Sorry for my late reply, I wanted to double check and I wanted my girl to be present, so there wouldn't be any mistakes. To answer your question, it matters whether it is FLAC or WAV and, on top of that, it matters if it was copied manually to RAMdisk or using XXHE built-in mechanism. The order of SQ is counting from the best:

1. WAV copied manually to RAMdisk
2. FLAC copied manually to RAMdisk
3. WAV copied to RAMdisk via 'copy-to-xx folder' & 'do not start playback'
4. FLAC copied to RAMdisk via 'copy-to-xx folder' & 'do not start playback'

This is no placebo! The difference is to big - more details and amazing smoothness at the same time if you play a WAV copied manually to RAMdisk.

I just wanted to let you know that playing directly from RAMdisk (copy tracks manually) vs. 'Copy-to-XX folder' and 'do not start playback at all' is clearly the winner - sounds better and I have no idea why. This is probably the biggest enigma to me...

This is very interesting offer, you have to be damn sure about the quality if you offer 90 days money back guarantee. Looking forward to more info.

Cheers,
Marcin

Set your buffer size to 1024 or even to 2048 samples in settings area of XXHE. Also make sure that Q1 is set to 1. (default is 0).

Marcin

Nothing, it's just the way it is with XXHE, unless you have very solid drivers, which are quite rare. I can use special mode only with ESI drivers. M-Audio, Cantatis, even RME can't do it (stable).

XXHE could play with latency of 1 sample not 1ms, which gives 1/44100 of second, right? But not many drivers allow for that.

Hi Windows X!

My experience in this area is that I prefer lowest possible latency and I've tried everything, believe me The bottom line is: low latency gives you the most out of music files - best details, control and smoothness at the same time, but there are certain requirements from hardware and software side that need to be fulfilled in order to get 'proper' SQ. I promised Peter that I will not continue my topic (with all the tweaks that I find significant), but I'll be happy to send you a PM with my ultimate tweaks, which btw are quite different from those that I published some time ago. In few words to get the best out of XXHE playback you need:
- very fast PC
- slimmed OS
- ramdisk
- few OS tricks

If you choose wrong OS, you won't be able to get a good sound in the first place. Other things I mentioned will boost SQ, make your setup more transparent.

Cheers,
Marcin

Haha - got you!

Can't wait to read first listening impressions and comparisons to other DAC-s.

Cheers,
Marcin

I love the paint, looks like a Subaru Impreza

Russ, newest BIOS/drivers anythign I could think of. I even contacted Asus support, because I thought sth is wrong with my MB. Right now I have 2 PCs and 3 different OSes (on one machine). Special mode instability or whatever we could call that happens on all the systems and that is before any tweaks was applied in the first place. But here's sth interesting. As I stated before, I flashed my Cantatis card in order to use ESI drivers and right now I'm able to play using buffer size at 32 samples and Q1=-4 with QAP with some small random clicks (with Q1=-3 completely glitchless) and the sound is unbelieveable, much better than RME-AES32 (slave) + dCS Elgar Plus DAC (master) in dual AES mode. How crazy is that? Amazing extensions of low and high frequencies, the sound is so powerful that it could crash walls and yet silk, fluid, amazing... I'm not selling Cantatis, no way. If Peter's DAC (and PC interface) is/will be able to play with 1 sample latency and I'm sure it beats the cr*p out of Cantatis, then I'll get one. For now, I'm staying with Cantatis and I believe that I can get even more out of it by just finetuning Windows/XXHE.

Cheers,
Marcin

Peter,

It's a shame that we/I didn't know earlier, I would have arranged my schedule differently and possibly go there. I wish you the best of luck!

Greets,
Marcin

Calibrator, I don't have to get Juli@ to check how ESI drivers rock! I've just flashed my Cantatis card to Prodigy 7.1 hifi and, as before, I'm able to play with 1 or 2 samples of latency, while RME or Cantatis wouldn't allow stable 1024 samples playback in special mode. So, like Peter said, PC/BIOS configuration matter, especially anything that influence PCI Bus (sound card's IRQ, PCI Latency timer, IRQ affinity masks etc), but it looks that driver's stability is on top of everything.

Cheers,
Marcin

Hi Peter,

I've always had problems with special mode and that was with 3 machines and 3 different interfaces (M-Audio Transit, Cantatis Overture and RME-AES32). In each case it 'looks' the same, it plays fine for a while (few minutes, few tracks) and suddenly it goes wrong - distortions and noise, like if I chose to small buffer size. I have to start playback again until distortions appear and do this over and over again. Is there anything I could do to fix this? Is this driver's fault or what? It never happens in Adaptive mode. It never combines with 'To many buffor errors' massage. Playback doesn't stop after distortions appear. Distortions show up even with highest buffer size and high Q1 values. I'd appreciate your help on this, because special mode is better now IMHO - much cleaner, detailed sound, better bass compared to Adaptive which is somehow 'dirty'.

Best regards,
Marcin

I'm using iMON, no weather or any other cr*p

Peter, just wanted to let you know that it took me 2 hours to configure OrigenAE remote with its native software to play with XXHE and other things, works great

Cheers,
Marcin

PS
I'm not sure whether 6 cores was such a good idea though. If additional performance from the extra 2 cores does bring anything up compared to my old quad core, it's not influencing SQ - in fact, I think it's worse due to higher TDP. Low-powered quad core is optimum at the moment. My next platform shall be quad core Ivy Bridge (22nm), of course, when it's released in a year or so.