Paul,

I cannot believe those hemp cones are such a good match, you sure you have not been using photoshop 

Mani,

That's one serious weekend car and looks great in blue. Seems there are a few car enthusiasts around the forum 

Nick.

Hi Paul,

I also tend to play as soon as possible after booting. As Peter mentioned this seems to have a better chance of getting the memory allocated. You would think with your 12Gb there would be a very long run of continous memory somewhere 

Best Nick.

Sorry I should have been more clear as I started by mention of the onboard graphics card. The remapping of PCI memory is in the Chipset > Memory settings of my BIOS not in the area for video card settings.

The option title in the BIOS screen is "Memory Remap Feature"

The BIOS help explanation "ENABLE = Allow remapping of overlapped PCI memory above the total physical memory."

Hope this helps,

Best,

Nick.

Hi,

I came across settings that significantly affect the operation of Straight Continuous memory on my PC. I thought his may help generally / be relevant here.

Starting point

The maximum Straight Continuous memory I could previously obtain directly after booting and after starting XX High End was 19mb, frustrating given the PC has 8Gb in it. I could get 77mb Straight Continuous provided that I first played music using Mixed Continuous at 100mb and then went back to a Straight Continuous setting of 77mb.

BIOS setting changes

Peter mentioned in an earlier post to this thread to watch out for on-board graphics cards (which I have on my Motherboard), this placed a spotlight in two settings in BIOS;
1)   The setting that allows the “remapping of PCI memory” in BIOS. This was changed from ON to OFF.
2)   The BIOS can set the amount of memory allocated to the on board graphics card. Values range between 32Mb and 256Mb. This was changed from AUTO to the lowest value of 32Mb.

Effect of SFS

After the PCI memory remap was set to OFF in BIOS, immediately Straight Continuous memory went up to 175Mb without the need to play Mixed Continuous first in order to get Straight Continuous above 19Mb.

Next with the Graphics memory set to 32Mb in BIOS Straight Continuous setting got up to more than 375Mb (have not yet tries to go higher). Again no need to run Mixed Continuous first to get this value now.

The sound is as expected much better with higher SFS.

I hope this may help.

Nick.


Update......

Straight continuous runs out at 600Mb but I have to coax it that high, it will not just go straight in at that. 475Mb seems a good value as a default, what a difference.

I should have said that I have 4Gb memory installed in the PC not 8Gb as above !

Mani hi,
Many thanks but I think it's ok, I came across an image of the card and I am reasonably sure I have understood the chipset used so please don't disturb your installation.

Thanks again,

Nick

Mani hi,

That's very interesting, sounds like a good result. I think it's time for me to get my soldering iron out agin 

Would you mind saying what USB chipset the board is using ? IM me if you can say and would feel more comfortable.

Best,

Nick.

I have had some experience applying similar principles to pci USB boards.

Upgrades to the usb clock.
Full isolation from the 5v and 3.3v pci bus power supply to the usb board.
Powering the boards chipset and clock with 3x quality linear shunt supplies.
Black gate decoupling caps.

With all of the above implemented on the USB board and the USB to SPDIF music interface that the board fed using it's own seperate internal 5v supply (eg not soured from the USB board, like the NOS setup), the board gave significant improments to sound.

I tried many USB chipsets, some better than others but one thing that was a problem for most pci usb boards was that they oftern share  interrupts with other devices (and we know this can be important) whereas motherboard USB tend to have dedicated interrupts to work from.

I tend to believe Peter that the NOS is relatively immune from USB interface type but past experience says there could certainly be something here.

Fingers crossed Mani for a good result 

I thought I would post a short update now that the NOS1 USB has had chance to get a few hours of use clocked up.

First thing is there there defiantly appears to be a running in process. The sound has become more richer, tuneful and extended in the highs and lows with 40 hours or so on the new interface.

It's well worth having the DAC on for a few hours before serious listening. My amp likes a few hours warm up but the NOS1 USB is like a good red wine, it's best left to warm and air for a while before enjoying. 

I found direct connection to power amp using XX volume control sounded too thin initially so I kept using a transformer volume control. Now the NOS has has some burn in and settings (see below) are worked out, the sound is now wonderfully detailed and rich when connected directly to my amp. I have no plans to to use an analogue volume control now as a result.

Setting to unattended mode with  XX to start playback immediately and not using copy to XX drive, seems important. The palpability of the music steps up a whole gear with these settings. A few weeks now and already superb sound is improved so I am doubly happy.

One fun characteristic is that each time I sit down to listen I think I remember how good the sound will be, but every time the music starts I find over again that it's just much better than I remembered. A nice memory problem to have.


On a different subject I finally got around to taking the CPU fan out of my pc, the only moving part is now the HDD. The idea was to buy something that would support upgrading my pc at a later date, so I went for this Zalman Resorator water cooling system. http://www.zalman.com/m/eng/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=183

Removal of the fan has improved sound as expected. The unit is very well made and silent in operation, the pump runs directly from it's own electrical supply so no electrical linkage to the pc. Overall a nice bit of kit even if it does look just a little "overclocky".

Nick.

Just took a look. Wow, not shy of stating opinions with not one person having ANY first hand experience of the device thing they are discussing 

I can understand people who work in the industry getting tired of the bigger numbers equals better sound pitch. However, I hope someone decides to get better informed about how the NOS1 does what it does, because it looks like many of these guys are the people responsible for creating music that we listen to. Who knows, we might even end up with hi-res files that deliver on the promise of better reproduction 

Nick.

Hi Bigear,

Yes I have the home made lead between PC and NOS USB at the moment. To my mind there is an improvement in sound, though not as large as experienced with other USB interfaces i'v used.

In the scheme of things it's a minor tweak i would say, the NOS USB sound with a standard cable is already amazing.

Best Nick.

An update on these suggested settings, don't bother with them  I had my DAC misconfigured  , I should have had switch no. 5 set to on. The settings above were compensating for my misconfiguration. I am back to Peters settings which sound absolutly great again.

Nick.

KnB,

Congratulations from me also, I hope you are enjoying it all the more after the wait.

Mani I tend to agree the 768 driver does something very, very special indeed. Just got back after a weekend away and cannot draw myself away from listening.

I have been trying a few settings and seem to have come across a sweet spot.

Basically I have started with Perter's signature settings with the following changes.

USB buffer set to 4ms in the NOS USB driver control panel buffer settings tab.

In XX I have the buffer set to 3072 using adaptive mode, and CPU scheme 2 set in processor settings. Could be specific to my system but I'm getting a really engaging and very nice sound from these settings.

See what you think guys.

Best nick.

Mani hi,

An interesting story, I can understand the outcome but it must mark the end of personal era when a reference as good as your PM2 is surpassed. It is not quite the same but my AudioNote DAC is likely to be looking for a new home shortly as well.

Best regards,

Nick.

There was a nice surprise on Friday afternoon, my NOS1 was delivered back having been lovingly converted by Peter to NOS1 USB spec..... Fantastic ! 

Peter sent a special NOS1 USB driver / control panel and a copy of V09-6, then it was time to set about getting eveything going. As Mani mentioned, the NOS1 USB connects in about 10 mins, "zimple !!" (as the meerkat says    ). With some “unusual” parameters to set in V09-6 (eg large buffers and Q1 of 30) all was done. Peter has certainly done one hell of a LOT of work on new hardware and software to produce the NOS1 USB that’s for sure.

Last night I was not able to really stretch the legs of the new DAC (small people sleeping in the house), even so it made quite an impression. I thought I would post the note that I sent to Peter this morning below to give a flavour ....

Today with the sound wound up properly the DAC is terrific and improving by the hour as the electronics burn in. I will post some proper impressions as the burn in takes place and the DAC settles.

Nick.



“Peter hi,
......
I could not listen too closely last night due to low volume levels but spent time getting the pc and 09-6 settings about right. I even had the amp connected directly without TVCs, brilliant !
 
The sound is very interesting, it has so little digital signature and is timed with such ease that I am sure that you have not added a new interface. My theory is that you have found a way of taking 20k worth of turntable and miniaturised it and put into the NOS case :-). And this from red book, it's the dream really come true, my goal for more than ten years has been a CD player that is as natural and engaging as vinyl but without it's problems. For a long time I really had doubts that it could be done, there would always be some vestige of digital signature getting in the way. The NOS USB has shown me it can be done, I am so pleased :-)
 
So today some proper running in and listening which I am really looking forward to. Not so much to listen to the performance of a good piece of equipment which is normally what i would be doing with a new peice of hifi, today I think I will be able to simply enjoy the priverladge of listening to peoples musical performances.
 
Will let you know how it goes.
 
Again, thanks Peter for the new NOS USB  of course but also for being so endlessly determined to create software and hardware that does justice to live performances.
 
Kind regards,
 
Nick. “

When I was using a synchronous usb interface (a much modded m audio transit) I tried a lot of usb cables and they did make a difference. The best setup by far was a diy unshielded woven cable with 3 hot wires and 2 earth all 0.5mm silver. The cable was just under a meter with only signal, no power. It beat all comers and made a noticeable difference to sound quality.

That was synchronous usb however, Peter is using asynchronous and depending on the transfer protocol across the usb this could really just be the same as data transfer from the pc into the NOS interface. If this is so then the time critically only exists when the data is clocked in to the ADCs so no real problems with the usb cables. This is all just guess work only Peter really knows 

Anyway I would be happy to try my best diy silver cable against the one Peter recommends when my asynchronous NOS1 comes back. I buy into what Peter is saying though and I don't think I am going to hear any difference. Will let you know, it might save a little money 

Best,

Nick.