Will do!

Juan, per Nick's Tweaks, i get better sound unplugging my Plextor optical drive and secondary SATA II drive when listening. This is a bit cumbersome when wanting to rip cause things have to be plugged in (just the optical drive, the secondary internal drive never gets used). Given the need to access the inside of the computer, I'm currently using the sides of my computer as bases for my amp and DAC! My wife kicked me and my system out of the living room and I'm now on the third floor where I can play as loud as I want whenever I want. Though everything was moved hastily and I now have to figure out how to organize the room. I haven't decided yet whether to get a proper "tower audio stand" to put components --DAC and AMP--on, or whether to just get a couple of "single shelf" boards (extra thick hi-end meat cutting boards perhaps with some well placed spiked feet  ) and leave the DAC and amp as they currently are on the floor. See below.

Sorry about the digression there. What I really want to say is that I currently run the OS with XX and all of my music on the same 3 TB SATA III spinning drive. I have found an amazing difference in SQ between music ripped to the internal SATA II secondary drive and music ripped to the 3 TB OS drive, with the latter providing the amazing sound. I have not tried an external USB3 drive but am willing to bet the family farm on an external drive not being as good as the SATA III OS drive.

Of course there are important practical problems with setting ones system up this way, namely: If music sounds best on the OS drive then why make backups that sound inferior? In other words be prepared to rerip ALL your tunes if the OS drive dies-- a pain in the ass, truly. But if you don't have a "lot " of music--my entire collection--as wave files-- is "only" 1.5 TB's-- its a risk/pain you might be willing to make. For me, the sound is that much better that, for now, I'm willing to do it this way.

Though I don't know for sure all the causes for the SATA III OS drive sounding so good, I do know that the SQ is made worse by connecting the SATA III drive with a standard SATA cable. My Corsair AX650 Power Supply came with two dedicated SATA III cables. At one point plugging and unplugging drives I accidentally used a stadard SATA cable on the SATA III drive. SQ was not what I had gotten used to and when I realized the mistake I switched back to the SATA III  cable  and, viola, the good sound returned. SATA III has a metal locking clip that the standard SATA cable doesn't have. Certainly the electronics of SATA III contribute to the difference.

On the other hand, I wonder if the UEFI interface that came with the ASUS MB, which interface is necessary for using a 3 or 4 TB drive as an OS drive, is what has so changed SQ here?

Lastly, my new room's dimensions are 11x15 feet with an 18 " "punch out" for a bay type widow on the exterior wall. The sound here is much better than the living room, probably because there is no piano between the speakers and the floor has wall to wall carpet. Anyway, any suggestions regarding room treatments are welcome!

Several times I've tried Peters settings and everything but the SFS of 2 works for me. I'm staying with my SFS of 450, though I've changed my signature regarding the other settings. Voices are eerily natural on my system at this SFS setting. Maybe I'll change my mind when, geeze, whats that new thingy called, oh yea, 9z-7 is released.

Peter, please try and change my mind soon. 

Brian

How did you do this? I was unable to get any significant change in latency by changing the memory frequency. Results below;

824 Mhz; 8-15 at idle, 18-35 with  XX playing
1373 Mhz: 8-15 idle,  12-22 with xx playing
1648 Mhz: 9-13 (very occasional spike to 17-19), 14-20 with xx playing (very occasional spike to 50+)

I've been amazed by this quote since you wrote it! Please, please, please provide for my American ears the definition of the word bit. Cause over here it means the briefest passage of time......

Don't know if its appropriate to ressurect this thread, but there were a lot of interesting ideas in it so what the hell:

Am home today and had a chance for a nice session with XX. Don't know why but it occurred to me (again) that SFS and volume are very interrelated. For the heck of it I set my SFS to 500 and increased the volume between 4 and 6 db depending upon the music. These volume settings were in a range I rarely go cause all gets distorted when playing this loud. However, with a SFS of 500, these high levels sounded very, very good. Reducing volume to a more usual level, but keeping the SFS at 500, things sounded  too woody or muted. Of course, lowering the SFS with the lowered volme brings back that "great sound."

This little exercise got me to wondering if there isn't a "correct" (or approximately correct) SFS for any particular volume level or range of levels, and if there is, or at least seems to be, wouldn't it be great (for those who dislike "fiddling" with too may buttons) if the SFS could be automatically adjusted as volume was increased or decreased? This "setting" would have to be based both on the SPL the music was originally recorded at and the volume you want to use (whether or not wife is in the room, etc) when listening in your living room. The feature could be bypassed (with a button, of course) for those who can't stop fiddling with buttons).

If implemented properly, this could be the "solution" to the SFS "problem". I mean, if volume and SFS are related, there ought to be an accurate SFS setting for each cd and the volume its being played at. Or instead of a specific SFS for each volume it could be set for a range and would change at a certain point that constitute a new range.

Sorry if I've got a bit too much time on my hands and you've just spent a couple of minutes reading a bunch of crazy talk!
 

= Women's Voices

Let me rephrase: If the women's voices get better than what I am lisytening to right now, I just might loose my mind!

 

Don't know if I'll be able to take them getting any better than they are in my room right now....

 

Might SFS be one of those areas we revisit? To me the change in sound caused by changing the memory speed was very, very similar to changing SFS, but in the opposite direction: increasing SFS smoothes the sound and reduces harshness the same way that reducing memory speed does.

Just a thought....

Glad to hear it worked for you too, Georg. I tried the lowest setting 848 MHz and the sound was a bit too relaxed or too "woody" sounding so I went back to the 1048 (I think that's it) setting. Gotta be on the look out for those little statments from Peter; like gold nuggets, they are. 

Hi Georg, Per Uncle Google, it looks like "ganged" is an AMD only tweak. Don't know if there is an Intell equivlent. I guess one buys a Rolls Royce to be as insulated from road vibrations as possible. Of course never exceeding 50 mph keeps those vibrations to a minimum. 

Brian

Last night I remembered the above exchange from earlier in this thread. I went into the ASUS bios and, in the Ai Tweaker (overclocking) section I played around with the memory frequency settings. I've always used the EZ Automatic overclocking function of the bios and have wondered why it automatically set the memory frequency to 1373 MHz when I have GSkill-1600, CL9-9-9-24. Anyway I set the Memory frequency to 1648, 1373, and 1098 and gave each a listen. There was a very significant change in sound for the better the lower the frequency. There is a 824 Mhz setting I've yet to try, but it seemed that the sound became so delicate and smooth at 1098 that it I really need to listen "here" for a while before changing this setting again.

Just an FYI regarding things I don't understand but which my button pushing nature and ears regard as worthwhile!

Can't get the cd writer software to recognize the plextor drive. Quick google search wasn't much help: referenced software incompatibility. Below is all I've installed on my system. Anyone else had this problem?

Yesterday I had the good fortune of plugging my new computer build and NOS1-USB into a couple of Audio Research 250 watt  reference monoblocks that powerd Vandersteen Model7's. For me the good news is that my less than ten thousand dollar system sounds damn good compared to one costing 200 times more. Don't get me wrong, the system I heard yesterday was incredible, close to walking into a concert hall. I'm just not sure that what I heard was "200 times" better than my system.

The best part of all was Peter's DAC and software. Let me just say that, to my ears, they more than stood their ground against Ammara and an EMM Labs SACD Player/DAC. The owner of the system was very impressed with the NOS 1.

Thanks Peter.

I was listening to some hi res last night from Lin Records and HDTT( High Definition  Tape Transfers) I unticked "fx" and left all upsampling on. The sound was really, really nice. Pedal, do you leave updsampling off when ypou play hi res?