XXHighEnd - The Ultra HighEnd Audio Player
March 29, 2024, 09:31:23 am *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
News: August 6, 2017 : Phasure Webshop open ! Go to the Shop
Search current board structure only !!  
  Home Help Search Login Register  
  Show Posts
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [13] 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
181  Ultimate Audio Playback / Orelino / Orelo MKII Loudspeakers / Re: Sneak Preview of New Orelos on: January 02, 2018, 08:10:31 am
Dave,

Yes, I did move the speakers; initially not for sound but convenience.  I spend more time in this space, which is a family room, breakfast area and kitchen space--a lot of space behind the listening position (at least 20 feet).

The speakers are 10 feet apart center to center, and I listen on a couch which is 10 feet away (triangle apex = 10 feet, not distance to speaker, which is a bit more).

I spaced the speakers as far apart as I could, and then toed-in just enough to get a solid center.  Measured distances to within 0.25 inches for accuracy. 4 feet from front wall.  10" from side walls.

The speakers sound gorgeous, exceptionally good.  Most recent "tweak" has been with the F-M curves, now set to green, orange, orange (based on VJ Rao's visit).  I like the depth added to the sound stage, and a little more "presence" in the mid-range.  All relative, of course.

I listen to a wide range of music, but still try to optimize set up for classical orchestral pieces.  My sense is if we can get this right, most everything else will sound good, EXCEPT of course for ancient rock recordings--the MQA versions really help.

Ramesh



182  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / MQA SQ and Albums on: December 31, 2017, 11:28:26 pm
First, thanks Peter for all the work on MQA.  XXHE with Tidal is much easier to use than I had anticipated initially, and the added bonus of "unfolding" and playing MQA albums has been fantastic.

Almost all the MQA albums I have tried are better than the straight 16/44 CD versions.  Some MQA albums I have tried that sound really good.

Nick Drake (Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, Pink Moon)
Joni Mitchell (Blue, Court and Spark)
Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin, II, III, IV)
Eagles (Eagles, Hotel California)
Carlos Kleiber and Wiener Philharmoniker (Beethoven 5th and 7th)
Cassandra Wilson (New Moon Daughter)

I have not had to change settings specifically for MQA albums.

Happy New Year everyone, and looking forward to more music in our lives.

Thanks for all the work Peter!! It's been a great year.
183  Ultimate Audio Playback / Orelino / Orelo MKII Loudspeakers / Re: Sneak Preview of New Orelos on: December 26, 2017, 09:33:37 pm
I’m finally getting around to writing a review of the Orelo Mk II speakers.  There is a lot of information in the forum on design, measurements, etc. so I won’t get into any of that.  Just my impressions after having lived with them now for several months.

Ordering and customizing

First, getting the Orelos is nothing like buying speakers from anyone else.  Peter and Bert went out of the way to make sure that what I wanted for veneer, horn color, other finishes were exactly done, and offered suggestions, often blunt, about what would and would not work.  The result is a speaker that looks spectacular—a hybrid of angel and winged beast.  We finished the woofer baffles in figured mahogany finished to a high-gloss “guitar” effect.  This brings out the figuring in 3D much like you see in figured maple and mahogany guitars—which is where the idea came from.
 
The horn in BMW Valencia Orange (B44 for anyone who might want to do this).  The BMW Valencia orange is perfect with the mahogany, a rust-toned, rich, metallic orange.  The front “nose” and decorative grille are gloss black, and everything else is matt black.

Arrival and assembly

The speakers arrive packed expertly in four large crates.  I was initially a little apprehensive about assembling them.  But here is the surprise.  They are VERY easy to assemble!  It will take two people to move the woofer column, but the actual assembly only involves: bolting the baffles in place (they fit perfectly), placing the horn on its padded rest, wiring the horn, inserting the decorative grill into the pre-made slots, and THAT IS IT!   Once I had all the components unpacked and the woofer columns in place, it took less than an hour.  The packing includes a pair of soft gloves to use with the horns not to smudge them!

Wiring and getting ready to play

Wiring the speakers is extremely simple.  One connection for the input from the DAC, and one for power.  I cannot tell you how complex wiring my previous set up was with ten channels of amplification, active cross-over, associated interconnects, speaker cables, power cables, power supplies, etc.

Sound

I have not heard speakers that sound better.  I’ve had “audiophile” friends over to listen.  A problem evaluating SQ is that not many people listen to live music, and are therefore acclimated to an unnatural “hi-fi” sound.

The Orelos are completely neutral and balanced, extremely fast and dynamic, detailed and engaging.  The Orelos have none of the coloration associated with “horns.”  More importantly, I am beginning to recognize that wide-dispersion cone drivers are in fact more colored, except everyone is used to this particular coloration of sound.
It took a few weeks for everything to loosen up and break-in, the bass initially seemed slim BUT this was both because of the need for break-in AND the absence of aliased frequencies that give artificial “weight” to bass.  I still have my previous speakers set up in another room (LX521 without the NOS1a), and can hear the difference in quality of bass, even though the LX521 bass is very, very good.  The Orelo bass is now some of the best I have heard—deep, resonant, natural, with body, without bloat.

Positioning the speakers properly is critical, but not overly finicky.  I have them 10 feet apart center to center, with very slight toe-in, 4 feet from back (front) wall, and 10 inches from side walls.  Toe-in and distance from side wall have probably been the most import influence on sound.  VJ Rao has posted on his dramatic improvement with room treatment, and this may be something to consider.  Hoping to meet up with VJ again soon.  The Orelos seem to actually benefit from some side reflection, this at least is my observation.

I have tried the F-M switches, but flat (slope, dip and high all at 1) seems best for me.  Would like to hear what others are doing.  I would prefer one setting that works for all genres, or maybe a setting per genre (orchestral, small jazz combo/string quartet, singer-songwriter) than tweaking for individual recordings.
The one area for improvement in my set up is probably imaging and width of sound stage.  All relative.

Conclusion

The Orelos are spectacular, world-class speakers, worth the price easily if you consider they include amplification, DSP for bass, F-M filters.  I have listened to a wide range of music on them: classical, modern, rock, electronic, pop, experimental.  Some poor recordings sound bad, because that is reality.  I have not tried aggressive use of the F-M switches to fix that.

Peter and Bert are obsessed with customer satisfaction in a way that is simply unmatched.  

It would be good to have a little more on the forum from Orelo owners—setup, tweaks, etc.
 
A very happy owner!!
184  Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 2.09 sound quality on: December 11, 2017, 10:45:04 pm
Juan,

I have been experimenting with settings as well, and have essentially settled for the moment on the same settings as you except with Q5=0.  I remember when the Stealth PC first came out, the suggestion was to use Q3/4/5 = 0/1/0; which had worked well for me prior to the G3/Lush upgrade.  Q3/4/5 = 0/1/0 seems to produce more body/realism without any loss of detail or dynamics.

Ramesh
185  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: MQA decoding issue on: December 05, 2017, 06:42:20 am
Richard,

I had a problem that I was able to fix by making sure the setting for the sound device "Select the sample rate and bit depth when running in shared mode" to be 24/96. Other settings may work.  The default Windows setting of 16/44.1 is a problem, as well as anything below 96.

May not help, but worth trying.

Ramesh
186  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / MQA Playback Kernal Streaming Errors on: December 03, 2017, 02:16:45 am
I notice that when playing MQA files in XXHE, the driver control panel shows a large number of kernel streaming/WSAPI errors.  I'm assuming this is not an issue, and certainly there are glitches or interruptions in playback.
187  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: MQA album playback skips second half of tracks on: November 27, 2017, 10:31:44 am
Peter,

Before this it was 24/48 which is the default Windows 10 setup!

Anyway all is working.  I am able to prepare MQA files on the Tidal laptop, move the USB drive to the music server and everything works!!  Great.  Listening now to some actually decoded MQA to see how it sounds. So far sounding very good.

Ramesh
188  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: MQA album playback skips second half of tracks on: November 27, 2017, 09:59:33 am
Peter,

It's interesting I was able to fix the problem, and get MQA icon with the 192 on it, and prepare a 24/96 file.  The only change I made was in the configuration of the Sound Device.  Set "sample rate and bit depth when running in shared mode" to 24/96."  At least this worked with the default sound device on my laptop.

Ramesh
189  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: MQA album playback skips second half of tracks on: November 27, 2017, 09:13:52 am
I get the same message as Arjan when I try to prepare an MQA files (The Eagles - The Eagles again), and end up with a 24/48 file. It appears that the MQA unfolding is not happening.  Will try on another machine.  Is there some way to keep the activation from previous machine?
190  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New XXHE Install: Specified module could not be found on: November 26, 2017, 11:37:24 pm
Peter,

Sorry, I think we have language confusion here.

I did care when I thought I was getting no sound.  Thank you for helping with this.  But then I realized after turning the volume all the way up that there was sound, except at a very low level so I needed to turn it up to -10db to hear anything at all.  Even at 0db it is faint, BUT none of this matters because I only plan to prepare Tidal albums on this machine.

Thank you Peter for taking the time, and sorry to have wasted it!!

I will go ahead with activation, and I should be set.

Ramesh
191  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New XXHE Install: Specified module could not be found on: November 26, 2017, 08:01:43 pm
Peter,

There is sound, and it has been working all along EXCEPT I need to get the volume higher than -10dB to HEAR anything.

Thanks very much. 

Ramesh
192  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New XXHE Install: Specified module could not be found on: November 26, 2017, 10:45:00 am
Peter,

I did check the .exe files.  They are not blocked.  I killed the XXEngine3 (blue button), and started play again.  Got the series of messages around "Clock resolution requested was not received; requested 15ms, received 1.003 ms"; then "This could be WSAPI problem or some other cause", then statement about renaming the ClockRes file to remove this message.

Ramesh
193  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New XXHE Install: Specified module could not be found on: November 26, 2017, 08:13:13 am
Peter, the upload was failing I think because the X3PB files is 0KB and nothing in it
194  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New XXHE Install: Specified module could not be found on: November 26, 2017, 08:12:07 am
Attaching files separately as upload fails
195  Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: New XXHE Install: Specified module could not be found on: November 26, 2017, 08:10:58 am
Peter,

Here they are.  Keep in mind that this version of 2.09 has not yet been activated.  If I remember that should not matter.  Need to activate this once I get it working.

Ramesh
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [13] 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1 RC2 | SMF © 2001-2005, Lewis Media Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Page created in 0.096 seconds with 12 queries.