Then you should listen to Lalo Schifrin's "Marquis de Sade" from 1966, recorded at Englewood Cliffs with Van Gelder. No echo there. Best recording ever, and - incidentally - best music ever as well. Only successful marriage of renaissance/baroque music with jazz. You can't get it anymore, but PM me if anyone wants it.

Sorry for OT. Listening to "The Dissection and Reconstruction of Music from the Past as Performed by the Inmates of Lalo Schifrin's Demented Ensemble as a Tribute to the Memory of the Marquis de Sade" right now on y-4, fucking brilliant.

In my system, upsampling causes worse timing and flow. Both alt. 2 and 3 sounds less like music than vanilla, I am not sure if upsampling with or without Arc Pred is the worst, but quad clearly sounds worse than double. Mind you, "worse" is relative here, it still sounds good, but I am not willing to trade an ounce of PRaT against more detail and space.

The DAC on my card is a Wolfson WM8740 I think.

And let me just add that with the below settings, y-4 sounds sodding fantastic here.

Have played a bit more with Qs in y-4. Tried SeVeReD's settings, 4/26/26/0/0, ticked "invert" and WOW, instant boogie machine! Powerful bass, smooth as hell and very musical with a great sense of timing. Now I don't dare touch anything for fear this music might go away.

It's a bit like the Friends episode in which Chandler and Joey turned on their TV one day and found they had free porn on one of the channels, leading to non-stop porn watching lest they loose the channel.

?

But no commercial DAC I have found boasts these parametres. Or am I wrong?

My wife loves listening, she plays bass in a nice punk rock band so she is cool with loud music, and sensitive to SQ.

What DAC are we talking here? Can you give me an example of a NOS DAC that is nice?

But my DAC isn't oversampling, is it? It just converts the digital stream that is presented to it to analogue. I don't understand what kind of DAC that would benefit from AP then?

If I feed it 44.1, it reads 44.1. If I feed it Quad/AP, it reads 176.4. Thus, the DAC isn't doing any oversampling, but XXHE is. Am I wrong in this?

Now that I've had the chance to play all little with Arc Prediction, I'm not that sure I am all that convinced.

Some records, especially orchestral pieces, sound more neuanced, detailed and clear with less congestion with Quad/AP. However, all other music suffer from Quad/AP in that it ruins the timing and groove. Especially rock suffers I think. Double/AP is better than Quad/AP, but vanilla 24/44.1 rocks much more on my system.

AP makes me wanna change song whereas no AP makes me wanna dance.

Mind you, this is on my system, the whole computer sourced playback-thing is so tentative that I'm sure a different system will produce different results. Love y-4 tho, 14/20/20/0/0 with scheme 3 and 24/44.1 sounds jolly good, with tons of toe-tapping, dance-inducing PRaT.

Edit: Damn changed my mind about Double/AP. Will run it for a few days before I try vanilla again.

And I am enthusiastic again! I am an idiot, I just set it on "auto" like you said, and double/Arc Prediction works! I got hung up on the fact that I had to 1: set sample rate in the sound card control panel and 2: then go and set the same rate in the Windows sound settings. If I choose auto, I can only set the previous setting from the card control panel in Windows control panel.

The VIA control panel for the sound card now says 88.2 or 176.4 when I choose double or quad, yay!

Gonna try some listening later on Thanks for the help Peter, like always

Yeah, I can set it to 24/192. If I do that, choose "double" and Arc Prediction and try to play a 16/44.1, file I get "Endpoint create failed, the dac does not accept this byte sequence" and a box with "2/32/88200/705600/8".

I cannot set the sample rate to 176.4, there is no option for it in the sound card control panel. My guess is that the drivers don't support it?

Peter, there is something I don't understand about Arc Prediction. I have to turn on set DAC at 18/96 at least to be able to turn it on in. My sound card can handle up to 24/192, but it cannot upsample. The source material has to be e.g. 24/96 to be able to run the card at 24/96. Consequently, I cannot use Arc Prediction for 16/44.1 material because my sound card doesn't have upsampling capabilities, am I right? Or is the upsampling done by XXHE? No matter what settings I try, I cannot get Arc Prediction to run with 16/44.1 material.

Could you please clarify?

Sorry, but fucking hell Peter

y-4 sounds spectacular. Using XXHE is like getting major free upgrade to your CDP every other week.

Two things that have bettered drastically: timing and bass, which are obviously connected. The bass is supertight and very present and melodic. Toe-tapping is greatly increased. Moreover, individual instruments are more distinct, but seem to be playing better together. Well done

Running Win 7 x64, 24/44.1, no upsampling, 14/20/20/0/0 (works with this version) and appointment scheme 3.

Frankly, I am a bit ambivalent towards the Q settings. I can alter them, and in turn hear sound alterations. However, I am at a loss as to what I prefer. One setting is brilliant with chamber music, another with rock, but I really can't be bothered to keep a track of the exact settings I prefer to this or the other genre.

Thus, I think the aim should be one set of settings that works well in my system and with the music I play. But this is easier said than done. So I suggest you guys post your preferred settings and other thoughts on Q settings here, for general reference and help for others. For example, what gives the most detailed sound? What gives the most organic sound? Which setting provides the most rhytmic oomph? It would be interesting to gather some opinions and see if they correlate.

I have been running -2/0/0/0/0 for a long time. A few days ago, I decided to play a bit with the Qs. (I discovered that I get an "unsupported sampe rate" error I crank Q1 above 24?). First i tried -2/30/30/0/0. This produced a more rounded sound, more "organic" and less digital if you will, but vocals suffered very much from this setting. They became duller and with less life.
Then I tried 20/30/30/0/0, which was better. The vocals were better, while maintaining the organic flow. However, timing was much worse, so this setting was out of the question.
Then I set it to 20/0/0/0/0, and compared this to -2/0/0/0/0. Hmmm. In one way, I liked the flow and smoothness of the first, whereas the latter had more detail and soundscape. I don't give a toss about detail and soundscape really, but the lower Q1 was more rhythmic and with better timing, which is immensely important to me. I would really like the organic flow of the first and the timing of the second setting here. So I tried 12/0/0/0/0, became uncertain and went back to -2/0/0/0/0.

Anyway, do you guys share my general feeling that higher Qs as a rule of thumb give a more organic sound, whereas lower Qs give a more hard and detailed sound with better soundstaging? Would love to hear your thoughts on this issue.

Haha, all my taskbar icons disappear every time I press play or skip song in x-5. Have to bring up the task manager to bring them back. Weird bug?

With sloppy I mean the bass transients get blurred - bass starts and stops less articultately, if you will.