Hi folks.

You might want to have a look at linnrecords.com

There is a good chance that the offered 24/96 master-quality-material will lift audio quality further up!

http://www.linnrecords.com/index.aspx

I think its worth a try. What do you think?

Cheers
Klaus

Hi there.

I am really wondering if that is all that complicated.

Best sound is IMO achieved if we are talking about a  100% jitterfree-bitperfect data stream without any manipulation, which will deliver all
sounds,spectrum and phases right. Everything else is manipulation, which leads into this or that audible direction.

You guys are aware that I rather prefer the "shortest" track philosophy. Find the shortest track from RAM2DAC. All interfaces in the stream are just introducing jitter.
If I manipulate the signal then I manipulate the basedata offline and not realtime. I know it is not always possible, but than I always ask myself "What's the lesser of two evils?" E.g. my software volumecontrol is one of these cases.

The thing what's done different today, compared to "good" old times, that we start further up the stream to avoid jitter, which introduces  different spectrum/phaseshifts to the signal. I believe that due to jitter even the original wave form and its spectrum is changed, which will end up in weired distorted sounds.
This of course will be much earlier audible in the highs. The number of samples, due to the high frequency, to cover one wavelength are just a small number.
The effective error is therefore in this particular area much more evident than in lower frequencies.
Having distortions in the bitstream will therefore heavily influence the highs, much more than the mids. That explains many of the improvements we're looking at.

I realized that just getting everything what's possible impacting the stream out of the data-stream path leads to extreme improvements.

I still think (and experienced it) that especially the latency-jitter issues described by RME, which occurs at quite some interfaces in the process chain is one of the main drivers for all the mess. The IRQ handling and the correlated timer is the 2nd main reason for the mess. Of course there are other factors like load dependent dynamic processor-clock changes, on USB I found out about dynamic bandwidth allocations and different number of data-packages per USB-package, all kind of different size ring-buffers at the the process
interfaces, even the ROM based USB drivers do impact the stream. Everything which tends to be non-linear will non-linear impact the data-stream, thus causing distortions.

To me we're talking about nothing else than a distorted bit-stream, which needs a  proper  PC environment (respectively data-chain),  to get rid of its distortions.


Cheers
\Klaus


 

Just to comment:
Windows 2000 is known to be much better regarding latencies, resp. audio-processing in general, then XP.
If that's the cause for Adrians problem/finding is a different question.

Cheers

That's interesting! How about Accurate Rip. Glichtes would change the checksum.

If the problem would be caused by the PC in general, not any result would be the same.

Cheers

Hi folks.

My hot pick:

Manger  - Musik von einem anderen Stern

This is the best reference CD, a real nice sampler (international pieces), I came across.

Suberb quality recordings.
All main genres are covered.
One mic recordings.
Drums, percussion, bass, ochestra, folk, voice ...... ( and real church bells!)

This CD shouldn't be missing in any collection

Cheers
\Klaus

I tried to address the glitch issue some time ago. I don't remember if we had this discussion at Berts forum. EAC reported often 1000s of glitches. Sometimes I even had huge differences between the right and left channel. 

I addressed it within the EAC forum and I had been in discussions with the XRCD distributor in Germany. Without any success

I mean, these glichtes are obvious production flaws. No idea why the labels don't take care on these.

Great that there'll be a tool to remove them in a proper manner. EAC is just completely removing them afaik.

Cheers
Klaus

Hi Peter.

My main interest was to get the 44.1 vs. 48khz question answered.

I did not intend to start a Linux discussion at your forum.

You did a great job with XX. period . Nothing more to say about it.

Cheers
\Klaus

Hi Werner.

Interesting statement:

Perhaps you can shed some light on your Linux setup. What do you call "tweaked where possible"?

Interesting that 44.1 sounds better then 48. If 48 sounds better on Linux. Why should it
sound worse on Vista- XX. Perhaps Peter has an explanation for that!?!
Is it because of the Vista automated resampling?
Somehow the behaviour doesn't make sense to me if the stream is not twisted somewhere in between.

Cheers
\Klaus

Just a late night thought about how to define "sound quality" as a benchmarking parameter- the headline of this forum area.

The sound is getting better and better with our undertakings and closer to 100%. 
XX definately will contribute to it as a radical new approach in the MS Windows world.

Cheers
Klaus

Peter.

I run Windows 2000 on one machine - Not NT . But that's working fine.
My XP machine has an issue.
I guess I have to look up what direct X I have on my XP machine.

\Klaus

My 2 cents:

100% sound quality is given if the system (chain) reproduces 100% what's stored in the source
material. Who is supposed to know that? There is no system in the whole world which reproduces 100%! I am sure nobody had ever had a chance to listen to 100% reproduced material.

Sound quality is relative. I am sure nobody had ever experienced and will ever experience 100% sound quality.

Enjoy.

Hi there.

After deinstalling the usb-audio.de driver on the NT system. XX worked!!

Considering that I just have 512MB RAM on that system and playing 44.1 files instead of my beloved 48kHz files, the sound was quite good - promising. ( I was running at 0db, though!! It's always frustrating -- running at 0db straight path -- you realize what's taken away by your pre-amp or digital volume control. )

I need to run further tests on my "XP - production machine" getting  XX to play over there too.


Cheers
\Klaus

Hi Peter.

Long time that we havn't been in touch.

First of all congratulations that you took the step to launch XX.

Beside that, opening up a new forum, great job.

You can imagine that I was also waiting for XX.

I guess you'll be busy for some time on troubleshooting - supporting all us XX newbies.

I got two issues:

I ran of course in the .net 2.0 issue.

1.
On my english Windows NT I didn't have any problems to
get XX up'n running (without sound output).
On my german XP I never managed to start XX up. It got killed right after
I accepted the DEMO Window. It must have something to do with the .net setup I guess.
Any ideas?

2.
I figured on my working NT system, that XX doesn't recognise the usb-audio.com driver.
XX recognises a usb audio device only. Did you manage to get Berts usb-audio.com driver setup
working?
I guess worst case I'd have to uninstall the driver. I mean if'you're telling me that with the engine 2 setup no ASIO is needed any longer I'd uninstall the driver.

THX.

Cheers
\Klaus