Hi,

For starters I just removed the wooden footers and started a listening session.

The vagueness seems to be moved to another part of the frequency spectrum. Also, as expected, there is also less focus to the sound. Engaging PA in both + and - version reveals that again "something" is lost in that musical quality. The minus setting is very clean, but seems to "compress" or "thicken" the music ever so slightly. OTOH the plus setting adds a little liveliness and colour but at the expense of apparent details.

In my -still- preferred non-PA setting the music sounds more free, able to breathe more. It also seems louder. Unfortunately the feet make no difference to this quality.

Before moving on to new feet, I noticed that the XT-Tweaks "balanced load" setting was 98, much higher than I remember after installing 8a. I have not been consiously fiddling around with the XT tweaks (to keep a reference for the PC across XX versions) so this was some kind of accidental setting. After some tooltip reading I took the plunge to get a grasp of their effect on Sq (and CPU temp).

Now it got very interesting. Reducing the "balanced load" had a very profound effect on the sound. In fact the musical magic appears to happen only at a setting of 90 and higher, regardless of the other xt tweaks -so far-. As a bonus a setting of 90 sounds a little more fleshed out than the former 98.

Well, though this makes a nice start, it complicates finding an optimal solution with all possible interactions .

Wrt PA, I cannot reproduce a lower distortion and better percieved sound. Maybe the normal XX 8e distortions work out for the better in my odd system.

regards, Coen

Ok,

FYI: The dark magic-cubes have been removed from the room allready. I will experiment with some other footers and PA tonight.

Regards, Coen

Hi Peter,

Foorters have allready been replaced by three woorden doorknobs. Sig is on par. I do not use PA (when I did I preferred + over -) and all xt tweaks are conform initial pc settings.

I can do checks and experiments later.

Regards, Coen

I would like to share some experience I have with v8e.

With the settings below (i will paste them in an txt attatchment) I enjoy a fabulous musicality. I mean with every piece I throw at xxhe the music seems to be exactly right. The right dynamics, the right timing, the right flow,the music holds my attention easily for an entire album and with the right material I get shivers in the neck. Sometimes the musical rightness is pure magic. Oh, and all this bliss is regardless of genre.

Arrived at audionirwana? Well, not yet. Musically it is on par, but tonally it is a bit undercooled and sometimes instruments or voices are a little vague. I really wish for some extra warmth and solidity to obtain perfection.

I have found while playing with the settings in search of better tonality, that this magic is very fragile. Some setting do bring extra warmth (like playing unattended, with ram-disk or PA+) but with all changes the superb musicallity is destroyed. Some settings are worse than others, but all make the music less interesting and harder to connect to (more "good sound" like).

A record where this is immediately apparent for me is the "Horwitz at home" recoding. With the good settings you want to listen to the musical story that the master tries to tell with his piano or just enjoy the flow of music. One setting off and you are listening to a poorly organised undynamic pling plong, that makes you want to skip the track or do something else. Fyi: thats what I usually experience with most tracks of this recording.

Knowing that Peter allways has new tricks in his sleeve, i am a little reluctant to search in the rest of the chain. For now I keep searching within the settings and let you know if I succeed. Hints and tips are allways welcome!

Regards, Coen

Then the music will be pure nos low rez for spotify, wouldn't it?

For some setups this may cause trouble...

Maybe you can add postprocessing (upsampling) to the audiostream.

Regards, Coen

That's one impressive setup!

I am looking forward to your postings of the results.

Any reason not to do the phono eq in the digital domain? (I.e.http://www.stereophile.com/phonopreamps/pure_vinyl_lp_recording_amp_editing_software/index.html)

Regards, Coen

Hi,

Of someone is interested in upgrading to win 8 the official way, he or she may better do that before the end of the month. Windows has planned to revert to their normal pricelevel.

Regards, Coen

Hi,

Some of my experiences:

I rather have no usb devices and no runnng fans on my pc. That is none for the cpu and psu. Used as videoconverter I never had any temp problems with this passive setup.
The no usb is something to keep an eye on, thats why I use a mobo with ps/2 ports for both keyboard and mouse.

Smps on the powerstrip kills the bass and some of the magic. That is all smps, including the ones for the usb drives, routers, chargers, etc. they are on a seperate strip which I can switch off.

I tried the linear power for the discs with two cheap labsupplies. Grounding was a bit of a puzzle. This didn't work out as intended for sq and I am fine now with the smps. The latter makes imho quite a significant impact on sound. I tried a few and you can recognise them immediately by their sound signature.

Too bad one sata device cannot contain my current music collection.

Good luck with your further experiments.

Regards, Coen

Peter,

Maybe the sharp sound has to do with the smaller sweetspot. All speakers beam the hf more than mf. For some psycho-acoustic reason me may miss clues to the sound location if the sound is out of balance (we might prefer some missing or out of phase frequencies). Just a little tilt may make this missing audible again.

Just a hunch.

I've had problems with an inconsistent stereo image when using mono amplifiers and polarity of the powerplug.

Regards, Coen

Well, same magazin (stereophile), different writers: Jason Serinus and Michael Lavorgna.

You've got their attention!

They used to have some minimum amount of dealers policy for reviews, not shure if they still do.

regards, Coen

"I encourage you to click on the link"

http://www.audiostream.com/content/phasure-nos1-24768-async-usb-dac

Good advice!

Regards, Coen

You refer to


Not possible to fully engage the listener with a 200k+ system....?! Why demo at all?
I recognise this inability to energise the room from my memory of many "high-end" demos.

Quite a different tone on this years report (It must be the cables  ). No cable, amp or speaker can repair or ameliorate the crippled sound of an imperfect source.
Otoh my rather imperfect diy system sounds absolutely splendid with z8e!

Regards, Coen

So the laptop/XX/NOS1 combo is by far the cheapest component of that chain even less than the LS cables... I would argue it is the most important for SQ in that room.
The source component could have easily been 10 times as expensive to match the rest of the set (not to bring you on any ideas Peter  ).

regards, Coen

Hi Juan,

Please note that I am more of a "transient" guy than a "tone colour" one. I have less problems with horn colouration than with a slow and undynamic sound.

When Peter had 16ms in his signature I tried it, but found it rounding-off the music, sounding a little odd and distant to me.

Above is the very same reason why I prefer 10ms clock res over 15ms. I am still trying to balance tone and dynamics with SFS and Q1. Both spice up the sound at lower values bringing it alive while loosing warmth. This can get too much, even for me!

regards, Coen

After fiddling around with the settings and ultimately disabeling the RAMdisk playbackdrive the sound is now super musical and devoid of any hardness. All instruments play their tune without disturbing the whole

Me like very much !

regards, Coen