I've just found a couple of other files. Here's what silence* looks like with and without the Intona...

*Edit: Playing back the 'digital silence' file from the Alan Parsons test CD.

Mani.

Take the following with a big pinch of salt...

When I was 'testing' the Sonore microRendu with the iFi Nano DAC a few months ago I took a few 24/192 captures. Here are two spectra - the same track, with and without the Intona.

I'll do some more in-depth testing at some point to see if this is actually repeatable.

Mani.

I haven't had the chance to try 14393 yet, but did quickly take a listen with/without the Intona yesterday:

Without. Very easy on the ear. 'Organic'. 'Wholeness' to the sound. Thicker, deeper sound.

With. Much cleaner sound - as if a blanket of low-level background noise has been lifted across the spectrum. Longer decays with everything. Beautiful resonance of instruments. More forward. More dynamic. (Certainly can sound too edgy with SFS <0.1 and clock res at min.)

Over here, there's simply no contest. The Intona is a 'must'.

Mani.

Well, this seems to have fixed the problem. Everything is working fine when I use RDC with a 1920x1080 screen.

But when I use my laptop with a 3200x1800 screen, the XX window is 3-4 times smaller and pushed up into the top left-hand corner when coming out of Unattended. As before, closing XX and restarting brings the XX window back to how it was originally (before going into Unattended and then Alt-Xing out).

Nothing else to say, I don't think...

Mani.

Hi Peter,


Sure - I just wanted to let people know I'd updated the TRIAL OS.


I have WASAPI active in both PCs (so I could play around with a few things). Perhaps this is the issue? Strange then that one PC is 'happy' and the other isn't.


All worked fine with 2.05! I've just tried 2.05 again and it comes back from Unattended just fine. Something is not right though with 2.05 too... the monitor remains on (i.e. the screen does not go black as it should with the settings I use).


I always have this off. Have just tried with it on and off - exactly the same.

I'm going to go back into Normal OS and switch WASAPI off. Will report back...

Mani.

Not sure if it's related, but I've had the 'initialization failed' error message on both audio PCs.

Also, before applying a presetloader.XXSI, I was not getting the full path in the XX title bar. (I've used Peter's screenshots here, but mine were/are identical with the 2.06 replaced by 2.06a).

Mani.

I just updated my RAM-OS disk per Peter's instructions. (As an aside, I also had an issue with the Windows 7 DVD DownloadTool. Tried on a W7 and W10 machine, but got the same error message as Juan. 'isotousb.com' worked perfectly - thanks Robert.)

I then loaded XX2.06a onto W10586 base on the RAM-OS disk. Now, I use the same RAM-OS disk on two totally separate audio PCs - one in my office and the other in my main room.

The office audio PC works perfectly. But I've got an annoying issue with the main audio PC. I'm having what looks like a scaling problem when coming out of Unattended. The only solution is to then close XX and open it again - the scaling problem is then totally resolved.

I'm using exactly the same hardware and RDC connection as before - coming out of Unattended has worked perfectly with XX2.05 since I received the RAM-OS disk at the beginning of the year. I'm made no changes to the RDC whatsoever.

I haven't seen anything in the scaling and skinning tutorials (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?board=12.0) that seems to address this issue.

Any ideas?

Mani.

I had my Teradak working perfectly for 6 months or so with the i7 3960X processor at full speed. Yes, the Teradak used to get 'hot', but it has quite substantial heat sinks on either side, so not sure how hot the components inside were getting.

In any event, reducing the CPU speed to 1.2GHz (lowest I can go) and using RAM-OS has transformed this situtation - the Teradak now gets lukewarm at best. If it wasn't for the power LED, I'd wonder if it was actually switched on.

So there do seem to be ways in which to manage the stress on the PSU.

Mani.

Hey Coen, I think we've all been there at some point in time. I can't remember the number of times I've wanted to throw the whole 'PC thing' out of the window. I mean, only recently, I was trying to get the RAM-OS to work in my office audio PC, and constantly getting the 'not enough RAM' error. I completely replaced the installed 16GB RAM with new RAM... but still the problem persisted. I tried so many things and spent so long on this, because I could hear the massive improvement the RAM-OS had made in my main system. The cause of the issue? Only having an integrated GPU in the mobo and not an external video card!!! I only stumbled upon this by accident.

Yep, PCs can be the biggest PITA. BUT... there has never been an issue that [often with the help of all the guys here] I haven't managed to solve.

My advice? Take a bit of time off. Enjoy your CDs and LPs for a while. Once you're ready, start from a fresh slate with your PC. If funds permit, maybe just order a new one from Peter? I mean, it seems he's gone through a lot of the stress already...

Mani.

The noise happens on one PC (consistently, irrespective of track) and not the other (consistently, irrespective of track). If I had only shown the first set, it would have been much harder to identify this as a possible hardware issue (but only with XX). I think this is very useful information, no?

Mani.

Different days, different locations, different PCs. And I can't keep listening to the same track over and over 

Mani.

Here are some plots when using my 'tricked-out' audio PC with the iFi DAC in the fairly insulated (electrically, mechanically and acoustically) room in my basement (as opposed to the more run-of-the-mill audio PC in my office that the earlier plots were taken with). No issues here in all three cases! (Totally different track.)

Mani.

Here's something curious. I've analysed the outputs of the iFi DAC when being fed in three different ways:

1. XXHighEnd using KS (in Unattended)
2. HQPlayer using ASIO
3. microRendu using RAAT

The file was fed to the DAC with no DSP in the player (no upsampling, filtering, noise-shaping, etc). I've also included the noise spectra when there's nothing playing, for both the audio PC (XX and HQP) and the microRendu (RoonReady).

Have a look at the three attached spectra. So what's causing the noise between 23-60kHz during playback... XX having the highest? (These noise profiles are identical on all the respective 24/captures - it's not a quirk.)

Mani

I've been doing some pretty extensive testing recently, trying to figure out if going the microRendu route is the best way forward for ultimate sound quality. Right now, the resounding answer is NO. My two PCs running from RAM-OS both sound substantially better than my mircoRendu - the gap is pretty large. This could be down to the cheap iFi power supply I'm currently using with the mircroRendu, so hopefully, I'll get a chance to try it with a better PSU in the near future. But that's not the purpose of this thread...

As part of my testing, I captured a number of tracks at the ouptut of the iFi DAC (compatible with the mircroRendu, whereas the NOS1a is not) being fed from the audio PC in my office. As a reference, I captured some outputs from the NOS1a too, again being fed from my office audio PC. When I was listening back, I was really disappointed with the sound of the NOS1a compared to the iFi - the NOS1a was marginally better, but not really any more 'musical' than the iFi. And then it occurred to me that after the last reboot I had left the RAM-OS HDD in the audio PC during the NOS1a captures (and not during the iFi captures). I took the HDD out and re-did the captures from the NOS1a.

For anyone who is interested, this is difference between keeping the RAM-OS disc in your PC and taking it out:

OS running from RAM, but with HDD still inside PC: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0PU5LO5jVjfR25XbHFYZWV5QzQ

OS running from RAM, but with *NO* HDD or SSD in PC: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0PU5LO5jVjfbFpfOTMyOEhFdjg

If your experience of listening to these two files is anything like mine, you will be amazed at the difference. Having the HDD in the PC simply kills the musicality... and to think we've been doing this for years, and years... until Peter offered us the RAM-OS.

Mani.

Hi Peter, the price remains OK for me. Definitely one #3 for me for now. (I'll send you a PM with some other thoughts.)

Cheers,
Mani.