You better install SP1 RC1 before making any judgements about W7...

No, I don't understand anything, I'm a total lame and yet everyone can't deal without ramdisk, how come?
I asked a simple question - how does NOS1 perform without AP. Is that inappropriate?


Cheers,
Marcin

No, I have not. What good would the best DAC bring when 'the core' is a total mess? Of course you can't tell anything, because you think that the sound is great and can't be better, hehe But writing about sound is like dancing about painting, so you won't know until you hear a 'clean' OS

Adrian (Flecko) may be a good case study here. He can't even hear the difference between Vista and W7. What's the conclusion? That he is deaf? I doubt that. That his system is really poor? Nope. It means that his OS is far from 'transparency'.  Before I found the right settings and it took me hundreds if not thousands of hours of listening, testing, comparing etc the sound was like if I had put a blanket on the speakers. No, blanket maybe not enough - a thick quilt is a better term. The sound was toneless pulp. No plans differentiation, no plans at all I'd say, lack of dynamics, and plenty of harshness with some level of detail. OK, enough said. I gave you some valuable tips, what you're gonna do with them is your thing. You can stay with what you have now and be happy, whatever. I just wanted to give you some advice.

Merry Christmas to all of you,
Marcin

EDIT
Ok, maybe I exaggerated about best speakers and amp comparison, but purchasing them wouldn't be the key to great sound. You would still be very frustrated about harshness, digital glare, artificial factor, jitter - whatever you call that. I can't stand few seconds with it without getting nervous, that's why I've been so restless and keep trying to fight this.

Mani, could you please tell me if 44kHz without upsampling is 'listenable'? Or for the best results ArcPrediction is needed? Perhaps it is, but I'd like to know how the native redbook sounds.

PS
There is plenty to improve. Your OS is a mess and even the best DAC in the world will sound decent at most when connected to the PC with just 'regular' or barely 'optimized' OS. Remember, this is where all starts and even the best player won't cope with the limitations 'under the hood'. And forgive my ignorance, but I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't checked and experienced the biggest improvements in SQ that I've had in my life and I've been trying very hard to nail this for few years now as you all know. I'm gonna leave you with some tips for Christmas, haha:
- block size
- usb polling
- MMCS
- IRQ affinities
- processes affinities
- performance counters
- event trace sessions
- OS RAM caching
- win32priorityseparation
- autoruns
- system timer interval

That's basically it. I'm sure that buying the best speakers, amplification and DAC wouldn't give so much...
Good Luck!

PS2
Tip nr 2: the settings from my other topic are pretty much useless

There's the digital interface from Audio-GD that some reported to be superior to jkeny's hiface.

Peter, Windows X referred to system timer interval, when he wrote 0.5ms, it's not playback latency and it matters a lot. I hear the difference immediately in my system and I'm sure that OS is currently the biggest limitation when it comes to PC audio.

Regarding recording vs. playback, correct me if I'm wrong but there's no jitter involved when it comes to recording, while there's plenty during playback. What is it if not jitter that makes different pc-audio systems perform better or worse? Assuming that they're all bit-perfect. And I mean PC -> S/PDIF (AES) -> DAC route only (power supply stuff aside)

OK, $1M system wouldn't necessary be better than $200k system, you are aware of that? You're talking about hi-end industry, where price has no transposition to quality - at least not linear as you may think.

Mani, recording is very much different process, so can't be compared.

Windows X, it's a good thing (I guess) that we don't have $100k systems, so we don't think that PC audio is inferior In fact, it's better at the given price range and there is a comfort factor in plus, which you're aware of.

Besides, I don't think you've tested enough platforms, audio interfaces etc to tell for sure and maybe you're looking for some other type of sound presentation that you prefer from e.g. Esoteric. Remember, everything is subjective. My friend has $200k system and gave up traditional CD transport for music server with XXHE onboard, and he said that he'll never go back to CDs...

Play around with Processor Schemes, SFS values, buffer sizes, Q parameters and Engines (3 or 4, Adaptive, Special) etc
Also make sure you place XXHE and tracks on RAMdisk. And make sure you play unattended.
And how on earth are you able to tell what will be in 5-10 years, are you a fortune teller? lol

Josef,

I prerefer neither of those :D

Marcin

I think you should direct that question to Kingwa from Audio-GD.

It would be great it that was possible

The Reference 7 won't allow for QAP as it is limited to 24/96 AFAIK.

Adrian, there you go:

Are you talking about 'DAC needs' setting in XXHE?