It's been a long while since I've bothered playing around with any settings in XX, but thought I'd try a few things out. Playing around with different SFS settings, I got the error message attached - I've been using Straight Contiguous since it was introduced and can't recall ever getting this error in the past. I wasn't at all bothered because I was in RAM and knew that if something got messed up, it'd clear itself on a reboot. But no...

I've rebooted back into SSD and back into Normal too. The error message remains, no matter what I set SFS to. And 'User Rights Assignment' looks fine.

I can only conclude that this must be a hardware issue. Something wrong with my 48GB memory perhaps?

I've activated 'Log Activities', but *.log files don't seem to show much at all.

Ideas?

Mani.

New speakers Peter?

Mani.

I recently changed to an SFS of 4.00, but I'm back down to 0.69. Works really well now... loads of detail without any edginess.

(Sorry for the running commentary, but I can't quite believe what I'm hearing... from an extra layer of shielding in the USB cable!!!)

Mani.

Thanks Peter. Would twisting it 180 degrees have been OK?

The more I listen, the more impressed I am. The sheer NATURALNESS of this thing is incredible. NOTHING grates. And yet the details are all there... moreso even. And where did the bottom octave come from? My speakers aren't meant to go that low!

All from a bloody USB cable???

Mani.

My Lush^3 is in! It was a bit of a pain installing, as its B-connector is rotated exactly 180 degrees to that of the Lush^2. So, I had the choice of twisting the cable, or simply swapping the vertical positions of the Mach III and NOS1. I went for the latter. And for now, I'm keeping the shipped configuration - A: B-R, B:

The first thing to say about the sound is that... well, it hasn't got screwed up over that with the Lush^2...

Early days, and I've just rebooted the Mach III and NOS1, which often changes the sound, but so far... I'd say there is less 'digital glare' coming through, but with no loss of detail at all. In other words, everything sounds more natural.

One of my 'test tracks' is David Sylvian's "When Poets Dreamed of Angels". His voice can sound quite grating in various parts of this track, but with the Lush^3, I'm not hearing any sibilance at all. Everything sounds very natural, and yet with all the details intact.

Initial thoughts - impressed!

Mani.

My Lush^3 has arrived  . But I won't be able to take a proper listen until this evening.

(I'm still a little concerned that it'll ruin the lovely sound that I'm currently getting, but we'll see...)

Mani.

Anthony, when you finally get your Mach III, we'll be on the Vortex VII.

Mani.

I still have my Stealth II here too, and the difference between the Stealth II and the Mach III is massive. The Mach III 'sparkles' in comparison.

I really enjoyed having the Extreme here for a week, but can't imagine using anything other than XX for serious listening.

Mani.

I've ordered my Lush^3 (which I only heard about a couple of hours ago!).

The sound I'm getting right now is absolutely the best I've ever achieved, so I'll give the Lush^3 a good go, but if it screws things up, it'll be going back to its maker.

Will report back once it's here...

Mani.

I wanted to know what the generally accepted current SOTA sounds like with Roon and HQPlayer. And yes, how this compares with the Mach III running XX... feeding the NOS1 in both cases.


Roon, Tidal/Qobuz do work with the NOS1. Once all set up, it's "quick and easy". The only thing you'll miss is auto sample rate switching. No big deal really, because you can set Roon to convert to and output a constant SR. It sounds pretty good really. I captured the output of the NOS1 being fed by XX, Roon, HQPlayer and Roon->HQPlayer with my RME ADI-2... and Roon (using its internal filters) stacks up pretty well. (Happy to send you the files if you're interested in taking a listen.)

Edit: Once set up, it's easy to switch between Roon for more general listening and discovering music on Tidal, and XX for more serious listening. No need of a second DAC!

OT. How's your own Opus Magnum coming on?

Mani.

So, I finally got around to upgrading to 2.11. It's been a while since I've used XX, because I've been playing around with the DSP in Roon. But even so, I'm certain that 2.11 is a step up (again!) from 2.10. It sounds truly amazing.

So much so in fact that I don't have any withdrawal symptoms from having just returned the Taiko Extreme that I had on a week's loan. (You can read about that here: https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/60458-taiko-extreme-my-experience/?tab=comments#comment-1081051).

Thanks so much Peter.

Mani.

SOLVED!

It was the usual Sound Panel Settings that had to be set exactly correctly.

Firstly, make sure enhancements are switched off in the W10 Sound Control Panel.

Set the Phasure Control Panel to the sample rate that you want. Then set and test the sample rate in the W10 Sound Control Panel.

DO NOT ALLOW ANY OTHER RATE TO REACH THE NOS1.

Phew...

Mani.

The driver installed OK. I disabled 'enhancements' in the Sound Control Panel.

None of the players I had installed on my work PC worked with the NOS1 under WDM.

So I installed XX (still non-activated). KS works fine (and sounds brilliant!). XX WASAPI works perfectly with another USB DAC I have connected to the PC, but I cannot get WASAPI to work with the NOS1. No other player seems to work with the NOS1 WDM either.

This is all pretty confusing. I suspect that one of the recent W10 updates has stopped the NOS1 working correctly with WASAPI.

Mani.

Hey Peter, I don't think disabling driver signing in XX works. I did it through W10 startup (as explained here: https://windowsreport.com/driver-signature-enforcement-windows-10/) and I was able to install the driver. (I had to click on 'install anyway' a few times.)

Thanks for sending me the driver (was unnecessary in the end), and perhaps this may be helpful for anyone else attempting to install the driver on an updated W10 machine in the future.

Mani.

Hi Peter, I've tried unzipping the original file, but I get the same error.

It's been a very long time since I last installed the NOS1 driver on a HDD because I've been using a RAM-OS disk with the driver pre-installed.

Could you email the 1.04b driver to me again just to eliminate the possibility of a corrupted file please? Thanks.

Mani.