Best new version for XP?

[fzman]

Hello all,

I am still using xp for my dedicated music pc, running version .9y-8.  i have not tried any later versions of xxhighend.  I do not oversample, and am using the digital out of my essence stx soundcard.

Any thoughts from xp users as to the sonic improvements from using a later version of xxhighend?

thanks,

Mark

[fzman]

50 views and no replies?  I am a dinosaur still using xp?  I am really enjoying the sound of my digital, but will upgrade versions if someone who has tried newer versions on XP gives me some insight as to what I might expect.... Peter... any thoughts?

I have recently upgraded my phono preamp, line stage, and replaced a passive line level crossover with an active -- all DIY, and my system is sounding great on both LP and cd via the computer, so I am not rushing to make a change, but there seem to be many new versions since the one I am using.

Hopefully, someone has something to say here.......


Thanks for reading this.

Mark

[CoenP]

Hi FZman,

I am a XP dynosaur. Not only that, but I also (still) use a 833Mhz PIII (MSI mobo). I've no experience with XX on Vista or W7, alltough I have a W7 disc and licence catching dust somewere.

To me the 09-4-1 is the best 09 version so far. I've been tweaking the OS by shutting off services, registry tweaks and the like as suggested by members on this forum and the C2MP website. 08 versions worked better at first, with a fuller, fatter sound, but failed to involve me into the music. You will have to play with buffers , timeres, Q and so on to optimise the sound to your liking. Everything matters.

Since I've just begun listening to 09-4-1, it allready has a wonderfoll flow in the music. All instruments are very well seperated and have excellent dynamics. The low end is not very pronounced, yet very precise. I personally don't mind this. It seems that this is typical for the 09 versions.

Generally XP is not regarded as a competent OS for XX compared to Vita or W7.  There is nothing holding you back to try it. I would even opt to make a dual boot XP/W7 on your system so you can compare with W7.

regards, Coen

[PeterSt]

Thank you Coen.

but will upgrade versions if someone who has tried newer versions on XP gives me some insight as to what I might expect.... Peter... any thoughts?

Mark, this is hard to tell, except for stupid theories. But one thing would be that from Vista up to W7 SP1 all will be much faster, although not everybody will agree with this.

The theories say that there's less opportunities to change things (for sound) in XP. Like Straight Contiguous just not being possible. Or WASAPI. Or how the OS deals with "task switching" (which is all under the hood stuff, but here and there explicitly addressed by XXHighEnd). It's all just not as "sophisticated".

Maybe it is good to remind you of why you stil might be on XP ... I guess this origines from XP being more lean, better to tweak for bit perfectness or other by now far too old stories. There's just no reason, or otherwise I don't know them, or I forgot.
One thing is important I think : I have XP too, and it's already hard enough to test whether things still work there, and which testing always goes without sound. That I really listened to XP must be 3 years ago at least, and so ... what to expect from it for SQ ?
Most of the good stuff will come along, but not all. Others may by now start to work counterproductive. I just can't tell other than from the few (like Coen - or you !) who report. So, it just seems not the best to stay there.

I didn't declare it obsolete at all, but I just can't listen judge to it, like I won't listen to Vista once I found it sounds worse than W7-SP1. There's so so much to test and listen for within one OS, that you out there really must take care of the other stuff. Now, when you're quite alone on XP, how to ever get helped ? I don't know. But from that perspective it should start to be a dead end. Again, not because I declare it so. It just doesn't go otherwise ...

Peter

[fzman]

thanks to both of you for replying.  The computer does nothing but play music - not even connected to the internet.  the hardware is pretty much what is specified for cmp/cplay as of 18 months ago.  most of the optimizations he recomnmends have been done.  alas my soundcard is does not have a 32 bit asio driver, so cplay does not really work with it.  i use either winamp with ks, or xx highend (when i want the best sound, also via ks).

Looks like 32 bit versions of win 7 are not very expensive- and i would do it if there is a clear sonic advantage to doing so. 

i also use xp on my regular computer, and do listen thru headphones via an external diy headphone amp connected to the produigy hd2 sound card in the computer.  perhaps there would be a performance boost from running win 7 on this one as well.

so, is there a preferred version of win 7 32 bit, for best sound?

[PeterSt]

I don't think you will get any answer to that. I'd say without exception (by now) everybody with W7 will use W7-SP1 64 bit.

I think I dare to guarantee you without even ever trying, that W7-SP1/64 will beat XP by as far as you can only have dreamt about.

[fzman]

again, thanks Peter.  If I order up a copy and try it, i will certainly let you know.  right now i am enjoying the active crossover I built, which replaced passive line-level r-c crossovers between preamp and amps.  the passives I built used wbt nextgen rca jacks, naked vishay resistors, and audience AutaT teflon caps.



I also finished a line stage and phono preamp recently- so i am a very happy listener right now.  A power amp is next, and i am working on it little by little.  I am not the designer, but am very lucky to have a friend with great designs, which he is willing to share with me.

[PeterSt]

Nice ! ...

But (from your sig)

q1=4, 12-15 all 0

What about 5-11 ?

What hack did you actually apply to get all those Q's ?
Ok, just kidding. But something seems wrong in your sig.

Peter

[fzman]

oops -- good catch- signature fixed!.

[minzyman]

Hey Guys,

I too am an XP dont-no-saur. Just bought a copy of Win 7 Home Premium and am reading all that I can about how to install it and configure my system. Looks like everyone is suggesting Win 7 64bit Sp1? What is RC?

I ordered 16GB of DDR2 800 RAM and have a 120GB OCZ SSD HD. All of this is installed in a Zalman TNN 300 box with Intel P5Q EM motherboard (8500) and a Lynx AES16 soundcard. My plan is to buy the Berkeley usb converter when it comes out as I own the Berkeley Alpha Dac and like it a lot.

Does anyone have any suggestions for configuration, given the above specs? I'd really appreciate any OS tweaks/tips, XXhighend configuration suggestions or any kind of related advice.

Also, my one thing with digital is that it can sound metallic and edgy, esp when compared to vinyl, and I'd appreciate any suggestions on avoiding this in playback, if possible. In fact, I think it would be great to have a preset button in XXHighend that enabled a "vinyl-like" or analog-like quality to playback. Sure, this may just be coloration of the sound and nothing more. But vinyl and tubes just deliver something amazing to the sound to soften edges and open up the "space".

Can this be achieved in digital playback with any config or XXHighend settings?

Thank you in advance, gents, for any suggestions.

/Lee Mincy
SF Bay Area, CA

[PeterSt]

Lee Mincy, hi there !

I am going to tell you a strange story maybe, although to some extend you could have expected it.
Ok, let may first lay out that with Kernel Streaming and Special Mode, the lower Q1 the more "digital" it will become. But, this actually works the other way around from what you will perceive from my text, because all what happens is that it becomes more accurate. Btw, for WASAPI it kind of works the same, although to my findings getting lower than Q1=4 there will make things *really* digital. Now that strange story :

I have been comparing the Alpha with the Phasure NOS1 (original version) from an NOS1 customer (who does not post here, otherwise he could tell the story himself). Now, the Alpha appears to be a strange beast, and that's probably the reason why you bought it; it has crazily attenuated highs (a matter of slow roll off filtering) and in the end it makes a mess of everything. So, highs are silkey, but music is a mess. I'm serious.
Now, what you'd be doing with setting Q1 to "more accuracy" as described, is emphasizing that mess. This means you should go the other way around ? no ! it means the Alpha is no good to begin with.
In the end what I'm saying is that you really better spend that (crazy) money for the USB interface to something else.

Btw, I now recall that Praphan in here also owned an Alpha. I'm not sure whether he posted about the differences, but he might do it here for better objectiveness. All I can say is that the Alpha sounds to-tal-ly diferent (from anything) and it is not for the best ...

In any case I hope this is hepful to some extend !
Peter

[minzyman]

Peter,

Thanks for the suggestions in the first paragraph.

As per the other jibberish, honestly, do you conclude all this from that one "NOS Customer", or is this just marketing speak from [your] company that is targeting Berkeley Audio head on with it's new Phasure Dac? I mean, what am I supposed to make of this marketing speak??

Although I've never heard the Phasure, I have demo'd under very ideal conditions many other excellent dacs at trade shows and in the home. IMO, nothing else touches the Pacific Microsonics units, still selling for $$ after all these years. (Must be a reason for that). And while I wouldn't say the Alpha is quite the Pacific Microsonics, it is reasonably close and certainly more resolving and musical than any other Dac I have heard.

Lastly, I asked about the analog sound not because this is the way the Berkeley sounds, but instead because I think there are a some things that analog does better than digital. Note the large resurgence in vinyl sales in the last two years. It would be cool to see an option in the interface that allowed one to achieve some of these analog qualities via a filter or something.

Best.

[PeterSt]

Hi Lee,

If you call my talking jibberish, it will me my english or you just don't know me. But not any third option.

I can't be sure to which "one customer" you refer to. It shouldn't be about that one customer who brought his Alpha for comparison, because it was me doing the judgement (and speaking the verdict). That he went home with an NOS1 is what I was telling about, but still I judged myself.
It also hardly can be about that one Pacific Microsonics Model Two owner (you suddenly throw that into the equation ??), or otherwise you are scoffing that owner. Or maybe you don't know about him *or* you must be thinking something like it takes two NOS1's to replace one PMII (haha).

So, I warned you for a strange post, but your response looks even more strange ! Anyway, my intentions are good and I just tried to help you. I still do. But I guess that I scoffed you by saying what I did, and maybe my enthusiasm gets wild at times. I apologize.

But please tell me, why did you bring up the PMII ? Is it just your reference and don't you know about that "one person" (which indeed is only one !) who chooses the NOS1 over the PMII by far ? I never heard the PMII but know about its reputation. I can only be the most honoured that it is as it is. And yes, I trust this one person the most, and know him in person. Don't know what to say else.

Best regards,
Peter

[minzyman]

Peter,

Scoffing is fine. This is, after all, a hobby about having fun.

For me, I just can't take these opinions seriously, given your obvious interest in selling the Phasure. Espec given the Alpha dac's immense success amongst audiophiles, writers and bloggers, dealers who know anything about digital.

The reference to PM II is that this dac, as you know, was also designed by the team at Berkeley Audio Design many years ago. So there are many years of trial and error that go into the Alpha. And yes the PM dac is my reference, for I have heard no better and in many scenarios and from many people over the years, certainly not from just one person. I heard the very expensive ($30k?) MBL dac for example, compared A/B a year ago at CES and the PM just killed it (no big surprise): PM's imagery was locked into place, transparency and liquidity were just amazing. This should be your reference point too, I would think. Or perhaps Matan's enviable sound using the PMII and his Linux clamshell player.

Even more interesting, I've heard Paul Stubblebine's excellent tape project material compared in a formal A/B scenario with the Zalman/Lynx setup through alpha dac and I felt the digital sound compared nicely to the tape project tracks. It is good to see that digital playback has come such a long way. Berkeley has contributed quite a bit to this IMO, thru both the PM2 and the Alpha.

So has XXHighend. Your player sounds great and is, to my ears (thus far), the best sounding pc based player out there. Amazing what you've done with Windows bloatware! But to claim that your own Phasure is better than the PM2? My we're feeling ambitious...

What started this string was a question about digital vs natural sound and how to get the latter from XXHighend (and the above listed hardware). You spoke about Q1 for a bit, then launched into your marketing pitch for the Phasure—oh, sorry, "story". But I'd still like to know the answer. I'm getting solid results now from XXHighend on XP, but want to Install Win 7 64 bit (minimized) with a lot of RAM and the same (above listed) hardware (Lynx) etc. It would be awesome to get your suggestions.

And lastly, I think there is potential in the market for more "analog" sound from digital. Honestly most of my audiophile friends far prefer the sound of vinyl, turn their noses up to digital. And when I hear their rigs, I often hear why. Digital can always benefit (IMO) from a tube buffer stage to round off the edges a bit.  So why can't digital playback software achieve/emulate some of the same character that vinyl excels at? bloom and openness, dynamics and that pleasing harmonic distortion that so defines vinyl and helps make a track sound more "live"?

[PeterSt]

Thank you for some useful comments Lee (I still have the feeling that you didn't get that message about the PMII being outbettered by the NOS1, but never mind, indeed the topic is about something else).

So ... (helping helping) ...

What I was trying to tell is that sometimes there's no good way out. Or nothing which would be consistent. I could, say, predict.
What remains is that the lower Q1 will bring more accuracy. For fun you could try to follow the evolution of Kernel Streaming Special Mode. At first I was about the only one using it, but only on (high tranisent) ambient music. Later, when I could improve on other OS influences, everybody started to use Special Mode (at almost sub-sample latencies). Thus, what this does is outputting "accuracy" (hard to grasp I'm afraid) while first all other noise was there - that thus "accuracying" along with it.
At the DAC end it happens a kind of other way around : the more accurate the data arrives there, the more the nature of the DAC itself will express. This is (besides a lot of blahbah) a good thing within itself. It shows the nature of the DAC better.

Now, KS Adaptive Mode works the other way around. It smears. Not that it changes the bits or anything, but at the time it was the opposite of the too accurate WASAPI engine. KS Adaptive was made for the emotion people. That works too, but isn't accurate. It "browns" the DAC so to speak. One could say it makes it all less digital.

But the fun is - and I have been saying this forever - when all is done *really* right, the more "digital" things become, the more natural they become. The *less* harsh it becomes.
Now if you only could appreciate this as being true ... so let's try that for a moment;

At the DAC end we have filters. They *have* to be there, or otherwise we'd be listening to distortion only (this just is physically so and can easily be measured). If you now start off at that end with an overly "smearing" DAC (or filter), nothing else can be done about that, except for emphasizing that by itself. Remember, I just talked positively about KS Adaptive, which everybody automatically started using instead of WASAPI (which exactly nobody uses anymore). So, good thing !

Well, good thing, until we got the accuracy better by means of KS Special Mode. And this really is very similar to a DAC with more steep filtering.
If you had been following what all happened in here the past 4 years, you had seen that at a certain stage I got lost on the general good advices. This is exactly when KS Special Mode started to work for most for the better. But not for all, and all I could do since is writing "stories" like I tried to put upon you. Yes, wrong, because suddenly it is about DACs and not about XXHighEnd only anymore. But really, it happened before, and all I try to do is help out while this is quite hard by now, because I must rely on what others tell about what they perceive from certain settings. In your case I could rely on my own judgement, so I immediately did ... (you may reread that post by now ).

There's also the real life example from Mani with his PMII. He decided for KS Adaptive Mode (and he is a most serious tester with effortless time for it), and next received his first NOS1. He stuck with Adaptive and although the sound from the NOS1 was better in his opinion, he forgot to re-eveluate everything at first. But next he saw everybody (including me) using Special Mode, and "thus" found he was using the wrong setting for the NOS1. And next all was fine. Or superb (hey, not my judgement).
But what does it tell (to my best attempts of analysis) ?

It tells that the PMII can't bear the accuracy, or IOW things start to emphasize which should not. I will be the very last one saying that the PMII ain't right or anything, but I will say that it's consistently made for its self-producing sonics, while by now we are trying to influence that (call it blahblah, but this is what XXHighEnd is explicitly doing). This again means highering of Q1 for KS Special, or Adaptive otherwise (which can be seen as an even higher Q1).

A complete different side of the story is that a DAC can also be made to be without influence. Well, to some higher degree. Look at my sig and what I brewed from it. In this case it doesn't tell that the smearing must be as high as possible, but that it doesn't matter a thing, and now I better imply the least overhead for the system.

Ok, I'm sure I failed on being as objective as possible (but I tried), but I also hope you now can do something useful with it. Just take it for granted (beg beg) that the more "digital" the feed becomes, the more analogue it will sound. Think "transients" when I'm talking about "digital". Keep on thinking the other way from what you are used to, and keep my approaches in mind (Special vs Adaptive etc.). Make those transients as high as possible; think steep filtering instead of slow roll offs; this gives you the best chance. Always (did I say always ?) start off with Arc Prediction Upsampling (Redbook). 4x when possible. This will at least from the player side sustain the transients for 100% (really, it can't be more because there isn't more). This -generally spoken- will disallow your DAC to again filter. However, this depends on the math in the DAC (and now I won't repeat my other story, ok ?).

That's it Lee. This time I don't *know* more. A little different from "I don't know what to say more". I hope it comes across right.
Peter

[minzyman]

Ok, this is solid stuff. Let me process this, experiment a bit and report back. Thank you for the lengthy response.

By the way, is there anyone here in the SF Bay Area that owns one of your Phasure dacs? Any dealers that have them? I'd really like to hear one and maybe hold an event with my group (BAAS). I heard that you sent one to Chris Conniker. True? I know Chris well and definitely trust his judgement.

/Lee

[manisandher]

Hi Lee. I'm assuming you've read my thoughts on the NOS1 (original) vs. the Pacific Microsonics Model Two here http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1549.0?

I've got a couple of potentially really important caveats to my thoughts though:

1) I've always been aware that my Model Two was one of the earlier ones, used as the in-house demo unit by PM for a couple of years. But I've recently learned that my unit is actually a pre-production unit. Some people believe that the later 'Euphonix' units sound better than the earlier PM units. However, Dave Peck (production manager at PM, now at Avid) assures me that my unit meets all the PM2 standards... and his measurements confirm that my particular unit has state of the art ADC and DAC performance).
2) I don't have a Mykerinos card, considered by some to be the best way of interfacing a Model Two to a computer. Nor do I have a Lynx AES16. Rather I use either a Weiss AFI1 firewire unit (upgraded with a linear Paul Hynes PS) or an RME AES-32 PCI card. I've done extensive tests comparing the 'direct' ADC->DAC path with the 'indirect' ADC->computer->DAC path. I'm convinced that the PM2 itself set to 24/192 is pretty much completely transparent. However, I'm not sure that either of my AES interfaces are completely transparent.

With these caveats in mind, my thoughts in the aforementioned thread stand 100%. The NOS1 is a better DAC than the PM2. Not just my thoughts, but the thoughts of others who have compared the two at my place also.

Oh and by the way, cut out the cr*p about marketing. If you knew Peter, you'd know that he's not like that. And of course, it's totally against my interest to be potentially eroding the market value of my own PM2!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I have three Zalman TNN300 PCs. Two with Gigabyte cards (with an E8600 and an i7 - the latter a total bugger to fit and get working in the TNN300!) and one with a Asus PQ5-EM (with an E8600).

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Thank you Lee.

There's one in the Bay Area, but not "accessible". A few are underway though, including one for Chris indeed.

Peter

[praphan]

Hi

I am one of those Phasure NOS owners who also use Berkeley Alpha DAC extensively as well. I think most PC audiophiles run Alpha through Lynx card.

So the combination of Juli@ inside NOS1 will give different sound than Lynx plus Alpha. Personally I listen to music more from NOS1. NOS1 makes me more involving in music with other things being the same from cable to amps to speakers. Both are good DAC but it is just a matter personal preference. But surprisingly almost all of my audiophiles friends who audition my  NOS1 said that they hear the details that they have never heard before. Still it is very musical.

I will post a more analytical comparison when I get my NOS1 upgraded and fix my compatibility issue. Those who read my previous post all knew that NOS1 has issue with Gigabyte mobo.

On the sales pitch, I think I know Peter. He doesn't have to push the sales of NOS as the order is already beyond his production capacity. His stringent demand for quality makes it hard for him to OEM his DAC to contract manufacturer. Even it can be outsourced, the price for such stringent QC would make the price point even more outrageous.

Praphan