked vista32 vs 64bit (hope it doesnt) because I think we need the latter with 8+gig of ram to be able to load enough tracks. I'm already thinking 16gbs but I didnt check yet if my current mainboard supports that.

Yes, we (me, Peter, Roy) did, twice. Unfortunately Vista wins hands down.

Music should NEVER sound agressive, music should sound enjoyable ALWAYS, even with lesser sounding albums !

For now, and maybe never, w7 is NOT the OS you want to use for high-end audio playback.
When experience this thru a NON-filtering DAC like the NOS1, this becomes very obvious, I couldnt stand w7 for 5 minutes.
While enjoying Vista for hours and hours, but also only with RAMdisk. (very important)

Take a Piano part with high notes in it, being striked pretty hard, ..................its so obvious.

Also a tip for people who still think W7 sounds better, should maybe raise the db in their tweeters, by adjusting the resistors.

I modded many industry loudspeakers, including several expensive onces and its very common that industry lowers te output of the tweeter just a little too much
just to get that smooth sound as being reffered to (this for hiding flaws in their own audio systems), you got no details for sure,
otherwise it could never be smooth sounding.

Just beware of this....................

Marcin hi,

I think all of these services are needed. This is the minimum set to still have a working audio system. From memory I removed each individually to check and the system failed. I remember being disapointed at the time because XP would run on only 6 services ! Each removal was tested for sound quality as well (at least on my system).

Nick.

OK, so it depends on the system too. I have turned these off while XXHE was playing. I'll investigate that later, now I'm very happy with the sound and still have the usability of a normal PC.

It has been a long time since I tried myself, but notice there may be a difference between WASAPI (which is official audio for Vista/W7) and Kernel Streaming (which is not). For example, I can imagine that "Audio Endpoint Builder" is not necessary for KS at all, which it 100% sure is for WASAPI. This may (!) also imply that no audio devices should be enabled in the first place, so WASAPI doesn't even get the opportunity to start "building" those end points (which will be about the enumeration of audio devices as you see them in XXHighEnd, but also in more parts of the system (like the taskbar tray speaker)). Going this route, of course eliminates Engine#3 as an option to play with.

2c
Peter

Peter,
I know you had spotted this issue with W7, I remember the post, you really made think hard at the time. This post, papers on W7 and Vista architecture and cool audio quality reception of W7 at Phasure and elsewhere made me adopt a “wait and see” approach till something definite happened.....then this thread started .

I can really identify with your “the heat of the battle” comment, I get that a lot in what I do as well. You had to work with W7 when it was released though, every MS dependant application owner has to. What impresses me is that in you pursuit of the best sound you have the guts to say the “king has no clothes”.... I mean “We all fell in the W7 pitfall” dosent pull any punches does it  :smile:

Best,
Nick

I hadn't though about that, I did the tests on pre kernel streaming HighEnd versions so it may be that some additional services could go. Will have a play.

Another reasonably effective OS system edit – Globally Turn off DEP.

Data Execution Protection is implemented partly BIOS / HW and in the OS by Windows. In the windows admin tools you cannot fully turn DEP it off. I guess that there is some busy bit of kernel code checking I/Os and DEP flags trapping any errors as programs run.

Turning DEP off could open systems up to memory overwrite attacks and might cause instability if you run badly implemented programs but since my build runs music software only and never goes near a network I am happy to turn it off.

The effect is quite marked when applied on top of the MMCS parameters regedit. More hash and grain removed from the sound with improved imaging depth and resolution but I am not sure if it takes away some of the musical engadement from the sound ???

From a command prompt with admin privileges;
To turn DEP off “bcdedit.exe /set nx {current} AlwaysOff” then reboot
To turn DEP on again “bcdedit.exe /set nx {current} AlwaysOn” then reboot (I had to guess the on command but it seems to work fine)
Nick.

Nick, you're awesome  8)

I'd also add cMP optimisations per cics' site - http://cicsmemoryplayer.com/ They're for XP, but most of them works the same in Vista/W7.

I also had an experience of better sound once I installed latest DirectX Redistributable (June 2010), but I'm not 100% sure.

gotta try this right now :)

Telstar,

Let me know what you think to the Global DEP disable.

Have you tried the MMCS service prioritisation regedit ? It's in a longish post from me a few pages back in the thread. The effect fundermantal to relay :), this is the one you REALLY want to apply for best music.

Nick.

Yes, i printed both things.

On W7 the DEP can be disabled without {current} in the command line, that is:
bcdedit.exe /set nx AlwaysOff

Also the clock key is missing in two of the 4 entries (i think audio and audio pro, but i should check again) - is that normal? I'm using W7 64.

Telstar,

I had forgotten that you are running W7. W7 does not implement the clock keys there in Vista only. This reflects is one of the fundamental changes that took place for audio playback when MS launched W7. In Vista the key allows you to set the granularity of CPU time dedicated to multimedia processes. The clock key values suggested dedicate loads of CPU time to music  :) There were problems however for Microsoft with this CPU prioritisation as effectively other processes like network could be crippled when media was being used (not that we care  ;)). MS fix was to remove the CPU time Guarantee in W7. We may discover other reasons as well but I suspect this is at the root of the Vista / W7 performance difference. This is why I never moved to W7.

This makes me  :) when I think of all that CPU time going to audio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8_0e0pDzAY

On Vista the reg edit takes music to another level, it would be very interesting to see what you think the remaining key edits does for W7. Hopefully there will still be some benefit.

Nick.

I spent lots of time to the ramdisk to have it working (huge difference), at the same time of the registry and DPS fixes, and couldnt check without yet, so i'll do it later this afternoon.

The clocks are in SOME of those keys in W7 and i wonder if they can be ADDED to the missing ones ;)

Worth a try.

I've just received a message from Cantatis and they say that Overture can't and won't work with 176kHz sample rate in Vista, because it's impossible. I guess, I'm gonna have to stick with no upsampling for 44kHz stuff  :(

It's impossible FOR THEM. But since it's possible with other soundcards with the same chipset, it means that they need better programmers ;)

BTW, I did the test of 8x AP vs no AP and it's NOT a huge difference, the ramdisk is way more important.

I know, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can install firmware from Prodigy 7.1 and have 176kHz available, hence QAP for redbook, but I won't be able to play 48kHz tracks at all, so I choose less evil.

Nick,

What power scheme do you use? Did you try different settings?

The going back to Vista and using RAMDisk are key and fundamental in our xx project,

I'am not really sure about appying all other tweaks, I did the whole tweaking in a bunch.
And did not get the same, BIG change feeling, like i did got from the RAMDisk change.

Nick or Marcin, do you guys keep a log of the changes you made ? can you share those with me.

Roy

Yep, I keep the log, I'll share it during this weekend.

Marcin (or anyone), have you tried W2008 R2 with RAMDisk?

Mani.

Unfortunatelly, I haven't tried it on 2008R2, I wasn't aware of RAMdisk back there. Maybe I'll try it, but for I've had enough reinstalls during last days, so give me a break  :heat:

Yea, just to find out at what level it has effect, i mean on SQ.
Rule out placebo  ;)


Funny story:

I though I bring me own music to Peter and I (should) could trust my "local" programmer with my 2TB HDD full of precious music, thought wrong there, hehehe  ;)
While discussing another subject Peter asked: "should it be possible to connect a hdd when the PC hibernates/sleeps?".
This was a hard lesson you can NOT, well not on IDE.
I think it kept the previous connected USB card/or whatever in memory, PC came out of sleep mode, and OVERwrite my hdd mft/mbr with that USB file that still was in memory.

Peter feeling REALLY guilty, he was more shocked then i was, but still there where like 5000 albums on there.(no back-up, yet)
He spended several hours on it in maybe get it fixed somehow that morning, but I told him to spend time on the more important stuff, the stuff we came for ...AUDIO !

But afterall I managed to get ALL the data of my disc, I only needed the buy another hdd to write my fixed image to,
and some 10 hours work for my pc on writing data back and forth.

 :smirk:
hehehe, you may stop feeling guilty now Peter, hahaha

Roy

He calls that a funny story. But man, what am I glad now. :heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat:

Roy,

What dpclat are you getting from your tuned OS? This is not a hard wired indicator to music performance but it gives me a feeling for how far you have gone with tuning. Are you on vista? What have you stopped / done so far?

When settled what are max, min and estimated average dpclat scores ?

Nick.

He Nick,

You guys are a week ahead on me, I was 2 days at Peters and such, repairing hdd, setup vista blah blah.
Lot of catch-up to do

So I am around 13-15 us range on DPClat, on minimal services, applyed all yours and marcin's tweaks, but i am not sure if i did all.

But if you are working organized, you should kept a log right ?

I also did, so i want to compare reg, sys and windows settings, we also need a log when we want to write something to automate all these registry entries.

Best regards,

Roy

Nick, do you use underclocked and undervolted system? It brings great improvements imho...

At this moment I have the feeling it's the other way around.
Will tell about it later ...

Martin hi,

I tend to go for responsivness as the guiding principle. RAM and CPU  give moderate improvements. I also over volt a little. On my system the last 5 % or so of clock speed is -ve for sound so I back off from ffull potential. 2 cores seems best I have a quad core but run 2 by setting boot options.

There was a build paper for another player with great configs but to low volt underclock did not work for me.

Cut the background load  and run fast !

Nick

Ps will post autoruns later then thighs get interesting :-)

Yes, maybe you're right for external interfaces that doesn't feed power from PC. For PCI soundcards, I can't be wrong...

That would be great Nick, take your time !

I think i managed to degrade my sytem again, meaning worse sound.
Something is not right.
 :(

Roy

I also disagree.
What I think it really matters is to disable the energy saving features from bios, including EIST and C1.
Then i undervolt 0,1V just for keeping the cpu coooler.

've had this post written and ready to post when I accidently closed my browser, so I'm gonna be short now (frustrated...)

I did a comparison between underclocked/undervolted PC (CPU set as dual core at 1GHz, 2x2GB RAM DDR3 at 800MHz CL5) and default settings (2.8GHz, RAM at 1600MHz CL7). I have few important things to say:
1. THe faster the PC is, the larger SFS setting is needed for XXHE to sound right. (12MB for very slow PC is fine, but once I brought the power back, I needed to increase it to 150 MB)
2. Underclocked/undervolted PC (slow) could help you bear with wrong system/settings (like W7) - it will cover its flaws and hide details at the same time. But now that we have tuned Vista and XXHE on RAMdisk, there are no flaws to cover.
3. The fastest PC will get the best out of XXHE, but if you have something wrong in OS or bad recordings - it will throw you all the flaws right on your face.

So I guess I should wait until Sandy Bridge (next generation of Core architecture) is released and get the fastest one 8)

And one more thing: underclocked/undervolted PC really works great for CMP, but not for XXHE. They wander around just like I did...

Marcin,

Great work, a myth busted ! Its easy to wonder off down the slow CPU route but system responsiveness in the right places suits HighEnd IMHO as well. It will be interesting to hear Peters thoughts following his earlier post.

You make a very important point about a poorly tuned PC masking issues in the overall replay system. I also think this but have never expressed it so clearly. The better the tune the more you hear so the basics have to be right but if they are  :soundsgood:.  As Peter's software as taken great leaps so access to the last 15 or 20% of audible performance from the system has become much more important IMHO.

Regarding your PCI card. I have modified a USB PCI card to run from linear supplies. The only connections to the PC are the PCI bus earths and the signal channels of the bus to the card. There is still going to be some RF transfer through the earths / signal and general environment but the card was far better. I don't use it any more (gone over to internal USB which works better with the asynchronous mode HiFace) but this might be a great modification for your PCI card. Its a fiddly one to do though as the tracks that you need to cut and solder are very small. I am looking forward to seeing the PCI interface that Peter has put into the Phasure NOS. It sounds like it doesn’t need much tweaking ! but....

Nick

Nick,

Do you install drivers for your GPU?

Marcin,

No, I was careful to select a mother board with a very basic Intel on board GPU built in, I use the basic out of the box Vista drivers and over clock it in the Bios then limit video traffic as much as possible in config. I have used PCI and PCIe video cards and tried to buy the slowest most basic possible. The problem is they all have mega 600Mhz +++ processors and complex drivers these days. They have high IRQ priority and can command a lot of CPU interupts. As a principle try to limit the PCI traffic to the card by doing whatever you can with the config to do this.

Sorry forgot you question on power schemes. I start with the max performance one then go with

Never sleep
Display off in 1 min (I read an interesting comment from Peter saying this may platue CPU speed so I will look at this)
Hard disks off in 1 min
And turn off everything that means the OS has to monitoring something.

For a bit of fun (sad) I used to follow how quickly the PC shuts down, it gets quicker and quicker as things are stripped and tuned. From the moment you click the power down button to the PSU relay clicking off with a dead screen it takes 3 seconds ! Now RAM disk is installed and writing the disk from memory it takes ages  :(

Nick.

That's like I thought, but didn't you mean underclock in BIOS? GPU speed is not required for XXHE :)


Same here :)

Is your Image saved to an SSD ? (mine is)
Or maybe your RAMDisk is 4GB or so ? (1GB here)
I really don't notice it. Yes, at booting ! (the RAMDisk is created before the Numlock, Capslock and the light besides that lit).

Peter

I never turn it off, I just put it to sleep ;) It consumes 4-5W when sleeping.

My power settings are 1h for HDDs (one), anything else never turn off. When i want it to sleep, i do that MANUALLY. Recovery from sleep is 2seconds.

I think I have a GOOD working Vista Install (vLite), with RAMDisk.

I mean really good sounding, felt the bass on my hands from meters away, could play very loud and have clean hights.

I think this is the foundation for further tweaking for me........most tweaks still needs to be done.
BUT with CAUTION.

Also changed some BIOS settings, like EIST off, and overclocked Q9550 @ 2.83 --> now @ 3.48, RAM also overclocked a little.

Roy

:blob8:

Thats great Roy  :)

@ Special Mode 32 samples, SFS 12MB, Q 1,0,0,0,0
But to premature, will take more time to test further.

Peter, thanks for the fast reply on the new activation code, this get me going fast

I have attached the Autoruns for my thin Vista build.

These are for EXPERIMENTATION only at the moment. They are not supposed to be applied verbatim to systems.
PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL changing system config with Autoruns it can make your system unbootable very easily. Trust me I'v had a lot of forced rebuilds getting here. The settings are are specific to my system (eg my drivers and hardware) but the general config items should work on most Vista builds.

The best way to proceed is to;
1)   Open you systems Autoruns in one window.
2)   Open the attached Autoruns in another window.
3)   Position the windows on screen so you can see them both.
4)   Transfer the setting of my Autoruns to yours in blocks of about 10 at a time. AVOID changing anything that looks like it is a hardware driver specific to your system (sound cards etc).
5)   Reboot and see if the last block of changes works, it’s worth playing music each time as some can stop HighEnd working (see recovering if you cannot boot)
6)   If you cannot boot you need to press F8 after the BIOS posts to get to the safe boot screen. When you are in the F8 screen USE LAST KNOWN GOOD CONFIGURATION. This will normally get you going again.

Note that there are no WinSock entries in my safeboots. This is only because you cannot toggle on and off, you have to delete them one by one. It is fine to do this and well worth while (no network on your dedicated music OS!)

There are endless permutations and it’s taken months / years to get this listing and its defiantly possible to go further. If you do go further than these settings you do need to A/B test changes you can easily end up harming sound (sometimes is a subtle way like slight loss of a little dynamics or timber).

Have fun.

Nick.

I should have atteched a link to the Autoruns program in case you don't have it.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Nick

What a great sounding OS i have installed here, FABULOUS !
Untweaked even on spinning disc

I dare to say and try for yourself, but its SPEED that we're after. (CPU/RAM/mobo)
Overclock as much as you can, because the cpu wont get really hot, just dont over-volt too much.

XX is really responsive from this, meaning a 9min song wil play within a second. (dep on settings and needs)

And the sound:

well, how about a field of sparkles in a dome of sound, what a soundstage, hmm

What happened here ?

Nick, thank you so much for sharing all this preciously collected data.
Isn't it great to be an audiophool. We always like to share eh ?

In the mean time ... We know about your warnings, and I know not everybody should just apply this (and hopefully nobody does). But also for me counts that this by itself unreadable data has to go somewhere in order to be readable, and that by itself already looks dangerous if you never have done that before. So (and this is also for me :yes:), is it possible to describe in a few lines what to do in order to just make visible what is in there, and which will be totally harmless ? (some viewer ?).
Please don't make too much fuzz about it, and if "totally harmless" isn't possible, just say so and we'll stay away from it.
For now. Haha.

Thanks,
Peter

Nick, thanks a lot! I'm gonna try them today. Fingers crossed!

Nick, your settings are in Chinese or other language that I can't read. Is there any way I could change it? I'm a bit afraid to apply it on my machine, because it seems that there are different entries here..

Marcin,
Chinese  :( I did not expect that. I think that it is possible that your autoruns install has in the wrong language. How do the settings of you pc display when you just load autoruns? are that ok.

I will take a look at the file too to see if any thing has gone wrong looks like a character set problem.


Peter,
Just so I know where to start with notes have you installed the autoruns program from the link I posted. You proberbly already use the program maybe ?

Nick

I applied my own autoruns tweaks. You can check it, I attached the settings, nothing much in there... I think I'll make my system for audio only and make another install for web and utilities.

Nick - I use AutoRuns allright, but it's version 4.03 and I merely use it to remove stuff I don't like the face of.
Never used it to "apply" things.

But please keep in mind : It is only for looking what you have in there, and I guess many are interested in that. Applying it is quite another thing.

Thanks,
Peter

Nick, I'm gonna ask this again - did you mean overclocking or underclocking your graphic card? It's quite important. Also you may be able to turn off hardware acceleration for GPU and disable it in device manager, it will work anyway.

Peter hi,

We have our wires crossed a little, but we are both actually on the on the same page I think. I am defiantly not suggesting that people use autoruns to batch automatically settings onto their machines.

I also use Autoruns the same way you describe which is to remove stuff that doesn’t help music.

My reason for posting my .arn file us that this gives precise details of what a thin build can run without and sound ok. What I think folks might do is to manually transfer the settings that they want to try between two copies of autoruns running on their machine. One copy open with their machine autoruns displayed to be edited and the other copy looking at my .arn file. This should only be done with some thought to what is happening and on a boot that is experimental and therefore it doesn’t matter too much if things don't go well. I have done this process in the last couple of days to rebuild my thin Vista after the AHCI problem and its not too difficult to do and since I was not bothered about losing the Vista boot it took 30 mins to transfer all the settings over.

Autoruns frustration.....

I have spent the morning trying to get to the bottom of why Marcin is getting Chinese characters when he opens my .arn file. It appears the current autoruns version 10.3 is not compatible with my file which was created in v9.35 ! I tried installing 10.3 on my machine to read the .arn I posted but I got Chinese characters as well. Then I tried to generate a new .arn file with version 10.3 and hit a known bug with Autoruns which is that this version will sometimes not display all of the intended categories correctly (only about 15% are listed). I therefore cannot create an .arn file with a complete list of what is no my PC using the current version 10.3. @**$£!!!!!

Possible solution.....

The only option I can think of is to post my .ARN file and the version of autoruns needed to view it v9.35 with so folks have the same software. Do the forum rules allow me to post an executable? I think the licence is a freely distributable one.
Out of interest can you Autoruns version read the .arn I posted ?

Nick.

Guys, I'm still interesting in knowing whether anyone has tried this...

Mani.

Hei,

I did ramdisk, but after W7 reboot the drive is empty? XX folder gets lost.
Maybe I did it quick and forgot to do something? Anybody seen this?

Ivo

Ivo,

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1403.msg13333#msg13333
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1403.msg13335#msg13335

Marcin

I over clock my gpu on the basis that it might be a bit quicker at dealing with graphics calls when music is  playing. To be honest though I have not managed to detect an A/B improvement so in my system the setting is more theory.

Just a thought are you running an OS swop file ? It has high i/o priority and its not really needed for music.

Regards
Nick.

hi guys,

I'm typing from my smartphone, cause I gave up networking in my OS. I ended up with 8 services running and almost empty autoruns. I'll post full report once I set a new system for work. I applied all tweaks I came across with. The sound is unbelievable on my overclocked Phenom (3.8GHz dual-core).

Nick - no swap. I'post everything tomorrow so stay tuned

Marcin, throw out the battery of your cell phone. It may help.
But you can always send me letters. I will pass them on !
Hahaha


(do we all imagine Marcin ? no communication with whatever outerworld, but he has GREAT sound)

haha. you killed me with your latest post. :XD I'll write them on a regular basis lol You know I'll have second OS tomorrow and it's a good thing, because it won't disyract me from work and in the evening I'm gonna seat on my sofa and enjoy music of my vista - ultimate audio edition :)

Peter, you made my day

Yes, i never do vista or w7 without a swap of at least half the ram size. Swap is on ssd.

So... I finally got around to installing Vista (thanks Peter) optimized for audio (thanks Nick + others), with XX installed on RAMDisk (thanks Marcin).  Oh, it's nice to have a digital sound that can match my vinyl for 'sweetness'.

I've been thinking that my Weiss AFI1 interface is just too bright and edgy, and hence it's been gathering dust for the last 12 months or so. Only now do I realise that it's been W7, and not the Weiss, that's been at fault. I've also been mildly critical of QAP for a short while and again, I now blame W7 for this criticism.

I really don't know where we could take the SQ from here... Of course, that's been said many times before on this forum, I know...

A very happy Mani.

Ha ! Good !! But count me out for thanking; Instead count everybody in extra for judgeing and confirning it. This includes yourself. Well, you know ...
At the time we must play Take5 again, just let it know; only I try to avoid it for the nest couple of years. Haha.

But man, ain't it complicated; I really hope we're on the right track again.

By now I'm interested what "Moritz" has to say about this; He's a paying member, MS associate, and has been around for a short while only; quite knowledgeable IMO (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?action=profile;u=752;sa=showPosts).

Peter

Just a point of clarification on my part - I'm actually running W2008 SP1 and not Vista, though I'm not sure whether there's any difference in SQ.

Mani.

Hello Peter,

recently you gave an overview of the steps to install Vista as the second OS. But however hard I search I can not find it again.  Or was this just my imagination again ? Could you enlighten me?
Leo
ps
XX on RAMDISK is very nice

Hi Leo. That was here : Re: cannot run as administrator anymore (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1334.msg13165#msg13165).

Hi Marcin, from the quote below, how does one add the new DWORD, IRQ8PRIOITY? Not sure what you mean by this. I've also attached a screenshot of the Priority Control you point to in REGEDIT. Maybe a screenshot back showing what you mean might be helpful.

Thanks!

Allow me ...

RighClick on empty space (at the right side), and choose New. Next choose DWORD Value, fill the name of the "attribute" (IRQ8Priority) and next change the value (RightClick on the new item and choose Modify). Change the value (from 0) to 1.

HTH,
Peter

Thanks Peter, will post results on whether I remain educable....... :)

Need to do more listening, but this tweak is no placebo, immediatly even more refined than what Ramdisk alone brings. Thanks Nick!

Bolero,

Glad you like it, thanks for the confirmation.

Best,

Nick

I think the nx should be behind {current}. Thus :
bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff


Now let's see whether I can still boot. :)

For those who turned off DEP, you might check whether SFS still matters. DEP seems a reasonable reason to me that may influence this.
(I can't check this "really" anymore because I've implemented another means of "SFS", while I didn't apply the parameters yet I promised elsewhere (like for still being able to use the old method)).

Peter

I've turned DEP off, and implemented most of the tweaks in this thread, and the SFS still has an affect on the sound! When someone can explain why this is the case, I'll be happy.

I've also been comparing Engine#3, Engine#4(Adaptive) and Engine#4(Special) to a vinyl source and... Engine#4(Adaptive) comes closest in my setup. There is a quality that vinyl has (mine at least) which I call 'sweetness' that my digital playback is getting closer to, but still isn't quite recreating. Vista (W2008) has helped, but I'm still not there. The sound of my vinyl is both totally organic and yet ultra detailed. With my digital playback I can get one or the other, but I'm finding it very difficult to get both to the same degree as the vinyl. Oh, and the DAC is totally out of the equation - I'm feeding the vinyl through the ADC/DAC for all listening. When you do this with a good ADC/DAC, you realise one thing very quickly - PCM digital itself is very, very good.

Mani.

Well I tried it the way Nick suggested and it didn't work; I then tried Peter's suggestion and I can't get the computer to boot. Each time I end up with the "Safe Mode" screen and I can't get it to boot from there either, it just goes into a loop. Have put the installation disk in and booted from the disk. The start up repair utility is unable to fix the problem and when I attemp to use System Restore, it tells me that its  already running???? Any suggestions?

Damn, I was having such fun! Let me know if a reinstall is what must be done.....

Sorry Boleary, can't help. I hope you get it sorted though.

For others who are thinking of doing this, Telstar's suggestion worked for me - "bcdedit.exe /set nx AlwaysOff”

Mani.

So I was lucky to be able to boot eh ? Well, that's what I thought.
But Brian, or you may be able to boot in safe mode (with Command Prompt !) and then apply Always Off, or you hopefully can restore things to boot into "last settings that worked" (similar).

For evrybody : don't do these things unless you feel you are comfortable with it. Do like me, and Google for whatever it is you may be unsure about. Read stuff about "not being able to boot", and next decide whether you take your chances. I didn't say it without a reason (let's see whether I can still boot"). I just read about it, and thought "oh well" (a complete reinstall in my mind). But still, I would have hated myself if it would have gone wrong. But at least I knew what could happen.

I can only repeat it : when you are not comfortable with this, just sit it out, and wait for all had been determined as a good thing to do.

Peter


PS: Might you be able to boot in Safe Mode ... that bcdedit.exe is in c:\windows\system32\. You have to go there when no "paths" hve been defined,and you do this by the CD command (Change Directory).
Good luck for now !

Thanks Mani. Am working on a fresh install now. Did I say something earlier today about being educable?

Anyway, its good for me to learn, however marginally, this sh*t!

You see, today is Columbus day here in the US, so I had too much time on my hands.....

 :)

I tried everything you suggested in your last post, I even had my wife, a former DOS programmer give it a try, all to no avail. Am reinstalling now. Really, this is good experience for when I partition the desktop with a Roy inspired version of things.

Anyway, until this happened, all the "Nick and Marcin" tweaks I had applied from this thread improved SQ quite substantially........ now what the hell was it that I did?????  :)

Sorry to hear that boleary. As you said, take it as a learning experience.

Without meaning to rub things in, I'm close to heaven right now. I still have my W7 SSD attached and can easily switch between W7 and W2008 (essentially Vista) via the BIOS. The W7 SSD has all the tweaks applied, up to and including RAMDisk, but not the latest tweaks suggested by Nick. The W2008 SSD has pretty much everything.

I cannot believe that up until this weekend I had been putting up with such second-rate sound from the W7 SSD. What really surprises me though is the difference in clarity between W7 and W2008. The latter is much tighter and clearer, and just sounds real. I am convinced this was not the case before applying Nick's latest tweaks. I strongly advise anyone who feels Vista is giving them too much bass to try these tweaks.

Mani.

Mani, do you use 64-bit or 32-bit W2008? And for W7?

Can you mani please explain it again with some screenshots?

 :)

Hi Josef. 64-bit in both cases. The rationale here is that I want to use 8GB of RAM and allocate 4GB to RAMDisk. (I have a few hires albums that take ~3.5GB with all tracks loaded.)

Mani.

Hi Gerard. Do you mean how to use the MS Interrupt-Affinity Policy Tool? If so, I'd be happy to do this when I'm back home this evening. It's pretty straight forward, and Nick's document helps a lot.

Mani.

If you would like to do that and also this thing that Nick came up with. Do not now what to do with this.


Thanx  :)

Ah, OK. The latter (switching DEP off) is pretty straight forward also:

1. Make sure you're running in Administrator mode.
2. click the Windows Start button and type 'cmd' in the search field - a black command line box should appear
3. now type bcdedit.exe /set nx AlwaysOff in the command line and press enter

That's it! It worked for me on both W7 and W2008.

Mani.

Hi Mani,

Jealous !  :)  Wanna  know how close you are to the heaven. Can you please share with us on how you set RAMDISK up in a dummy version. I am a basic PC user   :sign0144qp7:

I know it takes time but I will wait.


Thanks in advance.
Praphan

Yes, I can confirm that SFS matters a lot! This is still the most influential factor! I noticed during optimisations, that I needed greater SFS values, while my system was becoming faster and faster. Finally, after all optimisations, I need SFS at 350 MB (even 450MB). Anything lower than 300 MB is harsh, edgy, dry, just wrong! Yes, there is slightly better control, but you lose timbre, great depth of soundstage, dynamics and sound is, like my girlfriend said, buzzy. So according to my experiences, I assume that large SFS values are the best once your system is very fast. I think that on a regular OS installation, without optimisations, big SFS values sounded clumsy, because system wasn't able to process big chunks of data fast enough. That's not the case now. I'd really appreciate if someone could perform full optimisation (I'm writing tutorial in a moment) and try large SFS. But nothing is perfect and with that high SFS values, playback stops after few minutes with message - 'OutOfMemory Exception'. Peter, is it possible for XXHE to release some memory while playing? Does it have to consume more and more memory during playback? I mean the memory that was needed for previous track.

Greets,
Marcin

This is where setting IRQ affinities might prove useful. And not just what you start during playback, but what gets started automatically without your knowing, e.g. RAMDisk making calls.

Just a thought...

Mani.

Interesting. But again, this is no doubt very system-dependent. As you know, I'm tuning my system by comparing playback of recorded 24/192 to the original vinyl (also being fed through the ADC/DAC). And here the sweetspot is 50 now.

But I agree - the SFS still plays a big factor in sound. Surely it shouldn't, now that XX sits in RAM (and 'Copy to XX-drive' is active). Someone, anyone, please. please offer at least an explanation of what might be causing this!

Mani.

Mani - True. But still, if this were under program control (hence looking at the running processes and all), I'd still miss the not-yet-running processes.

Marcin,

I already optimized this (better) for 0.9z-3, and you can use significantly more memory now. But it is not really about "more and more", but about the largest track you coincidentally run into. I know, this doesn't show much in 0.9z-2, but anyway, freeing that is of no use, because you still need that "largest" track, and you need it at the same time a next small track comes by.
Or drop gapless. :nea:

Peter

Ok, just an idea ...

Can a few of you (if not all) SFS Expericnced tell me whether you have your Virtual Memory On or Off ?

Peter

Off here.

PS
I lost my post about optimisations, wrrrrrrrrrrrrr  :grazy:

Haha, ON here! (Currently set to 4390MB by system.)

Mani.

Bad luck. :dntknw:

I thought having it Off might incur for "attempting" it constantly, therewith influencing.


Another thing is : I can hardly imagine that which such huge sizes you (Marcin) don't have problems with Gapless ...

Nick, All,

I am afraid I was right in my earlier "suggestions" that this won't do a thing (I forgot where it was, but you will have remembered :));

So, these Registry Entries are "profiles", like the Key suggests. These Profiles can be addressed from within a program and *then* the data in there comes alive. Without that addressing ? nothing. Not even for WASAPI (Engine#3). :sorry:

The good side of this all is ... I didn't do this addressing. Well, not before today. Haha.
I do other things though, and at this moment I really can't tell if it will make a difference;
The largest part of the work has been done (getting it all to run), so now it is a matter (for me) to fill that data with some sense and see whether I perceive differences. If not, I'll leave that to you - which I will do anyway (0.9z-3, and both Engine#3 and #4 will use it).

The nice thing is : Profiles are Profiles, and a Key like "Audio" or "Pro Audio" can be made up yourself (read : created in the Registry). Next what it takes is a means to select such a key, and per change of a Setting in XX the used Profile can be changed.

Notice that for XP this doesn't work at all, and for Windows7 I can't estimate to what degree it works. But officially for the latter : less.
Vista and its W2008 counterpart (under R2) must work.

So, another good reason to postpone 0.9z-3 a little. :)
Peter

Peter hi,
I agree that there are program calls to access Multimedia registry profile settings. My understanding is that MCSS sets up prioritisation based on these profiles when asked to by any code that makes the calls. On my config there is defiantly an marked A/B change in sound quality with the registry exits so I still think something is requesting MCSS to use the registry profile data. Could the HiFace Driver be invoking the settings ? or windows still has an awareness of the HiFace as a music hardware device, could MCSS apply the settings anyway when a process (say XXhignEnd) registers with the sound device ?

I took a scatter gun approach when coming up with the suggested key values by applying them to many of the profile types (pro audio, audio etc). I will spend a little time trying to pinpoint the profiles and key values that have an effect.
Whatever is happening  for with current versions, I do hope this is exploitable for 0.9-z3.

Regards,

Nick.

Well Nick ... I don't know what you're hearing, but it is worse. That is, to me that seems, and I can't make anything better out of it. What ?

It just doesn't work at all. Or more accurately : it certainly doesn't do what it intends.
I have been trying and testing and everything, but to me it's a half baked hoax. Additionaly (or maybe that's why) MS of course admitted that half of the OS collapsed because of these jokes, which -thus- didn't do what they wanted in the first place. Add to that that WASAPI didn't work in the first place when Vista came out (I with a bunch of tweaks / XXHighEnd was the first one for more than a year), so all was just stupid theory. And now it appears to just not work.
It may do things to other processes, but a simple appointing Affinity already does not work.

Besides all, it wouldn't do anything extra regarding to what I do myself and also it will confuse if I'd let it in and if it would work.

Maybe with(in) WASAPI it will work afterall (today's MS examples (which weren't there before at all) are with WASAPI only), but I don't believe that. And what if so ? we're not using that anymore (ok, hardly anyone I think).

In the end ... trust me. I do all (and much more) than this whole thing would do if it worked. I/O and Driver priorities, that's another story. But as I explained earlier, that doesn't seem to be necessary (by coincidence ?).

Case closed I guess.
Peter

Not so fast: case re-open! :)

I was finally able to try out Vista (thanks Peter for the key!) and, indeed, I must admit that overwhelming positive response here is fully justified! (This is so weird I still have trouble believing it so my next step is to install clean Win7 just to make sure this is not a placebo or a corrupted Win7 installation.)

I was also able to test a couple of tweaks mentioned here and so far I can verify the following:

1. MMCS registry settings: These have no effect in Kernel mode (Engine#4).
This is very easy to verify as MMCS service is clearly completely inactive  when XX is playing via Engine#4.
However, it can also be seen that MMCS does work when WASAPI (Engine#3) is used and it works as advertised: popping up every 10ms and doing it's thing (whatever that is). (note I have not tried MMCS registry tweaks as I have used only Engine#4 so far).

An interesting note: seems that Foobar (which, btw, also sounds better under Vista) does _not_ really use Kernel streaming even though it can be selected! The reason is that MMCS is clearly active when Foobar works (whether WASAPI or Kernel is selected) while it's dead as rock when XX is playing via Engine#4 - a proof of just how difficult it is to get KS 'right' and/or proof of Peter's audio-programming prowes? Kudos to Peter anyway :)  (note I used 'older' Foobar 0.9.6.9 but Kernel Streaming component hasn't changed since 2006 so it should not matter...)

2. Much more interesting (at least to me) was Nick's Interrupt Affinity discovery as I was frustrated not being able to get it to work under Win7 and yet I believed in (at least) a theoretical merit of being able to manually appoint interrupts to CPU cores. Short story: Nick was right!

Affinity tool works perfectly well under Vista SP1 64 (not tried 32 and Peter I believe you are on 32?)
I could clearly hear DAC 'ticking' when tool asked to restart device. Likewise, my mouse stoppped responding for a while and USB HD came up from sleep. But, I did have to reboot - even with all devices properly restarting affinities were NOT applied until after reboot.
Curiously, XX reverted to demo mode so I had to reactivate it every time I changed affinities (it worked OK every time though).
I first observed interrupt & DPC distribution without affinities, then with USB Host Controller (with Offramp attached) set to CPU1 first and then to CPU0. When there is no music distribution is about equal between cores, as would be expected. However, playing music will drastically increase #DPCs from 200-300 to 1,400-1,500 range.
It could be clearly seen that CPU1 handled _all_ these 'extra' DPCs while CPU0 was practically unchanged from 'no music' state.
And when affinity is switched to CPU0 then _it_ would serve Offramp's DPCs and CPU1 would show no change. There is no way around this - this works! Kudos to Nick!

Now back to listening tests :)

I want to emphasize the above, because after reading Josef's response it looked like I wanted to close down "the whole case", which isn't true. And then I thought "but I thought I made a remark about the I/O interrupts ?". Well, only after the 5th time of reading my last post I found this little (quoted) sentence,  so I must have hidden it very well in the remainder of that post. So, in case this happened to you (Nick) the same ... I only wanted to close this "Profile" thing, certainly not the I/O thing. Even


this shouldn't do a thing to "resting the case" because this counts for 4 cores, and not for 2 (as I explained about earlier).

So, I hope it is clear that I am as open to this subject (see Josef's post) as can be, only I couldn't get it running. And of course not to forget, I was even asking for it somewhere in between the lines - which Nick so superbly picked up.

Peter

Josef,


Please look very carefully into your RAMDisk setup and possibly the AutoHotkey config (if you use that to startup XX), because this is totally impossible. But it is all so easy to start XX from somewhere else than you think, especially when both places are equal.


As I already told more or less, MMCSS existed right from the beginning of Vista, but examples weren't there. Today's examples do contain the call to this particular function (which is really4 lines of code), and I certainly don't have that in. Now, it can be that somewhere under the hood the function is called by one of the hundreds of programs involved (which just come along with the SDK samples I ever used) BUT keep in mind it is a profile which is addressed. So if this is the case, it would be the most likely that this would be the "Audio" task, knowing that AmirM (head of audio development at MS back then) was a consumer audio guy. But if not that, then "Pro Audio". And only one of them. So, changing them all would just be good if you don't know which one is addressed (like Nick's example did), but it doesn't proove it works. So, if you think this does something (and I sure do belive you of course), try to find which one is involved, and proove it by something you can recognize. Affinity is the easiest one, but choose Scheme "Nothing" in XX.
Notice that for me it wasn't clear at all how to test it because I do all these kind of things as well and they mey interfere with the results, but since you "see" it working anyway, please proove it by means of manipulating the registry data of the task concerned (which is to be found out first).

I think you may come up with nothing, but with the conclusion there's something else again. Or just the difference between WASAPI and KS.


See. It *must* be something else. :)

And I hope this is clear too : if it can work afterall, no case is closed of course. 32bit/64bit (I'm indeed on 32) can make a difference when drivers are involved (and they are).

Don't feel obliged to do this all, but know I'm listening for sure !
Peter


PS:
I did that (including the RAMDisk stuff). It didn't help (4 pairs of ears listening). Haha.

Josef, how many cores does your CPU have?

I solved the problem late last night but was too tired to post: What happened was that I did activation only in XX run from RAMDisk. When I did a _proper_ activation i.e. when XX was started from SDD it didn't go to demo mode after reboot.


I'm afraid I don't understand a word of what you just said :) (especially that thing about 'profiles').

We may have a misunderstanding here which is probably my fault for not more clearly explaining what I did and what I 'saw' so let's try it this way:

1. Open ProcessExplorer and add column 'CSwitch Delta' to display
2. Let XX play using Engine #4
3. You should _not_ see any increase in CSwitch Delta next to your svchost.exe processes (some go up & down at times but that is normal)
4. Now let XX play using Engine#3
5. You _should_ see one of those svchost.exe go to 100 CSwitch Delta: If you have a quiet system this will be obvious as previously it was probably not active at all (my case). And it is 100 because MMCS gets activated every 10ms per MS defaults. How do we know?
6. Right-click svchost.exe->Properties->Services: MMCS should be in the list.

That's it.

So this is purely an objective technique to prove when MMCS gets activated. As I said, what/if it does anything to sound and whether it is really influenced by registry tweaks is beyond this - I plan to test that later but it's not my priority (as Engine #4 simply sounds better).

And about testing IRQs: it's also easy:

1. Open ProcessMon and look at DPCs queued/sec & Interrupts/sec.
2. Do this with different Interrupt Affinity tool settings (e.g. affinity to CPU0, CPU1, none)
3. You should see a clear pattern of (especially DPCs!) following CPU you used for affinity

Again: keep in mind that reboot is required after changing affinities.
Also, and this is what I discovered later, if your sound device shares IRQs with other devices you MUST set all of those to same CPU! For example, my laptop has 2 USB ports but both share same IRQ. So, in effect, sound device (solo on port 1) was sharing IRQ with mouse & HDD on port 2. Device Manager showed 3 'Host Controllers' associated with this same IRQ. I had to set affinity for ALL of them to be the same, otherwise it didn't work.

So, again, no subjective (listening) impressions here just easily observable facts.

Please do try these 2 simple experiments and post your findings!
You never know, maybe there is something weird about my laptop or I have made a mistake (and I can certainly make some, like 'rogue' Q2 setting from last week :) Well, at least we all learned about what Q2 really does and it is quite amazing in it's own way but that should go into a different topic :) )

Marcin: 2 cores (plain vanilla Intel Core Duo).

Josef, no problem. I at least understand you. :) :)

If you look a few posts back : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1398.msg13655#msg13655
... you see what I was talking about, including the Profiles. I went on on that one in my post following the one I referred to (doesn't work blahblah), and next you tried to lay out it all *does* work. But what ? I think it is clear now that you didn't much refer to my post(s), although you nicely started with the "case re-open".

So, no problem on this side, but I'm still talking about the same, while you're a bit on your own route. Mind you, as valuable !

Ok ?
Peter

Ah, I knew we had a misunderstanding: 'case reopen' _was_ related to your post, specifically to this:

I thought you referred to Nick's Affinity Tool trick not working which I demonstrably proved _does_ work. But now I see you were instead talking about Affinity _key_ for MMCS which I said I did not even bother trying because none of those keys could possibly work in Engine #4 (again proved in experiments mentioned).

No offence, your posts sometimes are not exactly easy to follow (to say the least :) ) but in this case it was me not following _very_ closely what you wrote so I misunderstood - sorry for that!

Back to topic: About the MMCS keys themselves I think I completely agree with you: I did not look at it before but now I read that link on MS site and it pretty much clearly states that all those keys are not effective unless application specifically asks to join MMCS as managed thread:

"Each thread that is performing work related to a particular task calls the AvSetMmMaxThreadCharacteristics or AvSetMmThreadCharacteristics function to inform MMCSS that it is working on that task." 

And the code sample they refer to (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb614507.aspx) clearly shows that application needs to call those APIs to have keys 'activated'. I believe Media Player is using those APIs as there was a much publicized scandal when Vista came out initially and it turned out it killed network speed whenever Media Player was playing music, lol - Culprit was, indeed, MMCS :) 

So yes - case closed on MMCS.

But maybe not quite, actually :)

Notice in my posts I showed that MMCS will indeed get activated every 10ms even with XX (Engine #3). While we can close the case on 'Profiles & Keys' being non-effective for XX, I'm afraid that MMCS is still doing _something_ as I can see an increase in #interrupts  whenever MMCS is active.

I don't plan to spend more time on this but I have been able to verify one thing that _does_ get changed regardless of whether those 2 APIs are used or not! It seems that system resolution timer changes from default 15ms to 1ms when MMCS is 'active'.
Gosh, who knows what else is that thing doing.....better to stay away from it....

Guys,

I agree with your comments Ivo and Peter that some code somewhere needs to make calls invoke the key values via MMCS.

I said I would do some tests to pinpoint  the MMCS registry keys that effect sound. The clockrate, affinity and systemresponsivness key values are defiantly producing subtle but important changes in sound with engine #4 on my machine (as it happens the values that I placed in my post are resonably optimal). With engine 4 playing the MMCS thread is periodically popping up and consuming processor time. Engine 4 will run without the MMCS service running but sound changed and not as satisfying. I have not localised yet which registry control profile is being called (I’m still applying changes to Replay, Audio and Pro Audio) but I will do this.

Peter has established that XX is not (so far  ;) ) making any calls to MMCS to invoke any of these registry settings, however it appears some code in my replay chain defiantly is. As I said before I suspect that this is either the sound device driver or possibly Vista when a sound card is registered by a program which is preparing to play music.

I don’t know if this presents potential for Peter in code but as a tweek something is defiantly happening.

Cheers,
Nick,
Ps When I first tested this registry edit some time ago I was using a Transit card and drivers. At this time I also remember being able to detect changes in music presentation with different key values.

That does not sound right: when MMCS is active it is 'on' all the time music plays (and it definitely should _not_ be on at all with Engine#4) - How do you determine it's only 'periodically popping up'?

I want to say AHOY to everybody (cuz this is my first post).I've been using XX for an year already but finally felt like writing since I have to share something,that might come in handy.To get the clue -I think it's of a rather different significance than SFS (even Engine and Mode) and crucial for SQ.
Reduce USB Polling!!! Well I'm using Burr-Brown 2702(6,7) USB Dac(with headphones I'm still waiting for my amplifier) but after I tried http://cicsmemoryplayer.com/index.php?n=CMP.07Optimisations chapter 7.3  step 7->Reduce USB Polling (with "idleEnable" value=3 =375mHz=3ms it came the  best sound so far) I have totally different sounding system and XX!!!
I suggest to everyone who have USB DAC or HDD to give it a try at 3ms or different value(maybe 2 or 4 can be the sweet spot or other)! 1ms sounds to edgy and aggressive like "hey look at me I've got it all" 3ms sounds more balanced and calm with more micro detail and stage.
P.S. I don't know where to post it so sorry if it's not the right topic  :)
Some additional info about IdleEnable values:
"by default sets the windows usb polling rate at 125mhz thats an 8ms response time to me and you. what does this mean, well, this equates to lag!
125mhz @8ms response time (default for the Windows)
250mhz @4ms response time
500mhz @2ms response time
And the highest so far:
1000mhz @**1ms** response time!!!"

Best regards, Chriss!

Hey Chriss, a warm welcome here !

Proper place for your post ? yes, the past few weeks everything goes in here. Not the best, but good for summarizing the bunch of tweaks you all come up with lately. And for yours ? thank you very much ... it seems a useful tweak - apparently when using an USB DAC.

At this moment I am not sure how the "1ms" turns out for its real merits. I mean, disregarding the device's buffer we should be able to go far (far !) under that with Special Mode and a couple of samples latency. But ... honestly ... you might be further on this than we are. At least I really don't know (not using an USB DAC).

In either case, great post and thanks a lot !
Happy times now !
Peter

Chriss - Just a question :

If you calculate for your output rate (like 24/96 etc.) the samples needed for the MHZ setting you use, and you select KS Adpative Mode and a Device Buffer setting which is as close as possible to that number of samples (but equal or larger) - and with Q1 set to 1 ... does that play well ?

Also, how low can you go with KS Special Mode looking at Q1 and the label above it (denoting the number of internal latency in samples) ?

The latter may say nothing much (as of yet), but the former will (there should be a relation to the poll frequency).

Thanks,
Peter

Hey Peter,
First my Dac is 16/48khz (it's burr-brown 2706 :) ) and I try A LOT of combinations with USB Polling and I found that 375mHz(this is value 3 as I sad) is much much better with Engine #3 not KS and I say it again MUCH better :) Adaptive mode ofc, can touch almost the bottom with 48 Buffer Size(in both Modes) but i prefer much bigger like 3072!(even 4096) and Q1 set to 1 is OK  but (different point of view again :) ) i prefer bigger values for Q1 like 12. I can hear that such a Q1 give me moore room and depth. In conclusion my USB DAC sound best (and a lot better!) with IdleEnable=3ms Engine#3 Adaptive Mode-over 2048, Q1 9-16, SFS-(here is very interesting :) ) for now  I can say only over 50! and for over an year I try a lot of 'combos' but this Polling thing (and XXHighEnd Team and mostly you Peter) makes me smile and cry for 2 days for since I try it!
P.S. Try to excuse me for my poor English spelling please :)
Best regards, Chriss.

:) :)

Chriss, I'm sorry but could you provide some source of that information? I mean the values and adequate polling rates. There are only two values possible for IdleEnable parameter - 0 or 1, AFAIK...

Holla Marcin,
well it's little bit funny and odd because http://www.cicsmemoryplayer.com/index.php?n=CMP.07Optimisations (site that I found in tweak  Vista topic) gave me an idea to try reduce usb polling. In Google there is only programs for it and info about values used in optical mice and special software for them. So I decide  to give a try only with the info from the up link with different values:) Just give a try and tell if it's an AFAIK...if it is ..then I'll stay FAIK with IdleEnable=3 :)
..seriously try it!

P.S. tomorrow I'll try to find some mouse software and try with it.
P.S.2 I know it sounds... crazy but I can hear a difference betwen IdleEnable-2 and IdleEnable-3 and 5.
Best regards, Chriss.

Hi,

Played around with the USB priosettings last night, initial impression: pfew this is powerfull stuff!!!

Upping the prio is like stopping down the diaphragm of a photolens (from f3.5 to f16), a lot more comes into focus and seems sharper defined. Could hear every instrument, echo and lyric like never before with setting 4. Maybe even over the top! It's a bit like decreasing the SFS, but with more result.

Lost some of the direct-to-mind quality though. Not quite shure if I'm happy with a new interacting parameter... :(

Now, let's play with 9y03!!!

regards, Coen

Chriss, I still don't get it how did you calculate these values? Assuming that IdleEnable=1 equals 5ms.

Hey Marcin,
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/mouse-dpi-and-usb-polling-rate.html here we have:
Polling rate     Response time
125 Hz           8 ms
250 Hz           4 ms
500 Hz           2 ms
1000 Hz           1 ms
The default USB polling rate is 125 Hz so=8ms
1ms=1000hz so dworf IdleEnable -1 (on=1ms=1000hz) (that is strongly my thoughts) I decide to try with other values (wandering where might be the other Hz and ms) and I found the difference. That's why i what to share it even i think to ask Microsoft for it.
Best regards, Chriss.

But that has nothing to do with IdleEnable parameter (?) which gives 5 ms when set to 1.

Marcin,
I'm totally confused now you have right about IdleEnable (0-off, 1-on) that's the logic but Vista is not 1ms as it sad in the http://cicsmemoryplayer.com/index.php?n=CMP.07Optimisations it's "USB polling frequency from the Windows Vista default of 125hz" quote http://forum.overclock3d.net/index.php?/topic/8088-vista-usbportsys-500hz-mouse-polling-rate/ you may want to try their  usbport.sys files for 500hz and 1000hz as I did. But honestly IdleEnable value 6 give dramatically  more sonic sound than any usbport.sys files. I admit that it's strange  and odd...maybe I'm going nuts...but I really love it :)
Best regards, Criss.

Chriss, your first link says:

Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}\0000
Right-click in right pane > Select New > DWORD > Rename to 'IdleEnable' > Set value to 1
Repeat for each subkey \0000, \0001 ... that has the 'Controller' key

Do you set it to 6 in stead of 1?

The usbport.sys trick only works for mice like they say on your second link, if I understand it correctly...

Yes but you can try other values like 3, 4 and 5(I recommended to try with 1 and then with 3-6 and Engine#3!)

quote:
The usbport.sys trick only works for mice like they say on your second link, if I understand it correctly...


Well it's an USBPORT so I think it's working for Ports no matter which device we use. I did not receive any positive impression yet from this usbport.sys. So still testing.
Regards, Criss.

Hi all,
I'm following this discussion for some days now and I have also "downgraded" to Windows Vista, same result as for you all, sound is so much better now. I always thought that we are talking about software induced jitter, but I'm using an Apogee Big Ben reclocker that should eliminate all jitter so that the resulting sound should be the same regardless of the input. But the difference in SQ is still so big that I don't believe that the bits coming out of Vista and W7 are really the same. W7 sounds more like XP, as if everything is resampled.
Can we exclude this possibility ? And if yes how can the difference in SQ be explained ?

regards,
Bernd

What version do I need the Vista 32 or the Vista 64 bit?

I'm using my old 32 bit home edition. Windows 7 was 64 bit. If that makes a difference is another question for me, I will try Vista 64 in the next weeks...

It does seem so, yes.

In principle, W7 _will_ resample as needed if you are not in KS or WASAPI exclusive mode but XX or even Foobar are both using those modes. However, if you select DirectSound in e.g. Foobar, all bets are off and chances are your bits might get resampled depending on your sound card. (BTW it would still sound drastically bettter than XP as resampling is done in 32-bit float as opposed to int16 in XP)

The difference in SQ is coming from somewhere else - I have tried compiling official Microsoft sample source code for WASAPI exclusive mode and while they report same latencies in both W7 & Vista the music is completely unlistenable in W7 due to glitches & skips! (not to mention SQ).

Why is there such a difference between W7 & Vista I'm afraid nobody here could explain....

Maybe it is related to drastic changes in W7 scheduling algorithm (AFAIK MS completely rewrote that part), maybe not... But you can try one thing which may make W7 more bearable: Try changing 'processor scheduling' to 'Background' as opposed to default 'Programs' in Control Panel - System - Advanced system setting - tab Advanced. Let us know if you perceive any difference!

Yes, I tried that option, but there is not a big difference (if at all). Another problem that is also solved in Vista is movie sound. In PowerDVD and Arcsoft player I always had short breaks with Hiface, even with 48khz setting (same problem on 2 PC's). In Vista this is completly gone, even 44.1 khz is working.
So it seems as if W7 is really doing some bad things that results in a change to the signal. If this would only be jitter then my Big Ben should be able to fix that, it is recreating the complete digital signal with its own clock, but there is still a big difference in SQ...

Hi Bernie,

There is really nothing new here, if you'd only know what I have been undertaking to create a DAC which would be immune to this all (and eliminate XXHighEnd's virtues with that). But it doesn't work.
I started this (DAC project) two years ago now, the sound has become the best there is, but the influence from "software" never disappeared. It didn't even get less from it all.

Peter

Ah, HiFace - so you're in USB camp....
Are you saying 44.1 does not work in W7? That would be interesting....

In meantime, couple ideas you probably tried but just to make sure - Have you:
- manually turned off Power Management for every USB Hub in your system? (see picture - by default it's on in W7)
- made sure you don't use any software that dynamically manages your CPU speed (e.g. RightMark) i.e. Power Plan = High Performance?
- tried disabling SpeedStep in BIOS?
- tried 'USB polling' tweak from couple posts above? (I'm a bit skeptical on that one but you never know....)

For audio 44.1 is working fine, only for video (blu-ray) it is not perfectly smooth with W7. With my old USB1.1 adapter it is working, but not with hiface. Vista and Hiface work perfectly together.
I have already tried to deactivate Speedstep (bios and energy settings in W7), but without big success. I will try your suggestion to disable the powermanagement for the USB hub, but I have the feeling that all these options will not give the Vista SQ from W7.
Or is there anybody who managed to tweak W7 so that it really sounds like Vista ?

Oh, your feeling is right: you will not be able to get 'Vista sound' - I'm just curious whether it helps resolve glitches. (BTW when you mention BluRay that may be related to having proper codec: I had extreme stuttering until I got a proper one....)


I'm afraid not...

Hi Josef,
I'm using PowerDVD, so the codec is not a problem. It's not a problem at all, I simply use my old USB-SPDIF interface which is working fine on W7. Only the fact that Vista does not have these problems seems to be an indicator for me that W7 is suboptimal for audio processing.
So I give up tweaking my 2nd W7 PC and go back to Vista. This solves all my problems and obviously sounds much better.
Maybe all these W7 tweaks can also improve Vista.... an endless story  :)

best regards,
Bernd

Hello everybody,

I think I'm gonna try XP one more time - slimmed&tweaked, minlogon etc. I remember I didn't like it some time ago, but now with new version of XXHE, Ramdisk and CPU affinity masks, it could be interesting... Maybe it's not too late and not everyone switched to Vista... haha

XP has one (among others) interesting option - it's called timeres and it allows to decrease 'waitable timer' from default's 7.8ms to 0.98 ms

Anyone using XP and Vista on the same machine?

Greets,
Marcin

I'll wait for your report Marcin! And what do you think about trying Win98 to? :)
Regards. Criss.

I'm sorry but Win98 is cr*p :)

True! Question to Peter, is it possible to run XX on Linux(I'm sure you already answer it but can't find the topic). I've been trying few Linux OS and music program on them but...didn't like them!
Regards, Criss.

W2K would be an option though ... :)

Criss, no, no Linux. Maybe sometime (when this small part is really finished), but it will really need a complete rewrite.
I've heard Linux implementations too, and didn't like them either. :no:

Peter

Hi Marcin_gps,





Are these posts related?

regards, Coen

Hi Coen,

Related to what? XP and Win98 are not the same, if that's what you wanted to know :)

Cheers,
Marcin

Hi Marcin_gps,

Thanks for the reply. So you tried win98 and disliked it, but still have plans for XP?

regards, Coen

Coen, I think the story is a little different;
W98 (or ME) is no "OS" as such. It is a toy.
Says me. :)

How to set it up Marcin?

Hello,

CoenP - I think that Peter made a good point here :)

Chriss, if you want to apply some serious tweaks, go to http://cicsmemoryplayer.com/ and knock yourself out, hehe
However if you play in unattended, you might want to skip Chapter 7.3, step 5 (change sheduler time slice), because it sets equal priorities for foreground and background processes, which may be good for attended.

Greets,
Marcin

Marcin thanks for the link but i found that 'The setting only affects multi-processor systems' :( I have only one haha no point :D
Regards, Criss.

Chriss - too bad, but I highly recommend that you apply the rest of the tweaks. It really works, I tried them some time ago along with cPlay.

Greets,
Marcin

Hi,

Tried those USB polling numbers from 1....5 and without the key at all.
So, it seems, the best is 3. Less and more than 3 sound is more harsh and flat, with 3 it is deeper and warmer, like that.

Ivo

p.s. Peter, my internet connection was a bit damaged (cable was squeezed somewhere) now it is OK, can access this place.

Thank you for letting me know Ivo.
(after a PM mentioning troubles)

a
Indeed, I'm with value 3 for more than week and it's the sweet spot for me too. ;) (so I'm not crazy ahaha :D )
Marcin I tried them ...yeap I can hear the difference! Hmm about Xp...hmm please try it I think it's not bad at all. I got better mid and high but kind of tiny bass. Still digging!
Regards, Criss!

I have also tried the USB Polling regedit and have found it very effective. the sweet spot for me is a value of 4 but its a close call between 3 and 4. I am also using a HiFace so it's interesting that Ivo and my results are converging.

Nick.

Yes, but you have different DACs and different systems :)

One question regarding Vista: I guess Vista Home Basic is good enough to start with for XX? Or I need some other Vista flavor?
Just got both HP and Basic, therefore before starting to install and tweak, would like some feedback.

Ivo

Another thing: which service pack is needed: SP1, SP2 or none at all? (I want to make a solid (for XX) system and want to do it once)

Careful : There's one topic or post floating around in here (or maybe it was an email, I don't know) about Home Basic not working. And as far as I recall I never heard it was solved.

I'm using SP1 and am OK with it. I wouldn't go without SP (quite some wrongish things in there).

Peter

OK, then I will go with Vista HP.

BTW, after installing Vista (I plan to vlite it first) when in Device Manager you uninstall some unneeded device, does it get installed back automatically on next reboot? If yes then how to make it not to install back automatically?

Ivo

There are two ways that immediately come to mind to achieve what you want. Firstly, if initially prompted to install a driver for something you don't want to use (for example the onboard ethernet feature that you choose to leave enabled in the BIOS due to running a dual boot environment ), then choose the option that says "do not install at this time" and "do not prompt again for this device" ( or words to that effect. Going on memory here! ).

Second way is simply to choose the "disable" option when right clicking on an entry in the device manager. That should stay intact across reboots OK.

Give it a try.

Cheers,

Russ

Thanks Russ, I will try to do so.

Regarding Vista: is having SP2 is OK? or SP1 is better?

Also Peter, can you remind the link to the post of XX requirements? Want to check before start vliting everything out of it.

Ivo

Ivo, don't know if there are other links but you definitely want to check this one: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1426.0

I have the day off tomorrow and am planning to create a vlite version also.

I'm running SP2 on my Vista Ult X64 music system and haven't noticed anything to make me think it's an issue.

Russ

Ivo,

Put Shut Off UAC on top of your list.

Don't forget to reserve some space (like 10GB) on the OS partition for Galleries for a couple of 1000 albums, might you (ever) use them.

I don't know much more right away what you won't already know.

Good luck with it !
Peter

So, working with Vista HP SP2 via vlite. It seems I cut off too much, as even the installation failed :)

I thought maybe those from you who have vlited Vistas can post here the "Last session.ini" file. So, we can apply it for our own Vistas, ah? Or at least take look at it.

Ivo

If you followed instructions from my post then it's more likely vLite simply does not work with SP2.
But here's my .ini file so you can check...

Thanks Josef!

Ivo

Pity :(
I was going to try next week

I don't see how it wouldn't work for with Vista SP2 - it certainly works with W2008 SP2.

OK, I am off. Cannot solve no way.

My Vista installation from USB stick fails with the error:

"Windows cannot copy files required for installation. Make sure all files required for installation are available, and restart the installation. Error code 0x80070070."

Tried full Vista SP1 and SP2 as well as vlited, all the same. At some 3% pops up error and finita la comedia.

Someone knows something? Cannot find anything useful in forums. Also I have no DVD drive.

Ivo

Better burn the ISO on dvd if possible,

Should give less problems, its (probably) not about a "wrong" vlite created vista, its about the way you install it........so burn it, then install.

Roy

PS: I wish i had the time, grrr  ;)

Ah, that's something else - I had the same problem and it drove me nuts: I guess you had Win7 installed before?
Turns out Win7 will create a 200MB partition for BitLocker before 'real' Win7 partition.
Unfortunately, Vista just assumes that first partition should be used to copy installation files so it will use that small partition :(
You'll have to delete BitLocker partition (if you are not using it) or move it after your Win7 (or Vista) partition. Think this one will work: http://www.extend-partition.com/free-partition-manager.html

Note that moving partitions around is not recommended if you have important files on HD without making  a backup first.

Josef,

Thanks. Yes, I have Win7 and I want a dual-boot system with Vista. Actually, I looked and there is 100 MB "System Reserved" volume. I guess you talk about this, but it is not 200 MB. Anyway, I have a tool and will try to move it after Win7, e.g., the C: drive. Let's see how it goes.

Ivo

Just a general remark :

This kind of stuff is "able" to turn your OS into quite some different from what, well, another receives from the same install set. Think in areas like "when you upgrade from XP to Vista, it will always stay XP under the hood (and for some things) while a clean install will just be Vista.".
But ...

Whether you upgrade or not is not 100% under your control, exactly for the reason of the lasts few posts here.
Somewhat longer ago (maybe 12 years) when not that many tools were available, I once ended up in a situation that only a new disk would solve the install problem (which just was not clean enough). A year or so later I found out that a low level format of the disk would at last solve all (this can't work per partition, so it is not a solution to the problem of the last posts).

Peter

OK, I got the Vista finally. I tried various approaches and ended up with installation on another SATA drive.
So, it seems I vlited too much as was not able to run XX:

1) it did startup with message that startup failed.
2) I was not able to activate it: Peter: do you need network for activation? I took out network completely from Vista install.
3) XX needs .net I guess, so probably my Vista did not have it.
4) What about Vista's activation: there was not the usual remind about activation after 30 days in the taskbar right corner? Does it mean if there is no network support, Vista can be left forever unpaid? :)

Ivo

Ivo,

You do not need network - in fact, you want to get rid of it for best SQ!
You do need .NET as XX is written in it.
You will need to activate Vista with a legal key - not doing it is illegal, so don't even think about it even if you find a workaround, it's just wrong!

As for 'cutting out too much' I will refer you to my post once again.
Please read & try once more - as Marcin reported he got vLite to work with Server 2008 SP2 it _should_ work with Vista SP2 as well!

Ivo - why not show me this message ? maybe I can see what's lacking. Also I sent you a PM about a new Activation Code you may need.


Btw, I am not 100% sure what happens if *all* of the network stuff isn't there. I mean, I look at it via normal commands, and don't anticipate on the commands not working. And I don't know whether they are or not. But I didn't hear about problems in this area so far (but not 100s of people are doing this of course).  But you will only know after getting an Activation Code for *that* system.

Peter

Peter,

1) When I launch XX, I get this in a regular small XX window: "Proper initialization FAILED, so further errors WILL occur".

2) Today I tried to configure XX, but discovered that I cannot select engine4, but instead receive the error: "The Core Audio Engine cannot be explicitly chosen" and some more text there... So I was able only to select engine3.

I guess that I have vlited out the Vista's core audio components, that is why I get the error #2. I also was not able to get any sound out of XMPlay player.
I think I will rebuild the Vista once again and be more humane, so I think everything will work then.

Ivo

Yes, but this is after the "real" message ...

You should be able to put your key in the install iso, but that requires an OEM version not retail I think.
I for sure do NOT want to go online to activate the OS.

My experience : Once yoyuhave (!) to do that because it doesn't go automatically (which is on-line also of course), it won't work anyway. So, it goes automatically, or it doesn't work at all.
What I'm actually saying is : when it works it works, and when you -then- explicitly want to activate, be careful not running into dead ends. Normal (automated) telephone procedures won't work either, and you will need a new key from a human at the other end of the line.

Btw, I would say that if the thing isn't asking for activation it's bad luck, never mind it's not legal. But, it's still not legal anyway. That is, if you don't own the license. If you do, what's the problem ?

But there's another pitfall I experienced once :
As far as I (properly) recall, it can happen that no activation is required because the thing is so smart to see that you're not on-line, so it just can't succeed. This is an indirect thing, and maybe it is preceeded by a question somewhere in an early stage "do you want to activate on-line ?". No, I don't see this message ever (today), but you can manouvre the OS in not asking for it. Next, when the "trial period" has expired *and* you have to set your IP settings because you didn't do it before (may be related to the intelligence of not attempting), you won't be able to do it, because you are cut off before you can enter those things needed to get internet access. Something like : "Expired, do you want to Activate now ?" and you can only say Yes or No, Yes implying to go to the Internet without IP settings which won't work, No implying system shutdown. You won't be able to get out of this.

Moral :
Don't be too happy the OS is not asking anything, because it still may happen later. *If* that happens, you should be able to go to the Internet, or otherwise you're up to a new install.
I think this implies that you should have internet access all the time, because if not, you can't reach the settings which will allow you to (could even be Enable Network Interface Card).
One possible option is the BIOS; If you can shut off Ethernet in there, it will be a matter of settings that On, and then all will be fine for that one moment it's needed. But better test this in advance.

Peter

Hi guys,

I spent few days on XP configuration - nLite (few attempts to achieve the smallest possible size), many many tweaks (minlogon, regedit tweaks, ramdisk etc). In the end XP reserved ~40MB of RAM, 2 services (4 needed for XXHE) and was lightning fast. I had quite high expectations, but unfortunately I was disappointed with SQ. Everything seems to sound flat and lifeless, regardless of player settings. I think that XP has it's own sound character which is on top of everything, because I tried other players and sound signature was very much the same. But I discovered one thing, that may be interesting - SQ remains virtually identical regardless of CPU speed/vcore. Is it a good thing? I don't think so -my previous W2008 installation was so transparent, I could easily hear even smallest changes in the player, regedit, not to mention CPU undervolting/underclocking. Was it worth the effort? I guess, now I'm sure that W2008/Vista is the best choice. Oh, and XP has one other disadvantage - I couldn't get IRQ affinity tool working, and therefore couldn't get maximum performance out of it. Now I have to install W2008 again, brrrrr

Cheers,
Marcin

Hey Marcin - thank you for sharing all this (and your attempts by itself).

I wanted to ask ... couldn't you approach this somewhat differently ? ... What I mean is this :

To me (software or DAC) such a thing happened quite some occasions. Thus, theory good, sound lousy. Now what ? back to bad theory ?
... I have NEVER done that ... and always ended up with better sound. Could take a year, but still ...

So let me tru to put it upside down :
What if all the sh*t which is added to it all by the less lean installation is something you perceive as lively ? This is not so difficult, you know. But let's say you can recognize that indeed adding sh*t is making the sound better, for a next thing you wouldn't want that. Right ?

Back to normal again, what if you now have something with the least sh*t possible, but it only doesn't sound well. Who says it is your OS doing that to you (remember, by means of adding the least sh*t possible) ?
What about all of the other maybe dozen things which influence ? maybe exchange some soundcards again which shouldn't be good in the first place (just making up things, but I know you tweak in that area with unexpected results). So :

If I were you (and I really would do it), if I'd notice that it should be good but it isn't, I'd seek until I drop dead what the real cause is (rather than changing my own good theories). I'd especially do that, because I have learned it works (but then of course I always have good theories, hahaha).

In order to even more motivate you for this (but hopefully not in the wrong directiion), hear this little story :
You will remember from a week back or so how I said I heard never such an analogue sound from my system - after some new tweak in the software. Well, up till today this still is so, although now at last I'm almost done with getting rid of "it". What ?
Well, as I told in that other topic, I heard some strange ticking noise through the right channel, on track 2 of that particular album. Well, first it was the left channel because I exchanged cables by accident (this is not important, but tells how easy it is to make mistakes), but secondly I found that the particular ticking and noise came from a general bug in the software - only unveiled by that new tweak.
Yeah yeah, Peter heard some unbelieveable analogue sound, even including (45RPM vinyl) ticking which just is in everything, and not only in more silent tracks. Good !

Not.

So, what's in my mind obviously is that I was fooled by some vinyl noise, and there is no super analogue sound at all. Ha. No ?
Well, you can bet I will keep on thinking that, but the noise WILL go away, because it doesn't belong there. Next I WILL keep on challenging that analogue sound, because under the hood it is still there.
What a normal human being will have done, is untweak that tweak and go on. But I refuse(d), and so far it's taking me a week to get things right.

You should take that week too. Or 4, or 5.
Please try to think in areas like "how can it be so that my only modest system sounds so good". I know, this is very strange thinking, but in the end it should not sound very good. But ... it can, if only some sauce is over it. A bad sauce.

Ah, I'm twisting my brains to explain to you that good theories must sound good, and when it does not, it's something else to blame. I say it again : in 100% of cases it worked out for me, but (e.g.) don't look at the throughput time (DAC example). But I gained and I gained and I gained.

If things start to sound consistent (like a "character" of an OS), this is a GOOD thing. It means (to me) that frequency response is more normally (flat) behaving. When this is not the case, it takes virtually nothing to shift the misbehaviour, and while in one setup the sax sounds like a trumpet, in the other London Beat singing sounds like a cat. If all is right, nothing shifts, only the volume level, but equally.

Ok. Although I can't put it into the right words, I think this is one of the very most important lessons in audio.
Peter


PS: I hope I can say it ...
Roy came to a similar conclusion. But Roy knows his system can take a 20K upgrade before "it" is allowed to judge these things to their real merits. I mean, how can you think there's too much bass from vLite while your speakers are not "authorized" to produce good bass to begin with ?
Things are  99% of cases not what they seem; I had an engineer over the other day, and he brought his own speakers. There was bass all over the place until his speakers were replaced with mine. His official report said "the bass disappeared with Peter's speakers". The poor man forgot that the bass coming from his (own design) speakers was not able to tell whether we heard a double bass, synthesizer or ship horn. Reference reference reference.

Peter, I agree that's why I'm gonna keep XP installation along with new W2008 installation and make some more comparisons. Maybe I have a 'bad' day or maybe not? My opinion is a subjective one, which is the same for everybody, but if I like the sound better or worse, I can put a 'quality tag' on it, even if it's an OS garbage or sth else.

Looking forward to hearing your tweak :D

Cheers,
Marcin

In reality, apart from obvious suspects like 'Indexing/SuperFetch' etc (i.e. high I/O usage services) most other services just sit idle and have zero net effect on SQ.

I'm afraid Vista simply has too many architectural changes which are beneficial to SQ (in theory). For example, thread scheduling is drastically improved and let's not forget that whole audio stack has been completely re-written from XP (just look at addition of MMCS service as an example what kind of attention MS has given to audio playback).
Likewise, I'm also afraid that Win7 has introduced several more kernel changes which might make for a better 'general-purpose' OS but result in worse 'audio playback' OS and, sadly, it seems those changes aren't reversible...

I doubt you will get better sound from XP but do keep us posted - it makes for an interesting read!

I have a dutch version of Vista Ultimate x64,

Can somebody point me to a English version, or a link.

I will spend my whole 17 days of Christmas holiday to vLite it.

But I really need a ENGLISH version, to start with.........

Somebody....

Roy

Marcin, please notice that Josef's post is beautifully counter productive to what I said (stupid english :)). What I mean to say is : what he says is very plausible, and in that case you will never get it better, just because it is not in the base.  But ...

If anything adds to the broadness of stage, depth, livelyness - relative to a given system, it is noise. So, it is just your flatness which makes me think it is better. But it is also stupid theory, only given by the "fact" that noise broadens (and noise might be out of the way).

Isn't audio difficult ?

Btw, wasn't it much more easy before ?
haha



PS: if you have a firly good system, play an MP3. The stage wille WIDER.
So, is that a good thing ?
How wide should "a" stage be ?
We don't know ...
Maybe if all is 100% right it's flat as a pancake, and therefore we shouldn't strive for that. :swoon:
Back to W7 ?

:nea:

Peter, all this can be avoided with an OEM version, like I said, which is pre-activated (or can be made so).
Anyway, if you BOUGHT the license, it doesn't matter what you do to stop the activation nags (there are other ways more brutal that work).

PS: Those thing re-asking for activation usually happen AFTER some "security" updates that you downloaded and installed. I'm NEVER going to do that for the Music PC.

Roy you have my ftp link in last MONTH mail, forgot about that? :)
Try to start with a SP2 OEM vista x64

Hi guys!

Once the pride of the setup, my dedicated music PC now seems angient. I am going to build a brand new one to benefit from RAM etc. That will have to wait until end of the year.

However, going back from W7 to Vista is easy. I can do that tomorrow. Is it worth it? Will I hear any SQ improvement from W7 vs. Vista? (Everything else unchanged).

Thanks in advance,

Okayyy, you you managed to post this in the proper topic but can't find the answer ?

More answers tomorrow. Haha

Pedal,
yes there is significant difference:
-first the start up logo is blue and green
-there is button for quick window switch(which i still can't find in w7)
-some cosmetic and visual things
-and YES BETTER SOUNDING ENGINE! But I think you can get it from all the 23 pages in this topic hahah :)
NVM try Vista and listen music that's all for now.
Regards, Criss.

Guys,

I now run the re-vlited vista hp sp2 32 bit and System properties show that Windows is not activated. So, will it lock down in 30 days? I have taken all network out of the OS. What are options here?

And tell me how are you doing with your W7s and Vistas? You all have legal ones? Do you activate them?

I am just curios if it is possible to create an extra small OS vlite image for music and also get done with activation?

Ivo

Thanks Criss!

I had Vista in the past, but with some minor hick-ups regarding Remote Desktop. W7 has been perfect in that regard. But SQ is first priority of course, so back to Vista!

Are there any particular VISTA version which is best?

@Ivo: no worries it's not XP there is no 30 days..I think.
@Pedal: try 32bit Vista Home Premium SP1/SP2 it's okay too.

Ivo, when I recently purchased vista and installed it in my dual boot system, I did not install any anti virus software and turned off all such native stuff in vista cause it never sees the internet. I did get the "thirty day" message and found that you can register it by phone. Here's how: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/10/13/how-to-activate-windows-vista-by-phone-activation/
Its simple. You call and are asked to input you registration key; then you are given a registration number that you input on the computor and you are done....no more thirty day messages. Hope this helps.

Ivo,

You are only "alowed" to run Windows on 1 PC.
So if you make that call, boleary talked about.

You will get a Q like: do you run windows on several PC's
ANSWER: NO

Roy

PS: you have an option in vLite to put your reg. key in, use that.
      This way you can do a unattended install.     

And the 3rd way is to geniune it(crack it) If you have original serial number I don't think it's a crime!
Criss.

That's interesting as, purely in theory, due to its infinite tweakability Linux could be made superior to Windows (including current 'gold standard' Vista): Are you at liberty disclosing what were those Linux implementations you heard?
 

Linux is the best resourse/stable OS but unfortunately(or not) Bill's boys have done better work with sound engene/drivers. Ofc I hopes that in near future Linux will give us sound blasting but for now kUbuntu, gNome and KDE sounds dry and skinny :(
Criss.

It has been a longer time ago now (over two years ?) and at that time things were "measured" by achievable latency - hence how real-time is that OS really ? As you will know MS systems claim not to be better than 20ms in general which is a total laugh if you look at the 1ms I use from the start (WASAPI) which is a kind of virtual because timer resolution is wacky near 1ms (and "normal" officially can't go lower), but this was before KS. And as you know we can now reach 1/88200 at 32 bits easily which is over 100 times lower than 1ms. So, how real time do we want real time to be ?
But as with W7 (where that numbers are reached), what does it tell ? not much about sound quality ...
Of course, I start about "real time", but that at least always *was* the argument for Linux, including "tweakablility". But next ... this implies more tweaking than low latency or anything. That we know now too. On the other hand, be careful, because at watching closely there aren't all *that* much really working out tweaks for SQ. The most we apply ourselves and is outside OS related stuff (like RAMDisk, copying at the right time, blahblah), and the tweaks that really should work out for SQ ... I don't know.

Even saying that Vista is better for SQ because it was more made for it ... I don't know. What I do know though that it works reliably, and at least I can do what I want, and it behaves how I expect. Not so with W7, and it is exactly there where it goes (and went) wrong. If I say (in the program) I want A to have priority over B, this doesn't work in W7 because it seems to have its own rules. Now *that* is important to me and SQ, because I'm in the blind, as is SQ because of that.

Btw, I don't have the experience on XP here (I never really used it for playing). Not really true, because at fist there was Engine#1 (which was Direct Sound) and already that sounded better to most people than any KS/ASIO from that time. But XP has other nasty things like limited buffer sizes here and there, which went away per Vista.

Peter

> And as you know we can now reach 1/88200 at 32 bits easily which is over 100 times lower than 1ms. So, how real time do we want real time to be ?

Excellent question!

It's pretty impressive that you can get 11 microseconds latency with your DAC - I am not able to even get close to those numbers :(
Could it be because of USB (my case) vs PCI (your case)?

If such low latencies are indeed important then due to way it works seems USB would be doomed in this regard? :(
 
In other words:

- what is your position on need for low latency?
- and do you think that for 384kHz playback a latency of 1/384 i.e. 2-3 microseconds might be needed for absolute maximum performance?

I have read quite a few discussions on this subject and people generally seem to fall into two camps: Either they believe low latency is absolutely necessary for high-quality audio playback or they completely dismiss the idea and even go in opposite direction by _increasing_ latency ('just get bigger buffers' camp).

Also, on this forum while pretty much everyone has moved to KS it seems that there is significant amount of people using Adaptive vs Special mode. Wouldn't it be interesting to find out if people with USB statistically tend to prefer Adaptive and vice versa? (Would you consider making a poll on the forum? )

(Please note this post is not a red herring: I've been reading around and it seems 'low latency playback' is a super-controversial topic that spilled a lot of blood in some internet forums. I'd completely understand if you'd rather choose not to answer and risk being vilified in some of those other forums. However, as someone who has spent years on getting 44.1 to 384kHz and making it work in both SW (ArcPrediction) and HW (your NOS DAC) it obviously makes you uniquely (and much more) qualified to voice your personal observations). 

> If I say (in the program) I want A to have priority over B, this doesn't work in W7 because it seems to have its own rules.

Wow - I didn't know it was that bad :( I thought it's just design changes in kernel which made W7 lose it's luster over Vista....
But if you are seeing such bad behavior then maybe it's just a bug and there is still hope for W7 - Perhaps it's an idea to try SP1 (think it's in RC stage now so pretty much done) and see if maybe MS fixed it?

I don't have much time right now, but the subject is interesting, I'll try to spend a few lines on it for now;

First off, *that* buffer sizes influence is clear to everyone I think (by now).
Those claiming that low latency does nothing, often go along with the statement "it isn't necessary for audio playback" (while it is for real time (midi etc.) live playing).

Next the subject has to be divided into two parts :
1. The buffer size of the device;
2. The buffer size of the software preceeding that.

#1 already has been audible to me always, and as it always was : the lower the better. But let's skip this one for now, because it's a real rough one, compared to what #2 can do.

#2, before, played a role just the same, but I think it was over-shadowed by #1. This was before low latency KS (Special Mode), because generally the software buffers were larger than the device buffer. It sure did something, but #1 ruled over it.

Today, with (actually ultra) low latency KS things have become very different. Now, what's in my mind is that the software is operating at such low latency level in communication with the driver, that actually this operates at (near) the same level as jitter. That is, it mathematically should be, if only that part of the process would be subject to jitter, which it officially is not. But :
While everything within the PC hence software officially is not (up to and including the driver), it has been proven easily that whatever it is, it influences. Not jitter, than something else (noise that incurs for jitter at the other end, whatever). However, no matter what it is, if it influences, now it influences at the jitter level (because it operates at the (near) sample level).

I come to this (and after reading your post Josef), because I suddenly seem to recognize plain jitter at using KS Special Mode. So, it doesn't work out, but *does* imply more detail. I think everybody would agree with the latter. As said more often, for special "ambient" music this is superb, because almost always this is about normal detail (but detail you won't find in e.g. Jazz) while nothing is there to disturb like a woman voice or real violin. It's synth details, often added with drums and cymbals, may they be sampled or not. It can't go wrong, and the detail is "needed" because it's there (especially on the synth level). Now, why wouldn't this work with a woman voice etc. ?

Let's say that the detailed communication is able to separate the samples better at that level of the communication (like in : use 8 samples for buffer size, and per 8 samples you'll have additional detail). Again, *how* it works we don't know yet, and we only know that it *does* influence.
In the mean time, and just *because* we operate at this "sample" level, the timing becomes outrageously important. So, the buffer runs near empty, and just in time it's refilled again, and this happens each 8 samples. Now, the message "buffer near empty" is not synchronized with the filling of it (both will run in different threads to begin with -> driver and playback software) so this already may create a huge amount of jitter (noise jitter, haha). So, the message as well as the filling both raise current draw in the system, and both create noise, that by itself influencing the DAC ...

Suppose this holds true, there will be an additional power going on (and this is a very strong power) : the power of resonance. Again, the timing of the message (buffer runs out) will have no real relation to the filling of it, and you can bet that it can happen that at one time the buffer is refilled while 2 samples are still there to play, while another time this will be one only. In the long term (but think under ms here) this will be a repeating pattern, and the current draw (hence noise) will show a pattern too. And at the other end this emerges as a jitter pattern.

This jitter pattern will not be a commonly known pattern, already because it was created by two sources. So, not a sine, but a more nasty pattern. So, theoretically it will produce an "unknown" (jittery) sound to us.

I shall admit that most (if not all) of this is based upon a perceived *real* better detail to begin with, which is a dangerous assumption. I mean, for the same it could be about a more squary sound, which incurs for faked detail. But I don't think it is, and I never heard someone perceiving it like that. But well listening through this all is the most difficult, and possibly I can't do that.

Peter

I don't compare my technical knowledge with yours. I am simply a long time audiophile. I tried W XP and W7 with J River software. Was not happy with the sound with either and decided to try Linux. At 75 years of age, I am not really literate with computer operating systems so this was a real challenge for me.

Tried 8 different Linux distro's and settled on Ubuntu 10.04 as I was able to upgrade it to the latest alsa drivers. Once this was accomplished, I have been very satisfied with the sound coming from my Benchmark HDR coupled to my McIntosh MC-275 amp. Sound quality is simply the best I have heard.

Happy that you have had success with Vista and hope you find may followers with your software.

Bill

Bill,

I am almost 2 times younger than you ;)

Are you saying that Linux+ALSA is better SQ than any Windows OS? Can you describe what is the difference like? How huge is that?

Ivo

Hey Bill, that's quite some thing you've achieved there. I mean your age in combination with all this hocus-pocus. But then you had quite some years to warm up of course. Anyway, hats off. :thankyou:

Ivo, Bill comes from JRiver area and it is not "SQ" related at all, but adviced for its useability. And so, many do.

I can't be sure, but I don't think Bill ever got XX running which is not his fault (merely mine of course).

I think it goes too far to say an OS "sounds" as such, but it will be the players for that OS making something of it (within that OS). Maybe W7 is an exception, haha.
It would be great If Bill can and wants to answer the question, but keep in mind the context.

Peter

Hello Bill
regards for started up Linux+Asla it's not an easy job for any age! Well I tried it 4 months ago and I must say that Foobar+ASIO on UNtweaked Win7 sounds better to me. And there is HUGE difference between Tweaky Vista and 'Basic' one. Plus RamDisc and SSD (I'm playing from 8gb Flash and it's  :veryhappy:) Keep the experiments and try our little digital eden :)
Regards, Criss.

>Tried 8 different Linux distro's and settled on Ubuntu 10.04 as I was able to upgrade it to the latest alsa drivers. Once this was accomplished, I have been very satisfied with the sound coming from my Benchmark HDR coupled to my McIntosh MC-275 amp. Sound quality is simply the best I have heard.

Wait: 75 years young, playing music via computer (after testing EIGHT! _Linux_ distros!) and listening on McIntosh 275???   :thankyou:

Bill - Don't tell me you actually got your McIntosh in 60's when they originally came out? That would be too much :)

We need to put this into perspective guys: McIntosh 275 is still made today based on original design from, what,  1961?!!! (gosh, I personally converted from transistors to tubes after hearing that same amp....)
I mean, can you imagine Apple selling Apple II in 2027 and some kid even looking at it?????

Wow, I wonder when I'm 75 if I'd still be up to try, hmmmm, Windows 17 or 8 Linux 203x distro's :)
 
Bill - Respect!
Post of the month!

PS Peter - May I suggest something gets done about that GUI (a default 'simple' mode perhaps?) if for no other reason than to get Bill to still another level: I mean, where on Earth can you find audiophiles like this? No such forum anywhere..... :whistle:

Josef, I must honestly say that when I wrote this :


I thought : gosh, hopefully it isn't true, but it just as well can. But I didn't think much of the GUI here, but merely about the problems people can encounter I just don't know about. On that matter, the more is posted about this (instead of leaving the game before it started), the better it will be. But who does that ? very few I'm afraid.

Btw, amongst us are more near 70 guys than you can guess. But I think 75 beats it all. Really really great to hear.

Peter

Agreed!

But surely anyone who can handle 8 Linux distros can handle little ol' XX... come on, it's not as difficult as that!

Mani.

While you do have a point there, as Peter said, we don't really know at the moment what was the actual turn-off reason. Hopefully, Bill will elaborate on specific issues.

But, now that you ask, (Peter, it's manis fault :) ) regardless of specific problem, I think an easy case can be made at least for default 'sizes': first, XX window is small hence everything feels pushed into an artificial straight-jacket (why is it small? to save space for something else? what? and making XX full-screen will leave everything as unreadable on 1024x768 as it is on 1920x1280 (even worse)?), font is too small hence hard to read (again, why? do most people really demand to see every song title in playlist on-screen even if they need magnifying glass otherwise they refuse to hit 'play'?) and what about those super-tiny buttons all over the place that even I (admittedly, a tiny bit under 75) have trouble hitting much less figuring out what they mean (icon for Quality Panel means.....what? And button to the right with 'X' means CoverArt Cache, obviously, right?) so I'm forced to hover the mouse over and read explanation in an even smaller font size? (and don't even get me started on opening/collapsing panels again seemingly saving space for ... what exactly?.....)

Heck - don't get me wrong, I really don't mean to be negative (rather: constructive criticism).
Of course JRiver a.k.a iTunes-like interface also has deficiencies & can be improved as well!
But wouldn't it make sense to do it the way most people are used to instead of re-inventing the wheel?
So most people can just 'use it' and enjoy the music which was the point anyway - wasn't it?

Hi Josef - The answer is fairly simple ... because people with 640x480 screens exist ...

But my opinion : if you work with the 1280x1024 standard (and its wide screen derivals), I really don't see a problem. But since you talk about such a derival (1024 x 768) - which is larger (unless you use that on an 8" screen), maybe I just don't understand.

Please notice that the only option is making the screen larger - and with that the buttons. Not only the buttons, because they won't fit. And I'm thinking touch screen here, where larger buttons my physically still fit, but can't be touched without touching the adjacent.

I said it before, if we think that 1920x1080 is normal, well, ... we've got something wrong, unless it's on the 32" and larger tV.

I really appreciate the input on this, and if people have problems on 1920x1080 it really *is* a problem, but not really my fault. It's unusable at normal display sizes (call that 20" at most), unless for photos / movies and CAD stuff which is *made* for that. All other is not, and you'd have the same problems.

If I let go of the 640x480 (which also is not normal of course !) then no "PC" inbuild screen (like OrigenAE) could be used.

Make two versions ? brrrr
Make it scaleable ? later.
Make it scaleable right from the start ? next time. :)

So, always my fault, but nothing much to do at this moment. I think.

Thanks a lot,
Peter

We have discussed the size problems before. I for one is staying with 09y-8c for now due to the visibility on my 1920x1080p displays.

The sound is very good on 09y-8c here.

I tested Vista Ultimate x64 SP2 against Windows 7 x64
Both were booted in debug mode for best performance. In debug mode most services are shut down.
The better latency that could be achieved with vista was obvious. I got about 30us (best about 10us, worst about 60us). With W7 I got about 100us (best about 80us, worst about 160us).
I tried different settings with Vista but at the end I choose the same as I use with W7. Everything was set to the same paramter. registry was changed in the same way (usb IdleEnable=1). I restarted several times and listened to the same two tracks on each OS (the hunted-kodo, Vicente Amigo). It always took a while to reboot. But at the moment I would say, they sound almost the same. That is my first Impression and as always, I might change.

Well done! But, I think Peter once mentioned that SP2 practically turns Vista into a W7. So "the best" is to use Vista only with SP1. (Who said this was easy?)

PS: I just tortured my computer friend to get me an out of production copy of Vista 64. He will never forgive me if it was all in vain...

Flecko, are you able to repeat the experiment with Vista + SP1 vs. W7?

All the best!

Pedal.
Aren't you mixing up Vista with Server 2008?
Windows Server 2008 SP2 is like Win 7 and Server 2008 SP1 like Vista.
So use of Vista SP2 is no problem.
Correct me if I'm wrong!

:swoon: (where is the "slam head against wall" smiley?)

...I have vista 32,64 SP1 and they both can not be installed because of a stupid error "cannot find install.wim". I organized a new version but I thought SP doesn't matter...OMG

If so, it would spare me a lot of work. Can somebody confirm?

I hope I never said Vista SP2 is like W7 ...
2008 R2 is (indeed).

Peter

Sorry for the confusion. I mixed up. SP1 or SP2 does not interfer with Vista SQ.

I don't have experience about VISTA vs. W7, apart from reading the reports here on the forum. But my new PC will be ready next week together with the arrival of the NOS1. Then I will sink my teeth into this VISTA matters.

I use W7 on my present PC, and have to say I am very happy with SQ after I upgraded to 9-z3. I wrote a short review about it here. (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1432.msg14398#msg14398) Seemingly I got similar SQ improvement with W7, as others get with Vista. But this is of course impossible to state exactly without doing a head-to-head comparison. Eventually, what I hear with W7+9-z3 is a step in the same direction. The paths of different starting points becomes more similar the closer they get to the mutual target*.


All the best!


*I was so satisfied writing this sentence of Hi-Fi philosophy, that I had to put it in bold. LOL

Can you elaborate on this somewhat ?

Pedal you inspired me to remember:


(The Sayings of Kung Fu, the First Season)

That might just be it...

Update: After installing grafikcard, soundcard (rme) and network driver the latency of vista got up to the range of 90us. I assume that it will be also in the same range of 100us like W7, if everything is installed. Sound quality didn't changed noticable. As example: I listened to z2 again (same settings). The sound difference is clearly audible. As SP doesn't should have an influence to SQ I will stick with W7 because it is a lot faster than Vista and works flawless. I keep Vista as second install to watch HD-DVD, that is impossible in W7.

Well, it’s like 2 men climbing the same mountain. One starts from the south side. The other guy starts from the north side. Their routes are completely different. But they have the same target, and the closer they get to the top, the closer they get to each other. Eventually they join each other at the top.

I have same experience with Hi-Fi.
A “typical” modest priced tube amplifier sounds very different from a equivalent transistor amplifier. But when you start “climbing” up in quality, the tube amp gets less soggy, more tight and transparent. While the transistor route improves in areas like smoother, less mechanical, etc.

The more you advance their qualities the more “similar” they get to each other. The very best tube amplified system I have heard (@Leif) is so transparent and with such a tight bass, that you think it was a top transistor amp.

-And when I upgraded to new opamps in my transistor amplifiers earlier this year, my first thought was “wow – the treble has got a kind of tubelike naturalness and “dark” character.

Best regards
Pedal (turning philosophical while waiting for my NOS1 to arrive…)



PS: RECOMMENDED LISTENING:

If that is true, it means we did 25 pages in this thread for nothing, he-he.  :grazy:
I hope/hope not it is like that...

(Although I think this topic was the key to discover the SQ improvement when playing from RAM, wasn't it?)  :goodjob:

I didn't listened to it very carefully. This should be done with more concentration. But it was just like..ohh I started vista instead of w7. Doesn't matter just want to listening some music...It pretty much sounds the same as I know it...why takes it so much time to open my explorer...lets have a look at the latency...wow it got 90us...I just didn't feel it changed.

Just to make it clear because what I wrote could be a little mistakeable: I did not listen very carefully to soundquality difference of vista with 30us and now vista with 90us. I listen very carefully to the diffenrences of vista and w7 yesterday. But it was 7-8 pm, a bad time to listen to music because everyone is turning on his tv, pc, microwave or whatever. I have no power filter, what makes the sound inconsitent over time. That might be a problem if you compare two operating systems. The time between the listening is long and maybe someone has turned on the microwave in the neighbourhood in the meantime, while the system is booting. If you will hear a different noise, it could come from a car driving by your house or somebode is walking down the stairs your ears might adjust to that sound. After that, the sound from your hifi might sound different to you. Comparing under this condition is a lot more difficult (if you are looking for small differences) as normaly, when you just have to press a button and the sound changes. As I compared Vista and W7 my perception changed from W7 ist better than Vista, to Vista is better than W7 and the other way round. I will listen to Vista and W7 at another time (9-10pm) and I will try to get the latency down again. Then I will listen more carefully to 30us compared to 90us. But my impression at the moment is: There is no or no big difference.

Flenco,
no offense but yes OS is the second step in the audio (digital one) chain(ladder) and if you don't hear the differens Vista/W7 (and if you tweak is huge one for Vista) than you might need to change the other components in your audio system (or you're deaf...well it's more cheap :D ). Accoustic tread is require electricity chain is very important 2 so...start change the 'hardware' first than you''l get the required difference in OS :) Without bad feelings just really try to help.
Regards, Criss.

Of course, one can think that my system is not resolving enough or I do not hear good. The bigest weakness in my system, I would say, is the hiface and that I do not have a power regenerator or something like this. The rest of my system should be good enough.

At least I can hear up to -45db distortion (depending on distortion) with my system in this test:
http://www.klippel-listeningtest.de/
I am very sure I should not get the "rusty ear" award :P.

As I said. The difference between z2 and z3 is easy to hear. You can judge yourself how big that difference is in your system. That is why I mentioned it, that you have a reference what I can hear in my system. But as it is on my system, the difference between vista and w7 is not so big that it can easily be heard. I set it up very seriously to not misjudge it and I am not finished yet.

And also without bad feelings :): It is often like that, people (me too) want to hear a difference beacause they beleave there should be something different. And of course the difference they now found is better than what they had before. If you like to hear something has improved, you will hear that something has improved (and sometimes it is a real improvement). I have many expamples where I fell for this psycological effect myself. No problem, everyone is doing that. I think there are a lot false positives bacause of this effect. Take the example: If some guy pays 1000€ for a cable, it sounds different and he can think it is better. He payed a lot of money so it must be better corelated to it's price and what the press is saying. Everyone knows there is a difference between cables but just to a certain technical point and then it is just "magic" or taste.

And that is why I am saying: At the moment, there is no significant difference from W7 to Vista, if you set them up the same. But this opinion might change after further listening.

If you ask me not the HiFace is the problem...XLR is a profi standart not a HI-FI it's made for long feet cables with decent quality...BNC coax. you use in first place is much much better! I don't want to star another war but Class-A ...for the price you pay for it...two monoblock with tubes will make you regret for the late choice :) and stone TL? why? are you speleologic guy? There is only one material for TL, Horns, BL/Front loaded etc etc etc-WOOD! There is only one material for speakers-PAPER (with leather surrounds) no other place for nice or cute or interesting or whatever even if i want...that's like nature laws, it's a lemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemma_(mathematics) ). Think about it and try change the XLR cables first! :)
Criss.

I will give you my philosophy.
Why BNC: Here we have the same opinion, good point to start. For Rf: Constant Impedance, Low damping, good shilding.
Why XLR: It is not only ment for longer distances also to reduce aditive distortion. There is a positiv and a negative signal-> aditive distortion canceled out. I tested this with different real balanced amps. The improvement is far from subtle.
Why not tube: High distortions, microfonic effects, transformer in the signal chain. All things you do not want in your hifi-system, unless you are a fan of distortions :)
Why Stone: Ever touched your speaker while your hifi is on? The enlocure is vibrating and you feel and also hear that. I have a compound material made of stone, glue and wood that is dead like...like stone. That is how it should be. The driver should makes the sound, not the enlcosure. Of course the TL sounds too but just as it is mentioned to be (waveguide with additive interference in the bass)
Why metall cone: I had paper, sounded good. But metall (hard membranes) sounds cleaner. They have cleaner waterfalls untill the resonance of the cone. If you filter that resonance you got very good sound. I would not argue on that point. Paper has the advantage of a less strong resonance, so you can make the filter simpler. Both fine for me

I know what you mean but it is not some kind of nature law, that speaker should be made of paper and leather and enclosures shoud be made of wood. You can make speakers from different Materials. That's how it is.

I listened to it again. There is no audible difference between W7 and Vista. :tomatoes:

Flenco,
what is your PC configuration, your hardware?
Criss.

ASUS P5QPRO mainboard
Core2Duo E7200
Thermaltake Fanless Powersupply
Geil 2GB RAM
XX played from RAMDisk 512mb
Samsung F1 500gb Harddrive

Configuration of Window:
(usb idleEnable=1)
All services off - (Debug-Mode (msconfig) or TuneUp 2011 Turbomode)
xx settings:
copy to xx drive by standart
sfs=150, sfs.ini=01

The rest should be written below.

There is some more regedit tweak : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1412.0 do all from Marcin's advise and try with IdleEnable value 3 ...but i doubt it to hear some change when you don't find it in W7/Vista. Undercock/undervolt the CPU is important too. Update DIOS drivers, ram is good to be on one stick not 2 or more. It's good to put the pc chassi on tree legs on the ground or in level rack and you can put the PSU out of the chassi to the ground too(well yours is fanless but you may still try it. Buy or DIY a good power cord! Change the fuses with old ceramic ones(in main power)!  Unpluge the dvd, led's and you may try hdd in outcase not in the main chassi(f1 is a very good hdd but try ssd or little one for OS like 120gb or 80 for less power consumation and vibrations). Very good pc configuration overall fanless cpu cooler??? If not do it! If you can afford a lcd 14 inch touch displey you will get of from the mouse and keybord power consumation and big lcd or CRT monitor(I'm looking for some kind of wireless remote cotrol from my other laptop to navigate if someone can help)! Things like lower brightness and no dadicadet video cards are good to (p5q is without inboard so try to find some vga with 16 32mb :) ). The mobo is with decend capacitators Fujitsu RE 560uF try Mundorf if you want http://www.partsconnexion.com/capacitor_ele_mundorf_all.html
Criss.

Thank you for the advice and kindness. I will try some of them. But you see my system is not that bad. my hdd for example is mounted in a zalmann cooler which decouples it from the enclosure. My pc has two very slow moving fans and is damped from the inside (bitumen + foamed plastic). It can barely be heard. My TFT powersupply humming is louder than my pc (I turn it off for critical listening).
When I tell friends, I want to improve something on my hifi, they say things like: "how this can get any better?/are you crazy?". Yes I am, I am an audiophile and of course it can be better. What I want to say is, if there were a significant sound difference between Vista and W7 I should hear it. Maybe a little difference can be heard if you set up two identical systems, so you can switch between them quick. But if the difference, you might hear, will come from the OS or from slightly differencies (production deviations) of the hardware you could not tell. And further, W7 is essentially Vista with improved performance. How should a more efficient OS be worse? That makes no sense if you assume that shutting down background services and less load increases audio performance. Unless there have things changed, touching the audio processing itself. But if xx with kernel streming is affected by something like that, is also not sure.

Hi Adrian,

W7 works totally different for most aspects I use in XX, and it is actually totally out of (my) control.
Vista is not. Not at all, in fact.

Btw (might be important) I explicitly agree with everyting you told in your lasts posts, also knowing you somewhat longer of course. I -although- also know that your findings are not always consistent with others' - and maybe there is some key. Some base you might have "wrongly" so to speak. *If* you really *have* no difference (where "have" is different from perceiving it) you might have some lucky combination of things, though things you can't recignize yourself (otherwise you could be explicit about it (the setting etc.)). This chance is small I think. And so the chance is higher that something prevents you from perceiving the difference, with maybe at #1 not knowing what to look for. For example (but this is a combination with the equipment), the "silkyness" I perceive from Vista (opposed to W7) is very similar to the difference between a well setup i2s connection (silky) and SPDIF. So, in my theories you'd only need poor jitter figures to end up with a similar sound in both OSes. A very long shot of course, but totally plausible if so (poor jitter) in the first place.

Here, the difference is a 2 second job BUT I (of course :)) coincidentally use those very good jitter specs in the first place.

Maybe this helps you ? (and mind you, with the reason of getting the sound better and not with you being wrong or anything all over).
Personally I'd never blame very poor sound on the PC hardware. It may matter, but it's a bit BS too. At least I don't care about it, and I have the best sound of ... ah ... that's not true anymore I guess. Haha.

HTH !!
Peter

Ok, good to know.

The strange thing is, that I can hear a different, as said before, from 9z2 to 9z3 but I can not clearly hear something between W7/Vista. I would not say that there is absolute nothing, it is just that I could not hear and name it until now. But that means, the difference can not be so big in my case. But you agreed on that already I think.
The things people say about the w7 sound, I don't hear (hard highs for example). I get silky highs and tight bass also with w7. And there are also a lot of people using w7 in this forum. It can not be that bad. And the ones changed to vista, a lot of them didn't had a chance to make a listening test right, because w7 was erased and instead vista installed. I wouldn't trust myself if I had done it like that. And you can argue like this: If there are tweaks for vista that make it sound good and that should have no effect in w7, then maby vista needs this. This is just an assumption, and I of course don't know how the things are realy be done, but from my point this is a valid argumentation. If things should change for me, you know, I will report. I will keep vista because of hd-dvd ability and then I will check from time to time.
I do not think I have poor jitter. The hiface has about 45ps and the pll in my dac has about 21ps typical. It is not great but good. But this will definitly be better after I get a better usb-spdif converter (I hope it will be some day).

I don't know. At the moment it would help to get together and hear, discuss and show eachother what we hear. But that is not possible. It is difficult because everyone has its own standard, so you never know what other people think is good sound or bad sound.

Hey Adrian,

Currently I am listening to W7 again (after being used to Vista for some two months). The difference (nothing much different from what I described back in December 2009 and indirectly what I wrote in the beginning of this topic, but now looked from W7 again) :

In W7 there is an ultra fast on/off sound. It influences everything and all. Especially horn instruments get over-emphasized. Women voices are not clean anymore. High-pitched instruments (cymbals) incur for overtones near the audible level (12KHz for me). It flares.

Generallly it is more rough. Just not clean. But careful now, because the sound I have here may be described as the most clean (it's not only me saying that anymore, and it's just the NOS1), so everything which is not jumps out.

Furthermore the sound is somewhat more dynamic (maybe not good) and the bas is generally less fuzzy (good), seems more tight (stiff). Maybe there's more slam too (would be the same as the stiff bass).


The on/off I talk about can be at a frequency higher than audible - would it be a sine. But it is no sine, it's just on/off (like a synth could physically do it).
Right now I'm listening to a "side flute" (???), which is one of the most clean sine instruments when leaving out the flowing air. With W7 it is not clean (pure) at all, and goes towards a tenor sax ...


As always, not to be right on things, but knowing this, maybe you now can hear it too.

Regards,
Peter

You better install SP1 RC1 before making any judgements about W7...

Man, what's wrong with you. Take some time to get a decent vision of things.

Maybe, just MAYBE you mean well. But I don't see it at this moment.

There's nothing wrong with me. Install SP1 and write your findings about SQ again. I'm sure they would be quite different as the SP1 boost SQ a lot, like a loooot. It's a piece of advice, nothing more. I don't see anything wrong with it, do you? Maybe you're trying to find sth wrong with my attitude, but I don't mean to be rude :)

Cheers,
Marcin

I encourage everyone to insatll SP1 RC1 on W7. The sound is a million times better and I'm sure that there's someone to back me up on this at the moment. But that's just the tip of the iceberg :)

I guess nobody can be 'smarter' than you on this board, but I'm not trying to be! I'm just very confident, because my ears 'are telling me so' and I want you all to benefit from it too. Gosh... Why would I want to start discussion anyway? I've learned so much here and I'm very grateful to you and everyone else for great support. Maybe you'll change your mind once you lay hands on SP1 and start to believe in my words.

Kind regards,
Marcin

I guess it's ok Marcin. It only looks that you like to go against anything you can find. Remember, me and Adrian were talking about W7 as we know it. So let my judgement about that be. Also remember that there's another way to express what your findings are, like you did before (PM); apparantly that didn't last long  :) (see ?). And it happened before. Well, you know, and also you know what a stir can imply once it is too soon to be real.

So, you mean well, and it's okay. Just don't forget your own "protective" expressions which you sure *can* have.

Lastly, it may be my mood. But I won't tolerate "bashing" on someone like Mani with a seemingly background which we'd call the "kift". I don't know the english for it, but it's in the directrion of jalousy. You will understand (think further) and *not* to offend by any means. I only want to say, I'm a bit biased, and my thinking shouldn't be emphasized.

Again, you mean well, and your judgements are (much) valued.

Cheers to you, and let's continue on anything for the better !
Peter

OK. I'm looking forward to your findings about SP1 than.

Hey Marcin, this SP1 fell out of the sky like a christmas-star?
Where can we find this or just google?

BTW. Since you're at the front of computer-sound-experiments, would you be so kind to share your findings?
It would be nice if us NOS1-less suckers can have the best possible sound for our Christmas-songs! ;)

Thanks you took time to listen to it again. How did you set up the installation? Same PC, same settings just a different partition?

Ok, I will listen to this sound signature.

I will give this a try after we discussed the normal version. Thanks!

Today I got a new CD. Very good recording, so I started again to listen to Vista. And yes, today I hear a difference.
Sound for W7:
Harder more emphased highs.
Tighter more controlled bass
More dynamics and transparency (could be because of the harder highs)

Sound for Vista:
More relaxed/analog highs. Softer.
Bass is not as precise. Muddier.

would say:Vista is for the tube guy and W7 for the transistor guy.
or: Charakterristics of vista z3 sounds a little like w7 with z2

@Peter: Try SFS.ini 01 with w7. 21, 11 sounds to emphased on the highs.

I like to see where things go with SP1...

Well, isn't that great Adrian ! (if you only didn't copy my words, hahaha).

So I suppose this is helping eachother (as said, -thus- for the better).

I must honestly say that I liked the "more freshness" of W7 yesterday, but some things disturb too much.

I've downloaded SP1 (RC) already, but first there's normal (DAC) wordt today. So, later. But I sure am curious (thanx Marcin).

Peter

Jep, it realy looks like this :) But I think that is how it sounds. I spend more time defending myself than to listen to vista and w7. And it needs some time to get rid of expectations to really listen. Maby it needs a good mood too. I excpected a big change and it didn't happened. If my amp and dac is cold, vista could sound nicer but  after 1-2 hours of getting warm, it is just right with W7. Maybe I should check vista again now...

That is the problem. Every day one hears the things a little different. Did you tried sfs.ini 01? It has just the right balance in the highs.

01 ? ah, no. But I will.

I got the Windows 7 SP1 RC release here: http://www.blogsdna.com/13301/windows-7-service-pack-1-rc-released.htm

The sound is great though I have not done a direct comparo with Vista....yet.

Windows 7 SP1 RC is much better than original W7. After several days of listening am sorta blown away by how good SP1 it sounds! Is it better than Vista? May be a matter of taste but it has a clarity and transparency and warmth (sfs ini @ 00) that I'm liking more than my version of Vista. Thanks again Marcin!

Me happy having a dual boot.  ;)

Marcin really thanx i like W7 with SP1 better than Vista. Sounds great!

So it is W7 time again!! Like that better then going back to spinning disk.  :wacko:

 :)

I just want to say...GO GO MARCIN!!!
No metter which OS is bettter I appreciate the Columb passion for discovering and searching!!!
Once again Thank you Marcn for sharing no matter is it good or bad that's the way we improve and discover the world!
P.S. Let's call him our digital Columb!(no joking!)
Kind regards,
Criss.

It's definitely better, enjoy :)