Allow me to take the opportunity to elaborate a bit on that ...

XXHighEnd's volume is "lossless" which means that no rounding takes place anywhere and that from an attenuated "file" the original can be recreated (hence the term Lossless). This is by guarantee / inherently so.

A DAC with digital attenuation under its hood, for 99% sure has to make use of a means which is highly detrimental to the "bit perfect"ness of the audio stream let alone it would be close to lossless which every normal means of attenuattion in software is. Thus, e.g. the Windows volume would be close to lossless which in the end is not lossless at all. And this means "inconsistency" in the rendering, Our brain recognizes that things are not right and the music is perceived as less good and unnatural.

Back to the in-DAC digital attenuation - unless the volume is controlled by in-chip voltage reference (which virtually is non-existent although is exists in some D/A chips (not said that the design uses it), this is so poor that a differential (balanced) setup is not even allowed because of the high THD implied (harder to explain but envision that plus and minus voltage of the signal can differ 0.5 dB in not-linear fashion, that creating the (huge) THD per (L/R) channel. 
Besides this, when single ended (like RCA) there is always the 0.5 difference per (L/R) channel, and that varying throughout the music. And oh, since the 0.5 dB is the accuracy of the chips doing this, it may coincidentally add up to 1dB (or 0dB).

XXHighEnd has just the one and only means to attenuate digitally in a justified fashion. It is also the only software doing it like this and it includes digital gain as well, if the headroom for it is present.

Peter

Hi there Josh, a warm welcome from me too.

I am afraid you can only tell whether it works for real, when you try it. Trying costs nothing (but your time). Otherwise your Allo should be able to support WASAPI or Kernel Streaming. If it supports that, I see no reason why it won't work. So in that case give it  try. It really will be worth while, SQ wise.

Best regards,
Peter

No votes to be seen anywhere... 
But not such a good idea either. The preamp - or any analog attenuation means is still the most detrimental to good SQ. So it would not be a wise thing to leave it out, or to have another parameter/setting for that matter. 

Regards,
Peter

Hi Paul,

Focus on the connection of the usb cable, both ends.
It happens to me too, after I moved something etc.  In the end you  will have it right again and then it will stay right.

It is super sensitive.

Best regards,
Peter

With the filters in the fpga somewhere ?
 
It would be a new DAC all right, which does *not*  require PC software.
Do you happen to know anyone who sells time ?

Hey Gerard!

If you ask me, there is no best new setting. The one with "consensus" is still, well, that.
It is a bit difficult for me to drag in the picture of that again, as we are out on vacation and I don't have everything at hand here.

Kind regards,
Peter

Hi there Roger,

Without further elaboration which would get complicated anyway, I would put them 20cm above each other, that being the smallest diameter of the implied half circle. Notice that this requires 20 cm behind your rack as well.
Because there's the rule that each 90 degree bend consumes 10cm of extra length, this adds 20 to the 20 cm to the vertical distance you already had. Take again 10 cm extra per end because of the plug's ends which are extra stiff.

Are we at 50cm now ?
Bzzz

Regards,
Peter

Maybe it depends on the high frequency response, also the low frequency response (as you may know I have that a kind of ridiculous here, although 10 others on this forum have the same) while the speed of the system also does a thing or two. In other words … hmm … no, they don't all sound the same to me. Not at all. But there are only a few worth while further investigating *while* we indeed always seem to come back on that "consensus" one.

Btw, what I noticed is that against the previous config I used (not sure it was mentioned in here as the last one, but I think so) is that the "consensus" config, is almost mono compared to that other. It gets used to after a few hours, but the difference on that is crazy already.

Or what about that ultra flat one (like in one ft only) with totally crazy width.
So the differences are in those aspects as well (or even profoundly).

Peter

Anthony … haha, I thought you would come up with that in this very topic. But no.
First off, what I talked about last year never came about in the first place (I suppose because of a lack of time). Secondly, what I talked about ~2 months ago, was something else, albeit still an interface at that level. But as it appeared (I bought a box full of hardware for it) that can not work yet. I expect it to come, though.

Regards,
Peter

Hi Anthony,

Below you see my SSD used space for ~24tB of music. The Galleries imply some redundancy in them, but by far most is in there only one time.

Best regards,
Peter

Anthony, don't tempt me. But Yes, I guess so.
Maybe there comes a time that we really don't know what to do, so I'd dare to start building a first piece of that (2500 components for 2ch) 8ch puzzle including power amplification.

But no.

I'd rather adopt the idea of making a DAC with an FPGA in the center, while the FPGA can do FFT's. I think this does not exist yet, while our Paul was a kind of forced to do that for an internship. This was against all odds, but he managed. The whole idea of that project of concern was to replace DSP code because that was too slow …

Of course, especially for Mani - because he always asks - there will be 10 parameters which 256 settings each.

But yes, that should be able to create a few channels for frequency bands …

Peter

Hi Kurb,

Although I feel that Robert can very well be right ("that was from back then") it still should not be the answer. At least it wouldn't be a nice answer.

I won't say you sound a bit desperate, but you do.

I myself am back to the "consensus" one, after I could tweak things elsewhere and the other config(s) started to sound somewhat exaggerated (I think I am not the only one with that idea of it). Thus I use A:B-W-Y-R, B:B-W-R again.
And nothing else, so only the Lush^2.

The psychological problem I have myself somewhat, is that all about "air" and such can relatively easily dialed (or out) in with XXHighEnd. Of course Robert has just been suggesting that for him that did not work any more (or at least something did not, with his Benchmark) but still I'd like to give the advice to try it.
It is per se *not* so that we all with Lushes suddenly need XXHighEnd. But you complain (between quotes) about something which should be "settable".

Notice that air mainly emerges from more emphasis to higher frequency. But it is not necessarily natural and for sure it will be more difficult to the system as a whole. So Yes, the Lush^2 has these almost explicit settings for that too. But it is not said that this works out for you (and/or your DAC or speakers etc.).

Let me know how things fare. You did a lot of experimenting and sharing, I think - so you deserve to be as satisfied as others using your data. Right ?

Kind regards,
Peter

Mani, not too much to ask. But we ran out of BNC chassis parts.

Peter

All right Frankie, thanks.

I hope you realize that I did not claim that the ~59 one will work. It's only that the message about USB did not suite me in the first place.

Maybe add a zero somewhere ?


Kind regards,
Peter

PS: I really like your message about the SQ you could finally perceive. But I hope you know that officially, in  Demo Mode, nothing much happens or can happen. Not to talk you into spending 72 euros … but you should. If you are 100% satisfied already, you should do nothing, of course. It's then only that the player quits each 10-20 minutes or so.