The OS messing around with memory all the time and compromising SQ, hmm I've read this before in a different context.

Or maybe not so different.

Now I understand why the designers of the NovaPhysicsGroup memoryplayer (PC&Dac&screen in a box) were bothered to write their own 'memory OS'-memorymanagement code (as advertised on their old site-if executing such code is possible at all, because all their stated digital theories are questionable-).

Save for a probably well integrated dac and analog stage their memory managementphilosophy must be key to the raved about sound. I don't believe the 'Rur' or quantummechanical jitter voodoo blah blah has anything to do with superior sound.

Have we entered the last frontier....?

Different set-ups, different results. Different people, different preferences.

I am still amazed how much similarity there is between posters when it comes down to discribing their XX experience.
Luckily Peter does his stinkin' best to please us all and guys like Ivo have the right amount of curiosity to discover great new tweaks!

I am for one thing very much looking out to v03, for the superior sound and dealing with the limited RAMresources I have. Playlists are awfully short these days

Again, the more I listen to it, the more I am of the opinion that this is a must have option. Almost even before the first note of a music track strikes I sense that my attention is drawn into the music and I am much less bothered by imperfections in my reproductionchain. I can tell ramdisc immediately by this trait. Maybe people with rather up to date systems and stripped Vistas are used to this kind of sound, I have no reference to that.

Keeping my eye on this forum!

regards, Coen

That would be real nice!!!

Hi,

After my initial excitement I tried to figure out if some settings could yield the same sound I heard from storing the stuff on my (limited) Ramdisc. No Luck for me, nothing I did could lead the way in the direction I wanted it to go (SFS settings, Q sliders, cardlatency).

Thats real bad, since I believe the ramdisc/ramdisc combi is exactly where I want my sound to be (or to baldly move from there into the unknown). Besides that the music is more focussed and playfull it's also like a subliminal door opens to let the music flow straight into my brain. A trick my deceised NOS TDA1541 Dac could also pull off.

Still with me   ?

In a desperate attempt to understand what's going on here I cleared the playlist and selected the same tracks from my HDD. Good sound but no magic here. Note that the very files did allready reside in the XX folder of Ramdisc (since copy to... was ticked).

To mess things up I cleared the playlist, unticked 'copy to...' (files still in XX folder) and played again: still nothing happening here, maybe a little less than before.

My conclusion: the space occupied by the files on the ramdisc makes no difference to the sound, no matter how many times the files are copied to whatever folder.
The magic is only 'there' when the playlist is selected from Ramdisc. It is there rather regardless of (SFS) settings....

What is going on here?????

regards, Coen

p.s. used vintage hardware does not allow for special mode

Hi

I tried this yesterday with two wavs I know very well. I made a new folder on the ramdisc 'music' and selected the tracks in XX (on the ramdisc XX folder).

Believe it or not the sound appeared a tad more subtile and was easier to enjoy. Below are the setiing I used.

Pretty strange since copy to xx disc was ticked and the file would be loaded to ramdisc anyway.

I don't know how SFS works, but its effect is immediately apparent. Maybe there is still a lot of IO going on with the drive...

regards, Coen

Ok, here it is

I have been too busy tweaking 

Well, I have to thank everybody on this forum for their persistence and commitment to maxxed fidelity from whatever setup.

Therefore ya'll get an extra and free tip from me (if you didn't figure it out yourself allready):

If you have a soundcard of BoB supporting 2 or more (stereo)pairs of analog outputs and are listening to two channel sound only, dedicate one listeningchannel to one outputpair and the other to an other pair (if you can follow me...). You can also try if muting the unused channels works out even better. This is a hardwaretweak making shure there is only one opamp in use per stereo channel. This reduces interference greatly and there is more psu power availably per channel to drive the load (cable+amplifier impedance). Worked great for me.

regards, Coen

Hi,

Now that I am posting here I would like to share my experiences with FW cables.

Some of you wondered if these make any difference to the sound.
Well, I can assure you that they have a major impact.

I played around with the stock 0.5 meter cable that came with the M-audio BoB and several others of 1 m length from low-end to mid-end Monster and Audioquest. I preferred the 0.5m no brand cable above all others, however it is not feasable to have it in my system right now. Also directionality has to be taken in consideration, though this is more subtile. I found the differences between them quite audible, being simply able to detect which cable was attatched. It seems that length matters most and I have no final verdict on quality. Still feeling this is an area that can be improved upon, I am considering to add 1m of OIYADE cable to my toolbox.

There is more:

The Firewire system is however way less reliable and user frienly than usb. I had several problems with the connectors not making a good contact. Both male and female connectors are on all cables have connection issues, loosing the ability to play music without a clear reason. Sometime I didnt even dare even looking at them... Furthermore the 4 and 6 pin standards make it difficult to select an expensive cable since my laptop has a 4 pin exit and my pc a 6 pin (and I want to use both). Adapters proved a working solution not solving the connection issues.

Booting the M-audio BoB (Break out Box) while connected, crashes my PC, something warned for in the manual yet not a thing you can allways prevent.
Networking to transfer files from my internet enabled laptop to the PC system also proved very cumbersome. Now I'm back to USB sticks :-). Furthermore, unexpectedly the laptop took over the BoB when conncted.

I'd say Peter was wise not to select the firewire system for his NON OS DAC if it were only for above reasons.

Nevertheless if you stick with a FW system, experimenting with different cables may prove very worthwile.

regards, Coen

SQ

Hi,

I played around with the latest developements on this forum and wanted to share my findings for those who are still not up to the VISTA challenge.

After weeks of gradual tweaking I obtained quite good sound from 09y-2 on my senior XP system. Of primary importance have been shutting down services, degrading videoperformance and sonically optimising SFS and driver latency. Unfortunately no cores to play with.

Installing the DataRAM ramdisc and running XX on it was quite revelatory. The sound is now at a new level I did not imagine possible from my set-up. Especially the high end is much more realistic and all instruments/voices have much better timbre, detail and seperation. Most importantly, with the right settings (not all permutations tried yet) the music makes perfect sense. I recognise these qualities from analog, I guess it has to do with the Allan Wright proposed sensation of 'downward dynamic range'.

Now I have arrived here, I noticed that everything seems to make a more noticable difference. The sound is kind of 'fragile' in this respect, ie having an open (file)explorer window is now noticable in the way -previously unheard- musical nuances express themselves.

Like stated in other posts, I had to reduce the SFS size from 40 to 17 (now) and have better SQ with a latency of 256 in stead of 512. Especially the SFS is very critical. To low a SFS and the sound becomes more dynamic, dark and distorted, to high the SFS, the less detail is heard and the less interesting the music becomes.

Still, as good as it is now, I have the feeling of not being there yet. That is I sense even more potential from XX, possibly improving on the qualities I admire in my analog set-up (quite a challenge). There are some tweaks left on my system and of course I will have to experience what optimed settings will bring me. Nevertheless I follow the corefilter and windows2008sp1 threads with great interest.

Happy listening,

regards, Coen

p.s. I have no signature, but my system setup is: PIII-833, 2x512 = 1G of SDRAM internal memory, Ramdisk 400Mb, XP-pro SP3, 09y-02, Q 1/0/0/0, SFS: 17; latency: 256; lots of shut down services graphics on native screen resolution 256 colours, Firewire PCIcard with TI chip, 1mtr of audioquest 1394 cable, M-audio FW-audiophile 24/96.

The folder did the trick!

(....now I'm two revisions behind  )

Thanks for the help,

regards, Coen

None taken!

Its my fully up to date -drivers & OS & software- HP pavillion zd8000 P-IV XP laptop that has the problem. So far a it has been a very reliable and enjoyable digital partner the past years....

The ol'e (horrible?) PIII is running fine and making wonderfull music, but it is dedicated to audio: XX and EAC are 50% of the software installed (next to the standard Microsoft XP pro package).

OK,

Downloaded 09z and 09zb zips. Installed the first in a new directory, run it and quit, pasted 09zb into the directory and restarted it (few tries until the right settings appeared -very slowly- ).
When I start XX now I see the attatched UI. I can move this UI around with the mouse and as said before the tooltips show. when I press play music appears after the usual lag, yet the screen is just is still like the attatchment (nothing changed). When I press stop the music stops immediately (also no change of the UI). closing XX with the cross (upper right corner) works also immediately.

Explorer pops up also immediately, selected track does not appear (maybe after a few minutes but I am not that patient). Needless to say that UI does not change its appearence.
Resizing also does not work (at least within 300 seconds or so).

Clicking on the undemo-volumeknob shows after 30-40 seconds the undemo screen, I can however not enter the activationcode.

The other install does everything right away after clicking on the button (ie showing little red 'selected' lights). (character limit)

Hi,

On my fully up to date XP PIV laptop the new user interface does not update itself. The play and stop buttons (at least those) seem to work allrightand as do the tooltips, however the UI leaves you in the dark about what is happening (ie suddenly the music starts to play).

I had some startup problems where the UI still 'worked' yet very very slow. I could check the playerprio which was set to 'below normal'. The problem is now that I cannot enter the settingsmenu anymore to alter this setting (if it is the problem).

Everything works allright on my PIII 833 XP pro stand alone PC, with best SQ up to date!

any help?

Peter,

Thanks for your reply. I allways use the XP sleepmode for fast booting, so that might very well impact te availability of special mode. I will try the reboot soon.

No problems with adaptive mode in 8c. This even works with very low buffersettings and low Q1 (2-3). I however do prefer normal mode on my system. I've also been playing with the sliders and buffer, but got no satifying sweet spot with 8c.

regards, Coen

Hello,

I would like to share that I am not all that exited about the 09-08c version. I played a lot with the different modes and Q1 slider and did not manage to get 'special mode' to operate without dropouts/distortion. Somehow with any setting in the end I didn't care much about listening, a very bad sign.

So I decided to rerun y06, which I thought better suited my taste.

Wow, this was the sound I liked from XX, seemed even better than before albeit with a few hickups. 
Could this be the famed special mode?
And yes what I have not been able to achieve before smiled at me in the P3B file: Special Mode!! So I stopped XX and selected another track to enjoy some more music, however I got quite good, but not só special sound. Checked the new P3B: normal mode. Huh? Save for the volume slider on the driverpanel of the M-audio and selecting the new track I didn't change anything. In a row of ten attempts with the same track I once got special mode to operate again, with however a lot of distortion at the previous Q1 setting (1), upping it to 3 got some decent music out of the system.

So it seems that something unknown to me (yet) determines the feasability of getting special mode in y6 to work, while in y8 it doesn't work at all. Weird. A little context: this was observed on my antique XP-SP3 pentium III.

For now I settle pleasantly with Y6 with low driverbuffer (64) and high Q1 (30) in normal mode. No complaints!

regards, Coen

Maybe relevant:

I had to reduce the split filesize in ver500-503 to 60Mbit to play entire tracks with sound (yields 3-5 tracks in a row before the player stops with a timeout). At 100 I got at best one track, mostly no sound at all (timeslider running though). At 70Mbit the player had the habit to stop during the track. At 50Mbit tracks paused once in a while (occasionally this happens with 60 too). Oh: and it is always at the same point!
Since the code is different now the filsize trick may not work for ver504 anymore.

Please note that I am running XX on my dinosaur PIII 866 PC. Starting the first track takes longer than the usual lead-in of a LP record . It is equipped with the TI 1394 chip for interfacing with my M-audio tough.

SQ is right where I want it to be (go?)! I liked the SQ of ver503 best sofar (yes, I noticed a difference between 02 and 03). Still looking forward to play completely pause and stopless with ver504.

Maybe I can create a few X3pbs as input?

regards, Coen