Hahaha. I didn't read about "Change 5" yet (will do that in a minute), but I can tell that Nick and I have been doing quite some sparring on "tweaks" to the NOS1. Funnily enough we both started around the same time on rather different physical subjects but with the exact same purpose in mind.

I think I am sort of finished with my part of the deal now, and Nick will soon be running out of appliances I guess. Then what ?
Then we both will have achieved the same but by very different means.

And then what ?
Then theoretically both can be combined as well. But, if either of us has done a great job, the one makes the other superfluous.

Well, now you know it all !

For now the message is : there is no reason such a thing won't be happening to you. But how will you know without something like an analyser. You won't. You will have bad sound though.

http://www.cherry.de/english/products/keypads_Keypad_G84-4700.htm[/url]

For the NOS1, as you know the position of the power plug is a little strange and it´s not a good idea to get all the cables there in the back of the dac touching each other. To avoid touching the DVI cable with the power cable a good solution is an adapter in L shape. I bought one from Voodoo cables and although a little expensive is very well made and solves the problem. See the Horizontal Right-Angle 15 amp IEC Adapter http://www.voodoocable.net/VAPA.htm

Dude i just fixed it ... i was fidding around with it .. lol .. Was trying to figure out how to make the motherboard stop throttling my processor up and down so i could have a consistent clock speed. Im guessing what was causing it was Gigabytes "Easy energy Saver stuff or w/e causes the processor to throttle up and down! I will take pictures of my bios and post them later tonight.

Thanks Bert for the suggestion.

I am sure I reformatted (long one not a quick format) the partition before installing OS fresh. But I am not quite sure if I took out the Juli@ interface card.

When you format the drive before installing OS, how do you format it ? Use the format facility during the installation process at the stage where you are asked for the partition to which the OS is going to. Or use the long format in the disk management ?

May be I have to buy  another brand new HDD tomorrow and try it out. Hope the ghost will be gone !

Thanks again.
Praphan

Gerard hi,

Just the stuff I have always done with DACs but the results here are bigger than usual. I think it is a function of how well designed the NOS1 is. If you stumble on a slight bottle neck and address it lots "gets through". I'm very interested to see what Peter makes of the changes how they measure etc. I'm always a bit cautious of posting claimed improvements just in case they don’t work elsewhere.

Hope your enjoying the sunshine !
Nick
.

Update

The post started with the tile "NOS1 to the next level ?" the "?" was there for a reason  . I have applied a second change now and IMHO it's time to drop the "?" (at least in terms of NOS1 potential).

What has changed ? very little (physically) and a great deal (sound) ... after the second change (very small change really and related to the first) the sound has just improved by another big step all over again  . More hash gone (I didn't think there was any left after the 1st change !), better bass performance (just listening to the hinges and doors in my house rattle as I write), improved dynamics and slam, sound more separated from the speakers etc etc.

You can really hear the differences that XX software settings make much more with the changes in place so it took a while to get to the sweet spot but its defiantly there now

I will send the details of change 2 to Peter to look at as well.

Nick.

Parphan hi,

They are good thoughts points 1 to 4 but its not these. In my case the DAC has not been touched with a soldering iron... Peter suspected magnets applied to the case (his joke only  ) , but the details are with Peter to test now. Let's see what he finds, could always be that I had a case of rose colour glasses this weekend (i don't think so though    ).

Cheers,

Nick

Gerard,

It is inside and quite simple in concept but I really don't want to say more because it is very important that Peter has time to look into it, test, measure, listen and take proper view on what if anything he would like to do. My comments are subjective only as I do not have the equipment to test quantitatively.

Being inside the DAC is defiantly not a recommended place to be. But I have been working with Peter on some aspects of my system setup for quite a while which is why I have been in there with his guidance - defiantly not recommended otherwise.

I have already passed some details on and I will send Peter some parts to try the concept when he gets back. It may or may not be something that Peter can use generally, it's absolutely his call.

Best Nick.

This is bit of a teaser post I am afraid for folks using NOS1s but listening to my system as I scan the forum I have to post on the subject

I have stumbled across a way to make the NOS1 significantly even more fantastic than it already is (to my ears). Bass is there in spades (rich, deep, superb pitch), tone of instruments superb (strings, brass, cymbals), just the most analogue sound I have heard from digital. The body and presence, sound stage and sense of performance are quite superb. The difference is similar in effect to moving from z3 to z4 but much more pronounced, you hear it from the first note played !

Anyway what I plan to do is send some gear over to Peter when he gets back from holidays in a couple of weeks as I think it is important that Peter looks at this before any more is said.

For now what I can say for a fact that there is a lot of "headroom" to be had (if you can image that) from what is an already undoubtedly a perfect DAC. 

Regards,

Nick.

This is bit of a teaser post I am afraid for folks using NOS1s but listening to my system as I scan the forum I have to post on the subject

I have stumbled across a way to make the NOS1 significantly even more fantastic than it already is (to my ears). Bass is there in spades (rich, deep, superb pitch), tone of instruments superb (strings, brass, cymbals), just the most analogue sound I have heard from digital. The body and presence, sound stage and sense of performance are quite superb. The difference is similar in effect to moving from z3 to z4 but much more pronounced, you hear it from the first note played !

Anyway what I plan to do is send some gear over to Peter when he gets back from holidays in a couple of weeks as I think it is important that Peter looks at this before any more is said.

For now what I can say for a fact that there is a lot of "headroom" to be had (if you can image that) from what is an already undoubtedly a perfect DAC. 

Regards,

Nick.

Hi Doc,

Glad to hear that you sorted out those hassels over the weekend.

Nice stuff about z-5 is that you will see 8 LEDs at the top of the GUI. In my case, I see 12 !   Hehe

Praphan