I'm surprised it worked

[acg]

Ok. I wouldn't know how "hash improved" bass sounds.

And to be really honest, what description is that ?
Of course it is not important at all, but hash improved highs I would understand right away.

Peter

Peter hi I agree, more likely to hear reduced hash is the highs not in the bass. I was typing a little too fast on a tablet  . Sorry for the confusion.

Regards,

Nick.

Nick, I think Peter is making a funny...instead of "hash" think of its equivalent words...mull, ganja, weed.

[Nick]

Ok. I wouldn't know how "hash improved" bass sounds.

And to be really honest, what description is that ?
Of course it is not important at all, but hash improved highs I would understand right away.

Peter

Peter hi I agree, more likely to hear reduced hash is the highs not in the bass. I was typing a little too fast on a tablet  . Sorry for the confusion.

Regards,

Nick.

Nick, I think Peter is making a funny...instead of "hash" think of its equivalent words...mull, ganja, weed.

Ha! I was a bit slow there.

Got you 

Nick.

[PeterSt]

Nick, I think Peter is making a funny...instead of "hash" think of its equivalent words...mull, ganja, weed.

And what you for sure won't believe is that in my last post I accidentally typed hasj instead of hash. Really so. Look at your keyboard.
Thought to make fun out of that, but didn't think it was appropriate. Should have done it ! haha.

Best regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

What you have described is the sound is sort of consistent with the PC's disk subsystem being improved or in this case perhaps removed from the replay chain.

Hey Nick,

I should start this with a "with all due respect", but since I'm not English, and not American either, you wouldn't trust that. Especially not from me. Still think that gist is deep down somewhere.

My real thought ? what BS is this now. Ah, much better eh ?
So please help me where you get this from or what you're heading for. And as you will know from previous times, once in a while I deem it necessary to come up with such a thing. But ready of course to receive your real and thoughtful explanations.

But again re reading your first post I think the laptop is still reading its disk but there are newly introduced SPDIF and upsampleing steps in the data path.

Same thing;
*If* we are going to express our thoughts it better has some fundament, and I don't see this, nor do I see the reason for coming up with something like this.

So I am sorry, but if I read something in here it has to make at least some sense, and at the moment I don't see that. So make me see if possible !

Thanks,
Peter

[PeterSt]

As to what Jim "is" ...

It may be a bit hard to see and possibly requires some introduction. So just in case :

Yes, what you have read undoubtedly implied some frowning. Using a million tools for all kind of stuff nobody has ever seen or thought of. And the careful reader noticed that all was mentioned but XXHighEnd.

So Jim is not only from another planet, he also *is* on another planet. He does all differently from I'd say all of us, and mind you, being from the other planet is only the conclusion of that.

Jim's ways come down to using everything and all that is related to upsampling and filtering, mostly offline. So, convert the music files in advance, store that on disk and play it from there. Indeed a million combinations of it may exist, if you cascade the numerous tools for that, in different combinations and sequences. Say a hobby in itself. And totally nothing wrong with that. It is only that "we" are not used to that because we already (think we) have our consistent one and only means.

Apart from me thinking it is good and nice to know that people approaching fine playback like this also exist (I know of a few more btw), we can now also see a better context of my previous post; Now suddenly this is not about Nick and possible agreement on "indeed, where out of the blue came that from ?!" (which was my stipulation there), but merely about :

How ever would we "dare" to point out an additional upsampling step and such things. I mean, as being detrimental.
Or even better : How would we dare to discuss SQ while by the farthest of the universe we will not be able to know what Jim receives for sound and SQ. And imply questioning it.

Nah, I must not overdo it. Of course we will question that. So Nick is in his good rights there. And oh, not that this was brought forward in any harsh way; the contrary. But we should clearly see that, at least in my view, there should not be any discussion about this because it can not exist. And, if we attempt, the first thing what happens is that we show to be doubtful about solutions concerned. I don't think this is allowed. Not in this most special case. And this is why I tried to elaborate somewhat about Jim's ways.

Please notice : working out how clocks run into eachother and what possibly to do to solve that, is a complete different matter. Just a technical thing and not related to SQ at all. Of course, in the end it is, but it is nothing to discuss because we CAN NOT. We can not because I can't imagine more difference between say all of us and Jim.

And Jim, I love such possibilities worked out like you did. Also I am very sure that I am not the only one, for those who can grasp to some degree what the importance of connections as such can be. And what victory when something you thought of, but never saw done, actually works.
I come from "movies" and the DVD upscaling era. First in hardware, later in software. Connections as such are crucial, as is the sequence of all in virtually endless knots.

All I say Jim, is don't let you hold back from a couple of strange posts. The contrary ... Love it.

Peter

[Nick]

I should start this with a "with all due respect", but since I'm not English, and not American either, you wouldn't trust that. Especially not from me. Still think that gist is deep down somewhere.

My real thought ? what BS is this now. Ah, much better eh ?
So please help me where you get this from or what you're heading for. And as you will know from previous times, once in a while I deem it necessary to come up with such a thing. But ready of course to receive your real and thoughtful explanations.

No problem Peter resect taken and you view understood.

So, the PC as a music replay device is broken period.

There still are mechanisms that link management of data in the PC which has been [is being ?] considered the data domain (think the school of thought that say it does not matter it just numbers being moved about) to the sound coming out of a DAC. Well how data is processed at hardware level in the PC DOES matter. In fact it more than matters, every single PC / DAC combo I have used for 8 years and those that I have herd elsewhere have had the same signature. I know now that this comes from the PC. BUT how data is processed and the timing of operations in the PC don't matter, it's just data that's what people would have you believe ?

Well if it's just data and how it is moved about doesn't matter then I need to get my ears replaced. In 8 years of listening to computer audio I have never heard such a change in sound quality. Reproduction now sounds more like music with real people enjoying playing together. It the single largest change in my system since moving to computer audio... And not finished yet 

It's too early for detailed theorising on line.  Although I will own up to having my nose in a too many very detailed papers. I am pretty sure that I understand the processes that impact sound within the PC now and to a point that it's possible to approach different elements of the PC with predictable outcomes. The element now being worked on is the disk subsystem as I said above and boy if these changes are not possible because it's "just data" I am delighted to live in a BS world and keep the sound quality changes thank you  .

The one point that I still cannot really pin point is how the linkage from the PC into the DAC audio domain happens. I have a good idea but it would be a great thing to understand this because the PC may be tuned even more or might is be possible to make the DAC immune ?

As mentioned a couple of times elsewhere the performance of the PC for music replay will impact PCIe USB and FireWire interfaces. IMHO this is not about the simply superb NOS1a.

Regards,

Nick.

[Nick]

Peter,

To me more specific as you asked above. Jim's first set up uses disk access to read the music as it is played. The second using USB pass through does not read music from disk on the PC that is playing. I am by no means saying this is the main factor that would impact sound but is could be very relevant.

Regards,

Nick.

[PeterSt]

Hi Nick,

Thank you for all this.

Well, of course I can see your general line of thinking, which didn't require this explanation/description. It is only that I don't see the relation, not without your description and not with it. And so ...

Jim's first set up uses disk access to read the music as it is played. The second using USB pass through does not read music from disk on the PC that is playing. I am by no means saying this is the main factor that would impact sound but is could be very relevant.

First of all you are still talking SQ while I think I just asked you to do not (read back Jim's post OP - did he really ?).

Secondly your mentioned/implied "no disk access" isn't a hoot related to anything because we are doing that all or do not do that all, depending on the setup. But maybe you want to start a topic about it, then we can discuss it from there.

So by now I better say that this is highly off topic in here. I hope you can agree !

Peter

[Nick]

So by now I better say that this is highly off topic in here. I hope you can agree !

Yes,
My appologies Jim for going off at a tangent.

Regards,

Nick.

[PeterSt]

We are all enthusiasts Nick. No worries.

[Jim_F]

> Nick,
>
> You wrote:
>
> > But again re reading your first post I think the laptop is still
> > reading its disk but there are newly introduced SPDIF and upsampleing
> > steps in the data path.
>
> I would suspect that in fact it's not using the disk at all
> (that is, on the laptop that's "bridging" the RME Babyface USB
> input to the Phasure NOS-1a USB output via the built-in
> Windows 7 playthrough capability).

I can confirm that Windows 7 playthrough produces no disk activity at all.  The disk activity LED on the laptop stays completely dark (once Windows has had a chance to settle down after I've stopped using the keyboard and/or mouse and closed the screen).

I had to disable the CD/DVD ROM drive in the laptop to make this determination, because before I did that the disk activity LED was blinking steadily about once a second (a Google search of this phenomenon suggested that it was because Windows 7 is polling the CD/DVD drive to check for an inserted disk once a second, and sure enough disabling the drive in Device Manager did indeed stop the blinking).

During the course of trying to stop the disk activity LED from blinking, I opened the service manager and went through the list of Windows services, stopping as many as Windows would allow me to.  I left the Windows Audio services running, and the Phasure NOS-1 service (and services that it depends on), and I also left the Multimedia Class service running, for whatever that's worth.

I did all this while the audio was still playing.

Interestingly, since stopping all those services, I have not noticed a single playback glitch of the sort I had previously been attributing to buffer over/underflows.

So maybe this is a viable long-term arrangement after all.  I'd still hesitate to recommend it to anybody else, because the stability of the whole collection of components may depend on the particular devices being used.  But I have to say, I think I've stumbled into some remakably good sound with this setup.  ;->  (I think it's the best I've heard from the NOS-1.)

Windows playthrough does seem to be surprisngly stable -- I've left the system playing overnight (with the volume turned all the way down ;-> ) and next morning it's still playing -- no freezes or crashes.

It's even possible to unplug one or both USB audio interfaces (the Babyface and/or the Phasure), and then plug them back in and have the audio resume automatically.  (Though one thing to be aware of is that when using Windows playthrough the source and destination devices are automatically selected as the default Windows recording and playback devices.  So Windows sounds -- the bonk-bonk when you disconnect or reconnect a USB device -- get played through the Phasure, and the stereo system, if that's connected while the other USB device is disconnected or reconnected.)

I haven't had to reboot the laptop since I started all this.

(By the way, a Microsoft programmer named Larry Osterman is the guy who wrote the code for the Windows 7 playthrough feature -- he calls it "Capture Monitor".
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2009/08/04/a-few-of-my-favorite-win7-sound-features-capture-monitor-aka-listen-to.aspx )

[PeterSt]

But Jim ...
This is how now *we* are on another planet. So you know, we start Playback through XXHighEnd and have all the "features" you mentioned, in quadruple. Don't need to do a thing for it.

Say that this is the other side of the coin of my last posts.
So welcome to Earth ?

Peter

PS: And you *will* have disk activity, just because I tell you so. But this is so few that you can't see it through the disk light. Still it is really not related, if compared with playing music from that disk. But this too ... try XXHighEnd. All arranged for and nobody on Earth will doubt *that*. But this is also how such conversation can look really odd. Using a NOS1a and all, but does not know about it at all. And I am fine with that. As said, we must understand your world, but you ours just the same. No, not must as such, but you get the gist.

[Jim_F]

Peter,

You wrote:

> . . .try XXHighEnd. . .

Well, of course, I **have** tried XXHighEnd.  I've purchased two licenses for it over the past several years, the first for 0.9z-6-1 (I think it was, even before I bought the Phasure DAC), and more recently a fresh license for 1.186a.

I've also had two licenses for HQPlayer (first 2.8.4.3 and more recently 3.6.1.1).

So I'm not unfamiliar with XXHE.  All issues of sound quality aside, you've got to admit that foobar2000 is more convenient to use than most of the alternatives.  I got into computer audio after the Winamp age, I've never been tempted by JRiver Media Center, nor have I ever been tempted to switch to a Mac for the sake of Amarra, Audirvana, or PureVinyl.

;->

[PeterSt]

Hi again Jim,

But this too ... try XXHighEnd.

Nah, this was too Dutch ! and not even the best of it. I could have said "But this too ... now look at XXHighEnd". And then it took me 20 seconds to see that the "now" was lacking at first or otherwise you would have said "but of course I looked into (!) XXHighEnd.

All IOW, of course I know you did. I only tried to sort of counteract your sort of stuggles by means of one Play button. I mean, it is you who started to lay out what's all necessary ... So again, "we" (other readers) would not understand without some explanation and I thus did just that. Ok, tried that.

The sub note is and remains - if you, Jim, for example start about shutting down such and so services for the better, everybody will say "huh ? what services then ?? - can we do more than what's done already ?". So people must understand your context, or planet. But the other way around just counts the same ...

Peter

[Jim_F]

> > The trick to tying them together was the discovery that
> > the freeware DAW Audacity. . . has a feature called
> > "software playthrough" that lets you turn on monitoring
> > and feed audio from your selected recording device. . .
> > to your selected playback device. . .
>
> I just discovered, quite by accident, that Windows 7
> will do "playthrough" from one sound device to another
> automatically, without the need of other software. . .
> If you check the box "Listen to this device" you can then
> select any other device in the "Playback through this device"
> drop-down.

In case anybody's interested, and for what it's worth, I've discovered a third way of bridging two different USB audio devices on a single computer, and this third way seems (so far at least) to work better, with fewer audible glitches, than either of the above.

There's a kind of software that functions as a real-time (i.e., streaming input to output, not just processing files in a DAW) host for VST (Steinberg "Virtual Studio" DLL) plugins -- i.e., a software "effects rack".  There are a number of these programs, both free and for money:
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2011/05/16/bpb-freeware-studio-best-free-vst-host-applications/
http://www.sonicprojects.ch/obx/freevsthost.html
But the first one I tried out, and that I've continued to use, seems to do the job fine: Cantabile 2.0 Lite. That's the free edition of the software -- Cantabile 2.0 Solo and Cantabile 2.0 Performer are the paid-for versions, with capabilities I don't need.  All these versions include the ability to use MIDI instruments, but as I'm not a musician, I haven't paid much attention to any of that.
http://www.cantabilesoftware.com/
(There's a demo of Cantabile Lite on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msOqxC5hPPA ).

Now Cantabile (or any other VST host I know of) doesn't, in and of itself, allow you to "bridge" two different sound cards (or USB or Firewire interfaces or ADC/DACs, or what have you).  You pick a **single** device's driver, and from that single device's selection of input and output channels you can choose the VST host's inputs and outputs.  (This makes perfect sense from a clocking point of view.)

However, it turns out there's a very interesting (and free) VST plug-in called Voxengo Recorder:
http://www.voxengo.com/product/recorder/
Voxengo Recorder sits in a VST chain and allows you to divert the audio stream into a file (hence the name "Recorder") **or** to "break the rules" by diverting the audio stream to a different audio device on the computer.  While doing this it also continues to pass its audio input on to the next VST plugin in the chain.

So the bottom line is that I can use Voxengo Recorder plugged into an "FX rack" inside Cantabile 2.0 Lite and bridge USB input from the RME Babyface to USB output on the Phasure NOS-1.  This is all happening at 24/192.

Unlike with the Windows 7 "listen to this device" playthrough feature, I can pick specific drivers (ASIO for the Babyface, though Voxengo Recorder is restricted to MME drivers) and I can play with buffer sizes (maximizing both the size and number of buffers, since I don't care about latency at all).  And this does seem to reduce the glitch frequency below what I was getting with Windows 7 playthrough.

As an aside, I've also expanded my experimental playground from the two-computer system I described in my earlier posts in this thread to a **three**-computer system.  The playback computer (running foobar2000, feeding an RME Fireface 400 clocked by an Antelope Isochrone) remains as before, and the laptop feeding the Phasure NOS-1 (but now using Cantabile 2.0 Lite and Voxengo Recorder to bridge the RME Babyface to the NOS-1) remains the same as before, but I've got a new computer in the loop.  The ADAT S/MUX4 (from an Apogee Big Ben being fed dual-wire AES from a dCS Purcell hardware upsampler) that was going directly to the RME Babyface now goes first to an RME Fireface UFX connected by Firewire 400 to the dual-core Windows XP machine I'm typing this on.  This third machine is also running Cantabile 2.0 Lite and is taking 24/192 from the Fireface UFX's ADAT 1 input and sending it back out to the Fireface UFX's ADAT 2 output (the RME Fireface UFX has 4 channels of 24/192 [or 8 channels of 24/96, or 16 channels 24/48] over ADAT, but only if you're using the UFX over Firewire; if you're using it over USB you're restricted to half as many ADAT channels).  The Fireface UFX sends 24/192 ADAT S/MUX4 optical on to the Babyface (that's sitting on top of it), and so on out to the Phasure NOS-1 as before.

In this middle computer, inside a Cantabile 2.0 Lite FX rack, I've been playing with two plugins -- the Fabfilter Pro-Q 2 parametric equalizer (just the demo version so far) followed by iZotope Ozone 4 (just for the MBIT+ dither).  I've been experimenting with various dither settings in iZotope, at the 24-bit, 20-bit, and even 16-bit levels, with and without various strengths of noise shaping.  I'm planning to try out a couple of 16-bit 192kHz NOS dacs with this arrangement -- an Audial Model S USB (Philips TDA-1541A) and an MHDT Labs Stockholm 2 (Burr-Brown PCM56).  Noise shaping over a 192kHz bandwidth is an interesting proposition, if the noise-shaping curve actually takes advantage of the full bandwidth.  Details of this as it might apply to MBIT+ are nonexistent, but when the algorithm was "MegaBitMax" and was part of Alexey Lukin's "ExtraBit Mastering Processor" (before he licensed it to iZotope), Lukin claimed "A new version of ExtraBit Mastering Processor 2.0 has been released. This version features special optimized dithering for high sampling rate modes, such as 96 kHz, 192 kHz, and others. Try our state-of-art dithering to 8 bits at high sampling rate and you'll never return to 16 bits.   ".
http://audio.rightmark.org/lukin/
(He was making a little joke there about 8 bits, but the possibilities at 16 bits, with a 16-bit NOS DAC running at 192 kHz, are more interesting.)

John Stuart (of Boothroyd-Stuart; i.e., Meridian Audio) also remarked in a 1996 paper, "This document shows that a combination of noise-shaping and a new pre-/de-emphasis characteristic for 96kHz (88.2kHz) applications, can result in an effective addition of up to 7 bits to the channel capacity.  For linear PCM systems operating at high sample rates, this technology is important, it ensures e.g. that a 16-bit channel operating at 96kHz can provide an effective dynamic range equivalent to 23 bits in a normal 48kHz PCM channel."
https://www.meridian-audio.com/meridian-uploads/ara/dvd_96k.pdf
Presumably this works even better at 192kHz, if the noise shaper is designed to take advantage of the full bandwidth (as MBIT+ **might** be if Alexey Lukin didn't "dumb it down" when he turned it over to iZotope).

Oh, one last thing about VST hosts -- I've also successfully used DX plugins in Cantabile 2.0 Lite, via something called DXShell:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=177538
To get my DX plugins to work in Cantabile, I did indeed first have to run the supplied shell2vst tool, which finds all the DX plugins installed on the computer and generates a whole set of corresponding "shell VST" plugins that can then be treated as ordinary VST plugins by a VST host such as Cantabile.

All the above is for Windows.  I'm afraid I'm not a Mac kind of guy.  ;->