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:

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. 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

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!

He-he, I can image there are plenty of hinders of all sorts. I know from my friend (the amplifier manufacturer!) that it takes a “billion” numbers of details and parts to make a complete Hi-Fi piece. Manufacturing is NOT as easy as it may look from the outside.

And, as usual, 99% perfection is not good enough, because the 1% wrong will get all the (negative) attention. So it really has to be 100% perfect.

Be sure to take your time and don’t rush anything unnecessarily fast. Waiting time I will kill having some fun here on ther forum.

BTW: Likely, my NOS1 will be returned to you for multichannel upgrade in order to run my 3-way active system directly. This will happen after you have added XO-functions to the XX software. So, it will be an opportunity to implement also other tweaks or upgrades you may have discovered in 2011. In other words, I am not afraid of missing something with this first batch of DACs, because upgrades will be retrofitable.
 

Hmmm, I am beginning to see a pattern here, and it is alarming.

We have waited for months now, to lay our hands on the NOS1. But no DAC to be seen, only lot’s of words and a poor photo. Not even a proforma invoice. Each week Peter is coming up with new excuses. He has to look at this or that, subcontractors are late, new features to be implemented, he must re-listen again and again. Etc, etc. Bla, bla.

I am afraid Peter has developed the Hi-Fi Manufacturer Motherhood Syndrome, aka HIMMS. It’s a well known mental disease infecting small scale producers who has devoted their life to their product. During the development years, they identify themselves so much with the product that they become unable to part with their puppies. Physical signs of HIMMS are black spots on the skin, beginning as dark rings around the eyes, then spreading all over the body.
 
I have seen this happen before with a local Norwegian amplifier manufacturer in the 90s. He actually refused to sell me his new €10,000 top model. He was afraid I could not offer his invention an environment fitting to its attributes and potential. (In the end I managed to convince him by visiting him at home, and later on we became good friends).

HIMMS is most common among small scale producers, and especially with their first production run. Typically they have a trial serial production of 100 units plus a prototype, totally 101 units.

Peter is unable to part with his 101 puppies, and he sees every customer as Cruella De Vil, who will only abuse the NOS1 in a wrong system and disapprove the sound of real square waves. He even wants to buy it back if you cannot offer it a proper home and caring.

The manufacturing business was intended to be profitable and successful, but after he got struck by HIMMS, unpaid bills are piling up and his wife is crying for a new dishwasher. It’s becoming irrational. Unless the first pieces starts shipping out soon and favorable feedback starts pouring in, I am afraid Peter will forever be lost to HIMMS.
 
Peter, if you don’t send out the pro forma invoice within this week I fear there is something wrong going on in Eperweg 53, and that I will have to pay you a visit. I’ll bring cash and a rucksack.

He-he, yes, this is a quite funny observation.

When PeterSt. releases a new version it happens frequently that users give feedback like “ahhh, this is much better than the previous version! The SQ improvement is then described in big words.

From the release thread there are about 120 updates so far. If you added all the “ahhh’s”, you might think the sum would make up a huge improvement all together. Well it doesn’t.

Not all updates were about SQ, they only addressed user interface or some other non-sound issue. Some updates actually degraded the sound. One step backwards. Other updates maybe improved the treble but after extended listening it was discovered that the bass was inferior or something. One step forward and one step backwards.

But in the end – the moral of the story – is that I, as a diehard audiophile, have to admit that “the smaller the improvement is, the bigger the describing adjective is”.

On a more serious side, keep in mind that the listening experience is a very complex cognitive process. One day I can be super sharp, really listening deep into the sound and detecting really microscopic differences. The other day I am listening to the same song, being perfectly happy with the cr*p sound coming from my car stereo. Listening is a very subjective thing. (Scientists still struggle to map the brain/aural processes).

A bootleg?! 

Well, well. I still gonna play Made In Japan, just to respect the ritual.

-----------

My SECOND album played on the NOS1 will be a special CD: The Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique with LSO/Colin Davis from year 2000 [LSO 0007]. You find it at Amazon.uk costing about €8. One of Tony Faulkner’s earlier attempts to master a CD entirely filterless, using a special mastering technique. So, it will be a complete filterless experience!

I had some interesting correspondence with Tony. He said that probably there are "a few hundred" CDs out there, filterless. He said it can be done as long as the music doesn‘t contain too much high frequency.

I am like a kid on Christmas Eve every time I get a new component in my system. The search, the waiting, the expectations, taking the unit out of the box, sniffing the odor of new paint, reading the manual, touching the buttons; -it’s very ritual.

When the new unit arrives, I take a day off from work, prepare some good food and I play only selected music. Especially the FIRST track is very important in this ritual. Since I was a kid, I always picked my most cherished recording at the time to play first, -like an act of honor to the new component. Something like Dark Side Of The Moon, Aja or a Sheffield Lab Direct recording.

The arrival of the NOS1 will be very special, deserving my most cherished record ever: Deep Purple/Made In Japan. My very first album. I got the compact cassette for Christmas in 1972 when I was 8. I had a portable Phillips cassette player – made in Holland – so it is all déjà vu. I played the cassette to death. Day and night. Because it is a double album, the tape was rather thin. In the end my cheap Philips turned the cassette into a tape salad. What a loss! The most important thing in my life was robbed away from me. During the years I collected huge numbers of equipment and music, but I will never forget my first love which was so abruptly thorn away from me: Made In Japan – my Rosebud.

When I play Made In Japan on NOS1 in December 2010 the circle will be completed. In addition Peter has told us that his dac magically will bring the band alive, with Ian Paice’s cymbals crashing in my living room like they are for real. Oh my God, I have enormous expectations to the NOS1. It will be just as sensational as it was for Christmas 38 years ago.

I think the additional digital spdif input is very clever. It makes the DAC more universal. People can hook it to their ususal source (even a cheap CD player costing €100.-) and have instant sound. It makes for a good "back-up" possibility when your PC is down or something. Also, it makes it easier to demonstrate (and compare) the DAC's capabilities when using its dedicated soundcard input. It let people experience the gain of using XX software. I WANT THAT!  ***I hereby confirm the order***

A/D converter is nice, only if the digital signal (stream) is possible to capture and record with a software in the computer. Otherwise I route my analogue sources directly into my preamp.

All the best!

I want you, I want you so bad
I want you, I want you so bad
It's driving me mad, it's driving me mad
I want you, I want you so bad
I want you, I want you so bad
It's driving me bad, it's driving me mad
I want you, I want you so bad, NOS1
I want you, I want you so bad
It's driving me mad, it's driving me mad
It's so heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy
I want you, I want you so bad
I want you, I want you so bad
It's driving me bad, it's driving me mad
I want you, I want you so bad, NOS1, I want you
You know I want you so bad,
It's driving me bad, it's driving me mad
Yeah, it's so heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy
I want you, I want you so bad, NOS1, I want you
You know I want you so bad
It's driving me mad, It's driving me bad
Yeah, it's so heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy
I want you, I want you so bad
I want you, I want you so bad
It's driving me mad, it's driving me mad
I want you, I want you so bad, NOS1, I want you
You know I want you so bad, it's driving me mad
It's driving me mad
It's so

Oops. Seems my joke backfired terribly here 

Oops. Sorry about that Jack, but you will have to wait untill next summer!   

Yes, that thread is a good starting point. But, then - what about the different RAM software, as discussed resently? 

Come on guys, are there no one who can come up with some specc's here?
Maybe typing "ultimate" was a little over the top. Let's call it "very good for running XX".

I don't need the exactly name and type of each component, just some basic guidelines.

Thanks in advance!
 

Gentlemen,

Can you pls help me? I am building a new PC to work (exclusively) with XX and Phasure NOS1 DAC.
It shall be top notch. I want it all:

Best sounding OS
Best processor
Maximum RAM
Best RAM software
Flashdisc
Quiet fan
Midi tower cabinet
etc...

-Can someone pls give me a specific "shoping list" what to buy of hardware and software? (Probably other entusiasts can benefit from such a list too).

-----------

Thanks in advance!