Marcin, Roy,
If we are only running XXHighEnd and RAMDISK then these are the services that need to run for a relay Vista boot. This is for a none service packed build of vista but should be ok with later packs. Other services may be needed to install different sound cards. This list is fine for the M-Audio Transit and HIFace.

Watch your DPCLAT drop as you stop the other services 

1)   COM+ ENENT SYSTEM
2)   DCOM SERVER PROCESS LAUNCHER
3)   Group Policy Client
4)   Mulimedia Class Scheduler
5)   Plug and Play
6)   Programme Compatability Assistant Service
7)   Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
   Shell Hardware PRotection
9)   Software Licenceing
10)   User Profile Service
11)   Windows Audio
EDIT
12) Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
13) Windows Driver Foundation - User Mode Driver
14) Windows Management Instrumentation (needed for RAMDisk to work)
END EDIT

What I do is set all other services to "manual" then reboot. Look at services again and some of the unwanted ones will have started again. For these restarted services I just set them to "Disabled" which stops them getting in the way.

I’m still working on the Autoruns which I will post soon. Have a go with this services and the registry tweak I just posted. The Services and the regedit tweak deliver a lot.

Nick

Raj,

When I chose my mobo I didn't know what chipset to go for and what would work best for PCI based interfaces so I did a bit of reading on chipsets. Nothing too technical but I recon RAMDISK takes the southbridge out of the equation (and a lot else as well).

Nick.

Guys,

I have remembered the missing ingredient to get recreate the sound of my thin Vista build. The way this tweak works could also be one of the reasons be why Windows 7 dosen’t sound as good as vista (more on this below).

I did some reading about 18 months ago about the Audio system and Multimedia Scheduling Service (MMSS) changes that MS implemented moving from XP to Vista. I found a good MS technical briefing paper and came across these registration keys. I have suggested values below but to be honest I have not tried many permutations as they seem to deliver the musical goods. Again I am trusting my ears but I think this is a big sound quality tweak.

TWEAK PART 1

Use REGEDIT on the following.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
There are sub key tasks for;

Audio
Capture
Distribution
Games
Playback
Pro Audio
Window Manager

These KEYs are how MMSS prioritises music replay processes.
For the “Audio”, “Playback” and “Pro Audio” keys try the following DWORD values
Affinity = 3 (dec)
Background Only = TRUE
BackgroundPriority = 8 (dec)
Clock Rate = 1000000 (dec)
GPU Priority = 4 (dec)
Priority = 8 (dec)
Scheduling Category = High
SFIO Priority = High

A Note on Windows 7 performance;
The “Clock Rate” value sets the granularity of processor scheduling for audio. This was used for Vista but is not used in windows 7 !! “The maximum guaranteed clock rate the system uses if a thread joins this task, in 100-nanosecond intervals. Starting with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, this guarantee was removed to reduce system power consumption.”


TWEAK PART 1

Use REGEDIT to change;
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile there is a key “SystemResponsiveness” set this to “0”.
Don’t worry this value defaults to give all Low priority processes 10% of CPU time.

Here is a bit more information on what is going off. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247.aspx

Again I hope this works well on other peoples systems, I am dreading Peter saying that they have nothing to do with how XX works, if so it’s quite a placebo  !

Enjoy.

Nick.

Ps there are some interesting variables that can only be set in code referenced by the article above and in other I have read that might be useful to Peter in the code for XX.

Marcin, Roy,

My sound quality is also not as good on my attempt rebuild a thin Vista platform. I have managed to get a DPCLAT reading marginally better than my last build (average of about 2us with lots of 1us readings) but the sound is way too sharp compared to the previous build. I am trying to recall all the stuff I did to my thin Vista build over the last year or more, I should have kept more notes !!!!!

I’ve not had much success using vLite. When I exclude the stuff I think should not be installed Highend and RAMDisk will not install. So, I'm concentrating first on making some notes on what a nice working build should be and then we can see where to go from there.

Its likely that I can post notes on services still running, registry tweaks and Autoruns.
Nick.

My thoughts on why RAM disk work for music go back to the basic architecture of a PC. Music is generally improved by PC responsiveness (speed) in the right parts of the hardware, OS and HighEnd processes. Micro or even pico seconds must surely count in some areas. The responsiveness of the PC to the few software processes actually involved in playing music is what all our OS tweaks are about in the end.

This is NOT all fully worked through as a theory but...

For XXHighend to read from a Sata HDD, the CPU’s read request has to be transmitted from OS > SATA drivers > North Bridge > South Bridge > SATA implentation of the south bridge > the HDD itself. The HDD heads then find and read the data and load into the HDD cache if it’s not already there. To return the data from the HDD to XXHighEnd the data follows the reverse route; HDD Drive > Cache > SATA > southbridge > northbridge > CPU.

Disk sub subsystems are very well optimised for speed but not to the same level as CPU to RAM by DDR data transfer. If you assume that a the SATA HDD and RAMDisk software drivers are equally efficient in terms of  code and use of interrupts (big assumtion), you can seen from the diagram in this link http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-p45-chipset,1961-3.html that the access of the CPU to RAM is both shorter and conducted over the higher bandwidth parallel channels of  DDR.  Much faster than CPU to a HDD access.

My guess is that the extra speed of access and data transfer, translates to MUCH more timely delivery of the data to XXHighEnd processes. RF and cables may also play a part but I’m guessing timing is the main influence.
Just a theory    any thoughts ?
Nick.

Roy hi,

I'v had no luck rolling back the AHCI drivers, they are defiantly a problem, they will not let my disks spin down and there are small regular accesses all the time  I'v tried everything I can find including your link and spent good few hours making changes to registry settings but no luck. Im going to concentrate on the Vista rebuild now. As I re-discover config elements that may be helpful I'll post them.

Nick.

Peter,

You could also try this for PCI latency setting.

http://www.mark-knutson.com/dawg/index.html

It works for me under vista and helped to reduce levels of agression in music. When run it discovers the PCI attached devices (right down to individual USB ports) then you can then set the individual device you want to tune. When I was using USB for my Transit card I used to set the Transit's USB port to a latency of 248 (max value) and all other devices to 32 (min value).

There is an unusual choice of picture on the site  but the software seems to run fine. In addition to the free version there is a version that will apply auto settings when you boot. I never bothered with this but setting PCI latencies up for each listening session did become a bit of a drag.

I was meaning to ask you if your proprietary L2S interface for the Phasure NOS DAC has a PCI based interface at the PC end ?

Nick.

Guys,

I think Marcin has come up with something REALLY significant using RAMDisk. I don't want to end up with egg on my face but I have just had an ear opening experience after setting up RAMDisk. I have only had a couple of hours listening but I think RAMDisk may become a fundamental component of the replay platform. Bear in mind that this could be specific to my system (HiFace etc etc) but this is what I am hearing;

Significant lowering of hash, harshness and noise floor, little if any discernable aggressiveness, deeper "blackness" between players and voices, really smooth top end, walk around staging, big improvement in timing and resolution levels. There is a small loss in midrange dynamic but I think this may be the loss of the digital aggressiveness which tends to raise mid to high sibilance and give the impression of more presence in my system.

I had to half my normal SFS from 80 to around 40 to somewhere near the sweet spot and there is more to come I, am sure.
I really could end up looking stupid by raving here but I am trusting my ears. It'a a 10 min install to get RAMDisk setup you REALLY should try it !

Great find Marcin 

Marcin,

I’m defiantly liking the RAM disk idea. I guess that the effect is to exchange music data disk read speed from SATA SSD speeds (already fast) to system RAM access speed (much quicker ?). Provided that the RAM disk driver is well written this could be an interesting solution. I’m going to take a look feed back any results.

I have been looking at how vLite works and getting an install working to have a play. I think my thin Vista build is quite a manual process though, lets see if vLite can help share a good thin build. The vLite experiment it might take a while though as I still have not solved the problem of rolling back the dammed AHCI disk drivers. Some times curiosity can be a real pain.....
Nick.

Roy,
Fantastic, I spent hours yesterday trying to roll back. I almost reinstated my thin OS build, a real hassle !
Stay away from AHCI  
Nick

With so many Vista builds happening I thought my experience this weekend with vista SATA drivers could stop a few dead ends for sound quality.

I won't go in to the process of learning but the out come is this:

HDD and SDD installed in IDE over SATA MODE and using the default MS driver for this config.....music absolutely excellent and dpclat scores of 1us to 3us.

Set both drives to run in SATA AHCI mode and installed the Intel AHCI drivers......music really takes a step back, aggressive and not so smooth. The dpclat scores more than tripped to 7us to 9us.

My mobo uses an ICH10 northgate so the AHCI drivers are for that Intel chip, but to be safe when you build your Vista I would not install any drives in SATA AHCI mode.

I am trying to work out how to roll back my drive controller drivers to the MS default SATA IDE driver, not easy when one of the drives is the boot drive. Any suggestions ?

Nick.

Thanks all for the advice regarding CPU heat sinks. I’ve been looking at the products and there looks like some interesting options.


Peter,

I bought the SSD recently after reading some positive sound quality comments. I tried placing the OS on the SSD, but Vista did not install well onto the Vertex 2. What I ended up with is the HDD with Vista on it and all my music files. The SSD has only XXHighEnd installed. When XXHighEnd is started from the SSD the music files are copied to the SSD by highend using copy files before play.  Using a "thin" Vista build the HDD will spin down even thought Vista is installed on it. Very, very occationaly it does spin up for a moment briefly, but not often.

I guess this might not be such a good config for your development environment though as you probably need a lot of vista services / network etc running which might keep the HDD spinning, its an option for a “best play back” config though.

So I bought a 60Gb SSD and use about 150mb .... Still its the sound that counts

Welcome back to Vista guys...

The only bad thing about this otherwise positive step for sound it that I never migrated from Vista 32bit, so I will not be sharing in the recovery of the beautiful sound quality that Peter describes .

IMHO I do think the OS and PC's ability to run fast is very important. I would really like to hear your impressions Peter when your new mother board and processor are in. I suspect it will be quite important to your systems sound. If your results are good, I might spend a little myself on a new mother board, CPU and memory.

Mani hi,
With regards to your 2 SSD setup, I think that the extra performance the second drive brings coulds be the removal of a spinning drive motor and drive electronics from the system. My PC runs one SSD with my normal hard drive "parking" after a 1 min of not being used (it doesn’t spin back up at all during music play back). I got similar musical results to what you are describing, no placebo. I seem to remember reading that you have a fanless setup but hears one to try if I’m wrong. Temporally disconnect your CPU fan's power (and other case fans) and listen to a track before and afterwards (Sorry I know you know this, but others reading may not - be VERY careful with CPU temperature, I can listen to about a track and a half before my CPU get to about 60 deg C and I put the CPU fan back on). This gives simlar improvements in sound to adding an SSD in my system.

Does anyone know of any reasonably priced, good fanless heat sinks for CPUs, do they exist?


Nick.

I'v read that the /pcilock switch in boot.ini prevents windows from changing irqs for pci bus devices from irq values set in  the BIOS or the irq set in hardware on a card (not that many cards seem to let you set their irq these days). I run /pcilock on for good measure but if you can set your sound device irq away from other resources manually /pcilock will stop windows relocating it to a shared irq. At least I think that's /pcilock works 

Re, windows performance settings.
The "background" setting for in Windows performance settings seems to work best. Is gives slightly better audible results has helped lower the dpc readings on my thin vista build which generally seem to be a positive thing.
Nick.