Well, I now have accomplished the most difficult task of it all : compare the DACs output with the original digital data. Took me two weeks only, and although not directly to the benefit of XXHighEnd, I hope we audiofreaks will benefit in general. Ah, no, I'm sure you will, because I'm also 100% sure we're al hoaxed by official measurements. 0.00002% THD blahblah ... prrrrt.

Ok, my DAC is Non Oversampling, so it will produce 40% THD (or whatever measurements try to fool me with), but one thing : NOS will be the most representative for what's in the WAV file, and what that brings you can see below. And you could say that already brings nothing much.

The red line is where the digital data is, and the black lines show where the DAC plays (or where it's off). Top is the left channel, bottom the right.

Btw, if you hear a kind of p*ssed voice here, yeah, that's a kind of how I feel. This all s*cks so much all over that it seems a better idea to make my reel to reel noise free, somehow. On the other hand, it shows a. the truth of digital, and b. the enormous amounts of improvement to achieve.


Ok, what do we actually see ?

The white small graph around the red line is the representative of the transients. Transients are the more or less steep changes in volume, like a smash on the rim of a snare drum will create a high transient. The second picture shows the transients better, because they are higher there. It may take looking at your monitor from more below or above to clearly see them (because of the white on grey).

These pictures weren't taken to show explicitly what I saw : there is a relation between the direction the transient goes and the direction the DAC is off. When the transient shows below the red line, the "distortion" (the black line) will be above the red line. Look at the first lower dip of the black line (both channels) in the first picture, and see that the transients are at the opposite of the red line.
What functionally happens is that the transient goes to the minus (volt) direction, but the output wave by the DAC stays behind and is more posititve than the digital file. Remember, the digital file is at the red line, so when the black line shows above it, its voltage is too high.
The other way around, when the black line is below the red line, its voltage is too low.

In general you can say that there is no - no - no - way the DAC can follow anything of what it is dictated.
And remember, this is unlike the earlier graphs which showed differences between settings and players ... this is just the absolute reference compared with the digital file.


Now let's look in more detail to the first picture. At the second time the black line (both channels) come above the red line, you can see that the transients are not in one direction only (like more and more and more positive amplitude), but in both directions (high plus, high minus, high plus, high minus) which might happen with a fast frequency like from a snare drum. Now look at the transients from left and right, which are just about equal. However, the "distortion" is not equal ! The left channel gets inconcistent, and the one few samples it is more plus than an imagineable average line, and the next few samples it is more minus. And oh, that imagineable line shows at the right channel (bottom).
The bottom picture shows this even more clear, and I can tell you this is throughout; The left channel of my DAC is even more incorrect than the right channel. Something is just wrong, and it shows clearly. Note though this is at the "unmeasurable" (hahaha) uV micro level.


Allright, this is just an example of what can be done now, and as you can imagine it is now possible to find the anomalies of players or settings in an absolute sense. However, thinking twice you can also see that it is not said that it is more easy this way, and this is just because the DAC itself is so much off in the first place.

On a side note, think about this : when the DAC would better follow those transients, various other things would go wrong, like bursting speaker driver diaphragms when the amp can follow in the first place. So, it is clear to me this can be much much better, but to a certain extend only. When things become real good, other parts of the chain will collapse, I'm sure.
This is also the reason why hires material really doesn't make it better. The inividual digital steps will be smaller, but the general transients will stay, and the DAC won't be able to follow anyway. Not by a mile !

Oh, obviously this is from my "super duper" NOS1 Phasure DAC, and I can tell you that a new version of it is coming up. This time it will have a kind of infinitly more "fast" analogue stage. Yep, that's the attention point now : very fast analogue parts. And we will see what that brings ...
(it has been a kind of quiet around the NOS1, right ? ... not for long anymore).

Peter


PS: Before one starts to compare with the earlier pictures ... the horizontal (time) scale is equal to some of the earlier pictures, but the amplitudes you see in the black lines have been devided by 10 here !! (or otherwise the graph would be outside of the picture all over ... so bad is it).

PPS: I must put forward a very small disclaimer : The ADC (Fireface800 in my case) is involved too of course. But I think this can follow everything, just like the digital data and the high transients in the WAV file at some stage came from an ADC. This is just measuring voltage from one sample to the other, and making that a digital number. I don't think much can go wrong with that, as long as the "measuring device" in there can measure fast enough for the time it has for the one sample; I don't think a greater (high transient) or lower (low transient) voltage difference between samples will influence the value the measuring device presents. But maybe it does, and if so we're looking at the ADC for a more or less part, and all doesn't say much.

Odd ... The only thing I can think of is that you are running out of memory. That is, when a reboot helps that is a kind of logic.
On that matter, try setting "Split file at size" (Settings Area) to 100 for a while (but maybe you already have that ?).

But when does this happen ? At start of playback ? in the middle of a track ? at the end of an album ?

But if anyone else has this, please let me know.

The "data" like Playlists and everything reside in the folder you denoted with "Data Folder" (Settings Area). When not set it's the folder where XX resides, and then indeed you'd be loosing it when you install to a new folder.
This data folder should not be a sub folder of the XX folder, because then you'd have the same problem.
If it's not clear, please let me know !

Peter

No issues so far. The more days proceed, the more I'm amazed what difference this brings.

Gerenal remark of my wife at squeezing out of her the difference she perceives : all is more clear (like in cristal clear). I think this is true;
Everything what is in there is just expressed more. Pronounced better. Emphasized in a positive way. More straight. More steady. A player plays with more self confidence. Blues is like "I'll tell you what blues is" and love is "I'll teach you what love is".
More direct is another way to summarize it, I think.

Only if I start from scratch, which implies two days of downloading and instaling stuff for the development environment.
This is what happens when you buy a PC with preinstalled software, and it is in "your" language. I seem to be stuck on it forever.

I won't do that ever again.


The audio stack has some nice improvements. Not for SQ I think, but for analysis (which I'm working on for a few weeks now) it has.
But ok, I got as far as SP1 (isn't this the third time now ? ) in english (the official install still being dutch). On the SSD/Vertex of course.

Peter

... which it does.

Bad luck.

Hi Jeffc,

For my part ... constantly working on it. But, not on the listening;
As you can imagine I can spend my time better on just proving it by measuring, and when I don't measure a difference, these is no difference.
Note that I measure the DAC output, so that really will tell it all.

You really don't want to know all the problems I run into, but I guess that comes along with doing things which officially can't be done. Or weren't done before anyway.

But push as you please; it may even help ...
Peter

Half a year later ...

Back on an SSD (OCZ Vertex) and ... man, what a difference. I missed this !!
Now let's see whether this one keeps on working. But I'd almost say, if not, then not. I'll apply a restore and in 20 minutes I'll be playing again. It's really worth it.

Dave, Leif, I even turned down my Q2 a bit. I thought it could take it ...

True ...
I have already downloaded all. Since W7 RC doesn't support dutch yet, I'm trying to go via Vista SP1 and the multi language support (and additional download for that) to W7. It will probably fail ...

Hi Martin,

I think most of what I can say is covered in this post : Re: General feedback, any possibility of XBMC support as a front end?

Anyway, I understand what you mean ...
Peter

Well, I found another album ("Now" from 2001), but I must honestly say that Stevie Wonder with Songs in the Key of Life sounds young and fresh compared to that. My wife said I'd rather switch to Tavares, and that did it for me. Out.

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=692.msg6125#msg6125 

Ok ok, I'll get it.

That red track thing isn't so obvious at all. Try Google, and see how many people ask about it. Anyway IIRC - a year or so ago - I ended up in exactly one link with someone who knew.

Dave, FYI : As you may recall I deliberately set Q2/Q3 back to 0 to get the real merits from the stopped services. I kept that up for quite a while. However, the other day at testing with these analysis, Q2/Q3 by accident got stuck on 30/30, and it was only the next day that I started to recognize just what you said in the quote. Yesterday I payed attention to it explicitly, and it just seems to be so.
Even "meat on piano notes" would be a good one to state. Like I earlier said that a piano would get less dry from it, I now hear the same for bass. It's more spatious, and to me this comes as a good thing.

Telstar,

Interested in a TEAC P10 ?
hehehe

Hi Mani,

Besides that I don't have that album, I don't understand what you want us to try.
I know about these kind of tracks, and once they are ripped (I forgot how to do that, but aren't those the ones shown in red by EAC ?) they are just normal tracks. For the computer there's nothing like counting down or anything. It's no other track than otrhers. But :

This is different for Cue Files, because in there all is officially denoted, and IIRC indeed in there you'd see something like minus times for the first track. XXHighEnd supports this, and what you see from that on the screen is again nothing. Could be a track 00 in the Cue File case, for those situation no track numbers are present in the track names; I then take them from the Cue data.

Peter