Go on Dave .. you know you can't resist having a sneak listen while you have the service pack installed

Cheers,

Russ

I was in the same situation. When I initially built the Win7 environment I had slipstreamed SP1 RC into the install disc, and when I attempted to uninstall it a few days back was unable to find a way.

It's only a few hours rebuilt time, and you could waste almost that much time searching the net for a possible solution, so just accept that a rebuild is needed and just jump in. It's worth the effort

Cheers,

Russ

I have noticed that also. I raised the Q1 a few levels to compensate. I've noticed it more with hi-res content (176.4 & 196). Anyone else experience this and does raising Q1 help? I have my new rebuild pretty much tweaked to how it was with SP1 RC installed, but I may have missed a couple of items that still need turning off/disabling.

Cheers,

Russ

After reading this thread late last night I bit the bullet and installed, this time directly onto my SSD, plain ol' vanilla original RTM version of Win7 Ultimate X64. Got it to the state where I could play something (quietly) and called it a night. Today I backed up the system so I have a base configuration if I need to go back, and then spent an hour or so going through the services and disabling, or setting to manual, as needed.

I then loaded Klaus Schulze's Disc 3 from his Works I set, and hit play.

MY GOODNESS !! Really tight deep bass and a wonderful crisp and clear mid and top end. What had I (we) been missing all these months. Suffice to say I listened to the album all the way thru, and used a gazillion calories tapping and bobbing my hands and feet. Blissful indeed. I then put another few tracks on that I'm familiar with, and the same newfound joy followed. It was a whole new ball game again

Kudos to Peter for having had the insight to play some things after removing SP1 RC, rather than blindly chucking SP1 RTM on.

Leaving the system in a vanilla state without ANY updates has my wholehearted endorsement.

Cheers,

Russ

 

Not necessarily Tim.

As a proof of concept, a few months back I loaded up XXHE on another PC on my LAN, which was cable attached (to the router), and controlled everything via VNC running on my Android phone and the PC. I haven't progressed any further since then, as I'm reticent to attach my music server to the LAN just at the moment, as it would obviously require the network drivers etc. being active all the time.

For casual listening though it may have merit.

Cheers,

Russ

I did, but it was the RC release, which has been discussed and was causing all the angst about expiring.

Regs,

Russ

Yeah, well, I couldn't be 100% certain it wasn't a bass drum sampled by himself or something he had concocted on his Moog, which was why I said "similar"

Regardless of whether it was sampled or created from oscillators, it was a good tight sound, and added a nice touch. It wouldn't surprise me if it was a sample though, as KS used to be a drummer before turning to the electronics, so I'm sure he has the odd drum kit or two still laying around his mansion.

Cheers,

Russ

Well now, what better way to test my system rebuild, than a spot of KS magic heh?

The first (short) track certainly has an underlaying bass "drone" in it, which was a hint of what was to come. The second track had his typical soothing rhythmic style, this time with a more defined bass beat. The third track stepped up the tempo and the bass beat became more prevalent, with a repetitive 'da thump thump' throughout most of the track. Similar in some ways to a bass drum, but more tightly damped. The fourth (last) track was very lively, and introduced new sounds and sequences, but still with that underlaying strong bass beat.

There was certainly an emphasis on the bass beat in this album, moreso than typical with most of his works. Perhaps KS discovered a new knob on one of his many synths

It's a good album to test how your system can handle relatively high energy levels in the bass region. For the ultimate test though, you need to try "Woofer Cooker" from the Boston Acoustics Test Disc. A quick google search has revealed a 320kbps MP3 is available here to sample ... http://www.mp3ye.eu/662170_bass-test-cd-woofer-cooker-this-track-can-smoke-woofers-mp3-download.html

Caution is advised!!

Cheers,

Russ

Yesterday I decided to rebuild my music server O/S from scratch. I figured everyone was going to be on the RTM release of SP1 anyway, so from a conformity point of view it makes sense. I rebuilt using a copy of my W7 X64 Ultimate with SP1 slipstreamed into it.

It didn't take ALL that long in reality, maybe 3 hours in total. I had previously taken screen dumps of all the services I disabled/amended, and I made sure I copied  the current AutoHK, XXHE and Data folders to another drive, in preparation to copying back to the new C: drive.

As a dedicated XXHE only music server, nothing else was applied, or needed, other than Acrobat reader, ExcelViewer2007, and an initial load of PowerStrip, which I used to create a custom screen res for my CRT monitor (Sony GDM-FW900) of 1280 x 834 pixels @ 75 Hz.

Firing up XXHE on the new build resulted in sound that I was familiar with, however I did notice occassional ticks and clicks midway through some tracks which was unexpected. I still need to disable the system logging functions discussed in the epic system tweaking post, so hopefully that will resolve the clicks.

Cheers,

Russ

G'day Chris,

"Picture Music" from back in '75 is a good example of his work before the electronics hardware started getting too complex. It's one of my favourite's from his early works. A more modern release could be something like the concert "Rheingold - Live At The Loreley" done in '08 and with support vocals by Lisa Gerrard.

KS has an unmistakable signature to his work, and you really can't go wrong with sampling (no pun intended) any of his works.

Enjoy his creativity.

Cheers,

Russ

G'day Mike and 



Peter will be along in a few hours with a thorough answer, but I'm reckoning, that because XXHE runs in what's known as "exclusive" mode, it is prohibiting the Airfoil app from getting anywhere near the data/processing. It's unlikely iTunes is using this exclusive mode, which is why that works for you.

Stick around regardless if you can't use XXHE as initially hoped. I'm sure you will hear the benefits used in a normal manner.

Cheers,

Russ

g'day Dave .... welcome back

I believe the consensus amongst us here is that Windows 7 in 64 bit form is the O/S of choice. X64 removes most of the memory limitations that the 32 bit version offers.

Plain SP1 should suffice. My philosophy has been to only apply additional patches/updates if proved necessary, and there is no evidence to my mind that suggests those constant updates have any benefit in a dedicated music server.

As far as tweaking goes, Peter, I understand, has something brewing in 0.9z-6 which should negate the need for extensive system tweaks, so I would hang tight on any changes until that version is released, which is imminent.

Cheers,

Russ

I decided not to wait for a week so contacted H.G. Wells to borrow his famous toy. It was out on loan to some team called Terra Nova, so I did the next best thing by incrementally advancing the system clock one day at a time, with a reboot followed by a restart in between each day. Everything still fine after 8 days of progress, so I'm now even more confident when I apply the fix to my real system I shouldn't encounter any hassles.

Cheers,

Russ

Thanks Peter, your advice is noted. As I have my cloned drive still operable, I will set date to Sep 1st and run with it like that for a few days. The server is isolated from everything so having it a few days advanced won't bother me too much. If it is still behaving in a weeks time, I will still have a few days to apply the loader to my "real" system drive.

I'm only going to this effort to save some time in having to possibly rebuild system from scratch, and apply all the many tweaks I had made. If the 0.9z-6 works out as expected then a rebuild should be a far easier task if needed.

Cheers,

Russ

I have a solution for myself, and depending upon how comfortable you are with dabbling within Windows and using third party apps, my method should work for you, although no guarantee's of course.

Firstly, determine whether you have a SP1 version that is expected to expire. Do a search within your system drive for "Winver.exe". You may have several hits/paths depending upon which version on windows you are running. Try running each entry in turn, and one (or all) should bring up a small window with details on your system. Mine highlighted the fact that I had SP1 RC installed and will expire on Sep 1st 2011 at 9:59 AM.

If you don't have mention of an expiry date after running winver.exe, then go make a cuppa and continue listening to music!

If you want to attempt to uninstall the RC version of SP1, and subsequently install the final version, the following web site should prove useful.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/99064-windows-7-service-pack-1-sp1-uninstall.html

If you prefer to try and stick with SP1-RC for the time being, then you need a "loader" to circumvent the expiry. If you google search for "windows loader DAZ" , you will see several references as to where to obtain this third party app by "DAZ".

In preparation to trialing the loader, I cloned my operating drive to another and booted up on that clone, thus keeping my current environment intact in case of calamity.

After installing the loader, I then reset system hardware date to a month ahead and booted the system. It came up fine. Further date resets to 2 months ahead and a year also resulted in no untoward consequences. I finally reset back to 1st Sep 2011 to see what would happen. Everything OK

The system date is now back to current, and later this evening I will apply the loader to my normal operating drive. I expect it all to work just as it did with the cloned drive.

Hope the above helps,

Cheers,

Russ