Alain and Peter,

Thank-you for the RAMDisk info and batch file.  A little bit of spare time came up today and I could not help myself so I downloaded IMdisk and Alains batch file and set to making a 2.8GB XX ramdisk and a 5GB playback drive using my 16GB of ram.  What do you know, a nice surprise and a I think a general lift in SQ which for me is characterised by a lower noisefloor, the background is more black.  Early days of course, but very promising.

One additional thing that I have done is to add Alain's batch file and a shortcut to XXHE (to the version on the ramdisks) to windows startup so both processes run automatically when the computer boots.  I just press the button to turn the computer on and then XXHE is sitting there running from the RAMDisks.  Nice!!

Cheers,

Anthony

Coen, this might be a stupid question, but sometimes the simple places to look are the best solutions.  I can concur with some of the sound symptoms that you describe when I switch back to XX after using another software player and forget to change Switch 5 on the NOS1 to the 768 position.  It could not be something as simple as this could it?

Anthony

Alain, thanks for posting this.  I will try it out in the coming days.

Anthony

I will be sitting in the stands at the Gabba for the first three days in November hoping that we put in a good showing in the First Test.  Hoping...but not really expecting.

Woe is Aussie cricket to be sure.

But it sure has been great to have Peter over on our local forum for a little while at least.  I know that I am learning a lot.

Anthony

Hi Juan,

Could you please share your Ramdisk settings?  I've never used a Ramdisk and am only brand new to XX and the NOS1.  Is there somewhere here that I could find out how to do this?

Regards,

Anthony

You beat me to it Bill.   It was good to catch up with you again mate.

Juan, I was running an XX pc built to Peters recipe, but of course not tweaked to best suit the system. 

When fully burnt-in and warmed up I am sure it will sound much better again at the upcoming dac get-together.

I should add that this is only the second NOS1 in Australia!!  I guess everyone has been waiting for someone else to take the plunge.


Cheers,

Anthony

Hi VJ,

The Arion HS-500 is the best amp I have heard.  Tube input stage, Class D based around a proprietary power supply.  Very fast with prodigious grip and power.

See them here http://www.arionaudio.com/HS_500.pdf
Cheers,

Anthony

I've had this happen twice in the last couple of weeks but I just press the power button on the pc to shutdown (rather than logging in) then restart and it all seems to work.  Unfortunately I am too new at this software to help you too much.

Anthony

From the info Peter has corresponded to me whilst building my xx pc, I don't think that reducing the active cores will be a beneficial experience.  But consider this: a 6 core like the i7-3930K can hyperthread to 12 whereas the 8 core Xeon will hyperthread to 16 giving it much more parallel processing power, lower TDP (measured typical consumption 172W vs 56w) and therefore much less heat to dissipate.  The little Xeon also has 22MB of L2+L3 cache compared to 13.5MB on the i7 which is something from my understanding that is beneficial to XX. 

What I don't know is whether XX can take advantage of all this extra grunt right now.  Perhaps Peter can chime in if he glances at the forum during his holiday.

Anthony   

Hi Nick.  Your observations regarding the Asrock vs Asus board are interesting.  Like me, you seem to be a serial tweaker but I am brand new to XX and the NOS1 so am just getting started in this.

I built my own XX pc based on Peters recipe but one thing that I changed was the cpu: I went for a second hand lower power 8 core Xeon from ebay instead of the high wattage 6 core i7 recommended by Peter.  I have no idea if it makes any difference, but it is cheap, and I like the idea of 8 cores, 70w TDP (although it has been tested at 54w) and permanent underclocking with 1.8Ghz.

It was a risk ordering a second hand processor from China on Ebay but it turned up on time, slotted straight in and I have been playing music ever since.  I just thought I would mention it just in case you were curious about the Xeon or 8 core stuff.  I for one would certainly like to know if I have limited my system by using it, but I am not going to spend AU$700 for the i7-3930K chip right now.

Cheers,

Anthony

The slightly softer presentation was the expensive cable.

It has...and they used to make such a difference...some were great...some were horrid...now they are pretty much all the same.

Greetings Phasure NOS1 owners,

As a brand new NOS1 owner myself, I would like to share my listening impressions regarding some of the USB related tweaks that worked in my previous audio setup that included an Empirical Audio Offramp Turbo5 and a NAD C390DD dac/digital amplifier.

I did a lot of digital cable testing, both usb and s/pdif in that old setup that contributed greatly to the sound of the NAD.  The USB cable that I settled on had a little tour to a number of other audiophiles homes and get-togethers and generated several sales for the manufacturer as a result.  In all the systems that the cable went into it produced the preferred sound and could therefore be considered as a very consistent performer. 

Now that I have over 100hrs on my new NOS1 toy, I thought that I would try out the super-usb cable as well as a Shortblock common-mode filter to see if improvements could be made to the sound.  I have built a brand new XX computer according to Peters recipe but run my existing PPAstudio USB3 card in preference to the mobo USB3 ports.  This card is based on a NEC chip and uses Rhenesas drivers but has been modded so that it does not take power from the PCIe bus and uses a high grade silver transformer for isolation as well as upgraded TCXO.  The card must be powered separately but I am powering it from its own line from the BeQuiet psu.  At a later date I will try a high grade linear supply on this card to see if it makes as much a difference to the NOS1 as it did to my old setup.

Now the listening.  It took a while, but I did hear a tiny difference between the cheapo cable supplied with the NOS1 and the super-usb cable.  It came across as a slight softening, or muffling of the higher frequencies and was difficult to detect, but it was there.  This difference is nowhere near what I and others have experienced with this cable in other systems which included dacs and reclockers like Offramps, Audiophilleo, PDX, Playback Designs, Chord QuteHD, Mark Levinson 360, AMR DP-777.  Which cable is more accurate?  I don't know.  I do know that the cheapo cable is staying and the AU$660 cable will be sold.

I got a similar result with the Shortblock common-mode filter.  In my previous setup I had tested the SOtM PCIe card (don't like it), the Adnaco S3B (even with a linear psu I didn't like it) and the PPAstudio usb card (I like it - all positives - no negatives - got better with a linear psu) and the Shortblock worked well with the Adnaco and the PPAstudio card, but did not work at all well with the SOtM card.  At the time I theorised that it was because the SOtM is the only one of the three that filters its incoming power and that a second stage of filtering with the Shortblock was detrimental on a product I was already not so keen on.  The result of the Shortblock with the Phasure NOS1 was similar to the result of the Shortblock with the SOtM card:  a smearing of the image, a slight hit to the dynamics.  In short, the Shortblock has no place with the NOS1.

The result of all this is that I feel zero compulsion to further test USB cables and filters because I think Peter has got the USB isolation of the NOS1 better than anything else that I have heard.  Kudos to you Peter...that is a rare and fantastic result!!

Cheers,

Anthony

Cancel that Peter.  Here is how I fixed it (for others in this predicament):  every dialog box that comes up asking for permission to run something  UNCLICK the "ask me every time" button EVERY TIME.  Then everything runs fine.