Haha! Mani, dCS sounded wrong fed by Cantatis (coaxial or optical) and Cantatis was better as a DAC than as a tranport combined with dCS - strange, but true. The same was with Sony drive, but with RME - oh boy, Cantatis sounds like cr*p compared to dCS, so you see, nothing is plain, but I'm sure of one thing - a DAC should be fed by an outside source, totally isolated from the PC (Firewire?). I experimented one more time with undervolting and underclocking of CPU, but I accomplished that with an app, so I got to compare it right away to normal and overclocked settings. I underclocked my CPU to 400MHz (for each core) and lowered the voltage to 0.450V!!! (1.325 is default, and 1.5V overclocked). I also changed CPU coligation for all processes to CPU2 (third core), XXHE scheme 1 (processing on CPU0, 'sound' on CPU1), cpu affinities for all non-audio devices on CPU2, RME, PCI Bus and PCI I/0 Communications BUS on CPU3. That was the best sound I have ever heard from my system and so much better than default or overclocked setting. So I think our pc-audio playback is going to be better and better every year, because of increasing performance of new CPUs and their smaller TDPs and better architectures.

But nothing is perfect right? With 4x400MHz and quad upsampling (not QAP) I get a random click from time to time, because there is lack of horsepower on CPU0, where all the processing/loading is done. If the processing was spread around all of the cores (except CPU1, where is playback engine), then I guess it wouldn't be a problem. The app I used for underclocking/undervolting is called K10Stat and allows for much better adjustment than you have available in BIOS. Normally I couldn't go below 0.85V, even running a single core! But I guess that the app is for AMD CPUs only...

Let me know what you think
Best regards,
Marcin

THe same thing applies to No-Appointment setting. Eventhough I assign it to CPU1, it goes back to CPU0 and CPU1.

Peter, is there any way it can be fixed - I mean Scheme-1 staying at CPU1 after conversion? (for low SFS values)
It's the same for SFS below 50 MB or so, even if I manually assign the Engine3 to CPU1, it goes back to CPU0 and CPU1 after few seconds.

Greets,
Marcin

Yes, but you have different DACs and different systems

Challange accepted Hehe
I know that it's a valueable knowledge, but never thought it would be that much Maybe someday I'll try to enter this market myself, could be interesting. I've said everything I wanted to say, so don't worry - no more 'mess', I promise.

Have a nice day,
Marcin

No it is to Jarek - he's a distributor of that thing http://audiofast.pl/main.asp?idm=60&r=0&wersja=1
Sorry for a misunderstood.

Greets,
Marcin

Agreed, but assembly, set-up and 'priceless knowledge' costs 100EUR in regular PC stores, although good for you - if you have customers that are willing to pay. Audiophiles not often are computer geeks, so they could go for sth like this blind, if they like the sound. For me, hardcore overclocker, IT graduate and former CHIP editor, it's a piece of cake. I once contacted you about 'Musa' asking simple questions, but you didn't answer. I knew it was scam then. I'd be very pissed if I bought it and didn't find anything that is not available as a ready to work product. I'd expect custom made linear PSU for the price, and I'd offer one if I decided to make music servers. What  do you think people would say, if they found about it? And they will, trust me.

Excuse me, I'm not criticising anybody's work. It was just a heads up for Peter - how his work is being used as a base of what I believe high-end system. No hard feelings. Can't I just publish the pictures from a show where thousands of people got to see it? But now that you brought it up, I need to say few things - yes, I think I could do better for that price, every kid knows how to put a regular PC together and install somebody else's software, you don't need a degree or years of R&D for that! Was I negative? Sure, but I think I made a point here and pretty good one. Maybe I'll have a chance to audition that 'Musa' thing in future and compare it to my music server, it should be fun.

Cheers,
Marcin

Chriss - too bad, but I highly recommend that you apply the rest of the tweaks. It really works, I tried them some time ago along with cPlay.

Greets,
Marcin

Hello,

CoenP - I think that Peter made a good point here

Chriss, if you want to apply some serious tweaks, go to http://cicsmemoryplayer.com/ and knock yourself out, hehe
However if you play in unattended, you might want to skip Chapter 7.3, step 5 (change sheduler time slice), because it sets equal priorities for foreground and background processes, which may be good for attended.

Greets,
Marcin

Hi Peter,

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/3061/obraz140q.jpg

Looking any familiar? haha
Picture taken few days ago at Audio Show 2010, Warsaw.
They made a product out of it - Win7 based music server with XXHE as a player of choice and charging over 6k EUR, haha, maybe I'll start selling these machines too, only better.
Win7 + attended - FAIL! I assume they didn't bother with other 'tweaks'.

Cheers,
Marcin

Hi Coen,

Related to what? XP and Win98 are not the same, if that's what you wanted to know

Cheers,
Marcin

I'm sorry but Win98 is cr*p

Hello everybody,

I think I'm gonna try XP one more time - slimmed&tweaked, minlogon etc. I remember I didn't like it some time ago, but now with new version of XXHE, Ramdisk and CPU affinity masks, it could be interesting... Maybe it's not too late and not everyone switched to Vista... haha

XP has one (among others) interesting option - it's called timeres and it allows to decrease 'waitable timer' from default's 7.8ms to 0.98 ms

Anyone using XP and Vista on the same machine?

Greets,
Marcin