Nick, I'm gonna ask this again - did you mean overclocking or underclocking your graphic card? It's quite important. Also you may be able to turn off hardware acceleration for GPU and disable it in device manager, it will work anyway.

I applied my own autoruns tweaks. You can check it, I attached the settings, nothing much in there... I think I'll make my system for audio only and make another install for web and utilities.

Nick, thanks a lot! I'm gonna try them today. Fingers crossed!

Nick, your settings are in Chinese or other language that I can't read. Is there any way I could change it? I'm a bit afraid to apply it on my machine, because it seems that there are different entries here..

Peter, did you compare playing on 2 cores vs. 4 cores? I'd unlock my 2 spare cores, but the Cantatis go crazy if I do this and hangs after few seconds of playback  I don't know if it's just my PC or these are really cr*py drivers - I can't change any hardware setting without reinstalling OS. Luckly for me, I can change CPU frequency, so now I'm running my Phenom at 3.6GHz, unfortunatelly I had to use fan, because it got to hot - I have a copper heatsink, which doesn't work great in a passive configuration, eventhough it's the best on the market - http://www.techpowerup.com/71605/Thermalright_Ultra_120_Cu_Limited_Edition_up_for_Grabs_Next_Month.html

To sum up - is there any benefit for XXHE from more cores? I could get a 6 core Phenom

That's like I thought, but didn't you mean underclock in BIOS? GPU speed is not required for XXHE


Same here

Nick,

Do you install drivers for your GPU?

Peter, I can't wait until you manage to run your new setup. My idea of best sound from PC has just changed 180 degrees and I wonder - how much is to be gained with really fast CPU/PC. Do you think there is a a boundary and having faster than e.g. top core i7 CPU won't bring further improvements? You're the only one who is able to answer this, because no-one know how complex is XXHE and what are 'the requirements'?

And one more thing: underclocked/undervolted PC really works great for CMP, but not for XXHE. They wander around just like I did...

've had this post written and ready to post when I accidently closed my browser, so I'm gonna be short now (frustrated...)

I did a comparison between underclocked/undervolted PC (CPU set as dual core at 1GHz, 2x2GB RAM DDR3 at 800MHz CL5) and default settings (2.8GHz, RAM at 1600MHz CL7). I have few important things to say:
1. THe faster the PC is, the larger SFS setting is needed for XXHE to sound right. (12MB for very slow PC is fine, but once I brought the power back, I needed to increase it to 150 MB)
2. Underclocked/undervolted PC (slow) could help you bear with wrong system/settings (like W7) - it will cover its flaws and hide details at the same time. But now that we have tuned Vista and XXHE on RAMdisk, there are no flaws to cover.
3. The fastest PC will get the best out of XXHE, but if you have something wrong in OS or bad recordings - it will throw you all the flaws right on your face.

So I guess I should wait until Sandy Bridge (next generation of Core architecture) is released and get the fastest one

Yes, maybe you're right for external interfaces that doesn't feed power from PC. For PCI soundcards, I can't be wrong...

And I have ticks with QAP of 24bit tracks. As far as I know, Mani mentioned it. Is it a bug with QAP or sth wrong with my PC?

Nick, do you use underclocked and undervolted system? It brings great improvements imho...

Unfortunatelly, I haven't tried it on 2008R2, I wasn't aware of RAMdisk back there. Maybe I'll try it, but for I've had enough reinstalls during last days, so give me a break 

Yep, I keep the log, I'll share it during this weekend.

I know, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can install firmware from Prodigy 7.1 and have 176kHz available, hence QAP for redbook, but I won't be able to play 48kHz tracks at all, so I choose less evil.

Nick,

What power scheme do you use? Did you try different settings?