Hello,
I am thinking of upgrading my Netbook to a dedicated highend music desktop. E.g. Intel 3930K with 16 Gb memory, SSD and SataIII.
I like to hear of experiences of other people who did that in the past. Will the SQ go up and how much? Or is it only glitchless playback that will be improved?

kind regards, Arjan

Hi All,

After reading this about a Playback drive I did some tests myself. And I also came to the conclusion that the sound is much better now.
The music files are on a external 2TB WD elements USB drive with its own power and as Playback drive a Maxell 32 Gb USB key. Also LAN is off now.
For my situation the USB key as Playback drive is much better then a external USB HHD.
One thing I notice, but not sure if it is related, is that I can use Straight continuous now. Before only Mixed was possible. I have one question: Should the Playback drive be larger? Or should I just make it empty sometimes?

kind regards, Arjan

Hi,
Just put in my experiences with 7-5 and Audiophilleo2 with NAD M51 dac.
I really enjoy the sound, so open and clean!
Only soft cracks when changing the volume via the DAC. I use the NAD M51 DAC also as pre, the 35bit is used as a digital volume control.
Maybe lateron this year I will try the Phasure dac. But so far I really enjoy music listening with XXHE.
kind regards, Arjan

Hi Peter,
I like to tell my experiences with 7-5. Since I use a 24bits Audiophilleo I can use PA now for the first time.
As DAC and Pre I use a NAD M51 with digital volume control. So the Digital Attenuation is fixed set to -10.5. I only have soft cracks during volume changes on the dac.
At stop I do not have a crack with Phase (-) but when I use Phase (+) I get a louder crackling sound on my right speaker at stop. So I stick to Phase (-). At stop I get a small repeat before it stops.
So far I really like the sound!
kind regards

Thanks Peter,
Again a big improvement with 7-4. Went from 7-3 to 7-4 with same settings, my first reaction was: what is going on! A really nice surprise.

Tried JPlay last night via HDMI and USB (on ultrabook with i5) but so far nothing beats XXHighend (on Netbook with Atom)!

And hopefully in the near future I can also try PA.

kind regards, Arjan

Hi Peter,

Thank you, that makes it more clear.
I use native, no upsampling --> NO PA, but end pops!
That is really nice, because I already love the sound.....more to look forward to!

I will wait for the 7-4 release!

kind regards, Arjan

Hello Peter,

Thanks for the fast reaction!
Yes, I can wait.
 
I have read some other threads talking about buffer sizes. Could be that my limited PC is also an issue here....

kind regards, Arjan

Hello,
I upgrade first to 0.9z-7-2 and got a small pop at the end of an album with PA activated. I use no upsampling so was it activated?
I upgraded to 0.9z-7-3 and the pop is still there. Maybe even a bit louder! Not sure if I could solve this the Fade-out step?

I really like the sound of 0.9z-7-3, a big step-up from the already very good 0.9z-6-1.

As you can see my computer is a very simple Netbook. But it works fine for me because I do not need upsampling (I think) because that is done in the NAD M51 dac. It is only a bit slow especially with larger 24/192 files!

kind regards, Arjan