I know quite a lot of people on the forum are using Gainclones and high efficiency speakers so I thought I’d mention an experience I had setting up Gainclone amps this week end.

Some time ago when I built my amp I decided to build it with 4 Gainclone amp modules but I never go round to using all of these and have been driving my speakers with only two of the modules. The idea of having 4 modules was that I could configure the amp as parallel paired amps, bridged pairs, or run Bi-Amped into individual speaker drivers.

I finally go round to getting some extra speaker cable this week-end so I could Bi-Wire the speakers, then I set the outputs of the amp up to Bi-Amp the speakers using one Gainclone module per speaker driver (In fact the set up is really Tri-Amped because Avantguards have active bass already). Anyway the results were really very eye opening. Lots of "problems" that I had assumed were PC, OS, XX software or DAC related were just fixed. 

The experience made me rethink what I was doing to tune my system  Before this I was assuming my focus should be in the PC and DAC. It turns out they were doing a pretty fantastic job all along and the Amps were the place to be looking. I hadn’t bothered with the amp side of things because general wisdom is that 1 gain clone per channel is great for high efficiency speakers that present an easy load. Now I’m really glad I spent the small amount of extra time and money needed to put the extra gain clone modules in to the amps. I would certainly recommend thinking about Bi-Amping if you are already using Gainclones.

The only downside is this could lead me down an expensive path that I hadn't intended to take. I always said to myself I would not go down the path of an XX software cross-over and a multi channel Phasure NOS1 when (if ?) Peter decides to develop this. With the Tri- Amping now in place and working so well, suddenly software crossovers look like the next logical step. Better start saving now ! 

Nick.

I can run at 1.2m sfs and do not need to reboot ever between play lists. It's very stable.

If I try any higher value higher a get the music glitching back a quarter of a second ever 10 seconds or so.

But this is with only 2g of RAM and playing with a 600mb ramdisk on vista 32 bit at 8x arc prediction so not uprising sfs will no go higher :-)

Nick.

I was concerned about the point that Mani made, that you need W7 Ultimate edition to be able to lock memory pages but z04-0 HighEnd does not appear to need this feature. Also Boolary has managed to get jplay working on W7 Premium 

Sounds like W7 Premium 64bit is going to replace Vista on my music PC at last.

Thanks for the advice guys,

Regards,

Nick.

Hi,

I'm looking to get a copy of Windows 7 64bit to use on a dedicated music machine, I am thinking of using W7 Premium edition as I don't generally need the extra stuff that W7 ultimate has in it.

Can anyone say What w7 editions are good for XX ?

Thanks,

Nick.

Ps SP1 (RC) will be applied :-)

Mani hi,

This is an interesting result, I had a similar experience when I coupled my Audio Note 4.1 NOS DAC to the SPDIF output of the NOS1. I posted some observations on this here http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1523.0.

The Audio Note put in very engaging musical presentation, more so than the NOS1, however the NOS1 was in a different league for perceived “correctness” and detail transparency. The NOS1 is clearly better in the comparison when you think about elements of the music but somehow the Audio Note got my toe taping and created a bit more of a “musical event”. These findings were based z3 so they need to verified using z4-0 , and I do fine z4-0 has a much more musical presentation already with the NOS1.

Generally I find NOS DACs,

1) are VERY susceptible to the quality of the input data stream you feed into them. IMHO they can be the ultimate cr*p in cr*p out devices and disapoint BUT with a good input data feed the transparency immediacy and sense of performance is altogether better than filtered DACs.

2) the characteristics of out put stage, including the IV conversion stage and the active output buffer, play a large role in shaping the overall presentation (more so than with oversampling DACS)

I forget which PC interface you use into your Model Two but it would be very interesting if you could eliminate differences in the PC interfaces from your Model Two / NOS1 test by using the SPDIF output of the NOS1 directly into your Model Two. This would help isolate the contribution of the DAC and output stages of your Model Two towards the musical presentation you experienced. I am not sure how practical test would be for you, I seem to recall you have AES inputs and external clocking on your Model Two.

The NOS1 SPDIF output is VERY good, so well worth the time to try if you can make it work for you.

Regards
Nick

Ps I have just read this back to myself and want to avoid any misunderstanding.
NOS1 vs AudioNote overall conclusion ? For me there’s no question it the NOS1 every time.
My comments above are meant to highlighting one interesting aspect of playback where the Audio Note DAC performs well.

I had a big surprise this afternoon. I set my Audio Note 4.1 DAC (very modified) to be fed by the NOS1 SPDIF output. I just cannot believe the sound ! I have spent the entire afternoon playing track after track after track. The weight, tone, macro and micro dynamics, timing, transparency and detail levels are amongst the best I’v ever heard. There is distortion in the sound, more so in the upper registers (so it’s not perfect as you would expect and as depicted by Peters recent graphs at http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1515.45), but the combination is just SO engaging and enjoyable to listed to !

The Audio Note playing at 44.1KHz is too sharp (distorted highs) for comfortable listening but it can run at 18bit / 96KHz. At 2X Arc-prediction most of the sharpness in the upper registers is gone and it is very listenable (if not as good as the NOS1 DAC at 8X Arc Prediction in this respect). It might not be to everyone’s taste but the NOS1 / Audio Note combination sound just fills the room with compelling music, even using XX Engine 3 (the only engine I have managed to use with the NOS1 SPDIF) and WASAPI. 

It’s very early days for the burn process with my NOS1 DAC and with this in mind I will not make comparisons in absolute terms with the NOS1 SPDIF / Audio Note now as this is unfair until the NOS is burnt in. But, I do really hope however that I when the NOS DAC is burn in that I get the sense of “performance” that I have heard today.

If nothing else this experience is pointing to the NOS1 being an quite exceptional SPDIF interface when it is coupled with the right free standing DAC. I am now pondering the influence that DAC chip I to V conversion approaches, valve output stages and DAC chips types have on all of this 


Joseph,

This is one AudioNote DAC 4.1 that's not for "pick up" and I would not get rid of your Audio Note DAC just yet 


I paid £2800 for my used DAC 4.1 as a unit to do DIY upgrades on, they do run 18bit 96Khz 

Mani,

I know your Model Two has AES inputs but it would be very interesting to hear your experiances feeding your DAC from the NOS1 as an interface of there is a way of converting from SPDIF to AES..

Best Nick.

Mani hi,

I am up and running now after Peter helped me with some set up this morning (try getting that level of support elsewhere on Christmas eve - thanks Peter).

I recognise the sound your describing. From past experience the fullness is just what comes from a nice long burn in period. I am enjoying the sound very, very much already but am really looking forward to listen with a few hundred hours on the clock. What really amazes me it that it sound so good straight out of the box 

All the best Nick.

Peter hi,

WRT having an ADC and SPDIF on the NOS1. I personally would not use the ADC at all so I am not keen on this. SPDIF might well be usefull though from time to time, either as an output an input or both (I was not sure if you were suggesting SPDIF output or input to the DAC in your post).

Best,

Nick.

Marcin great find 

I have tried Raj's suggestion of running DPC Lat minimised whilst playing XXHighEnd. The changes are significant in my system. Up untill this point I had suffered a little loss of musical timing with Z03 and was using .ini value of 21 to obtain good dynamics (.ini of 11 being a little flat in my system). Also I had started to use raw 2X sampling of 44.1 kHz material because Arc Prediction was sounding a little too smooth at the top and lacked a little presence.

The system timer change makes Arc Prediction sound correct again and I can use the .ini setting of 11 which give a more musical sound. Overall I find this a very musical tweek, there is more space, better tonal accuracy, frequency is extended at both ends, timing much improved and generally there is much less hash.

I have not had chance to run the Sysinternals system timer diagnostic yet so I do not know what default duration my PC has.

I would like to add my veiw to others that this would be a really good standard upgrade for XXHighEnd. It would be great if Peter might concider the timer value to be set via a parameter in the .ini file so we could try different values.

Nick

Mani,

As a though experiment only (no real experience here on this topic) and ignoring factors like RF noise and interface protocols (USB / Firewire / I2S / SPDIF) which defiantly have an effect on playback.

To record, the analogue signal it will be fed into some type of interface (external or internal). The conversion quality should be a function of the interfaces ability to time the sampling and determine the amplitude of the samples. For ADC I assumed this would all be done at dedicated ADC chip level with a very good clock timing the process. If the recording interface uses a buffer to pass the data back to the computer, and the transfer is not handled by the ADC (eg a separate processor takes care of this) then passing the data back to the computer does not result in jitter and so has less (no ?) effect on the sound quality.

Going the other way round to play music you have all of the playback buffer and memory timing challenges that Peter works on. Ideally the computer should be able to move data around and to the DAC in a true real time stream at precisely data rate demanded by the music sample rate. But as Peter and Josef are finding there’s a lot influencing and impacting on this. The net result I guess is that the data arriving at the DAC is less accurately timed even if you can manage to achieve bit perfect delivery of the samples to the DAC.

Probably way off the mark here.....

Nick.

Suteetat hi,

A very interesting account of the comparison, now we have much better idea about the event that triggered this debate, thanks.

Do you remember what DAC, amp and speakers were being used ? The question is more just out of interest.

BTW for your INT202 car batteries tend not to be so good in most audio applications they are great at delivery of massive current but not so good at delivery of quiet, fast, regulated power into digital circuits that run at Mhz frequencies. If you want to do a little DIY and depending on the current requirements of you INT202 you might want to look at using something like this. http://www.audiocominternational.com/product_info.php?products_id=28&osCsid=p67t8t2j3p94d4rlkddbapmsg1

I have used them a number of times in DACs, CD Transports, on USB cards and in SPDIF interfaces and they have usually been highly effective, much better than battery power. (Having said that I have not tried the battery type that JKenney is using in his HiFace mods which people say are excellent, you may not get your required voltage easily from these though).

Nick.

It's an interesting debate leading edge cd transport vs computer transport.

I have only an academic interest in which is "best" as this judgment is always only a subjective one. In the real world given the price tags of high end transports (not to mention relative convenience of use) I am not too worried as I cannot afford the sort of transport hi-fi needed to possibly out perform a computer transport.

For my part I got rid of a $15k transport 3 years ago to concentrate on computer transports. I did a lot of work on the transport before it left my system, but in the end a cd player is an electromechanical servo system trying to recover time critical data in real time from a disc with no ability to recover when data is missed (other than algorythmic error correction in real time).

For both types of transport system the aim is simple, just deliver the data stream unchanged to the DAC with each bit arriving exactly on "time". Much easier to say than do....

Both approaches to this have their merit. With the right amounts of R&D, I guess challenges of spinning a disc correcting any lost data, clocking the data and transmission of data to a DAC can be made to work extremely well. The same is true for computer audio where accurate data recovery is not such a problem but sequencing data flow into and out of memory, through output device software and hardware to a DAC is the challenge.

It's interesting to consider that after 25 years of CD transport development it has taken computer audio only 6 years or so to get so close to "the state of the art" that this conversation is already happening. With the extream speed and accuracy available from PC hardware its only a matter of time before the right combination of OS and replay software are coupled with the right data transmission hardware to deliver perfectly timed bit perfect data to the DAC. I think that this is the aim of all on this forum. 
 
IMHO Peter is raising the game of computer audio significantly by adopting an end to end system approach in the computer transport space that addresses; algorythimic data processing, OS, replay software, transmission hardware and the DAC together. I hope to hear the results quite soon.

Which is best today ? I don't know. Where would I place my bet in the short to medium term ? no question the computer, it is only a matter is time. If I were in the business of making or selling very high end transports I would be examining my business plans very carefully right now because the threat is pc audio and it has the the potential to deliver the same audio quality and better useability whilst taking a zero off the price !!


Windows X

I am genuinely very interested, can you say what your high end transport experience is ? You seem to have a lot of knowledge in this area. Are you a well informed private individual or do you work with music equipment ?

Best regards,

Nick.

Josef, Boleary,

Thanks for the advice, I have work away for a few days so I won't get chance to try to get play going till later this week. Good to know the hiface can sort though. It's a very interesting experiment with memory I am very keen to hear for myself. Will post thoughts on sound when I get it playing.

Nick

Hi,

I have been trying Jplay 1,2 and Deux (32 bit) but not having much luck. When I first tried I was getting an error saying JPlay could not register my sound device (a HiFace) but after switching windows audio back on this went away. Now when I play (trying with JPaly1 so that memory config is not a factor) I get a message saying the JPlay is playing the WAV file but unfortunately no sound.

I guess the program is using the Vista default sound device, I was thinking a vanilla Vista install my help, has anyone got JPlay working with a HiFace so far.

I would really like to give this a go as the results sound very interesting, any thoughts ?
Nick.

Han hi,

Nice looking amplication you have. I am using 103db horns driven by 30 watt amps. The speaker have active bass drivers with 150 watt per channel. At the moment I listen in a galleried hall landing space (not ideal) of 80 square meters by 5m high, so quite similar in volume to your new room.

In my case I have to drive the speakers quite hard. With 92db speakers your system will need to play at quite high amplifier outputs fill the space. I listen from about 6 meters and have tuned the bass crossover response up by about 5db. I still do not get the balance of smaller rooms. My guess is that your near field listening will be ok but listening at greater distance may change the balance. Best to give it a go and see.

Regards,
Nick.