Ah!!  "Someone finally understands me."   

For technical readers:
Sounds a little like the Heizenburg principle (can only know position or momentum with precision, but cannot know both with precision.)

And so for those who are proponents of "44.1 carrying all of the information and reproducing the signal perfectly" like they teach in schools to students who are unable to challenge the teachers,  let's just say that if ADCs sampled 20K music at 192K, we could simply interpolate and have BOTH transients and frequency response.   We would not have to choose one over the other.  Such interpolation would also not introduce phase errors.   We'd have it all with just AP.   We'd also not have distortion after 16K.  Simple.

Oh,  okay.  I did miss the point.  Thanks.

Things were not making sense to me because of all people you would know that a brick-wall linear-phase filter is the problem, to which the NOS1 and xxHE are a solution.  D'oh!  Sorry.   

Hi Peter

Thanks for trying.  Though I think you might be missing the point, or the points.

A brick-wall linear-phase filter (AI) is itself part of the problem, not the solution.  As such, it is not surprising to me that it doesn't sound good.

Some are saying that pre ringing is not found anywhere in nature, nor in traditional analog circuits, and therefore does not sound right to the human ear.  It shouldn't, so this line of explanation "rings true." (sorry)

That is why I'm trying HQPlayer, to try out some filters that address pre-ringing.  I can tell you that, over here, all of the filters that address or reduce pre-ringing sound more analog, more natural, less hard or harsh, less digital, sound smoother, and less distorted; and now some downsides, sound less live, less real, less detailed, move the soundstage back, sound more like a good stereo system,  blah blah blah.  Of these, the ones that ring more can sound more lush but can become riskier in that they can introduce some dirt on other tracks;  conversely,  the ones that ring less (we are talking mostly or entirely post ringing here) sound more dry / boring but are cleaner with less risk.

Some (most?) XXHighEnd users (me) are using OS DACs that only go to 192.  So why not compare at 192 or 384 with an OS DAC?  Oh, and if you do, open the DAC up as much as possible so that the DAC still filters Fs and as little below it.  This makes the OS DAC very fast and it acts more like an NOS1 will, except that it filters Fs.  (Remove the brick wall.  For this experiment, I set my DAC Rolloff to SLOW, which makes the DAC fast.)

Really, the original point was for requesting minimum phase filters and other filters that address pre ringing and AI is not it.  Over here, the best and most consistent one at 192 is not minimum phase but instead an asymmetrical filter with less pre-ringing and more post ringing.  This has full ringing but the pre ringing is shortened / addressed, and this results in a phase response that is better than that of a minimum-phase filter.  Izotope and others have these types of asymmetrical filters as options.  I encourage you to try one of these asymmetrical filters, as well as minimum phase, with both short and normal ringing.  ...and with dither (which I can confirm is usually better, but can be also be that None works best sometimes.)

I hope you don't give up!

From another thread:

Thank you, thank you.

And this reminds me that I've forgotten to report another situation where I think some test code was not commented out prior to compiling.  Now mind you, I'm running 0.9z-9b (otherwise prior to 1.186a).  And I think it is related to the above.

If I am playing around with 1x 2x 4x upsampling and choosing AI vs. AP vs. nothing (repeating bits) filter, I usually need to change two of these settings for each A/B comparison.  All of this works normally under attended.   But under unattended here is what happens:

Say I want to compare AI at 2x against AP at 4x.  I start with AI at 2x.  Then:

1. play a track unattended.   Listen for a while
2. hit alt-x
3. once xxHE comes up I click on stop or hit alt-s
4. I change filter from current setting to AP.  At this point I also want to change the upsampling ratio from 2x to 4x,  BUT I CAN'T!!!
5. Instead, xxHE immediately goes into play mode as if I had hit play.  I can't select 4x

And so i now am forced to hit alt-x again, wait , wait, wait, and then hit stop and finally change the ratio to 4x.

The only way I can work around this is to click [c] between changes.

So  I believe that this is test code left over for you to be able to quickly switch between AI and AP at 4x.  ...and should be commented out before final compile for the version that goes out non-beta.

Wow!  That's bizarre.  I think this might be the second time in about 8 months.  Maybe we have a telepathic connection. 


Thank you, thank you.  That will probably be freakishly good for us OS delta-sigma users, especially unattended.  And I predict that those who can choose a slower rolloff in our DAC settings will see bigger improvements.   And this will work in your favor because it validates the NOS1 / xxHighEnd as a concept because most the work is being done by the software filter in the PC,  and not by the filter in the OS delta-sigma DAC.  That is, your filter running under xxHE takes over and becomes dominant by far.

Regarding noise shaping,  who knows why each one sounds so different.  The only thing I can tell you is that it's audible even if it theoretically is too low in level to bother with.   Miska's NS9 sounds more airy (higher in frequency) than NS5 or Gauss1 at 4x.   Gauss1 is more evenly spread and in some ways sounds more natural.

It we can't hear the bit data influence,  then it must be the computational influence on the jitter.  Who knows.   Bottom line: it's audible. 


I agree.  It is a different topic and also was thinking about quoting Mani and starting a new thread.  It was just easier to just hit reply and start typing.

Mani - I agree.

Peter - Not just for NOS1 owners, but also for those us whom don't have an NOS1 (like me at this time).   I've been trying HQPlayer under minimized OS thanks to xxHE and love Miska's asymFIR filter at NS9 noise shaping at 4x for 16/44.1 material.  It sounds so very analog and pure that I am often preferring that sound over even highRes.   For this to work with my OS DAC, I set the filter rolloff to slow, opposite of defaults, and makes this DAC act more like a filterless DAC.   It is very open like this, almost filterless.  My DAC is the W4S DAC2, the original.   Of course I'd also like a minimum phase fiter as well per Mani (by this I mean a min phase reconstruction filter).   

Miska's (HQPLayer) asymFIR filter rings, but the preringing is less than usual and the post ringing is more than usual and so this gives a more analog sound while sounding lush (because of the reconstruction part of this type of filter).  There is some phase shift at some point, but less so than with a minimum phase filter. 
     If I encounter any hardness from a CD, which is rare, I switch to poly-sinc-shrt-mp or poly-sinc-mp (both minimum phase).   And if hardness remains, I downshift to polynomial1 (interpolation) or minringFIR.

Please please please????

Also, can we have some noise shaping with that?   (BTW - I read elsewhere on this forum that you tried noise shaping but could not measure it.   I ask, measure it?   Please.   It is very apparent if you listen with your ears and put away the distortion meter.   And also,  forget about loosing one bit.  Apparently it is better than round-off or truncation because those end up as music dependent error, which according to some is worse than noise.)

Thanks Peter and acg, so far.


It's the same facility as used for tuning the fan speeds and the clocks.  Within that same application, which you can run after the system boots,  it is the last Tab on the bottom left.  Simply choose a drive letter and an amount of disk space.  It will automatically restart with each boot unless you stop it.   Actually very easy to use.

What?

Miind you, I'm talking about 0.9z-9b, and an OS DAC.  I'm also talking about the Built-in RAMdisk facility that comes with the X79 Extreme motherboard in the XXHighEnd PC.  That is not IMDisk.

In my system, the midrange has never shouted.  Recently, I noticed that the midrange was quite forward and every once in a while a particular piece of music would shout offensively in the midrange.   Then I realized that I had made a fairly recent BIG change:  I changed from a playback drive of spinning dedicated disk to a  2GB RAM disk.

So I changed it back and sure enough, the shouting is completely gone.  I just listened for 5 hours straight and no ear fatigue at all.  Back to normal.

Has anyone experienced this shouting?

Could it be that IMDisk is much better?  Should I try?

(This is another case where things sounded great and I should not have changed, obviously.  But I tried RAMdisk and I thought it was better and I liked the fact that it loaded faster.  Yet another short term test yielding misleading results. )

I hope this means it will be changed to 192 in the next version.

I have found a new feature of XX.

if I am playing attended and I select a 4824 file,  while selecting AI up sampling, instead of being up sampled to 192,  it actually gets up sampled to 176.

Wait wait wait wait a minute!  For sure searching does not refresh the list.why? Because search is how discovered the problem to begin with.I would search and the album wouldn't show up.

The only way to explain this discrepancy is if the top search bar works differently than the bottom search bar.  does it?

Btw ,  i don't use galleries; except for alt c and alt z.

I'm starting to think that this could be a user error on my part.  At some point i started using the date feature [D].  If this applies, it started at around the time frame of the Chicago X "problem".  Once i started using the D button,i may have started not explicitly refreshing the file list, manually.  The M and N buttons might also have confounded because or if they refresh the list and i use them inconsistently, then it can cause missing albums also inconsistently.

The flac problems were real for sure.

What are the "official"ways to refresh the list?

Thanks Eric

Just checked.  They are all lower case "flac".

This post is to verify that the above post is accurate. The data structure for these albums is:

D:\Music\HDmusic\(artist)\(album)\(music files)

I will verify, but i am fairly certain that all that have problems have the following structure:

D: Music HDmusic (artist) (album) (music files)

I do have one iso file on the disk, not in these problematic folders.