Ok, let's do this after all.
But first Anthony's settings, because they pretty much (should) resemble the former sound (0.9z-9b);

So, the only thing more special about his settings is the SFS of 0.2 (but they could always work - now far more easy though). So, Anthony has a Q1 of 14x10 and only Q5 set to 5 (Q3,Q4 = 0,0). ClockRes is not all that much important I think, but 1 or 0.5). This should pretty much resemble the old high dynamic sound.

Personally I don't like this for the better and most probably this can be dedicated to the speaker and its speed in the tweeter. Notice though that with this speed more or less lacking it goes the other way around, and the new sound (mainly implied by Q3,4,5 = 1,1,1) may become dull. This is hard to explain but where the new sound excels, is in taking out the high albeit more rough dynamics. This, while the top end of it (highest frequencies) is sustained. This gives it this special flavour of analogue while all the detail is still there (and nowhere to be found on LP - just saying).

In my view, and as far as I have been able to judge it, the settings of my current sig go wrong-ish in the bass; most probably this now needs my ultra-low-going undistorted bass, but not sure. So yesterday I have been looking at the behaviour of the PC and found a quite different setting with as far as I can see better behaviour. And, after dialing that in from pure stupid theory, I sure had the idea this sounded better although noticed through one ear and the other one not on par either. So, maybe not better at all, but for the behaviour I see I'd say Yes.

Try a Q1 x xQ1 of 6x10, Q3,4,5 = 1,1,1, SFS=120 (and ClockRes of 1 might that ever matter).

The behaviour I see from the PC is quite unexpected and I must actually think about how this can happen. However, these settings were dialed in because I wanted some other behaviour to be better and that worked as expected. That UNexpected behaviour makes me think that there's a whole new world to explore with now Q3,4,5 = 1,1,1. So, set one of them to 0 and all is back to about how it all was but with the 1,1,1 we really have to rethink our SFS and also Q1; this is a kind of bonus.

If I heard correctly, the bass is now better again (or maybe even better than ever) and the highs are more profound but not "high dynamic". So generally speaking a more fresh sound without the general nastyness of W8.

If this is all correct then don't ask me how I did it with really one ear only.
Peter


PS: That Q1 and SFS are really arbitrary but they shouldn't be too low. So I wouldn't go lower because of the desired "behaviour effect" and possibly higher settings can even be for the better; the SFS will matter less for higher settings, but Q1 probably much. Keep in mind though that the higher Q1 (x etc.) the less responsive e.g. volume change is.

Let's recall what I have always been saying : XXHighEnd is capable of influencing the DAC, and I know of no other means than that it influences the jitter in there (at the clocking out of the D/A chips).
I have also repeatedly been saying that I can not imagine that this is thermal or other noise inside of the PC doing that, hence that we're influencing the noise that travels over the USB cable. Careful, because the sort of fact that I can not imagine this, doesn't make it truth of course.

So, *everything* influences to begin with (in-DAC I now mean) and the best influencers will be those with a pattern, preferrably at the ms level or maybe somewhat higher. Well, USB transfer is per 1.25ms, so that's a good start.

<snip>

Anyway Anthony, when the noise sneaks into the data as you propose, you're suggesting jitter up to the degree of molested samples (but read missed and repeated) which in itself would imply more jitter than ever can be. This can theoretically be in order, but if so I wouldn't expect a better oscillator to sound better (for the D/A I now mean, so not USB). Btw, this can also be seen the other way around : how can a 200fs oscillator sound so much better than a 1ps one while all "scientific tests" indicate that we won't be able to perceive the difference. But alas.

So, I can not imagine that such a thing is the case (high noise in the digital data) *unless* this is again at the 1ms level which makes it happen once in the 1000 or so (768K) samples). Thus, jitter like 1ps is way more low than 1/768000 which allows for the 1/1000 not to be perceived as jitter but something quite else (higher level distortion);

We then could say that once per 1ms or whatever it is, we have high jitter for a very small fraction of time (something like the slew rate of the electronics) that possibly being so bad that a sample is missed or repeated.
And something like this happening once per 1ms gives a nice flair to the sound. Or practice : Once the 1.25ms USB transfer is visible at the outputs, this is perceived as more bass and blanketed highs. Easy to hear and thus easy to measure while this noise is say 135dB down (but rides on the signal).

hmm ...
Peter