Did we expect any other result?

Anyway, congratulations!

Well, this review got me thinking about my earthing setup. Though playing wo (noticable) problems some aspects of the sound have bothered me for some time. Actually i remebered since I put a new grounded powercord to my pc (the old diy one had no ground -earth- connection).

Replacing it with the old power cable one again loosened up the sound considerably, but not to my total satifaction. Then I remembered my settings that have been a compromise quite different from others with an nos1 on this forum. Setting them more in line with Peters and others did give me a much better balanced sound. The final tweak was to flip the plug in the powerstrip and here we are again with the glorious and musical nos1 sound.

I have to get this sorted out one time with a proper nos1 approved system grounding plan. The sound is very sensitive to any change you apply.

Regards, Coen

Hi,

I have some of those blocks lingering around that are of dutch manufacture and look excactly the same. I suppose they are from the same source. Bought them to support a never finsihed tt phono amp.
 
Fwiw I have to concur with Peter here on the NOS1, something not being right in the details and freshness. Thats why they are lingering around. Should I remve the from the room to have my kids play with them ?

Regards, Coen

Hi Peter,

I was tricked into thinking that I had an activated version but could not return to minimised mode from 'normal' mode.

I digged up some old threads and triplechecked my activation procedure that worked fine for all the 07 versions I have installed (all of them). That was strickly according to the letter of the instuctions for one thing: I copied the activation code from a win7 note (the yellow post-it style ones) that is allways on my desktop.

Now I could change the processorcore schemes, but the coverartborder remained yellow. Not the colour I would expect (=red).

Then I got a hunch to look up the activation code on an older install and copy that into the activationcode field. Did that and voilá: XX was activated!

Rather strange since the code is identical to the one on the note. Probably in this version activation is font sensitive?

It would have been also less confusing if the processorscheme remained locked whilst being not (fullly?) activated. Is this hard to fix for a future release?

Next to that I find the activation alone to make a vast improvement in SQ, even on 'normal' mode!

regards, Coen

Why bother if you're allready on win7?

This looks like a typical version to skip. Maybe win9 will have a start button again  .

Regards, Coen

I have been experimenting a few versions ago with this setting. The difference was quite audible and I preferred the hpet on with win 7. With all changes and additions I should listen again!

The biggest BIOS thing was the downtuning of the on board video though. I even like to listen the OS screenseetings with 16 bits colours in the lowest resolution I can work with.

Regards, Coen

I found the crossed loudspeaker not a reliable indicator.

Well, for something completely different:

You can also try to start the discmanager. Type "format" in the searchbar (startmenu) and select the discmanager. In minimised OS it will give an error that the "virtual disc service" is not available.

I hope that gives a clue.

Regards, Coen

Rightclick the word "Minimise OS" under the button.
Follow the popup.

Regards, Coen

I haven't played with sfs since the latest version, but I agree with Booleary on the lower settings. Somehow the sweetspot in my system seems to be 8. Neither lower nor higher reaps any benefits (that is my view of course).

I keep usb free of devices ánd no smps adapters in the powerrail for optimum sq. The adapters rob the low end and natural midsof the sound.

Regards, Coen

I haven't heard a lot of active speakers in my audio lifetime, but one of them was the Dutch acive Pied Piper. There was much more of everything compared to the passive ones, but these speakers have quite a personality that you may fall in love with or truely dislike.
I think they communicate music very well, especially classical, but can be rough on the ears at times. Otoh they were driven by a mediocre laptop dac setup with an active preamp,

Though I prefer now the simplicity of passive speakersetups, I think active has great potential.

Regards, Coen

Congrats on the birthday!

My 2cts on this topic...

Maybe, maybe not. But so what?

It is way to much focussed on one performance parameter and drawing conclusions from there. You can debate or speculate about the specs of any part of a dac and stop the discussion from there.
There is of course much much more to a good dac than specsheets and speculations about one aspect of its electrical performance. The general preference for the higher rate with xx and the nos1 indicates that this presumed disadvantage is at least outweighed by other factors.
Still we have little clue how all electrical behaviour translates into what we perceive as excellent sound, at least Peter is on to some of this stuff.

So I really doubt the relevance of such a statement in the context of xx and nos1. I suspect Peter would not have introduced 16x into xx and the nos1 if the above has shown to be relevant to measurements or in sq (in a detrimental way).

Anyway I don't think perfomance is degraded (au contraire) when running the chips at 16x. I have not heard a better digital sound than xx with the nos1 in this mode.
That is provided that you have set your own optimal settings.

Fwiw I know of no other commercial 1704 implementation that runs its dsp lower than 16x....

Regards, Coen

That works!

Thanks!

regards, Coen

Peter,

No matter what I try, the Q1x counter jumps from 1 to 3 (and further) or from 3 to 1 the other way around.

With a little care I can set Q1 to 2 no problem. so I don't think is has anything to do with the mouse.

regards, Coen

You're welcome!

I would first try to increase feedback on the amp and assess then if you are really in need of more attennuation.
The way the LM works is that I think a little extra feedback will not hurt sq (au contraire).

I see no reason to be afraid of low signal levels through the caps. If you need the divider please put it before the cap, you can keep you precious gold cap for minimum distortion. AFAIK larger voltages across caps can cause audible minute deforming of the dielectricum, so I'd rather keep them small.

regards, Coen

I chewed a little on my post over dishwashing and you are right (as allways )! What I posted is not true and contains a flaw and you will end up with aliasing into the target bandwidth.

My post only makes sense if you filtered out all frequencies above the target nyquist freqency in advance. Only then you will (at least theoretically) end up with samplesets that all represent the same waveform (with synchrounous downsampling).

My synchronous 'experiment':
So take a 176.4 kHz original (88.4 kHz audio bandwidth). Filter it to 22.05kHz audio bandwidth digitally with a brick wall filter and then you will end up with four sets of 44.1 kHz samples all representing the same waveform. So no new samples on the time axis, but recalculated sample amplitudes.

So no way to downsample without filtering it first. This is the basis of Shannon!

The adc chips contain many of these filters. You will have to down sample from 24 MHz or something to 192k...


Well this is not what I had in mind of course. With asynchronous conversion you also change the timebase of the samples (only once every x samples you end up with a sample timed on the original timebase). The filter will determine the amplitude of all samples, so no one in his right mind will use Lin Interp for that.

I have allways wondered what the above synchronous experiment will result in. Do the four 44.1kHz sub files all sound indentical after proper filtering of the 176.4kHz 'motherfile', like they theoretically should?
This would be quite illuminating. Actually my idea is that they will NOT...

Back to the sq of hirez material.
Theoretically the hires in native samplerate contains much more original information than the downsampled 44.1 red book variant. You will have to filter and reduce bits by some inherently lossy process to get from the master to red book format whatever you record with these days. I don't buy 'native' 44.1k.
In practice you seem to have ameliorated this loss to something insignificant, like we experience with xx and the NOS1.
Thanks for that!

Regards, Coen

Ok I've havent been stating which adc process I assumed, but sigma delta adc chips are doing just that: dropping samples for synchronous conversion (but this also has the prupose to establish the sample value in this process).
Halving the number of samples in sync conversion is mathematically correct because in the higher sampling rate all the bandwidth of the halved rate is allready present and no interpolation is necessary to obtain the samples within that reduced bandwidth (the aliasing is a reconstruction problem in this case). That is the same reason why you need an AA filter for asynchronous conversion of sample rates (otherwise you would interpolate aliasses into the lower rate).

Then there is also the unmentioned issue of reducing the bits from 24 to 16....

Am I missing a point somewhere?

Regards, Coen

Added: from a theoretical vieuwpoint it does not matter which samples you drop in sync conversion. Both are perfect descriptions of the same signal PROVIDED that the conversion back to analog is perfectly limited to the nyquist frequency. You can find some flash on the net illustrating this counter intuitive phenomenon.