XXHighEnd - The Ultra HighEnd Audio Player
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331  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: PC motherboard upgrade on: August 15, 2013, 07:21:17 pm
Thanks Nick, I've never installed the ASUS MB drivers and just used the generic windows drivers. Because of this, I'm wondering if I can just install my current OS hard drive if I swap MB's or would I need to reinstall the OS should I swap MB's?

Brian hi,

My Windows 8 Asus install did boot on the ASRock board after some disk spinning time, I guess it may have been swopping a few drivers.

In the end though I did an OS upgrade to windows 8 on my windows 7 HDD since I cannot see me using windows 7 again. At least this gave a known OS condition for the ASRock board.

Nick.
332  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: PC motherboard upgrade on: August 15, 2013, 12:38:01 pm
I think I'll wait till Mani reports on his experience with the ASRock X79 before I take the plunge on a new MB. Am pretty sure my continued use of the APEXI capacitor card, which really helps the sound here, is because of the problems you've described, Nick, with the ASUS board. Am wondering though, when you were using the ASUS MB, did you install the MB drivers from the disc that came with your old ASUS MB, and did you do the same with your new MB? Also, if you did not install the ASUS MB drivers, did you reinstall the OS when you changed MB's? Hope this makes sense.

Brian

Brian hi,

With Windows 8 I have been using the standard Windows 8 software install with both the ASUS and ASRock Mobos (not using the MB driver CD for either of the boards).

Whilst I was using Windows 7 I did try running the ASUS MB with and without the MB drivers on the ASUS CD. There was not much difference with possibly not loading the MB drivers sounding slightly better IIRC.

I may try the ASRock with the MB drivers on the supplied CD just to see what happens  Happy

There is certainly no immediate need to fit the APEXI capacitor card with the ASRock but again i'll try it just in case.

Nick.
333  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: PC motherboard upgrade on: August 14, 2013, 06:36:56 pm
I have my fingers crossed that you have a similar experiance when your AsRock board turns up.

Oh, I didn't buy the ASRock because I think it'll necessarily sound better than my current Asus. If it does, that's great of course. No, it's because I have a spare Zalmann TNN-300 case sitting around that I'd (maybe) like to employ as my main music PC. And it only takes micro-ATX mobos and not ATX mobos such as the Asus.

Mani.

I understand, IIRC those Zalman TNN-300 cases are rather special no wonder you would like to get it back in use, but fingers still crossed for SQ all the same Happy

Nick
334  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: PC motherboard upgrade on: August 14, 2013, 06:21:30 pm
Yes Nick, same MoBo. And now you have that anyway, use PS2 connections for mouse and keyboard, not USB.

Peter

Thanks Peter, PS2 connections are in use  Happy I'm using the XX settings from your signature and a 50% under clock via CPU ratio setting. Wow the XXPCs must sound good !

Nick.
335  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: PC motherboard upgrade on: August 14, 2013, 06:18:04 pm
Thanks for the info Nick.

I have the z77 version of this mobo in my office PC, and like the sound that I'm getting there. So I've gone ahead and ordered the x79 version to replace the Asus P9X97WS currently in my main music PC.

Will report back thoughts on changes in SQ between the two x79 mobos once I've had a chance to install it (hopefully next week sometime).

Mani.

Mani,

Your not hanging about  Happy Happy, I dont think that my experiance is was down to a duff Asus P9X79WS board. I had to return the first board I had becuase of a fualt and it was replaced with a new example, both the Asus Mobos sounded the same however. I have my fingers crossed that you have a similar experiance when your AsRock board turns up.

Regards,

Nick.
336  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / PC motherboard upgrade on: August 14, 2013, 06:01:14 pm
During a visit to Pauls last week end we placed my Music PC in Pauls system as part of the on-going process Pauls has been helping me with to track down problems in the performance of my system. We were both very supprised by the significant gap in sound quality between the two PCs.

Pauls PC
Exceptionally good reproduction overall, coherent, smooth with a dynamic presentation.

My PC
Sound Quality (SQ) good but far from right, there was confusion, digital hash and hardness compaired to Pauls PC particularly in the mid and upper mid frequencies.

We did the same test of both PCs in my system recently with similar results so our conclusion was that the PCs generate a significantly different sound quality level and that the rest of our systems were unlikely to be the cause of the difference.

I considered continuing to build a clone of Pauls PC (having already fitted the same Seasonic PSU and video card that Paul has fitted), howver I was keen to keep the newer Socket  LGA 2011 CPU and the memory I had bought because of their cost. So earlier this week I replaced my Asus P9X97WS mother board (£330) with an AsRock X79 Extreme4-M motherboard (£150). All other components of the PC hardware and software remained the same.

I know this is a well worn statement but the change in sound is fundamental  EVERYTHING has changed, even more so than when a Seasonic supply was fitted. It may or may not be relevant to the change in sound that the new motherboard has reduced the amplitude of noise traces taken at the output of my DAC by about 70%.

Motherboard selection for music servicer matters one hell of a lot I guess we know that but without the ability to compare different PCs is all a bit hit and miss choosing components. After fitting the new AsRock X79 Extreme4-M board I noticed that it is the same board that I think Peter uses/supplies in the the Phasure Music PC so I now have some sense of how good these PCs must be sounding for the people who have bought them.

A great result for a very modest outlay  Happy

Regards,
Nick.
337  Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: IPL Transmission Line Speaker Revelation on: August 11, 2013, 11:19:48 pm
I'v been looking forwards to hearing IPLs for the first time. As Paul mentioned he's built 3 sets of different IPLs over the last few weeks and its been fascinating hearing about them from a distance as the results have unfolded.

Well this weekend I heard the TL4s that Paul built for a friend and Paul's own TL5s (in the picture above).

The TL4 delivered a very sweet top end, excellent stereo imaging and  low register resolution and extension that I have not come across before. Not a hint of boom, just real sound detached from the speakers. Paul's friend played an acoustic guitar track, the TL4s made it posible to sense the tension in strings and really hear the resonances of the boy of the instrument. Then there was Massive Attack......... :-)

Back at Paul's in his larger and very difficult shaped listening room the TL5 where really special, absolutely no problem driving the difficult space with a sense of ease. The first thing that strikes you is just how coherent they are, there is almost no sign at all that these are three way speakers. Then you try to analyse the sound only to find your attention slips time and again to just listening to the music. Humm, there is very little that you can latch onto to analyse the speakers are just making music and that's what you end up hearing not "attack" "decay", "highs" "transients" etc etc they do all this but quickly you realise they sound right and just listen.

Highlights are the very tuneful and realistic lows and a very transparent midrange. But they are extremely good top to bottom.

(The above comments on the TL5s are in the context of Paul's excelant PC, NOS1 DAC, and bi amped, bridged gainclones)

In the flesh they are certainly larger then they look in Paul's pictures. Overall very handsome, and a credit to Paul's craftsmanship and IPLs excelant engineering.

A very interesting and enjoyable visit, many thanks Paul.

Nick.
338  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Underclocking and MoBo Bios frequencies on: August 08, 2013, 11:20:11 pm
Thanks Nick, I understand that you have both Q1 and xQ1=10. With your Q settings the minimum SFS I can get is 14Mb.

Following your changes in the BIOS I found these as my best settings:

CPU Frequency: 1995MHz
DRAM Frequency: 1066MHz

Best regards,
Juan

Juan hi,

Regards SFS, 14mb does not seem very low for the power of your PC. I had a problem a couple of times where I could not get SFS below 4 without breaks in music. I had to go back to full OS then re minimise in XX for another reason after I did this SFS worked down to 1.5mb. It might be worth trying this to see if you can go lower.

Regards,

Nick.
339  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Underclocking and MoBo Bios frequencies on: August 08, 2013, 05:34:35 pm
Hi Nick,

What´s your xQ1 value?

Regards,
Juan

Juan hi,
I don't think my BIOS has an xQ1 setting so I'm not sure what to set on this one, try a few values and have a listen.

Cheers Nick.

Hi Nick, the xQ1 value I was asking for is the one in XXHighEnd, I don´t see it in your signature.

Regards,
Juan

Juan hi,

Q1 of 10 with SFS at 1.6mb. Gives a very dynamic sound.

Cheers,

Nick.
340  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Underclocking and MoBo Bios frequencies on: August 07, 2013, 10:24:20 pm
Hi Nick,

In my X58 Sabertooth the Load-Line Calibration has three settings: Auto, Disabled (Follow Intel Spec.) and Enabled (Improve VDroop directly). You set it to Regular (0%), is this the same as Disabled?

What´s your xQ1 value?

Regards,
Juan

Juan hi,

I would try "disabled" as the load line setting first. I don't think my BIOS has an xQ1 setting so I'm not sure what to set on this one, try a few values and have a listen.

Cheers Nick.
341  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: C1E and E1ST speedstep BIOS on: August 07, 2013, 10:18:03 pm
For those who don't know, this is the lake right next to Peter, Ciska and Paul's place. Apparently it didn't even exist before they decided they wanted a house with a lake-view... It's a bloody artificial lake that they had dug out for them when they had their (gorgeous) house built.

If anyone ever questions Peter's resolve to 'defeat' computer audio, he's like the bloody Terminator - just keeps going, and going, and going... EDIT: Until he get's his way.

Mani.

That's outrageous  Happy but just the sort of determination we need !

Nice one Peter, I assumed the lake just happened to be there next door as it were before your house was built. Now I understand the lengths you will go to ha ha.

Cheers Nick.

Ps there's nothing like gardening with a JCB  Wink
342  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Underclocking and MoBo Bios frequencies on: August 06, 2013, 03:22:47 pm
Hey Nick , based on your signature I assume you are not using the APEXI card?

Brain hi,

No need for the APEXI card for a while now since I moved to W8 and particularly now with the Seasonic PSU. Still use the card as a diagnostic but not for normal listening.

Nick.
343  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: Underclocking and MoBo Bios frequencies on: August 05, 2013, 10:59:55 pm
Hi Nick,

it seems that different clock frequencies for the mobo components are useful and that the correlation depends on the mobo itself. I tried the settings with two mobos with different equipment (RAM, graphics, etc.) and there are different values necessary. So it's an individual finetuning ...

Georg

Hi Georg,

Agreed values will be different for each mobo graphics card etc. The order I came at this to find the sweet spot was to underclocking first using the clock multiplier and running slow ram frequencies for best SQ.

 Then set the digi+ settings as described (but had to spend a little time researching the parameters) to try to stop the function making adjustments on the fly.

Then tweak the digi+ frequencies so they are not all the same, and finally tweak the cpu frequency up just a little so that the the ram frequency was different  to my vga card cpu.

The settings should work for an asus mobo same as mine and possibly other x79 asus mobo chipsets. For other boards mileage may vary as they say but hopefully there may be something useful in the principles applied to decide on the settings.

Hopefully Brian might be able to give the settings a go to see if they work for the same mobo in a different system.

Cheers,

Nick.
344  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Underclocking and MoBo Bios frequencies on: August 05, 2013, 08:22:05 pm
I posted on Digi+ power management a few weeks ago with some screen shots giving a few “starter” settings.

www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2664.0

For me these Digi+ settings improved the musical presentation and were worthwhile but also slightly emphasised a “hardness” in the upper scales that I had been trying to get rid of for a while. I suspect that the Digi+ settings and my graphic card together were contributing to this hardness. When using the VGA output of the graphics card sound is rounded and full but with the hardness whilst using the DVI output there was a smoothness to the sound and no hardness but the sound was slightly “light”For a while now I have had an idea for a while that the frequency of movements of data within the PC can effect sound.

 Nothing new here, Peter has provided a lot of settings which control frequency of operations within the PC and has done masses of work under the covers addressing this stuff. Under clocking also gives very good results here. So Digi+ Bios settings needed to be optimised and it might be worthwhile working with under clocking and Bios frequencies.

I'v been working with these thoughts in mind for a week or two and seem to have landed at a very sweet spot set of BIOS settings for the ASUS P9X79WS motherboard that I use. I know that a few members use this board (hi Brian, Mani  Happy) and the settings could be useful on other similar Asus MoBos, so I thought I would post the settings to see what people make of them.  As I write they are making a really positive impact  on SQ here.

The changes are.

A) Digi+ settings that limit the Digi+ functions ability to play about with Power and where frequencies are set in make these differ from each other to “spread” the frequency of power change to the process and memory etc.

B) Underclock the CPU using the clock ratio (32 standard down to 18) and reduce memory speed but overclock the processor clock frequency slightly  to shift the memory frequency away from the VGA card processor frequency of 800mhz.

C) Tune XX settings to work well with the BIOS set up. the results are the best sound heard here to date by some way.

I have placed XX settings in my signature and BIOS screen shots for the P9X79WS follow.

Cheers,

Nick
345  Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: How to build a silent PC for XXHighEnd on: August 01, 2013, 01:59:03 pm
Hi guys,

SQ wise I think fanless is a good place to be.

Its not too difficult to run without fans. Paul and I have been doing this for some time now without problems.

Water cooking EDIT cooling  Happy the CPU is the key then it doesn’t matter what CPU is used or the speed it is running at. I use this system, which unfortunately is no longer available. I think there are other forum members using them too. It would be worth trying to get one second had if new is not availble there are a very nice system. There are no fans just a pump inside the cooling tower which runs from the mains not the PC ATx PSU.

http://zalman.com/global/product/Product_Read.php?Idx=183

ATx supplies are not too much of a problem I used the Corsiar AX750 but the 400w Seasonic fanless PSU has taken over now pwering a 3930 CPU with an all up (mains measured) wattage of about 125W its not really getting warm.

For graphics I use one of the NVIDA 210 chipset passively cooled cards. I have just changed one EVGA brand card for an Asus 210 Silent card which is nicely engineered (thanks Paul for the recommendation). These cards do run a little on the hot side but they are cheap so if they do expire there is not too much of a problem. If you want to it’s possible to place these VGA cards on the water CPU circuit by adding a VGA card water cooking EDIT cooling  Happy head which I did for a while but don’t bother now as the heat is not too much of a problem.

http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/EN210_SILENTDI1GD3V2LP/

My mobo is a P9X79WS Asus which has a lot of power phases etc on so it does get reasonably warm. Even so it relies on passive air flow to cool the board in the PC case. The PC case is a Fractal Design R4 which as a number of removable panels which allows for resonably good air flow through grills in the case. I think Pauls case is perhaps a bit better for grill area but the Fractal works ok.

http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2&prod=100

I would say the main things are to get water cooling sorted and choose a sensible case for air flow. Otherwise its not too hard to do and it is good for SQ. We have had a hot spell in the UK for a couple of months with outdoor temps getting into the 30s and indoor high 20s. The PC has been on much of the time and besides getting gentaly warm has not had any problems.

Cheers ,

Nick
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