Good that you added "with my current setup". I believe that the differences between different setups, especially interfaces, could be vast.

No, I'm a total idiot, haha - joke

You're correct, 125%...

I am sure it sounds better, at least in my system. The difference is clear to me after a second. Now I had trouble choosing Special/Adaptive. Special is sweeter, great for jazz/vocals, but heavier stuff sounds better via Adaptive, I suppose...

What a cr*ppy driver, it doesn't matter if I play with QAP or at 24/44 (even 16/44), I can't go below 1024 samples and that is for Special and Adaptive mode. Never mind, it sounds terrific

Few remarks from my side:
- new GUI is nice, but quite unreadable (especially indicators next to the buttons and in settings area - I had to come closer to the screen to see if it's red or green, that's also confusing - red usually means that it's not active)
- I can't upsample 24bit files (wasn't able before as well)
- there's been a problem with application's window size and here is the same thing - one section appears on other. You should set fixed min. size of each section.
- sq is awesome  

This is the best sound I've had a chance to listen to from my PC - congratulations Peter! However, I'm not able to go lower than 1024 samples in special mode, still it's an improvemnt from 2000 something in 0.9y-c. Haven't tried adaptive yet, I'm afraid that I may hear sth worse :D

I'll write my in depth remarks later, but first - WOOOOOOOOOW. What a sweetness!

I don't understand as well. How a wav track with 16bit resolution sounds worse when I set DAC to 16/44 in XXHE? Also, how could the same 16bit wav file sound different when DAC needs is set to 24bit and again 32bit? Technically there should be no information, all zeros, right?

Haha, I switched from 24/44 to 16/44 and now I am able to set 128 samples That should be obvious - less data, lower latency, right?
But it sounds so much worse on a 24bit DAC. Also there is a noticeable difference between DAC needs 24bits and DAC needs 32bit settings. How is that possible? oO

Great, so we're all looking forward to that new great special mode

For me the lower the buffer is set, the sharper the sound becomes and this is the same regardless of sound card/interface used.

I am trying to find the best playback options for Cantatis Overture (great piece of hardware, I could throw my Beresford through the window right away... :D). QAP has more air, better holography, overall it's lighter while 24/44 has more punch. That would confirm Peter's conclusion about applying upsamling on a oversampling DAC. It's worth of trying though, I bet few folks would prefer QAP over redbook, even without NOS DAC.

For those who're trying to pursuit the lowest latency "train", you might never catch it :D yesterday I performed a series of actions to achieve 256 samples, well, I failed.
Here's what I've done so far:
1. Assigned IRQ priority to sound card
2. Switched power plan to performance
3. Forced installation of VIA drivers for Cantatis
4. Removed GPU drivers and set hardware acceleration to none
5. Changed PCI slot
6. Overclocked from 1GHz to almost 4GHz (quad core)
7. Installed fresh Windows on a formatted disk

Nothing improved - null! My theory is that it also depends on chipset and southbridge implementation. I can't adjust PCI Latency Timer as well. If my theory is right I will be able to achieve lower latencies with other PC and other chipset. I'll try soon ad let you know how it worked.

I just got Cantatis Overture sound card and I'm pretty shocked that I can't achieve decent buffer sizes with it. Actually, M-Audio  Transit (USB) that I've used so far could play at 64 samples without any glitches (24/44, Q1=1, Adaptive Mode) while Cantatis' lowest buffer size that I managed to squeeze is 512 samples (24/44, Q1=1, Adaptive Mode). I thought that it's a matter of performance, so I overclocked my CPU to 3.8GHz (4 cores, 4GB of DDRIII 2000MHz modules) and guess what - nothing has changed! That leads me to conclusion: drivers' "performance" is more important than overall performance of a PC But there is one thing that astonishes me - Leo reported that he could play at 4 samples (special mode) with the same sound card and slower PC - what the hell?

It's worth mentioning that with ASIO4ALL I can play at 64 samples with absolutely no cracks.

Mani, which PCI slot do you use for RME?

Hi guys,

I just got Cantatis Overture sound card and I'm pretty shocked that I can't achieve decent buffer sizes with it. Actually, M-Audio  Transit (USB) that I've used so far could play at 64 samples without any glitches (24/44, Q1=1, Adaptive Mode) while Cantatis' lowest buffer size that I managed to squeeze is 512 samples (24/44, Q1=1, Adaptive Mode). I thought that it's a matter of performance, so I overclocked my CPU to 3.8GHz (4 cores, 4GB of DDRIII 2000MHz modules) and guess what - nothing has changed! That leads me to conclusion: drivers' "performance" is more important than overall performance of a PC But there is one thing that astonishes me - Leo reported that he could play at 4 samples (special mode) with the same sound card and slower PC - what the hell?

Yesterday Macbook Pro got into my hands and I figured to do some comparisons and satisfy my curiosity. I downloaded Amarra Mini demo and newest drivers for my M-Audio Transit USB card, which in both cases were used only as a digital transport to feed Beresford TC-7510 DAC.
The same volume and tracks were used. The only difference was that on a PC, the player was XXHE and on Macbook Pro (with and without PSU) - iTunes 9.1 + Amarra Mini.  Two seconds after I pushed play in iTunes, I knew it was far from XXHighEnd when it comes to all aspects of sound characteristics. I am really disappointed with Mac-based audio playback. I don't know how much would change if I had tweaked Mac OS. I know that with  my PC it has a great impact and brings SQ level up, but much of that lays in hardware tweaks and there is not much to be done in Macbook when it comes to hardware tricks. XXHE FTW!!!