Peter,

Thanks for sharing your struggle!

I still think it sounded way better in the afternoon. Besides that the room was busier you also opened the curtains somewhat, probably for some fresh air. Maybe that helped the acoustics too.

No more Veldhoven?!

Regards, Coen

Even if you disconnect the earth of the bar at the plug you are not rid of the loops. For that each receptacle in the bar has to be disconnected from the earth.

I made a few cables with the earth wire cut and marked them as such. The powerbar still has earth for the screen of the cable (if present). That would be connected at the powerbar side only.

Regards, Coen

They do flicker. I thought they were neon. So I should tear those out?!

Regards, Coen

Because.....??

If you turn off the light my room is lit like the Amsterdam "walletjes"  .
Ik kinda like that!

Regards, Coen

Hi Nick,

You are familiar with the 300 hour burn in of Black Gates? Between start and burned-in they can make a system sound like cr*p.

Just want to warn you that the results can change over time and not for the better. It is all about patience in this case like with the NOS1, in the end you will be rewarded!

Regards, Coen

Hi all,

A little note from the x-fi show today!

First off it is good to know that I visit an audioshow about every year. Mostly to expose muself to different sounds, meet some people and to discover some new music. A couple of years ago I changed from the big VAD show to the smaller yet more interesting x-fi show. The latter was also a little more convenient because it was at much less travelling for me. Now the x- fi reoccupied the former VAD location near Eindhoven in the Netherlands, tough luck for travelling...
The Orelinos and "the sound of windows 8" made me curious enough undertake the trip to the Koningshof otherwise I would have skipped it.

Now I remember from previous visits that almost all rooms were plagued with poor bass quality or at least bass problems. Now there may be some prejudice and taste involved in my verdict about this bass quality, but the venture's rooms undoubtly play a role here. Furthermore these shows are a challenge to get right. Many use new speakers and amplifiers and have very little time to setup correctly. So it is unfair to have a verdict about products based on a bad show experience, but the a good ones I can remember years later. Nowadays I consider myself lucky if I have one demo I really like.

Am I heading to something? Read on!

All rooms were starting up and peeking in a few rooms I heard no sounds that raised my interest. 
Then I found the room of Peter and Bert and immediately there was a familiar sound in the room. Very musical, not having any of the dryness and boom of the others. Peter was playing some tunes that I am not very familiar with, but can be tough for a system to make them sound right...
And the thing is they didn't sound right to me. There was a nasty peakyness on loud passages in the horn, some highs were razorsharp and bass was plagued by a resonance. Also I expected more of the bass- horn integration, instruments and voiced lacked fundamentals. The kind of sound that I can recreate by connecting a mediocre cd player and solid state amp to my horns; not something to get excited about.
Knowing Peter and having heard his home system, this was not anything near the stratospheric standards he holds himself to. He wasn't looking very happy about the sound either. Peters wife Cisca confirmed to me in his absence that the sound at the was plagued by room related issues and not at all like it was at home.

Well that was in the moring.  I took a stroll and discovered another fine room and had a few chats. Then in the afternoon I decided to go back to the Phasure/BD room and Holy Cow there was a VERY realistic drum track playing VERY VERY loud.
No horn nastyness, no bad integration, no razor sharp highs, a very pure, natural and effortless dynamic sound all over the room. Easily imho the best sound of show by now. This was a diffent system!
By now I am familiar with these kind of drastic change in the XXHE world, yet I was still very impressed. I guess the system is still breaking in so imagine whet a fully tuned and broken in system would sound like!

Peter was kind enough to play some tracks that I brought along on an usb stick. These sounded absolutely better than I ever heard them, more natural and even more dynamic (not too much dynamic). I am shure both Peter and Bert (and Cisca) will tell you the sound in the room was so-so, and it probably was in their view and experince. To be frank I still noticed some (room related?) issues in the bass response but the big picture was so compelling that I took no offence to that.

If a system can sound this good at these soundlevels at a difficult show location, be prepared for what this does in your room. I can now assure you that the rants of Peter above are realistic!

I had a very good day and got all my goals fulfilled, it was very much worth the trip. Now I got enough inspiration and motivation to make win8 work and dream about a new speaker.

Regards, Coen

You know teamwork: 1+1=3 

Regards, Coen

Ok,

Solved?!!!!!

Without having any notion of the cause, but with plain practical thinking. Time will tell if it is really solved.

Here is what I did:

1) I booted into a "stops" version of the OS.
    I disabled the hiberfil.sys
    I rebooted, played some tunes, rebooted, etc

    As I expected the stops are there now at all boots.

2) so I enabled the hiberfil.sys again
    And booted into a "non-stops" situation
    I disabled the hiberfil.sys.
    I rebooted, played some tunes, rebooted, etc

   As expected the stops are absent now at all boots (at least 3 in a row now).

So Peter, if this applies to you (disabled hiberfil.sys) it looks like you are in situation 1), at which apparently over time the stops disappear at resetting the volume and magically reappear by an unknown event.

Of course this has to work for some time before it can be proclaimed "finally solved", when I run in to trouble again I will post.

Regards, Coen


[edit] To clarify "as I expected": my working hypothesis was that the hiberfil.sys was the cause of the "flip" between stops and no-stops operation.

Ok, its off. Powercfg -h off.

I followed your recommendation to google for win8. I found lots of tips that I don't trust. Experience tells me better safe than sorry in such a situation.

Regards, Coen

Just for the record:

I've absolutely no updates or hidden updates on my music PC.

Software version is "plain vanilla" Windows 8 Pro 64 bit, build 9200.

Regards, Coen

My timings are different:

I booted from a win7 session into win8. For shure the stops will occur. And they did.

The first stop happened today (after volume up) at about 8:30 minutes into the track accompanied with heavy HDD activity. After that I can play 3:58 minutes before the next stop. Stopping and starting gives at exactly that same time a stop repetitively.

Changing the vol slider up or down seems to have NO effect.
SQ has a fuzzyness.

As below my cpu is @30X100MHz. This seems unrelated.


After shutdown and restart there are NO stops anymore ánd NO fierce HDD activity at 8:30, the HDD starts though but very modestly.
I did NOT touch the volume slider nor the mouse after starting xx (actually only the mouse for initating playback).
SQ is clean.

So it is not some uncorrelated WIN8 process. It has to do with the dataloading of whatever needs to be loaded for XX playback.

Contrary to your postings I find a reboot makes all the difference in both sound and stops.

Regards, Coen

[edit] My first tracks are FLAC. Please note that I am open to the possibility that it is NOT boot related at all, but so far the stops have been cured by a reboot.

I Googled on this and it seems that hybernate is NOT a default option of WIN8 anymore. All tips are about locating this function to be part of the options again.

The hiberfil.sys file is used for speeding up all boot cycles in WIN8. It is not recommended to delete this file.

Regards, Coen

I will also check the updates! (I was talking above about the volume setting Peter hints at to making a difference in the stop behaviour).

Regards,
Coen

Peter,

I'm glad the stops were accidentaly reproduced in your system . We aready picking the fruits of that misfortune!

I have a remark about rebooting. There is a difference in w8 between closing it and restarting the pc and a win8 coordinated restart. The latter seems to take far more time and strange stuff happens. If i understand correctly your cpu multiplier changed, anyway i experienced a similar situation that my multiplier was changed (if that was the case with you). That was after a win8 coordinated reboot.

I've not been playing attention to my vol changes and when I apply them. I will check this later tonight.

Regards, Coen


Regards, Coen

Hi Peter,

I think I mixed up Oris with the Orphean, nevertheless I got my answers in your reply to Paul!


Regards, Coen

P.s. Never mind the Cat, I am old enough to make up my own mind!