I agree with Paul and the others. 09zb is the very best so far. I run Adaptive and 1024, like most of the others. Reducing latency to 512 make the sound (dynamics) somewhat "overdamped". 1024 is just perfect. Never before could I play so LOUD. Unlimited LOUD! At the same time the sound is extremely detailed and natural, without any boomy bass or hard treble.

Congratulations Peter!
 


EDIT: Also the soundstage is phenomenal. I have never had such a wide and deep soundstage. The sound has never before been so detached from the speakers.

I much prefered the old GUI, which was according to "form follows function", with large buttons with text, so you knew which to push. With the new GUI the buttons are so small, that I strugle to find them at all...

With the new GUI there is a lot of unused space, still the buttons are small, and still you have use sub menues (like settings area).

(I am using a standard Thinkpad as remote desktop controle).


Apart from that I LOVE the sound. Will check out some more settings before I reach a verdict.

Thanks Mani!

Mystery solved: I just increased the Q1 value some steps up (Q1 = 4). Then everything works glitz-free, I think. (Remains to be confirmed from long term testing).

Which means that my music-PC still can be a Foobar-free zone. :-)

MANI: You should check out the Global Record function. It's like a digital tape recorder. Just one push and whatever you are playing is recorded in WAV, same resolution as source.

Switched to Engine 3, but same problem. I can hear the music but highly distorted.
No, no loop or DSP at the moment.

I will try with other player and revert.


EDIT: I needed a fairly high (1024) latency in the past because I was using the internal DAC in the FF400. Now I have got my new Buffalo II DAC, and I use the FF400 only to provide the spdif out. I had forgotten about this point, but right now I managed to reduce latency to 512 with glitzfree play of 24/192 music files. Isn't lower latency supposed to sound better? :-)

It's adaptive mode, 1024 Latency, Engine 4, Q1=1.
(Didn't have time yet to try yout latest version).

09-y8c.

(Sorry for troubling you. I could of course try to install Foobar and check if it works better. But since you and others here at the Forum also use RME hardware/software, maybe you had some experience in this matter).

Hi Peter,

I use the RME FF400 as soundcard/spdif out to my DAC.
RME has a freeware called DigiCheck, where I can analyze the signal (music) stream. Also, it has a recording function, recording the stream to harddisk and saving it as a .wav file.

It seems that XX and DigiCheck doesn't comunicate perfectly, because I get audible noise when recording. (I record, save to harddisk and can replay the file in XX or in digiCheck itself).

Also, when I use the audiospectrum analyzer I get (too much) high frequency above 20kHz. It's like all my 96kHz albums has a lot of supersonic content. It is hard to belive. Maybe it's the distortion showing?

Is this a "generic" problem because of XX (I know som dCS DAC's doesnt work with XX). Or should I increase to latency or something?

All the best!

Bingo!

Next step is to have ArcP available also with 24/88.2 and 24/96 files.

True. Also with the PeakExtension feature, XX can simulate HDCD-decoding somewhat.

By the way; I have several HDCD titles, but they are coded differently. Only a few of them have this Dynamic range compression.

Mani, this thread is very, very interesting. I have thought a lot around this matters myself. Personally, I think that reducing the pre-ringing of every impulse is more imortant than the +20kHz amplitude contents.
The Red Book pre-ringing degrades the microdynamics of all instruments, including bass instruments.

I have started to collect hi-rez titles, and when listening to 24/96, the SQ improvements are more noticeable in the lower octaves, than the very high treble.
When going from 24/96 to 24/192, I don't hear more treble information, but everything else becomes more "real" microdynamic-wise. Especially instruments with high contents of DC. Like drums, guitars and brass.

(Of course, I hear that cymbals too improves at higher rates. I think 20% of its energi specter is above 20kHz).

---------

I suspect QAP is doing "something" with the pulses, because applying QAP to 16/44 I get a similar improvement in microdynamics, as with 24/96.

I recommend all PC-audio users to purchase the dbpoweramp program. It's very good for riping and (batch) converting. Or other DSP operations.  It permits de-coding HDCD (creating a 20bit /44 file out of the 16/44). Also you can do your own downsampling for experimentel use. Purchase a 24/192 recording and downsample it to 24/96, 24/44, 16/44, 16/96 or whatever. Then listen to the differences.

By experience I always caveat my speculations!

Several times in the past, we felt the present version to be the "best ever", and we asked Peter to go on with the user interface and get out of "Beta-mode". Then he went on and made the next version even better sounding. Again and again. I am glad you didn't respond to our crying in the past! LOL

Hi Danny D! (Danny DeVito?)

Interesting observation. If you are right many audiophiles are gonna start crying because they just ripped their thousand CD's to Flac... [/evil laughter]
Me? I stayed in WAV all my life. Memory is cheap, after all.

But seriously: Flac compression works, among others, because it sumarizes Left/Right information if same amplitude (mono). Mono takes half the space as stereo. This is just a wild guess, but the Flac prosess might influence the most fragile low level signals? The ones who influences on the imaging, in particular.

Or the explaination can be hardware-playback related as Peter mentions.

One more note regarding searching for Special Mode optimum settings:
Re-reading the Download and release notes I realize all factors are mentioned by Peter.

If you havn't found your noise-free Special Mode settings, I urge you to re-read "the manual" written by Peter. It seems also that both Processor Core Apointment and Priority schemes must/can be changes to get noisefree Special Mode.

Hopefully Peter will make Special Mode more automatic in use.

I have been on Special Mode for a couple of hours. It's frustrating to find the noise-free spot*, but when it works: Oh, my, oh my - the sound quality takes Red Book into new territory where mankind hasn't set his fot (ear) before!

It's like the final CD veil has been liftet. More bloom, more inner detail and more transient details.

------------

*The combination of Latency and Q1 seems to be interactive. The Q1 setting working with fex. 512 latency, doesnt necessarily work with 1024 latency. I have to scan the Q1 between -4 and 30, each time I change (reduce) the latency.

Also a setting works fine for one song, but next song in the playlist is heavy distorted.... In fact, it's hard to find a combination which gives noise-free sound from a full album. Right now I have the following combination (latency 1024 + Q1=13) = Q1 parameter = 1022

The gain in SQ is well worth the work, though!!!