Shoot Mani ...


You're just Gold ...
At first I thought you couldn't be right, because at this moment I couldn't see how. Had my answers ready to justify your thoughts anyway, poored a special whiskey, and checked to be certain. Below snippet is from the preprocessing part ...

It actually says that the only thing it takes for the actual playback is adding the last byte (totalling to 32 bits) which needs no further processing, and FYI looks the same as something that needs no processing at all.
I really can't say how much I like someone who actually dares to state as you did at this super micro detail stuff, *and* is correct at the same time. Cudo's, hats off, anything. (can't recall I ever used this ).

Coming from this, I would like to say :

If there's someone in this world doubting that stupid software can make a difference to sound, might it be Queen Mary, O. Bin Laden, mr. G. etc. Bush, Bill Gates or anyone else thinking of ruling some parts of this world, let them read this, let them read into all the combinations possible here, and let them guess something which was just proven right in this occasion.
I know, my english is far from expressing what I want to make clear, and I sure hope it comes to you all as how I intend it.
And I wish to go further even :

Please allow me to quote you from the place we have met :


It is not more than two weeks ago - and after you were slammed a bit as usual on the Internet - that following from this I tried to explain how to listen and what to listen for. I personally think it is more than quite amazing how you could evolve to, well, someTHING like this. But don't say I promised ... like in


So, apart from the valuable contributions from your hands (like the plots) now you can come up with this ? I really can't comprehend ...
I know from myself that the far most important on these kind of things is the, say, absolute memory which allows you to relate things, or better, make them relative to the reference (from that moment) I talked about in the quote. In fact this IMHO is about the ever so much importance of being able to listen through things, which comes down to taking distance from feelings, getting into technical details for comparison, and only when that fails, start with tapping the feet more differences.


I may sound rather stupid or wimpy-like in the majority of the above, but I just feel like expressing some feelings as an obligation to you Mani. I take it for granted when I'm a woman from now on. Can't be that bad anway.

Peter

Answer to both questions : NO !
Now what ?

For saving tweeters ?
If it sounds worse, obviously it won't be a real solution. But then at least you'll now there's a potential to the solution.

Now, what about "just the other" 18 euro solution ?

Btw, doesn't it even work when you perform rightclick on the XX icon, and then choose "Run as Administrator" ?

Hahahaha ... some people ...

Yes, that would be logic. Never thought about it.
So what you're actually saying is that while I now at last got rid of all the file formats not playing, now I have to start recognize files which *should* not play, right ? You must be like the Australian Plague !

Well, I never looked into DTS headers so far, and maybe I shouldn't; I bet the next one you come up with is an MKV, right ? hehe

The checkbox option seems reasonable, indeed taking into account that more "just data" files could be in order.
But let me first try some other general means ...

Hmm ... maybe I should disable the settings for better understanding ...
What will happen now is that only some settings will be appointed to the cores as indicated.
For a general explanation, Description of Processor Core Appointment Schemes.

Sound for sure can change with it, although I never found any consistency over PC's from users. It all depends on the stuff running in the PC, and how much can be (or should be) taken away from the sound playing processes.

I'm thinking on some debug code to find out what this causes this for you both. Strange that you are (so far) the only two persons mentioning this ...

I went to bed afterall. You aparantly did not.


You mean : when you check the Double/Upsample checkbox, right ?


How much did you by this time of night ?

Hi LydMekk,

Thank you very much for your description. If you only didn't copy mine I sure want to copy yours. And your description of the bass is better than my own; my "more separated" indeed intended to say something like more deep or maybe "in its own subwoofer world" (while I don't mean 20Hz regions, but something like the individual low vibes of e.g. bass guitar strings so good audible that it is like they sound through an undisturbed own speaker).

[...]

But I don't understand what you mean by this ! or ... what your implied impact is. I mean, if I "set" my soundcard to e.g. 96KHz (instead of let it auto-adapt to what it's fed with e.g. 88K2), the song is played faster. Can you please explain ?

But now take this :

There is plastic and there is metal (see earlier in this topic). Tonight, for the first time I listened to "decent" (because before it was just wrong) Double/Upsampling through my audio (nos !) DAC. Now :

I'm under the impression that the roughness (or rawness) as described earlier (btw not by me) coming from the nos DAC and XX since 0.9t (this latter is my own perceivement) is just compensated by this. All is very fragile, but still ... cymbals are more singing, and the sole thing ever occurring to me throughout albums was the better seprated bass (instruments) from all. So was this better ?

Maybe Yes, maybe No. Because I also noticed a downside (similar to yesterday with the Fireface) :
When the music gets more loud, things get too much shouting. This again is (IMO) about the higher frequencies no being able to fill gaps from the lower frequencies, that by itself possibly caused by the lower highs (volume) output. And so :

As how it worked always so far, it will work the same now : since I clearly perceive better things from upsampling (only Double this time), it will be a matter of finding a means to retain the positives, but eliminate the negatives. I don't know how yet though ... could be a matter of the pre-processing thing maybe ... I hope to get that ready tomorrow (for myself at least ).

To clear things up maybe :


OF COURSE not.
I gave it as an example how we can get fooled, with maybe the most important message : who actually can tell which sound stage is the most real for width and depth ?

I must admit though, that "laid back" is another phenomenon than "less deep". Or IOW : everything on the foreground (compare : right in your face) is different from everything in the background. Or maybe even better (though a negative) : everything being too loud cannot be compensated by a volume control.

One other thing to think about :

Since this is a topic that makes me brabble around anyway, take an MP3 if you dare (take the higher bitrates though).
So far I did not spend much attention about it (too much ), but you may find yourself finding it *better*. Maybe the pinpointing is less, but for sure the stage is wider and deeper, the bass is better ... Now what ?
And yes, I even have theories for it why it can be better, and 0.9t (and u for that matter) is a bit based on this theory. Mind you, a theory I had to come up with afterwards, so nothing I could reason out in advance.

What does this tell ? well

a. do never think that an e.g. wider sound stage is better, because how can an MP3 be better ?
b. the fact that, say, noise is added, not necesserily means we perceive it as worse. It should be worse though for theories.

Anyway, this kind of explains why we also can perceive the nos DAC to be better, although there's some more to that.
For those who know : I've been always referring to the Kodac DCS whatever camera for comparison. There is *NO* camera showing its resolution better than that one. There is NO camera more difficult to deal with at making photo's and avoiding the things it just can't do, like a roof with overlayed stone cover (sorry I don't know the name in english) which will show moire all over. Even with trees you must be careful. And you know what ? there is just no AA filter in there. It is the only camera which allows to see the 14MB picture at full size, and it wil show no degradation on sharpness. Also it is the only camera that will not need sharpness appliance ...

With these things in mind, it is more easy to see why we can perceive things better, while actually they are not, or why we *should* perceive things better when we only comply to the rules.
This is a great deal of XX ...

So far the discussion is not about NOS, but sure the lacking filtering in there comes down to similar stuff (/ perceivement ?). Otoh, I don't think it is good to bring that into the mix, because it will be different for inherent anomalies and (listening) results.

Then, I think it is important not to mix up with unrelated things as to what the alias at the other side of the mirror might bring for audible anomalies on one side, and what obviously happens on the left side of the mirror which SHOWS anomalies. It will be 100% sure that what shows there, is audible too.
Since we left our books covered with dust, we could wonder how the right side of the mirror (which makes perfect sence that that aliasing  happens) influences the left side *if* it is that what is going on. And I am not so sure about that yet.
Probably right now we are a bunch of stupids with to few knowledge to talk about this seriously, and IMO the only reason why it could be interesting even to the knowledgdeable, is the possible situation that an AA filter not only removes the aliasing, but *also* compensates for the known highs roll of implication, and just nobody saw that the roll of is already there when the aliasing is just left alone ...

With above fuzzy lines I only want to say this : I don't think we should try to work out (or "find out") the obvious, for those who just know. We'd only make oursellves more stupid to those who do know.
On this matter it is my idea to ask a person of which I'm 100% sure he knows ... Bruno Putzeys. Why him ? well, because he has been all over into this stuff, *and* we actually know him. He might not recognize it, but it was me asking for the highest grade Hypexes as I think are around by now, and hybride, you might know him more personally while I only talked indirectly to him (via MM-Audio). Send him an email, direct him to this topic, and ask politely ...
Btw, for those who don't know him : he once DIY created an amplifyer taking DSD for input ...

Now, since I actually don't even have those books (yeah, you knew that) there is much more going on which I found well over two years ago, and for which I don't have explanations. In brief this is about the whole audible spectrum being FULL of aliases, if you only know how to look at it, and how to incur for it. I can tell you, only nos DACs show this best, and actually it is quite unbelievable we can hear music through that mess. This too is about the Nyquist frequency being a mirror, and "colliding" parts of the mirrored frequencies being able to create the exact same SPL as originating frequencies elsewhere. Believe it ot not, but e.g. a 16Khz (somewhere around there) tone can create an as high volume at 20Hz. Mind you, no spurs of 20Hz are in the original tone in this case.
This concluded for now : the nos DAC is as bad as can be (for matters you can't guess and which I did not explain), BUT WE LIKE IT.


All 'n all (again, for now), assuming I can't hear the anomalies on the other side of the mirror, the only thing I see is a roll of of the highs (but careful, because you can see a drop a 2KHz already) and an anomaly at the low end. If this indeed would be all that's the matter it hardly harms sound but for more dullness (and what comes from that of course -> should be less detail). Mind you, apart from the thingy at the low end, it's rather lineair.

Last thoughts : if this is a phase impeeding thing, I'd say that we can't capture it with a *digital* loop back. But I can't believe this is phase related ...
The strange things I found I talked about in the above, are in the pure digital domain also ...

And oh, let's keep in mind in advance of things : theoretically it can be that what we see is not real. Not so much because RME software would be wrong, but because the representation of it all actually also needs an AA filter. How this can be made consistent with software applying an AA filter (like most probably Foobar and its used plugin does), and all looking good, is another thing.

Peter


PS: This didn't incorporate hybride's last reply, above.

To a certain extend, yes. Now you can't set the Core Appointment thing. This *does* differ, although it depends on your system as a whole, how.

The only "useful" thing I can say for now : take your time on finding what the problem is, and during that time you'll know that in the end (when you have succeeded on solving it) the sound quality most probably will improve.

Of course I'll do anything to help, but I really can't tell anything else from what has been said in that specific topic.
Maybe you have a friend around who is a systems manager and who wants to help you ?

g. http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html

uhohh


Thank you for the Foobar test Mani.
Now I wonder what happens at double/upsampling with "DAC is" at a 16 bit setting. If this looks normal, then

1. It is most probably the SPDIF limit;
2. Foobar (SRC or whatever it is you were using) doesn't utilize the bits (only uprates the sample frequency).

Btw, I am not asking you to try this, but can't do it myself at this moment (tonight I can).


Oh, when things still don't look normal, I'd try ADAT instead of SPDIF.


PS: I was Googling for an hour or so on the SPDIF matter, but couldn't find a clear answer. Keep in mind that "we" are using SPDIF over Firewire (400 in my case) and that things may matter there.

PPS: I got the idea here : http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=13353422&postcount=897 which was singing in my head the whole day because I couldn't believe that, while on the other hand, that (MS) guy should know. Suddenly the combination with our topic here popped into my head ...