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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: Windows 8 disappointment.
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on: June 29, 2013, 03:16:14 pm
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Arvind, it really took me a while to get 9Z-9 on W8 sounding better than my W7 setup. I don't think this will completely solve your problem, but try making the clock res .5 or as low as your system will go. I found that the higher the clock res the brighter or thinner the sound became. Another thing that made a big difference for me was the drive that my music was on. (I have not set up any RAMdisc's yet.) You might try copying a track to the drive that you have XX on and see if that helps. I guess in your setup that would be putting the track on your IMdisc drive that you created for XX.
Don't despair cause you will sort this out, even if that means reverting back to W7!
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422
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 09-z9 impressions
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on: June 20, 2013, 02:54:25 pm
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2. In both W7 and W8, 9Z9 sounds best without the ASSI Rainbow Sugar Card (I didn't make that up!) It definitely puts a bit of a blanket on the sound. Okay in the future I'll spare you folks my foolishness of posting first impressions cause 9Z9 has shown, over time, that they are a bit "premature" to post. I know Peter has been warning all about the unreliability of the ASSI Card but I realized last night that all my testing with W8, with the settings below, has been with the ASSI card installed. I thought I had taken it out! Anyway, the sound with W8, 9Z9 and the ASSI card in is just remarkably good. I removed it and there was just no comparison--the sound stage with the card out isn't nearly as precise and there is just a lot more hash without the card. So, for now, it's staying in here.
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 09-z9 impressions
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on: June 18, 2013, 02:07:14 pm
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Here are some first impressions:
1. 9Z9 (Peter's W8 settings except SFS @ 60)sounds better in W7 than W8. W8 sounds a bit more veiled to me.
2. In both W7 and W8, 9Z9 sounds best without the ASSI Rainbow Sugar Card (I didn't make that up!) It definitely puts a bit of a blanket on the sound.
3. 9Z9 in general is just a bit too fat in the mids resulting in less well defined vocals; though W7 sounds much more defined than W8.
4. 8e in W7, with Rainbow Sugar (the AFX-104 filtering card), continues to sound fabulous here.
Regarding 1 and 3 above, well, they are wrong. After making some adjustments to Peters W8, 9Z9 settings I think I finally dialed in W8 to where I am getting "the best sound ever." The three things that took away the impression of fat mids and vieled or not articulate enough vocals were setting Q5 to 2, setting the clock res to 2.5, SFS to 60 and copying my entire music directory to the W8 partition. This last adjustment seems to have had the biggest impact. (If anyone wants to indulge me, I'd appreciate it if you would copy/paste a track to your C drive (or whatever drive you have XX installed on) and compare the sound to whatever playback drive you currently use. Results could be reported in the playback drive thread.) In my setup 9Z9 sounded "grey" in W8 until I copied some music to the C drive, which is where it is played from in my W7 setup. As soon as I did that W8 came alive here. Though I wouldn't describe my W7 sound as grey at all, now it doesn't sound as pleasing or musical as W8. Guess I'll have to switch over to the W8 SQ thread for further reporting. One other way of saying this is that the high frequency sound of 8e that I "crave" is now achieved in 9Z9 W8, but in a much more refined and integrated way. Yesterday I played Anita O'Day, Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered in W7, 8e and though the vocal sounds incredible the accompanying piano sounds fake or like a toy. In W8, 9z9 that same piano sounds very, very real--like it too is in the room with Anita. So awesome. Thanks Peter....sorry for being a bit slow.
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Stopping problem with 9Z9 and Hi Res
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on: June 09, 2013, 08:33:26 pm
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I'm confused. Using the original 9Z9-from the day it was released- I did the following per the release notes:
"Watch out : This patch is available by means of the second download at the very bottom. Only install this over your folder where the native 0.9z-9 is installed in (which latter is the first download near the bottom)."
So should I now delete this folder, create a new one and reload a new 9Z9 without the patch?
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Stopping problem with 9Z9 and Hi Res
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on: June 09, 2013, 05:43:15 pm
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I always download into a new folder and I didn't copy anything from an older version into that folder. I then pasted the 9z9b exe into the Z9 folder overwriting the original Z9 exe. The problem is not random at all; it happens every time I play either a FLAC or WAVE hi res file. Clearing the cache or restarting the 9z9 engine doesn't help.
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 09-z9 impressions
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on: June 09, 2013, 01:54:02 pm
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Hey Nick - Well what can I say? - on this occasion I have to completely disagree with you but it may point to some difference between our systems that needs further investigation.
I started at Q5=2 and clock=0.5 and the sound is lively and dynamic. So I set Q5=10 and clock=1 - wow what a difference the sound suddenly sounded much more analogue and easy to listen to. But for me it was not an improvement the sound was flattened and the problems "brushed over" (I was listening to a very poor Tony Allen recording). Actually I preferred to listen to it dynamic warts and all and not "brushed over".
Now SFS makes very little difference to SQ (but like PA it used to make a significant difference).
Well that's the way I hear it anyway.
Cheers
Paul
Paul hi, It's very interesting that your experience is so different. If I understand what Peter has done with Q5 (from the tool tips) I think that tuning settings might become much more PC specific to motherboards processors and disk types etc. I'm thinking that different PCs may have carateristic periods for operations like memory access, processor scheduling and so on. If Peters Q5 setting is helping to break these characteristic frequencies up and different PC do have specific periods then could be that we will hear very different things on different PCs. To explain more about what I'm hearing its actually very like your system, it just sounds so much more real palpable and dynamic, with a much sweeter to end. There real energy in performance with the whole spectrum contributing in a consistent way to the sound. Might it be that your PC already has a "nice" spread of internal transaction frequencies, so sound is already [extremely ] good ? It would be interesting if Mani and Brian could try the settings I posted above as they have the same mobo and processor and this might give some indication of whether or not we are getting to the point of more PC specific settings now. Perhaps Peter might comment on this ? Best Nick. So I've spent the last week listening exclusively to W7, 9z9, in order to establish some kind of baseline for comparisons. Yesterday I had an opportunity for an extended listening session and here are a few impressions: 1. Regarding Q5 I have to agree with Paul's description above (I assume, Paul, your tests were with W7.) I found my most pleasing, dynamic, settings with a Q5 of 2 and a clock res of .5. In general, it seems that increasing the clock res presents a brighter sound while increasing Q5 does the opposite: the sound becomes rounder or more analogue like and, if you keep the volume the same, less dynamic feeling. However, I found I could crank the volume to unbelievable levels with the higher Q5 and the music sounded awesome. If I set my system up outdoors and wanted to play as loud as possible I wolud use Nicks settings, but at home in my listening room my preference is the somewhat lower volume with the lower Q5. 2. SFS really makes a significant though more subtle difference here. My preference is around 50 or 60. With my current settings I can't go below 30. Nick what settings were you using when you managed a really low SFS? 3. Like Juan said in his beautiful post about 9Z9 and W8, volume is something to really pay attention to. With peak extension off, 9Z9 feels roughly similar dialed down 3db to what I was used to with version 8e. However, I find that I'm bumping up the volume 1.5 db in 9Z9--not sure if that is a good or a bad thing. 4. After listening for several hours yesterday I rebooted into W8, which sounded very good and smooth but a bit less dynamic than W7. Not sure why this is so. Anyone know if having music on one side of a partition and OS on the other side has a bad effect on SQ? All of my efforts with a playback drive and/or having music stored on an external drive changed SQ here for the worse. 5. Lastly, yesterday I was ready to announce that I was changing my signature because 9Z9 is best of all.....then I played a few of my favorite vocals with 8e. After adjusting volume to account for PE being on, it seems to still have some magic too so I'm just going to add a 9Z9 settings to my signature. Maybe I'm just a little slow.
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 09-z9 impressions
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on: June 02, 2013, 08:52:42 pm
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So I played with Q5 @1 this morning and vocals sounded very similar to what I like best about 8e. The base though, with 9z9, is much better and the sounds of the instruments in space were more defined and palpable. I was A-Bing Dave Brubeck, Take Five, and in 9z9 the first few measures, though soft, never sounded so live before. I briefly listened with Q5 @ 10 and, though it sounded incredibly smooth, it was less dynamic than Q5 @ 1.
A-Bingbetween 9Z9 and 8e it seemed a bit odd that volume levels were the same. I played Brubeck @ 22.5db, in both the volume seemed the same. I should have used the SPL meter but it wasn't readily handy. I thought 8e would have to be played 3db louder because of using peak extension.
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: Windows 8 and 09-z9, a match made in heaven?
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on: June 02, 2013, 03:10:01 pm
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Hey Nick and Paul any chance you guys could update your signatures with what are your latest 9Z9 settings? Also are you still using the Chinese sounf filter card?
Don't mean to be offensive so this is just a suggestion: could folks post 9Z9 SQ impressions in one thread-- maybe the 9Z9 Impressions thread--and post playback tweaks in the appropriate place--not in the SQ thread. This current thread has just gotten too confusing and there are now so many important software changes in 9Z9 that it would be great to reserve the 9z9 impressions thread just for that purpose. Seems to me a newbie would have a very difficult time trying to read about the SQ of and best settings for 9z9.
Yesterday I was playing 9Z9, W7, with PA off, a SFS of 60 and all other settings the same as Peter's and the sound was pretty incredible. Look forward to playing with Q5 settings.
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435
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 09-z9 impressions
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on: May 28, 2013, 02:06:49 pm
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Couple more observations I forgot to mention last night: 1. 9Z9 sounds very, very good. To me, it sounds much improved over 8-3a. 2. Turning on peak extension in 9z9 kills the sound. Guess that problem was solved--would love that tweak applied to 8e . 3. Phase Alignment turned on sounds best here in 9z9. I used my W7, 8e, PA settings.
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