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Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: RAMDisk
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on: October 07, 2010, 08:57:38 pm
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So Peter, would you say that XXHE is a multi-threaded app? I'm asking because I may have another small tweak from a hardware side. My memories could work in two dual channel modes - ganged and unganged. Ganged means you will have a large 128bit pipe and unganged means you will have a 2 x 64bit pipes. Unganged mode is supposed to help multi-threaded applications. I wonder if there would be any difference for XXHE?
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188
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: We all fell in the W7 pitfall
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on: October 07, 2010, 10:26:30 am
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4) Mulimedia Class Scheduler 9) Software Licenceing 11) Windows Audio 12) Windows Audio Endpoint Builder 13) Windows Driver Foundation - User Mode Driver 14) Windows Management Instrumentation (needed for RAMDisk to work)
I'm pretty sure that you don't need above once you have everything installed (sound card drivers, XXHE, ramdisk). TWEAK PART 1 Use REGEDIT on the following. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile There are sub key tasks for; Audio Capture Distribution Games Playback Pro Audio Window Manager These KEYs are how MMSS prioritises music replay processes. For the “Audio”, “Playback” and “Pro Audio” keys try the following DWORD values Affinity = 3 (dec) Background Only = TRUE BackgroundPriority = 8 (dec) Clock Rate = 1000000 (dec) GPU Priority = 4 (dec) Priority = 8 (dec) Scheduling Category = High SFIO Priority = High A Note on Windows 7 performance; The “Clock Rate” value sets the granularity of processor scheduling for audio. This was used for Vista but is not used in windows 7 !! “The maximum guaranteed clock rate the system uses if a thread joins this task, in 100-nanosecond intervals. Starting with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, this guarantee was removed to reduce system power consumption.” TWEAK PART 1 Use REGEDIT to change; In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile there is a key “SystemResponsiveness” set this to “0”. Don’t worry this value defaults to give all Low priority processes 10% of CPU time. Here is a bit more information on what is going off. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247.aspxBest tweaks ever? This is unbelievable what happened after I applied these tweaks. Thank you very much!
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189
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Re: RAMDisk
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on: October 07, 2010, 10:20:03 am
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I'm very happy that my work is appreciated I keep tweaking OS, XXHE settings, because sth is always wrong and I can't sleep at night, haha. To be honest, the reason behind this is probably the same with everyone - to achieve the best SQ. Now I must admint I enjoy music like I've never have before, but it's not just because of RAMdisk only. I applied series of tweaks and those that Nick http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1398.msg13228#msg13228 are amazing, I'm speechless. This is the new dimension of sound. I could only imagine what would happen if I turned network services off, etc... but I don't want another OS just for XXHE playback, at least not now. SFS still matters, unfortunatelly, and I haven't found optimum for me yet. Greets, Marcin
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191
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: We all fell in the W7 pitfall
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on: October 06, 2010, 07:18:42 pm
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Hi Nick, I was gonna asking about the services that you have running there, but I guess that's gone now? Or could you give us some recommendations? I'm back with fresh Vista installation, I have only sound drivers, ram disk and xxhe installed right now + the following tweaks:
- Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Performance] Settings > Visual Effects > Adjust for best performance - Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Performance] Settings > Advanced > [Virtual Memory] Change. Select No paging file and click Set. Click OK and restart Windows - Control Panel > System > Advanced > Error Reporting. Select Disable Error Reporting (and But notify me when critical errors occur if this is wanted) - Control Panel > System > Advanced > [Startup & Recovery] Settings. Deselect the System Failure options and set Write debugging information to (none) - In Regedit, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl, add a new DWORD, "IRQ8Priority" , and set the value to 1. In that same key, look for "Win32PrioritySeparation" dword and set the value to 28 (hex). Restart a PC.
These are checked and worth applying. I'll proceed very carefully from now on.
Cheers, Marcin
PS Peter, Roy - how about your experiments with different Vista installation variants?
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192
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: We all fell in the W7 pitfall
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on: October 06, 2010, 03:34:17 pm
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It's hard to make direct comparison if you don't have two identical PCs. However, I listened very carefully W7 right before I switched to Vista and then repeated the same album on a fresh system (about an hour later). Clearly- Vista is better.
But I wanted to improve the sound further, messed with tweaks and drivers and SQ is terrible now. Thankfully I did't install many apps and I'm about to reinstall my system again. Remember to be careful with your optimisations, better don't apply to many at once unless you're sure of them. This is very hard and requires time
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195
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: We all fell in the W7 pitfall
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on: October 06, 2010, 12:15:37 am
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Yeah, a what about filesystem on ramdisk? :> And what if other 'ramdrive' application? Am I crazy yet? BTW, my thin vista build is ready, I'm about to install it, but I need to create another partition on my SSD. I assume that noone tried to install second Vista on the same partition? That's quite risky, is it? (or perhaps impossible, haven't tried though...)
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