I know it might sound crazy, but I had a significant increase of warmth and width (fatter?) playing Z4 in Special Mode, when I unticked "Stop Services". Almost took me back to Z2.

I finally got SC working today, but couldn't get the SFS larger than 10.2. It sounded too thin compared to MC with a SPS of 80. With the hiface I'm in Special Mode with the device buffer set to 512 with Q1 @ 8. Very unusuall settings for me. The sound was really good but had that high frequency janglyness that drives my wife crazy. However, it became silky smooth when I unticked Stop Services....perhaps a built in filter? Gotta love it.......Peter, what HAVE you done? HaHa!

Cricket, isn't that an insect? 

Will play with settings, am currently listening to special mode and, for the first time, it sounds pretty good here. Its been 7 or 8 months since I last tried it.

Got about a one minute taste of Straight Contiguous when a "Too many buffer errors" occurred. Again this was with a .2 SFS setting. Rebooted repeatedly trying various SFS settings, including .2 but no luck. Before trying other settings I immediately played the same track with mixed contiguous. The latter seemed thinner than Straight Contiguous but I can't say for sure cause it wasn't a long enough sample; I used SFS of 10 and 40. Will try switching from wine to beer....

Will probably try 64 bit tomorrow during the NFL playoffs; I grew up in Pittsburgh..... of course only worth saying if any of you guys across the pond follow American football.

Thanks Peter. Will give it a go this evening.

Last night after reducing the size of my Ramdisc to 1 gig I got Straight Contiguous (SC) to work with the lowest split file size , .2mb. After 30 seconds or so I stopped it (mistake, I know) and tried to increase the SFS but couldn't get any other SFS to work. I rebooted and tried again with a .2 SFS but no luck. I then reduced the size of the Ramdisc again to 750 mb, rebooted and tried again but still no luck. I have 4 gigs of ram and am using Windows7 sp 1, 32 bit. I have the 64 bit version of 7 but with only 4 gigs of ram am not sure if switching to the 64 bit version will make a difference. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

I found mixed contiguous better than mixed, but was unable to get contiguous to work. When I played mixed contiguous the first time the "privileges" message appeared and I had to reboot. I probably need to reduce the size of my ramdisc to get contiguous working, maybe tomorrow.

It sounds really, really good....a step closer, maybe, to a "fat Z2/transparent Z3" sound. Need to give it some time to be sure. Other settings: ramdisc, SFS 40, clock resolution "nothing", and Q1@-1, everything else as in my signature.

96k with 9z-4 works here; my Jkenny is a modified hiface. Sound is damn good too! No suggestion on a solution assuming your "Dac Is" setting matches your dac?

GerardA, the Jkenny MK2 will make your current Hiface settup--with attenuator-- sound like its shrouded in mist.....you gotta hear the MK2 to believe it.

Can't say that I can recall playing anything quite that long. I'm fairly sure Peter will be able to address this issue for you. Here's a 26 minute, 36 second file that works fine here:

Try going into: control panel/system/advanced system settings, then click on settings in the "Performance" box and then select "adjust for best performance". What you describe here has happened to me after I've had XX playing and I try to access the gui after playing in "unattended" mode. After adjusting for "best performance" the gui always "shows up". Hope this helps.

ps: you really should spend the few bucks for the XXplayer, most issues will go away and you won't ever again get a better upgrade in your sound quality for such a small amount of $.

Okay, let me make sure I have this right: If you have an integrated amp (analogue volume control on the amp) you should not keep the XX digital volume at 100%. Rather back XX volume off a bit and you should perceive an increase in SQ, which is what I did last night for the first time and it sounded better than ever before.

If your amp is not integrated take your preamp out of the chain (analogue volume control) and just use the XX digital control: this is best.

My amp is integrated but I've bypassed all the controls (balance, treble, bass) except volume. It only puts out 17w per channel, so reducing the XX digital volume by -3db sounded best for me.....a significant improvement to be sure.

Never heard this before. Started with -6db and then -3db. Very nice. Thanks!

I almost started my last post with:"Have you heard Z2 on W7 sp1?" but I didn't want to overstate this finding. Am very much looking forward to the Z4 experience.

Adrian, I did try those settings. I also tried letting my dac upsample straight 16/44 from xx, hadn't tried that for a long time and forgot how bad it sounds. In my system arc prediction with peak extension just dramatically improves everything when playing 16/44. Straight 16/44 is just too hard edged and jittery sounding here.

If Z4 can capture the midrange width of Z2 and the depth of clarity/transparency of Z3, without the janglyness (new word for HF distortion  ), I may never have to post again!

After listening to Z3 for nearly a month, my wife started complaining about  harshness in the sound; after changing various settings in Z3 I tried Z2 again. The character of the sound is completely different from one to the other. Z2 seems a smoother, fatter sound but not as revealing or transparent as Z3. For vocals though Z2 again seems more pleasing than Z3.........

Both were played from ramdisc with tracks manually copied there as well.