OCZ are releasing an IDtool in the next few days that will identify which type of NAND is installed ...

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?84821-New-update-on-the-25nm-OCZ-SSD-drives&p=604237&viewfull=1#post604237

Also, if your current firmware is 1.27 or less, is seems to indicate you have the 3xnm chips installed ...

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?84691-Consolidated-release-notes-for-Sandforce-Firmware-updates

OCZ appear to be doing their best to correct this marketing blunder by offering a speedy RMA program. See first link above for full details.

Cheers,

Russ

Thanks for the link Marcin. Looks good on paper but like most of these early reports I expect a difference with final production examples. No doubt there will be a premium associated with the new technology and to get the best from them you will need a m/b with appropriate controller. Still, it's a nice advancement and will hopefully drive the prices of their, and other manufacturers, drives down across the board.

The response improvements going from spinning platters to SSD is very noticeable. Going from SSD to these new drives more of an incremental step I expect. Will need to wait a few months I guess.

BTW ... anyone running OCZ drives should make the effort to get on the latest firmware. Only gotcha, is that you need to be on an internet connected PC, so in my case i disconnected the drives from my music server and installed temporarily into another PC. OCZ reckon you shouldn't lose data during f/w upgrade but I took a full backup as a precaution (which wasn't needed).

Cheers,

Russ

Those contemplating a purchase of a new small capacity OCZ SSD would be advised to read the following first ...

http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_2_25nm_review_oczssd22vtxe60g

Fortunately my 2 x 60GB drives purchased quite a few months back have the 34nm chips onboard.

Cheers,

Russ

OK .. just checked that. I queued up a mixture of 16/44.1, 24/48 & 24/96 material and I played each in turn correctly.

Also played DTS back OK.

While on the subject of DTS playback, I mentioned a while back that having some different profiles to call upon with the click of a button would be helpful in cases where playing back DTS was needed. Currently, if you want to play DTS, you have to disable PeakExt, any oversampling and put a tick in Disable Crack Detect. A small selection of customisable profiles would make it much easier.

Cheers,

Russ

I can confirm that AudioSrv and AudioEndpointBuilder services are not needed if you use Kernel Streaming. In fact, with those two services disabled, the option to use Engine#3 is removed from the drop down list in the parameters page. If you use your PC for other, non XXHE purposes, leave those 2 services intact.

Those using the ESI Juli@ card can remove JulaPan.exe (the control panel). Thanks for the tip Peter. To achieve that, fire up Regedit, and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and delete the entry for it. It may be prudent to export that Run entry in case you want to reinstate it, or simply run JulaPan.exe from explorer on those rare occassions when needed.

Regs,

Russ

Imagine how much more enjoyable the experience would be if you drank a decent beer! 

Cheers,

Russ

The following screen captures may be of assistance for those wishing to cull some of the non-essential services that normally run following a typical install. I am running Win7 X64 SP1, and my decisions as to which service(s) to cull came mainly from the info found in Black Viper's website.

http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm

Those running other O/S's will need to amend as appropriate.

Note that my music server is dedicated purely to playback using XXHE only, and as such has NO LAN connectivity whatsoever. Any data transferred onto or from it is done via a Zalman ZM-HDR1 drive bay, or memory stick for smaller files. No virus protection is loaded or needed.

I also disabled a lot of logging activities as discussed in the "How I tweaked my Vista virtually dead" thread, and other tips from within that thread.

Upon startup, there are a few services that normally run for a few minutes to 10 minutes then close, and the screen captures below reflect the system after things have setled down.

If you are in doubt as to the safety of stopping any service, in addition to Black Viper's valuable explanations via the links on the actual process name in his tables, simple google the name and you should get a good idea as to it's function.

There's still debate over the influence of running processes and how they may or may not influence sound quality, but I figure if they ain't running it does no harm and at minimum, frees up resources.

Have fun tweaking !

Regs,

Russ

Ps. I left the screen captures at original pixel size for legibility but used high compression to help those still on dialup modems.

thanks Pierre

I had a feeling it may have been related to buffers but because it only popped up occasionally, and it wasn't apparent in the playback, I had forgotten about asking.

Any lowering of potential latency can't hurt.

Glad my nose has been useful again  although of late it's needed a rather large umbrella to stop from drowning!

Cheers,

Russ

hey Pete,

been meaning to ask what's the significance (if any) of the "Ran out" message that appears occassionally in the X3PB log?

I think it's new following Z4-0 release.

Ta

--- snip from X3PB log --
Name attempt : Juli@ Ch34 ** Found ** ** Succeeded ! **
Filter found : \\?\esi#julia_01#5&2e82fd80&2&0001#{6994ad04-93ef-11d0-a3cc-00a0c9223196}\esi_wave3
Name attempt : Juli@ Ch1234
No ambiguous devices found.
-13
-14
-16
Set Device Buffer Size : 48  Samples of latency (Q1) : 3  (see more below for the applied KS Mode)
-29 (Start Playback)
FileBase : 44 Start at : 44 Corr : -48 FileLengthEnd : 127999932
21:02:44.3804420 First ChangeWP call
Special Mode !
31
31
31
21:11:48.6255524 Ran out.
31
31
31
21:20:52.8361584 Ran out.
31
21:22:02.2504729 Second ChangeWP call
31
31
21:27:06.5041082 Second ChangeWP call
31
21:30:07.9141443 Ran out.
31
31
31
21:36:48.1134632 Second ChangeWP call
21:36:48.1149634 Ran out.
31
31
31
21:45:52.3315701 Ran out.
-30 (EXIT)
-30a (EXIT)
-30b (EXIT)
-30c (EXIT)
-30d (EXIT)
-44a (Quit)
-44b (Quit)

Undoubtedly Peter .. hehe

I'm guilty of zero feedback since the release of Z4-0. In all honesty I couldn't imagine being happier with what I am listening to at the moment. After a brief foray into using mixed contiguous mem management I switched to straight continuous and left it at that , as I perceived a subtle improvement. Hard to define .. just an overall feeling. With my 8GB ram I can have a 3GB ramdisk and use an SFS of 128MB.

Transients and the even tonal spread are impressive, and if it wasn't for the acknowledged "tick" at the start of each track, I'd be happy to have it called XX 1.0 from a purely SQ perspective.

Stability has not been an issue and I've got into the habit of letting the PC simply "go to sleep", then wake it with a quick press on the power button. 5 seconds later and I'm ready to queue up another album or two. Haven't had a need to reboot in a week now.

I should also point out I have stripped the OS down to bare minimum processes, using Black Viper's guide. If anyone is interested I will post a screen shot of my minimal running processes.

Regarding tweaking with the release of a new version, my philosophy has usually been to pick a day when you are in the relaxed mood to want to listen to music, then spend some time playing with the parameters until you are satisfied. Once you have achieved that, put all notion of further tweaking from your mind. Trust your initial judgement ! It is a well known phenomenon that different days will harness difference perceptions, and if you continually change things you only end up chasing your tail.

Now, I simply queue up album after album after album, and just enjoy it all

Cheers,

Russ ( converted tweakaholic )

hey there Peter,

I queued up a Fourplay album a short time ago, simply called "X", and when the GUI disappeared and the wallpaper was expected, the following 2 messages came up. Thinking the error may have been due to the short album name I then tried again with one of their other albums called "4", and the same error condition resulted. I then tried yet another album, this time with a longer file name and residing in the same artist folder, and all was fine. The folder art appeared to be intact in the actual gallery folder for the 2 albums in question.

In both the "X" and "4" albums, the same 2 part error message occurred before each subsequent track.

Hopefully you can replicate the condition.

I can't recall reading about this issue before.

Cheers,

Russ

Edit: Similar events occur for Stanley Clarke & George Duke's album named "3"

Within the dBPowerAmp folder under the STARt menu, there is a dBPowerAmp Configuration applet. Within that is an option to "Enable Pop-up Information Tips" and "Enable Explorer Columns", together with 'advanced' submenu's. You may not have those active currently, or there may be some options in the 'advanced' areas that will fix your issue.

Cheers,

Russ

At this point in time there are 1228 registered members, although not all of them have been active of late.

Member 1000 would have joined on the 28th Jul or shortly before that date.

Gerard is #56, Pedal is #119 and yours truly is #29

Unsurprisingly , Peter is Numero Uno.

I would expect membership numbers on any forum lasting this long would increase exponentially. Here's to member 10,000 rocking up soon !

Cheers,

Russ 

Well at least you've achieved one out of two of your objectives   

 

Enjoy wearing the crown Peter It's lined with kangaroo fur so it should keep your head warm this winter .. haha

I can use 1 sample at 96Khz, but need 6 samples minimum to get clean playback at 176.4Khz.

I also found running DPC Latency Checker dropped the system timer interval to 1.0ms. DPC doesn't have to be running, merely loaded, so I click "STOP" after load.

Cheers,

Russ (former champion)

[Now playing... Melody Gardot - Live in Soho]