Hi guys,
I had a lot of fun yesterday. Sorry I was too shy to participate although I could never figure out the solution.
But here is the proof that we all are in the same boat of fools.
Please forget the dust. It's almost impossible remove it there behind.

Maxi

I am wondering about that too. I steal the analog signal from the soundcard with its correspondent ground wire near the DAC chip, but the card itself is attained to the PC chassis in the usual way. I'll give a try when I feel brave enough (or at least less lazy).

Maxi

Best ever, no doubt!

The previous version with Q5=1 was fantastic but this one is EVEN better. And bear in mind that my PC is a standar one and way obsolete. The rest of my system is quite modest so I can hardly imagine how this version may sound in a decent equipment with a dedicated PC and a NOS1.

Thanks Peter for your efforts and pursuit of excellence.

Maxi

I have problems with activation with every new version and I think that the hotkey can be the culprit. When you activate, play some music and then restarts, the hotkey is running. I don’t know if is a coincidence but the activation works when I kill the hotkey before the XXHE restart. I wonder if it may be an interference between hotkeys of  different versions.

Maxi

Hi, Peter
for me Q5=5 from now too.
I love analogies, they are a fantastic way to explain and to understand concepts. And yours were very nice. So "cotton wool"

Happy summer to everybody.

Maxi

Hi,

I have 3 O.S. for now (probably insane):

   - W 7 Home for normal use
   - W 7 Ultimate for XXHE use
   - W8  Pro for XXHE use too.

From time to time the initial boot menu doesn't appear and W8 starts spontaneously but in a strange way (among other things the sound card is not recognized). Sometimes I can fix it closing sesión and choose user again but sometimes a reboot is needed.

Regards,

Maxi

Totally agree in my system too, Coen. I 've been trying the IMdisk with XXHE and as playback drive and, despite some other problems ( header data not found, sound interruptions and more ) I've found the sound is worse with XXHE in IMDisk and the "magic" is lost.
I've not tried different clock resolution settings for now.

Regards,

Maxi

Maybe someone can help with this, is advisable cosume 3 Gb  in RAM discs on a PC with 6Gb only (I could expand up to 8 Gb)? I expected better sound with the ImDisks but I think it sounds slightly worse. A compromise solution I am going to try is use a single 1Gb IMDisk for XXHE and we'll see.

Maxi

Hi Arvind and Coen,
I guess that W8 is not the culprit, well I mean not W8 per se, but some type of configuration of PC or XXHE. I tell you because I need to use headphones very often and the fatigue with them when the thing goes wrong is very evident. This was not the case with the latest versions of XXHE on W7, but with 9-z9b on W8 is even better so the only signs of fatigue are the need for sleep at 2 A.M. and beyond...

Regards

Maxi

Sonic Hyperspace I'd say, Peter (even with a low-medium equipment).

Regards

Maxi

Second thought:
After listening Barshai's Shostakovich 9 and 10th, that always sounded a little bit harsh to me, I can say that now is  better. More separation between instruments and better overall sound, more listenable. Not spectacular but clearly noticeable. And at certain level even a little improvement is at the same time more difficult to reach and, therefore, more welcome.

BTW for those who have placed the card yet, Have you noticed the purple ligth in the dark? I had to remove the rear plate and the leds are quite intense so my PC is now cool tuned. 

Maxi

I ordered mine on march 5 and it took three weeks to arrive. Sadly when I placed it in the slot I broke a solder point from the DAC chip  just placed in the slot under. I didn't realize then so I went crazy looking for the cause of the rigth channel failure.
Happily I could fix it at last, but since then I haven't had much time for a careful listening session. That is why I don't want to be very conclusive but if there any improvement it isn't very apparent to me. Maybe the reason in my case is that, as I pointed in a earlier post from march 4, my soundcard has a capacitors section called by the manufacturer "PC noise killer " that seems to be intended to do the same function.

Maxi

I don´t know if it can give some clue to solve this, but I had the same problem ( Windows NT 32 ) when I was messing with the soundcard (inhabilitate, uninstall and change the PCI slot) while XXHE was in minimized OS. I didn't realize at first state but after some problems with unexpected stoppings and some strange behaviour, I noticed the Windows NT 32 issue. After that,  I uninstalled the soundcard  and change into normal OS, installed the soundcard again, played some music and everything went normal. After that, I minimized OS and everything is OK.

Maxi

Glad to hear it. Before the PA days I used to try reverse IPhase when I felt that the sound was not as good as it was expected. With certain recordings there were no noticeable differences but with some others the difference was nigth and day. I think that PA reduced the effect in some way and made me stop using it. At the end all this stuff is phase related.

Maxi

Brian,
Have you tried with reverse IPhase setting? I tell you because without PA it seems to play a role again, at least in my case.

Maxi