Controversial post and new Setting

[PeterSt]

All, I suspect this wil be "unnecesary" long, as usual ...

Of serious importance is this background :

I am using the great Orelino speakers which go abnormally low and which can show about real cymbal levels if I'd want that (but nobody wants that); As you may know I have been - and still are - working on the crossovers, which is a tedious process to get it the very very best (ever in the universe). Bert is working on them just the same and in parallel and let's say that while I can listen to out both applications, Bert has to work on them from theory. Although it is not of the most importance how we get there together, it is good to know that at some stages theory and practice come together and that a dozen and more of coils and capacitors and resistors are replaced by another set, and that the other day something went sort of wrong and I couldn't get back to my own original pile. Too bad and no problem in the end, but it is about me currently not working with my best sounding setting.
So let's summarize this with saying that the (response) curves we both like for listening are pulled together by Bert at the distance, while I gave up a bit on getting them back myself, in the mean time me thinking of how to get back the good sound by other means. Notice : This kind of operation happened many times before in our both past. So ...

While we all seem to have dozed off somewhat with XXHighEnd settings because they perceivedbly don't matter all that much anymore because the general setup of XXHighEnd sort of overrules all for the (hopefully) better (at least under W8 we seem to think so), yesterday I listened for a first 20 minutes and thought with the settings in my mind what to do to improve on what I was missing now. This was - for the current loudspeaker curves - some of the better bass while the highs because of that were lacking somewhat. Okay to listen to, but only maybe WOW's from others would be incurred for. Not from me (at all, at this moment anymore).

With some other new theory in mind which I actually had been focusing on the past two full days, but with nothing changed in the software yet, I at least now thought of squeezing out those highs by software. And yes, you see it coming ... the lower SFS sizes;
A LOT of talk has been going over this and while many - and for a very long time - had been playing with SFS=2, in the end most of us settled at some general SFS=120, with the emphasis on "general" because it wouldn't matter much anymore anyway (at least for W8 that counts).

So, from here the more controlversial part starts, and it could be much more important than a nice XXHighEnd setting found ...

First to notice or recall, is that I myself always found that the lower SFS (like 2) implies more of everything, but, the bass starts to color. I don't know how many agree with the latter, but for me this was obvious and reason alone to not let it stay there. Notice though that the last time we (all ?) tried that direction can have been February or so 2013. In the software nothing much changed since then, but again, we settled on the consensus of the general SFS=120;

Yesterday my guts told me to try SFS=4 (for clear reasons in my mind). So, rebooted to have all fresh, tried playback which told me that my Q1 x xQ1 x DevBufSize was too high, and I changed my xQ1 of 10 to xQ1=1 and all could go (Q1=14, DevBufSize=4096).

Intermezzo : While this was at 6pm and I grabbed a first beer, at 7:15pm I was totally drunk. The relation ? well, I guess that our state of mind, dopamine and adrenaline and whatever more can bring us in that state without real drugs or too many drinks and to me this happened in an outrageous form yesterday. THAT good it was.
Btw, I recall measuring kitchen grinders going on right behind by back at 1M distance in the kitchen - preparing Sunday cakes -at 80dBSPL. Music came from 6 meters in front of me at close to 90dBSPL and I couldn't care less. It just overwhelmed any grinders for its CRAZY SUPERB sound.

Remember my lead in, which tells you that I was listening to loudspeaker curves I not only disliked, but which also did not produce the good sound I received before.

My very first notice on the first second of sound was the bass; I don't know what the heck happened to it, but at later minutes I could not believe that such a concert level bass could sustain in my relative small room. How in the world can it happen that this power does not mix up into a blurr between these walls ? I checked for standing waves as usual, and they were nowhere to be audibly found.
The next clear notice is that while these Orelino's are aligned (for height) to sitting position and in my room they really need sitting down on a sweetspot for their best performance, this now totally was not needed anymore. So, imagine a best bass vibration of the lower keys in that sweetspot - now I could listen anywhere again, like I have been used to with my old speakers. I perceived only power, power and more power of it. And even more.

Meanwhile, the highs where exactly there as expected. Well, better, because the more fresh highs we know of the lower SFS now went into the perfect silk direction in the mean time. All in total perfect balance and I noticed so much the all coming together and sheer joy. This is probably which made me drunk in an hour of time.

Can this be outbettered ?
I was listening carefully the remainder of the evening, noticed that ALL I played would go directly in my Demo Gallery (but I quit that after the second track because why to do it if all goes in there anyway), and could not imagine any improvement anywhere. Still it is so that the loudspeaker curves I was listening to do not make much sense to me. So theoretical improvement is to be there for sure, but don't ask me at this moment how that will be perceived.

Ah, that controversial part ...
By now I am sure that while the lower SFS from before incurred for colouring of the bass, this was because of improperly dealt with bass by the speaker. So, a small reminder for those who don't know anyway ... These Orelino's with their outrageous powerfull bass and which is open baffle, are supposed to have no distortion because of back chamber counter pressure and that sort of thing. My old speakers should have shown this distortion and I dare say everyone's unless open baffle (which undoubtedly won't be powerful at all in the bass regions). Also to remember, these Orelino's go flat to 20Hz and are at -3dB at 18Hz. And this with 100dBSPL hands in pockets. Now :

I think I have just proven that the lower SFS brings out the power in the bass (and the SFS of 4 was the whole purpose of it), but, it *first* needs a speaker to do that unconditionally. So, my old speakers (including subwoofers)  do not, and instead the power turns into colouring.
That the highs went into the direction as described was more or less to be expected too, but this has been described by others already (instead of too fresh hence more harsh, just silky). Of course this too depends much on the speaker (higher regions) and for me at this moment the only thing which is not much clear is how the speaker went into the silky direction while before it was a kind of explicitly too grey (per my destroyed XOver). But alas.

The SFS=4 was for a reason with the notice that without my special reason I would have used 2. I also think the 4 setting was not tried by many, but now you really should.
If the bass starts to colour you have a reason why, but I don't recall people telling about that anyway. But at least you should be able to perceive a more powerful bass with the notice that this is Windows 8.

If this really works out for others as well, the software changes I set my mind to are just about to start.

So ?

Regards,
Peter

[juanpmar]

Peter, when I read yesterday about your new SFS and Q1/xQ1 settings I was by chance reinstalling the ramdisk so I thought that why not to test these new settings. I did it and went to sleep quite late last night and quite happy with the new sound. I made some test with SFS 120 and SFS 4 and with the previous and new Q1 settings, I tested also the clock at 0.5ms and 1ms and ended up with your new values. This morning I´ve been listening music with the new settings until now that I read your post. For me the sound is better now, but mainly in the mid/upper frequencies, not so sure that the bass has been bettered by SFS 4. My speakers can manage the bass volume and crossover point and the 15" woofer inside each speaker is self powered, I never had a problem with the bass and always found a point where it is tide and deep without being blurred, no standing waves either. I have not changed the bass settings with the new SFS values and it is still great, if this bass is colored or not I couldn´t say unless I could listen an open baffle to compare with, all I can say is that I can´t find it distorted in any way. At the end these are better settings than the previous ones in my rig but I´m not so sure, in my limited experience, that a closed baffle means always a distorted bass.

Kind regards,
Juan

[PeterSt]

Thank you Juan.

To make clear better my real "message" about it all :

That this can be about a more coloured bass ... like I said - I don't recall people complaining much about that, so why would that happen now. Maybe when people have the suggestion of it (pay attention to it now), but it is not about this really;

What I experienced was a blasting bass I had in the in first place, opposed to now a rocket bass. So, not something one would scratch his head an think "is this now more or ?" ... no ... it is so much more and better that I can't find the words for it. Ok, I had some yesterday, but they are not much to put in a forum.

So ... a totally crazy difference of which one should think that it is not possible unless the mains is suddenly filled with Nitro or whatever.
Totally nothing of the sort happened ever with my old speaker, hence (!!) where it undoubtedly tried to do that it only resulted in colouring because it actually could not cope. And to be clear :  in my view it can perfectly happen that the "not cope" is not in order, but just a simple "not there" instead, wich would not lead to colouring, but just to nothing at all. And to that regard, in the past I honestly saw nothing much writing about bass as such with the lower SFS anyway. So, highs/fresh changing, yes. But a bass of which you can't even imagine how it can be in the room without getting muffled, THAT is something else. And here this just happens in that unimaginary way.

And the more real message were it for XXHighEnd settings : So, this may need this outreageous bass response from the speaker in the first place, but fact is that this XXHighEnd setting is doing this. And we sure did not know that ...

Regards,
Peter


PS: Maybe I should apologize for screaming about "the best" (speaker) and such, which is not much our habit on this forum; nobody does, nobody should, or maybe nobody should without being 100% sure. I think the Phasure forum is fameous for that and it makes it very worthy (meaning : all expressed values can be trusted). So, I tend to make exceptions at times, which I make when I am sure it could be valuable to everyone. Of course I should have a headstart or two which makes it more easy to be ahead of others, but still I would not allow myself to just scream around about "something" without real value. And this time I don't even know how to scream louder than I alread did. What remains for you out there is that you should try SFS=4 etc. Hopefully it works for everyone !

[Nick]

Peter hi,

 I have read back my last post to myself and feel that it's not really appropriate for me to raise these points here, my apologies. This is Far better an off line discussion, I certainly don't intend to deflect attention from your achievements with the speakers.

I hope you will permit me to remove the post and we can discuss the topic elsewhere.

Kind regards,

Nick.

[listening]

Hi Peter,

undoubtedly there is an immediate influence on bass reproduction without negative influence to allover SQ. Especially interesting is the Q1 and Q1x combination, which I never tried. Can't give a really good input for low bass SQ because my environment is restricted. 

Georg

[PeterSt]

I know this may be considered a rather heretical view,

Nick, you can say that alright !
But talking about "rationale's" ... what about a good differentiation between problem and cause ? Of course I am saying this as a sheer counter-uhm-defence, but I seriously don't see how you arrive at a conclusion that my NOS1 is causing a thing or two, while clearly *MY* NOS1 was not changed. So in the end you may have changed anything imaginable to your system for the better for that system, and that is a good thing. But all I can get from your post is that my system improved because I was unlucky to *not* change a thing about the hardware in the first place.

I know you are verermently  apposed to knowingly applying "filters" to solve problems but I think "Voicing" Bert and your most excellent speakers and possible changes in XX could be to  tune around a bass issue that exists elsewhere not in the speaker's response or software.

Here you are completely off and it is in your second sentence. Of course my writing is too long as always, but maybe just in case I wrote what I intended to, read my lead-in again. Nobody needs to solve a problem with bass in the first place. But if you read that somewhere, please quote it so I can correct it. So in my opinion the base for your post is way off, which makes the rest of the same off for that reason already.
So, sorry to say, but what else to say ...

But the best of course is any attempt to help. However, I don't need any here. Btw, Bert neither.


Ah, oh, uhm ... I now see that you removed your post to continue the discussion elsewhere. Well, I hope that is not necessary anymore. OK, I don't like to type without a reason and remove my own post, so below is yours after all. And it was not inappropriate - it only has a wrong base (well, my opinion). No harm done anywhere !

Best regards !
Peter

Peter hi,

This may be a little controversial but it's said in good faith and really intended to help.  I know you are verermently  apposed to knowingly applying "filters" to solve problems but I think "Voicing" Bert and your most excellent speakers and possible changes in XX could be to  tune around a bass issue that exists elsewhere not in the speaker's response or software.

I entirely recognise you description of coloured blasting bass above. My system has suffered this un damped blasting and  coloured bass for a very, very long time. I used to lay the blame on my Duo active bass units which don't have a great reputation for speed and accuracy.  As a result i tried a long list of stuff to try to improve the problem. By chance the Q1 14, xQ1 1, and SFS 4 setting you mention above have been one of a few sets of "reference" XX settings used here when trying to figure things out. I find they gave the best "controlled" bass whilst giving good sound elsewhere. I didn't listen to music much using the settings however because I found that whilst bass is better damped, extension was reduced and real life energy was not as good. This meant living up with a thud thud quality on some music whilst using prefered XX settings.

These were my impression before work started in ernest recently on the NOS1 to try to address noise problems. A great deal more has been done so far to the NOS than I'v posted about. With this work done, bass is ENTIRELY changed. Even via Duo active base units, its now extended, has a flat response, is well damped, very tuneful, has excellent tone differentiation and is presented with very lifelike impact and energy. This is with settings of Q1 30, xQ1 5 or 10, SFS 140 but the XX setting are not really the point. The point is that relative change to bass quality and realism has been staggering. In absolute terms I never expected the old model Duo's like mine could do any of this but they do.

My apologies right up front for saying this but I think particularly with respect to bass quality, by far the greater part of the solution lies within the NOS1 itself. Speakers / amps and XX settings can be "tuned" to tighten bass response but i'm sure now that this is working round the issue by applying filters to tame aspects of the NOS1 reproduction in this area. I won't go into the details of the internal mechanisms here but there are simple rationals behind what is happening that have worked in practice beyond any expectation.

I know this may be considered a rather heretical view, and expect it may go down like a diver's boot, because it questions the baseline we have all been working to. I'm pretty positive about this though and think a lot of time could be spent fixing the issue in software and in other components.

As always I'm very happy to discuss the rationals behind this here or off-line.

Regards,

Nick.

[Scroobius]

Peter knows that I too have been making changes to NOS1 as Nick has been making. But HANDS UP the first problem here (as Peter very rightly points out) is that neither Nick or I have the means to measure the results of what we are doing. But the latest (very very simple) change brought about one of the most significant changes I have heard in my system. In fact so significant was the change that I could hear it instantly from behind the speakers and much of what I heard was in the bass region. AND (to these ears) it was all for the better - very much better. There is only one thing in hi-fi I really trust and that is my ears (OK it may take days and days to be absolutely sure but still they have not let me down yet). My opinion (without any measurement to back it up) is that that amount of change with such a simple change just cannot happen unless some fundamental restriction has just been removed - i.e. it had to be an improvement (OK I know I cannot measure it). Also I have to point out that it is not just one simple change it is almost certainly cumulative working with other prior changes. So not that simple after all ha ha.

But this weekend I have made a fundamental change to the layout of speakers in my room (Nick I have not told you about this yet) and it has led to a very substantial improvement in bass. It is clear now that there significant colouration in the bass in this room which has been substantially improved for the first time here. But now there are more changes I can make to the speakers to improve bass further which I shall be making later today. AND of course I shall be making changes to SFS etc. but all in good time.

So getting back on topic there is far more to the bass story I think.

I will try lower latency settings and post the results. It will be interesting because I have always preferred low latency settings in the past but have not spent any time on them recently due to other changes being made in my system.

Cheers

Paul

[AlainGr]

I tried with the suggested SFS and I would not swear that I hear an improvement (because of expectation bias), but I feel LF have improved. It would require longer listening to determine the real merit of it, but I can say at least that the results are very interesting !

Alain

[Scroobius]

I tried the low latency settings with SFS = 4 and I can not hand on heart say that I can hear any difference. This is consistent with what I have found before changing latency in Windows 8 seems to have little effect in this system. Certainly in W7 there was a significant difference with low latency settings being preferred by these ears 

But changing speaker location - well that is other matter but maybe for another post.

Cheers

Paul

[manisandher]

Haha, as usual, I'm away from home when a new XX idea comes up. But I'll try the new settings as soon as I get back over the weekend.

Actually, I can try them right now... but only with my Win7 laptop, Audioquest Dragonfly DAC and cr*ppy Beats headphones. Will try them anyway though...

Mani.

[GerardA]

Well it's so easy to try so I did it too.
Jackpot for me!
I just had XXHE working properly again on Win8.
After the first excitement I felt there was a bit of sameness leading to uninterestedness. The high's needed a bit more freshness, more aliveness. Everything sounded smooth and undistorted but agressive guitars don't sound like that. Bass as always was less impressive then what I can get from some vinyl.
With SFS changed from 12 to 4 I feel the bass has become strong as supposed too and still refined and tunefull.
This evening been playing disco-hits from the 80's ( ).
The rhytm is perfect, timing and volume too. And what's important the low bass you can feel in your stomach while dancing. (Mostly the children, but then on music from the 80's, unimaginable before).
What I like along the strong tunefull bass is the fresh highs that make it sound alive and spacious.
After two hours of this music I still did not turn it off...

[CoenP]

You're right on Gerard!

I messed around with my speakerfilter setup which gave a few usefull insights, but couldn't get it to sound as I believed possible.

Next to a lot of small stuff one thing that REALLY helped was changing the IMDisks (now only playbackdrive) format from FAT32 to NTFS. The clustersize does matter, but not nearly as much as this simple change.

Now these new "controversial"  settings also work out very fine with me. I just experienced a very very very low punch base drum on Patricia Barber's "Regular Pleasures" track and all perfectly in sync with the music. Also tonally very even and a refined presentation of details. I did not hear this before on WIN8.

I'm even considering a move to win8 now  !

regards, Coen

[AlainGr]

Hi Coen,

What is the cluster size you use with NTFS ?

Regards,

Alain
PS: Did you try ExFat also, with 2048k clusters ?

[CoenP]

Hi Coen,

What is the cluster size you use with NTFS ?

Regards,

Alain
PS: Did you try ExFat also, with 2048k clusters ?

I did not experiment with nfts clustersize yet. On fat32 i found the small clusters (2k min for a 6gig ramdisk) a bit thin/sharp and the higher values (up to 64k) a bit thick/slow. Not a really big difference. The 4k standard value seems a good compromise.

I did try exfat but it sounded maybe even more unnatural. Also the AWE driver messed negatively with the sound. All this is rather subtile though, but it is able to annoy me real fast!

On my system the ticket that made a significant difference for the better was selecting NTFS.

Regards, Coen

[AlainGr]

Thanks

Alain