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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Recommended albums
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on: November 01, 2010, 10:11:58 am
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Haha, I know her work very well, but I like Barefoot above all of her albums. Thanks  Let's go on: Elisabeth Karsten - FluxOld words about love and death throughout the centuries travel between Rolf Lislevand's flute and Tore Brunborg's saxophone, sung by a brand new Norwegian voice named Elisabeth Karsten. The melodies are mostly from the 16th Century, and have been sung in Shakespeare dramas on numerous stages throughout Europe. Arrangements are by Rolf Lislevand and Arild Andersen. The latter also plays bass on this CD. Pĺl Thowsen and Paolo Vinaccia play drums. Elisabeth Karsten is originally from the town of Skien in Norway. At the moment she lives a cosmopolitan life based in Miami, USA. She travels from place to place around the world as fast as the tunes on Flux fly between 5 centuries. |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: 9-Z3
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on: October 31, 2010, 07:39:37 pm
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Well, this is all system dependant and I mean OS too  Now with my slimmed&tweaked W2008 I have the best results with SFS at 12 - nothing edgy, harsh about the sound. That was not the case with 'bare' OS without optimisations, period. It's so good, that my pc-audio with Cantatis sound card sounds better (IMHO) than dCS Elgar Plus DAC... (in my system) This is not a joke. dCS is very detailed, but sounds dry. My server with Cantatis onboard is more lifelike, organic, engaging. I didn't know it's such a freaking good value! The dCS' price 4k EUR (used), the look on my friend's face - priceless. Greets, Marcin |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Recommended albums
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on: October 31, 2010, 07:21:59 pm
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Hello guys, Now that we all enjoy our systems (Thanks again Peter), I think it's a good moment to start a thread where everyone could post his recommendations of favourite albums, not just bands - specific albums. I hope this thread will continue and we all find sth interesting for each other. So, let me be first: One of my favourite vocal-jazz albums from a Polish singer: Anna Maria Jopek - BarefootIt's not just great music, but realisation is also quite impressive. Let me know if you get to listen to it. Cheers, Marcin |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Build a new computer for Z3/Vista 64 bit/RAMdisk
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on: October 31, 2010, 01:24:18 pm
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Hehe, I'm getting one X-400 Seasonic PSU in few days, Thermalright HR-02, OrigenAE S16T case. I disagree with Peter on few points, because I have had different experiences. For me absolutely no fans inside PC and no PCI-e GPU is the only way. Fans are very silent, but 'noisy' to other components, if you know what I mean. The same with power consuming noise polluting graphic card. If you don't hear the negatives, go ahead and don't bother, I do, at least in my system Maybe PC interface for NOS1 isn't sensitive for that factors, but I doubt it - if it's powered from PCI/USB, then it matters. |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Build a new computer for Z3/Vista 64 bit/RAMdisk
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on: October 31, 2010, 11:39:01 am
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True and wrong Ramdisk can use memory above 4GB in 32bit OS, leaving all system memory for Windows. So, assuming you have 8GB of RAM installed, your OS utilise 4GB and 4GB goes to ramdisk. I'll check this myself tomorrow and let you know how it works. I suspect it could be even in terms of SQ, because ramdisk won't interfere with system memory. |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Build a new computer for Z3/Vista 64 bit/RAMdisk
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on: October 31, 2010, 08:19:36 am
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I'm building dedicated music server next week. Initially I wanted to go with core i3, since it's 32nm, low tdp, integrated GPU and all, but now that I experienced better SQ on 4 cores, I don't want to go intel's way, because they don't have graphics starting from core i5, so I'll give Phenom X6 a try Actually, you can get MOB with integrated graphic with 1156 socket for i5, i7. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3568#ovhttp://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=qWmZUAdNKeozTOXb&templete=2However, I still think Phenom X6 is still the way to go as it is about 1/3 the price of 6 core Intel and I don't think that Intel i7 4 core 1156 socket offers any benefit over AMD x6 core. My last concern is the benefit of tripple channel DDR3. Certainly it would help XXHighend as reading and writing speed is quite a bit faster than dual channel DDR. However, that would mean going with Intel quad core with 1136 socket. I have not seen any MOB with 1136 socket with integrated graphic yet. If I can find fanless graphic card, this might make an interesting option as well. I'm afraid you're wrong. The motherboard supports integrated graphics as long as it is integrated in CPU, but quadcore core-i5 doesn't offer one. (only dual cores i3 and i5 have intel hd graphics). http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/processors/corei5-specs.htmi7 980x could be much better - 32nm, 12MB l3 cache, triple channel ddr (Phenom is 45nm, 6MB l3 cache, dual channel ddr), but the real question would it matter for SQ? |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Build a new computer for Z3/Vista 64 bit/RAMdisk
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on: October 30, 2010, 09:29:29 pm
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Fans are noisy. RAM speed matters for the ramdisk though, so go for the fastest ram having at least 12GB (so you can make a 10gb ramdisk). There are (few) mainboards with onboard graphics with hdmi port (like mine but its for older generation cpus)
I am curious about 10GB RAMdisk on 12 GB RAM computer. Now that XXHighend resides in RAMdisk but I assume that since XXHighend is a memory player, eventually it will have to load wav file onto RAM outside of RAMdisk, is this correct? So I assume that to have thing runs smoothly, I would also need pretty good size RAM that is not allocated to RAMdisk as well, presumably. For now, I am thinking of going AMD route with 6 cores as Intel 6 cores would increase the cost significantly which means I am pretty much stuck with dual DDR3 but because cost of AMD 6 core/MOB/ 16GB dual channel DDR3 is quite a bit less than Intel socket 1366/ 8GB triple channel DDR/MOB + graphic card, AMD route probably make more sense for now. I'm building dedicated music server next week. Initially I wanted to go with core i3, since it's 32nm, low tdp, integrated GPU and all, but now that I experienced better SQ on 4 cores, I don't want to go intel's way, because they don't have graphics starting from core i5, so I'll give Phenom X6 a try |
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Build a new computer for Z3/Vista 64 bit/RAMdisk
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on: October 30, 2010, 04:29:57 pm
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- no additional GPU, I have a passive Radeon 5750, but it's out at the moment - really bad for audio...
- quad core is a must have right now, especially if you assign IRQ affinities (XXHE Engine on CPU1, sound card and interface on CPU2 and CPU3, almost everything else on CPU0) I am very curious if another 2 cores for sound card would bring further improvements...
- 8 or 16GB of RAM is necessary if you have large hirez collection and want to make use of RAMdisk, but that implies using 64bit OS, which I didn't check and don't know if is equal/better or maybe worse in terms of SQ
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