In in four words  ...WTF happned ! 

Its a quantum leap forwards...

I simply didnt realise I was listening to so much "loudnes" (in the not nice sense) before. Normal loud play for my system was at -30db before this morning, with 09-z03a l'v been playing at -22 db at times!! and the sound is superb !

Settings so far have been similar to 09-z82, but I'v just pluged in Peters settings for a listen. I had meant to spend half an hour listening this morning but its now 1:20pm and I'm still rivitted, enjoying a real seventies fest of music

A superb landmark release Peter, many, many thanks,

Nick.

Mani hi,

Check your PM, I dropped you a note with a few other things to check / try that appear to work well with our MoBo type  .

Regards,

Nick.

Just want to chip in on "stop all services"

Having tried "stop all services", for me this is a big improvement. I agree with the earlier descriptions. More weight, and tonal richness, cleaner and more detailed but smoother highs. Overall there is more sparkle that makes me want to keep listening.

Defiantly a preferred setting.

For reference this is with w7 09z-8-2
SFS 1.5 sfs max 180
Q1 = 7

Nick.

Hey Paul,

Thanks to you and your family, I had a great time yesterday. We had a lot to get through and listened to some great music along the way. This visit I was determined not take so much of your time but it was another 7 hour session. How time flys when i listen to your system .

So a few listening impressions from our session. First thing to say is that I still experience your system as bout the most resolving end engadeing system I have heard. It's just sounds so right and makes it so easy to hear and make assesments of changes made to settings, DACs etc.

When we started the day comparing 09z-82 on W7 and W8, W8 was exceptionally detailed with excelant left right sound stage and quite good depth. The mid hardness of W8 was there but better on your system than on mine. I could certainly understand why you liked W8 so much bit for me W7 still had the edge over W8. Just. Everything was however not right with W7 it was too smeared and had a slight confusion to the sound. I think we used the word "impressionist" in the sense that it lacked the incisiveness if true life.

So onto the W7 tweaks.
SFS from 1 to 1.5
Q1 from 14 to 10
Remove the unconnected SATA cables from the PC mobo

Smiles and disbelieving looks all round from the first notes and W7 sounded FANTASTIC. Almost the same level of detail as W8 but with lifelike realness spark and dynamics. I felt i coud have gone for a walk in the sound stage of your system at this point - front to back left to right top to bottom !

Next some tests on DACs which we remain quiet about 

Amplifier comparisons were extremely useful for me in pointing out a problem in the presentation of my gainclones.

And then a long session soaking up the absolutely beautiful sounds generated by Peters superb software and NOS, and your absolutely excellent system. What a treat !

A truly enjoyable and interesting day, many thanks.

Nick.

Brian hi,

Good news.

Sorry to send you back into you PC again but i just found that this is worth a go as well.

Try using a SATA 3 cable (the ones with clips on them that come with the mobo) then plug your HDD it into mobo "SATA 1". Look at the printing on the mobo by the SATA ports, SATA 1 is one of the grey ports, it is a 6gb port but it sould work fine with a SATA 2 or SATA 3 HDD. I think this tidies the sound just a little as well.

Cheers,

Nick.

Georg hi,

I had been wondering if a KVM switch might be useful to allow the switched disconnection of the monitor whilst music playing.

Is there much of a difference when you unplug your monitor ?

Nick.

Judging by the SQ before the SATAs were unplugged, BBC radio 1 I think 

(Possible noise is the reason that the "caveat" is there, but hope tweak to a tweak  works elsewhere)

I have a refinement to tweak number 4. It's absolutely dead simple but I just cannot understand the improvement to SQ it has made here.

This is tweak no 4,
4)   Remove power connections from DVD and Floppy Drives etc

The updates is as follows.

For these unused drives disconnect all SATA cables from the motherboard on each of the drives.

Some folks will already be doing this I guess but I wasn't. I was only removing the power connection to the drive to disable it and leaving the SATA cable of the unused drive connected to the Mobo. BIG mistake !

Usual caveats apply, it may not work on other mother board types / DACs and i am only using one HDD (eg no playback drive), but it's dead easy to try out. I really encourage you to give it a try just in case you get the surprising that this has given here this week 

Post back any findings.

Cheers,

Nick.

Brian hi,

Interesting about the defrags. I can see me doing regular rebuilds from now on.

Cheers,

Nick.

I felt that the sound of my windows 7 install was not as good as a remembered from just a week ago when it was reinstalled last. The poorer sound was coming from a very clean install that had been through 5 cycles of min OS to normal OS changes and A/Bing of a couple of "tiny" OS tweaks. Just to humour my curiosity to see if sound had changed, I thought I would do a complete reinstall last night of W7, XXHE and recopied my music into the single disk I am using.

The result is the sound is once again MUCH better. Either I will not be touching any OS settings in future or might the OS sound worse as files etc are moved around the disk ??

Has anyone else come across this ?

Regards,

Nick.

ps there is a chance that the effect could be related to the "noise" problem I have been having, but this has been extremely well behaved lately and I did do tests for noise before and afterwards and really could not point to this being the difference.

Paul hi,

This is interesting you have just summarised above why I like W7 slightly better overall. W8 presents more detail and clarity etc, W7 runs W8 close with 9-z82 in these areas but W7 is just more involving even if it's not quite so "clear".

Its a very close call though. I am guessing that out systems are the difference (that would have to be speakers Duos vs AN/Es). I am guessing that your AN/E inject a little sparkle into the W8 sound that the Duos don't and so W8 sounds better. The differences are quite small between the two and personal preference is going to play a big role at this level.

I'm really looking forwards to taking a listen.

Cheers,

Nick.

Paul hi,

I'm really looking forward to coming over to take a listen  were going to have a lot to get through , not long now.

Not wanting to drop a brick in the pond and cause more Bob Dylan to be played  but did you have Peters suggested setting of 43 for balanced load set in W7. Things really took off with 09-z82 and W7 this evening, before this setting I recognised the smearing and description of sibilance in the sound, now it's much better.

Cheers,

Nick.

 

Peter,

Defiantly getting more and first rate HF here with 09-z82. I just tried the balanced load setting of 43. Before this setting there was sensible amplitude level in the highs but they lacked sparkle and had a small amount of smear. With the balanced load setting there is plenty of HF output and the sparkle and clarity is back, very very nice.

I tried some ELO (Out of the blue), you absolutely put you finger on ELO recordings sounding grey. I get a great sense of nostalgia from ELO but always just put up with the "Telstar" (remember the label that put 20+ tracks on a side of vinyl) style of compression I was hearing. That is not the case now. There is life in the recording at last  . Great.

I had had to lower the output level on my subs to balance them with the highs as they were. With the extra HF amplitude and clarity, I have just put a couple of extra notches (estimate 1.5 db) into the bass to balance the increased HF output.

Elsewhere I feel the mids can be slightly recessed, vocals stand back in amplitude on some albums. Anyone else getting this ?

Nick.

Peter,

Thanks for providing the background. To be honest I don't do much OS tweaking at all nowadays because you have covered most (all  ) of the angles. In light of your comments I think I will back the config change off my system.

Cheers,

Nick.

Hi Brian,

A couple more suggestions (besides Peters balanced load setting of 43 which works really well here), given we have the same mobo etc, these may also help with top end. Your probably doing these already but here goes.

In windows device manager, disable the two USB 2 ports on the mother board. Having these two USB ports enabled in device manager is the kiss of death for high frequency SQ on my PC.

Another thing to try is checking the box to give priority to background services in Computer => manage => advanced system settings => advanced => performance => settings => advanced => background services. This may have SQ effects elsewhere but seems to clean up the highs.

Cheers,

Nick.