Imho this is all about the 'transparancy of the medium and not about sound quality per sé. I believe digital is more transparent than vinyl analog, though I now still have a preference for the latter. With digitalplayback is it with a great effort possible to get very close to the stuff that is stored in the medium. With stuff I mean the music including the processing distortions (mixingtables, bad psus or grounding, jitter in conversion to digital, clipping); this can be beautifull but also very disturbing. The question is: do we really want this transpareny on all our records?

What still puzzels me most is that XX still manages to get a very pleasant and revealing sound dispite the cr*p that me be stored in the bits.

On the topic of ripping: I believe bit identical rippings may very well sound different, regardless of powercords, clamps and weights. At this forum we make take as a fact that the dataretrieval is influencing sound quality. Though this may seem academic, noise may be recorded along on a magnetic bearer like a spinning disc and finds it way to the dac at playback. Also a second rip may be divided differently over the free memory chuncks of the storage medium and consequently induce a different jitter pattern at playback. If the playback chain is this sensitive, one can imagine other magnetic/electric phenomena having an effect on SQ (like data in a RAM buffer that is moved around or processes variably drawing currents from the psu, etc). I believe everyone that claims to hear a difference between rips.


regards, Coen

p.s. when confronted with the choice, I prefer beauty over accuracy. I have a (filterless) FOVEON SIGMA SD14 camera just for its dense colours and 3d-ness. Many generic CFA CANONs and NIKONs may be more accurate (sharper and more true to the real colours), but never get that special SD look and feel. One can also debate forever on this topic...

Hi Marcin,


Personally I think there is more to comparing. Just like CPU benchmarks, there are more tests that might work out completely diffferent for completely different configurations. Just like with all audio testing one would like to gain insight how a product compares to its peers right out of the box ánd in a highly tweaked situation. Just like the occasional dac that apparently does not like to be fed from a powerconditioner or brings extasy only connected by cable brand X, can be a winner or looser just the same by 'all things equal' comparison. I would opt for comparing products it their most favourable configuration.
I realise this is not a sustainable principle since allmost everything is variable and makes a difference. Still you could experiment within your own context and still get a meaningfull result.

Since the Jplay is a demonstration app it cannot be so extensively tweaked as XX. I think is is therefore justified for everybody who has gone through the effort of optimising XX compare it with (naturally optimised as possible) Jplay and publish his or her findings.

Unfortunaltely no comparing for me since I have no WASAPI enabled OS  !

regards, Coen

just an afterthought: are you shure the OS and PC XX optimisations are also optimal for Jplay....?

I don't want to sound like a tutor, but in a free field a point source looses power-to-three acoustic power with distance. So for a DOUBLING of the distance there is a 8X or 9db decrease in acoustic power.
This will correspond with the nature of low frequencies that diffract and radiate in all directions. High frequencies bundle (as result of conus or horn geometry) and will loose half space power of 4X or 6dB per DOUBLING of the distance in a free field. This is worst case since bundling is expected to lead to less than halfspace radiation. Consequently the difference betwee listening at 4 or 5 meters is smaller that between 4m and 8m!

Note that the room also reflects the soundwaves, wich is especially important for low frequencies which refections add to the LF power in the room. Since the ceiling is high, power is lost there. Hard walls also refelect the mid and high freqeuncies, so dependent on the radiation pattern of the speaker these refections play a role or not...
All in all it isquite little hard to predict the actual acoustic powerresponse of a given loudspeaker in a room, I believe it to be less than 6dB per doubling of the listening distance and compensation for LF is likely.

I would expect the bigger room and further listening distance needs at most 6dB more loudspeaker output than the room of Peter, however the difference in loudspeaker efficiency is vast and more important. This is 20db or 100 times more amplification power for the smame acoustic output. You need a very big amp and speakers that can do away with the heat and distortion at high excursions.
You need in the end either a smaller room, lower listening levels, closer listening or more effcient speakers (arrays or horns) to play loud.

regards, Coen

Hi,

I'm also thinking about assembling an up to date noiseless pc for serious audio.

I hear however about too many craches too soon with OCZ (even Peter himself). Nice specs but reliability is something to worry about. Not so with the big company. I would opt for Intel X-25m or something.

regards, Coen

I support Telstar in his request for (at least) a playlist repeat button on XX.

I have been searching this feature in the menus but was surprised not to find it. It seems to me much user friendly to have a seperate button for this than messing with the AB (never used that on the CDP either).

Maybe I'm to much a 1.0 guy   !

regards, Coen

Hi Marcin_gps,

Thanks for the reply. So you tried win98 and disliked it, but still have plans for XP?

regards, Coen

Hi Marcin_gps,





Are these posts related?

regards, Coen

After a lot of experimenting to find the z3 sweet spot I noticed the following:

Regardless of SFS.ini setting, the difference between 'copy to XX disc first' on and off is very small. Actually I like it better when off. This is very welcome with my limited memory (only XX on the RAMDISC).

When switching the SFS.ini or any other setting I tried, you have to optimise SFS each time. Sometime it is hard to nail down SFS between to high and to low.

I feel SFS.ini setting 00 has the most explicitly detailed and natural presentation of all, albeit sounding still a little 'thin' overall.

Still the best experience of 'not listening to the sound anymore' is obtained with z2, music from ramdisc and 'copy XX..' ticked on. There is subtile timing and dynamics information revealed that makes a connection to the music very easy.
Playing music from ramdisc with z3 (00) does not lead to the same results (unfortunately). Typical soundwise difference is that the instruments in z2 sound a little 'clothed' and less resolving compared to the 'nudity' of z3. It looks like it is a trade-off, for now I prefer the convenience of z3, being able to play long playlists.

The vsuite ramdisc (direct IO) seems a little smoother than the dataram one, quite a subtile difference though.

regards, Coen

For old time's sake I put 09y8 on the Ramdisc. My PC has been tweaked since the last time I used it, so it would be a nice indicator of the 9y -> 9z progress and maybe give a clue to the hard upper mid/highs I am experiencing.
Consider this my second impression of 09z3.

Well, no wonder I was a little sceptical when the first 9z version came out. What a great rendering of detail, completely natural highs, powerfull (yet a little fat) bass, more fleshed out instruments, excellent transients. In short a joy to the ears. 09z sound anorexic in comparison. (of course on MY system!!!)
All moonshine and rosesmell with 9y??? Unfortunately not. A thing that I noticed (as I did before) is that I started to do stuff and took the music for wallpaper. I some way it could not hold my attention and was left unmoved by its (beautiful) presentation. To be short: the music had lost its mojo.

Since I consider this a cadinal sin I went back to 9z. There it was again: the music-magic (not soundmagic), along with the rough edges, spoiling a bit of the fun. Time to explore the tweaking and finetuning further.

I started with the SFS.ini settings loking solely for the musical x-factor. Actually the worst souding setting (10) made the music everytime a party. This would make for a fine startingpoint.

Since 9y was played with higher Q1 I upped it to 6 in 9z3 and this did ameliorate the hardness to some degree. For some reason the SFS setting does not make for any difference (as it did with 21...). There are still a lot of settings to explore, but it can be safely stated that 9z3 is the most musically enjoyable version so far.

Still searching, but in the mean time enjoying the music



 

Since this is the SQ thread I will post some first impressions of 9z3 on XP.

Please note that any finding may relate more to limitations of my system than to XX. All listening has been done with settings as in profile (IdleEnable:1).

SFSfile setting: 11
What I like: Fantastic voices and individual instruments floating in the air, good instrument separation, excellent flow and vividness in the music, can listen long sessions at low sound levels.

What I like less: somewhat vague and blurred bass, a little disorganised (too lively), @ craked up volumes unbearably hard highs and thin sound, some 'heavyness' or 'darkness' around instruments

SFSfile setting: 21 (comments hold for all 2x settings)
Compared to 11: Much more gentile presentation (less distortion?) aslo less 'dark' and 'heavy', more focussed and smaller, easier to follow the singers text and individual instruments, in general easier, yet less compelling to listen to. Didn't try this one @ high loudness.

SFSfile setting: 10
compared to 11: at low volumes it sounds more organised with the same drive, tad better transient handling (ie hearing the skins of the drums), magical voices, audibly more information in higher registers (ie cymbals), works best at low volumes: even less bearable when played loud in my system.

summary of firt impression: 9-z3 sounds great for late night listening (use 10)

A great improvement is that copying music to special musicfolde on RAMdisc first makes no sense anymore (tried that!). If the copy to XX folder tracks are removed after playing, the playlists may be elongated to their orinal size, that would be excellent!

Thats it for now,

regards, Coen

Okeeeh,

Now I remember there was an issue with the logfolder not being present (or made for that matter). Will try that tonight!

Off topic: Those 9y versions actually don't sound bad at all (not a surprise: they never did!).... Will compare them for fun with 9z3 on RAMDisc @ the 'improved' music server.

regards, Coen

I think this may still be the proper thread to post the results of my experiments on my laptop after I installed 09z3.

Fortunately I experienced no crashes, but it isn't working either...
(also not for 09z3) 

The problem is actually exclusive for all 09z versions, all 09y50x and before run fine.

After the usual messages the XX-window starts and looks fine with all buttons, playlist and coverart nicely, however than some inconsistent behaviour occurs:
 Sometimes I can 'push' buttons or select pulldown items for a half minute or so and it all works like it should. After that suddenly any 'push' takes ages to react (>30seconds, if ever). The same holds true for resizing, moving is no problem. Closing the window (very fast reaction), killing the .exe task and starting again gives a new short time (does not seem to be consistent) to push a few buttons. It is not related to any 'button' or menu, because the stalling also occurs when even none hase been 'pushed' before.
Never got it to play any music though (no XXengine#3 in the task ever appeared).

Looks like some window component introduced in 09z does not work properly. Any clue???

One extra thing I found and may/may not be related is that I cannot activate any XX version on this PC with the code I use for my music server...

On second thought there is more to the latest versions of XX not working on XP.

The PC on which XX runs fine is unupdated-no-internet-stand-alone dedicated music system with stripped XP SP3 (started as is from the MS disc).

My fully updated and untweaked XP (SP3+) internet HP P4 3Ghz laptop which is used for everything else than music playing has a XX 9z2 install that does NOT work and occasionally crashes the system. Since I don't play any music on this system I allmost forgot. Didn't get really into this problem but it might be related to the crash of JoaquinM.
I will try a remove/install of XX to 9z3 and make an update of the .net framework. Could also be that some kind of XP patch does not like to work together with XX.

I will make some screen dumps of the window quirks (maybe tonight). Basically the XX playerwindow does *unfortunately sometimes* not allow for resizing, It stays just the same surface, yet not showing the windowpart that is outside of the original surface. Any buttons that are not 'in sight' cannot be controlled either. Backsizing after this happened seems impossible. Also after a move *again sometimes* the windowbuttons (right uppercorner) are covered and do not respond anymore. Rebooting usually helps.

regards, Coen

FWIW,

I'm running 9z3 under XP with no problems (or actually with the usual XP playerwindow redering quirks) at this moment.

regards, Coen

Hi,

Played around with the USB priosettings last night, initial impression: pfew this is powerfull stuff!!!

Upping the prio is like stopping down the diaphragm of a photolens (from f3.5 to f16), a lot more comes into focus and seems sharper defined. Could hear every instrument, echo and lyric like never before with setting 4. Maybe even over the top! It's a bit like decreasing the SFS, but with more result.

Lost some of the direct-to-mind quality though. Not quite shure if I'm happy with a new interacting parameter...

Now, let's play with 9y03!!!

regards, Coen