You are perfectly right. These are very useful tips (merely because of speed), and while I apply them all my life (ok, nearly), I never thought of mentioning it, nor did I think about it at people with response / speed problems. So, my bad I guess.

Anyway, you have it right (as I actually pointed out already), which leaves the reason in the blue for now.

If you make all unhidden files show (like I have), maybe those files are then counted in as well (what about a 20GB Swap File hehe).

Peter

Aha Thomas, your "low Q" explains it all ...

(although I must first say that the effect is much less on XP compared to Vista)

If you search in here for "standing waves" you may find what this all is about ...

So ... try to pay attention to whether you are hearing "illegal" bass from other players, or just too thinny sound from XXHighEnd;
One of the things I "claim" is that standing waves won't bother you. You just hear the bass as it is, and not the room mostly creating it. The advantage is that that you can play way loud (infinitly for that matter) *and* you can recide in the room wherever you want (no calibrated sweetspot needed) and keep on perceiving the music in balance. No DSP is involved here, more more accurate playback is.

Try to imagine "think" bass waves incurred by inaccurate playback, oppposed to "thin" bass waves by more accuracy. The effect ? bass waves won't easily meet anymore. The chance is just less because they occupy less space.

The real effect ? perceiving individual vibes from bass strings, while otherwise it is just a low tone.
Try to find a surface that is willing to vibrate with bass waves (a bar would be an idea). While you did not "learn" to hear it yet, you for sure will feel it. The difference ? nothing with standing waves, and vibrations (like from 80Hz or lower) when all is as intended.

When you tweaked your system in advance to how you are used to things, you will have turned the bass output more low (think of XOvers, or even bass knobs). If so indeed, try to put everything back to neutral.

Last resort for me (hehe) : if you are using a DAC with Opamps in the output stage, blame that (and I am the most serious). You may recognize that because of sub low output (under 40Hz) being OK, but the low right above that being not.

If you can't agree with anything of this, please don't hesitate to say so. But also keep in mind : YMMV because of using XP, and while most say even that sounds better than everything, it is really not 100% under my control. Vista/Engine#3 is ...

So again, please let me know after now knowing the above.
Peter

BUT

(... I thought to put this in a separate post)

this is not your issue. Look at the "Size:" and "Size on disk:" which is exactly what I was talking about. In my case as well as in your case there's hardly a difference, which will be the case because the smallestcluster size is the default (and the smallest is the best for the OS disk, as well that it is the best for the Gallery files). Keep in mind your music disks though, which really should have the largest cluster size, with which you gain much speed, and don't loose disk space upon.

So ... where did your bytes go ?
Q : how much discount did you get ?

Here it is rather consistent. 50.3 ~ 50.4

Keep in mind though that this is - or may be to a large degree determined by the cluster size. For the OS disk, assuming all those small Gallery files will be there, this should be the smallest. This, opposed to the disks holding the real music files, which should be the largest (64KB).
If you don't pay attention to this, each small Gallery File will consume 64KB, while actually it is some 100 bytes only. 64,000 time less ...

Now watch my 274,000 files (the largest part is Gallery files). Times 64,000 I think this is over 17GB.

Moral : always think of (a) the tradeof between faster reading at large files but slower reads on small ones (when cluster size is large), and (b) slower reads on large ones but faster reads on small ones (cluster size is small).

Submoral : when choosing for (a), you will loose disk space on many small files, and when choosing for (b) you will have utilized disk space optimally.

You may need to read it 5 times, but it means that disks containing small files merely must be formatted with a cluster size meeting that small size as good as possible, while disks containing large files *are allowed* to have a cluster size meeting that (and 64KB is far far less than the 20MB ++ files containing music).

What about sleeping on that ?
Peter

PS: Good that you bought a 64GB SDD ... hehe

Oh yes, this will be very normal;
During playback all resources go to that playback, and all other things will slow down because of that. So, that cpu graph has to be redrawn each time new data is available, and that goes slower now. You see that as a "flicker".

Ah Thomas, that's good. Thanks or mentioning it. I was almost up to it.

In XP the Q sliders can't work. Sorry, but this is Engine#3 only, which means Vista (or W2008 or W7).
In the earlier versions with Q2/3/4/5 those sliders were enabled by accident (but did nothing).

You can find a brief outlay on them here : Q Parameter Settings.


If you mean tone/color *controls* then I must disappoint you. XXHighend is not about any means of DSP, and instead tries to pass through the bits as 1:1 as possible (up to the DAC-Out).
But did you mean controls ? if not, can you elaborate a bit please ?

Peter

Hi Rob,

This is hard to say, and obviously you expected it to be better instead of worse.

Besides the below, let's keep in mind that nobody that I know of (for XXHighEnd) uses a PCI Express soundcard. And, while I myself would expect that PCIe should be better than normal PCI, it is very different anyway.

First, however, I'd look into those "DSP" settings in there. The "normalized volume" could be a first you overlooked, or even set on purpose.
I think you will know that all of these things should be shut off, right ?

Now, since you will be using this for analogue out (opposed to SPDIF Passthrough), anything could differ, because you're just using another DAC. And you won't hear me say that Realtek is specifically bad (in fact it seems to be the only mobo chipset people use here and there). So, I'd say that when nothing else can be found (the DSP stuff) it may very well be the DAC you are hearing.

Lastly there's this :


This looks like a virtue, but may also tell you that an opamp is in order while in the Realtek there is not (this needs diving into that chip), and which - when one has not and the other has one - is a good reason for very different sound.

I hope this brings you somewhere ...
Peter

I think it was in this topic that someone said "long live the backup facility from Windows !", but the other day I tried it (for moving to my SSD), and couldn't find any means to perform the restore !

What I do : get the OS disk out, and mount it in another PC (not as the OS disk). There make a backup of it (I use Adonis), then restore to the new disk on either that PC or another.

An Image backup via Adonis on Vista itself from the live OS disk, does NOT work. Well, not for me. After the restore to the new disk Visa boots, but the desktop remains completely empty, and nothing can be done.



Try to think the SSD emphasizes. So, what you hear is the emphazation of something which is not right in the first place. At least that is my experience.


Do you use the latest drivers ? (I guess so). How officially Vista compatible are they ?

Why Roy ?

Maybe your soundcard contains explicit settings for different sample rates ? And because you let it fixed on 44.1 it won't go on others ?

Hi Thomas,

The uxsms thing (for XP) is a known bug that got in in one of the latest versions;
That XP won't produce sound I did not know (I'll try myself later today and let you know).

Thanks,
Peter

I just found out that - up to 0.9x-7 - the default settings for all Q sliders is at 14. For Q1 that is correct, but for Q2/Q3/Q4/Q5 this is wrong, and it should be 0 !! (as the more untouched sound).
This will be solved for 0.9y.

Peter

All I know is that this should not be necessary. If you hear a click or gap or anything, something is not right in your system. Could be a disk spinning down too soon.

You are right that preconverting everything like with Unattended will solve a few of these things (if not all), but it is really not setup like / for that, and this is not going to change.
Better find the culprit !

(I recall that you have a zillion glitches and all per track anyway ... dit you solve that ?)

Mwah, lightning speed ... I don't know. But twice as fast, yes.

As I understand, no world record, but here is mine.

Btw Roy, maybe this message came through, maybe not, but the Galleries really should be on the OS disk.

Hiya Dave,

I thought I was the only one on the globe not to have any anti-virus stuff on my PC's wherever. Nice to meet someone else who thinks he has everything under control himself.

I must honestly tell though that in two occasions things went wrong afterall;
One was at work, lending my PC to a collegue in order to arrange for some things on my PC I thought he was better at (he was, but needed a virus to get there ) and the other occasion, only two weeks after that, was my wife DLing an audiobook for the DSLight, saying to herself "hey ! that is an .exe ?!?" and click it. In the latter case I could save the PC after a good night till 5am or so with some good whiskey, but in the first case I had to give up after some 4 days of trying to recover.

So yes, I'm in the leage of those who think they can see it happen before it really does. But sometimes things are not really under your own control.

One advice I have :
Besides antivirus software actually always slows down your PC to the point of it being useless - so better don't have anti-virus software for that reason - just have it at hand IN ADVANCE. I mean, nothing is worse than needing it at the moment you don't know what to choose, and you really have to buy this one, and that one and another one, just because most are a kind of hoaxes. I can tell you, you really don't want to buy that software when your browser doesn't allow for it anymore (because of that smart virus), and you really don't want to buy it, learning that it won't work in Safe Mode, which of course isn't in the small print. So :

When nothing is the matter and all is up and running, take the time to buy something which is really good, just lay it aside after that - ready to use when you need it.

Guys, this is not for you just using anti-virus software actively already. You are used to it, and to your satisfaction (I suppose). So this is for people like Dave, who just some day may get into deep sh*t, by own fault or not.

2c after one challenging night and a real bad week (no whiskey at work )