And now my sound is SCARY

[PeterSt]

Now I see that you used Windows Boot Device. I can get there but no idea how to put Windows in the Ram, so better I wait for your instructions.

Hi there Juan and all,

This is the big problem ... those instructions can not exist because they are way way out of "our" experience. And oh, please keep in mind that I am even talking about myself here, the one who got it all running. It is out of space ... or from another planet.

Think like this :

After very much preparation (which includes months of work 2 years or so back) I sat down for it again first thing on Saturday one weekend back. Btw I thought to pick it up again because I mentioned it for a reason I forgot in Rakesh's topic. Know a bit more again by now and such - blahblah. Catching some breath Saturday 7pm with nothing working yet. Sunday 7am continuing with a slightly different approach, remembering that what I attempted Saturday failed for the same reason two years ago.
Sunday 5pm or so a booted the OS from RAM ...

While carefully writing down on paper the steps I applied (and attempted), on Monday I first started to wrote that out in a Word Document because you know, the procedure is too long to ever remember (say it is a full day of applying commands, once you know what to do). That writing took me a sheer 4 hours. I ended at page 7 ...
Throughout that writing I had several times the thought of "no wait, this can't be right - must have been the other way around" etc. etc.
So I should have a document for myself of 7 pages that will let be do it again if necessary. And the document is not telling about opening command prompts in elevated mode and privileges and Normal OS Mode vs MinOS mode and when and such and this and that. It could be 40 pages if I had to explain it to the unknowledged ...

The remainder 6 hours or so of that Monday were about installing XXHighEnd and memory sizes and ... etc. etc. Look :

Requirements for Windows OS:

"To: How big is Windows 10 on DVD and HDD?
»» x32 (on the DVD ~ 2.5 GB, after installation on the hard disk drive ~ 9.0 GB)
»» x64 (on the DVD ~ 3.5 GB, after installation on the hard disk drive ~11 GB) "

So, Peter,  even with 16GB of Ram, you may be able to pull it off, but just about....The reality being that you really need another 8-16Gb of Ram. You are a worthy hero for a twenty-fist century sequel to Mapes Dodge's 'Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates.'

So yes, I can just as well say that Rakesh knows his stuff. Am I confusing ? I hope not. Meanwhile though it is a nice example of the other way around :

Of course all runs in 16GB of RAM but it takes 30 minutes of sitting back myself and staring at XXHighEnd parameters on how to do it and whether it requires a new one for something etc. ... which appeared not necessary.
30 minutes of thinking FOR ME. No mistake, I am not implying that I am so good at this. I do say that out of all I should be the very first and maybe the only one because it is my software. But still it needs 30 minutes of thinking and reasoning. And trying other sizes. And finding means to REsize. Etc. etc. etc. ...

This is not for normal human beings and it is only for me because I am totally crazy and eager and persistent and ...

... and because I know how to always present this :

A PC around it.


Maybe some of you remember how I ~ two years ago was able to make a backup in 2 minutes and a restore in 1 minute. This is based on this same thing. It was meant to be shipped with the XXHighEnd PC and how to provide backup means of the OS which is tweaked at 500 topics for W8 (300 for W7). How I wanted to have such a thing for everybody ... but which can not work because of driver stuff.

With the danger that not many can follow me, this is a bit of the same problem; I can make copies of that base hdd, sell it for a nice price with even a free W10 Preview etc. on it (actually how we use it today), but I see all kinds of problems happening when such a live OS is put in a different PC from the one I created it on. And then what ? then I am answering questions for the rest of my life while you in the mean time lost even your grey hair.

Anyway this is how this originally was in the wrong board (Sound Quality) and how I now moved it to the XXHighEnd PC board. But not sure at all yet, at this moment.
This is also how I said that Gerard could have it and Johan not. Or maybe.

Peter

PS: For fun, below the end of my document towards the end of page 7.

[acg]

Peter, is the OS booting from/to RAM persistent?  That is, once it is done, it is done?  Or does the process need redoing every time you reboot?  I'm just trying to get my head around basically what it is exactly that you have achieved.

If I had to guess I would say no, you don't have to re-do it every reboot or after every shutdown unless you are relying on the W10 reboot procedure that saves stuff to RAM for quicker reboots to prepare the OS in ram.  Easier to say and talk about than to write.

But kudos.  I also spent a couple of days trying to get this done a year or two ago but was unsuccessful.

Oh, and I am offering to check your procedure here if you like...haha...serious.

[PeterSt]

Hi Anthony - Very justified questions. See next post I just prepared when I found yours.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Some additinal info to make it somewhat more "believable" :

While it could be THE achievement of my XXHighEnd Life to have the OS running in RAM and now no single device attached to the PC any more, we should be aware of this :

All this won't make any sense when it would be a one time exercise. I mean, being able to boot from RAM which takes you an hour to next hope that all keeps on running for the next month and all changes applied being disappeared after that ...

To understand what I mean : If people use XXHighEnd as how it is supposed to be and they use a RAMDisk for not only playback but also for XXHighEnd, they will notice that changes can be applied to Settings and that they are preserved. Of course, half of you does not know that and takes his own measures for this (or not and lose the settings), but ... As we know, a bit of music playback should also come with some comfort, if possible.

So when I had this working for real this Monday (last week) the biggest challenge came about : how to make it WORKABLE. How in the word to make changes to an environment like we are used to (be that the OS itself or be that XXHighEnd settings and all we are used to), when the OS and everything runs from RAM.
Of course I could funnily quote some sentence from Rakesh again, but that's not really the idea (plus I am not Bill Gates indeed).

In between the lines I can tell about an additional big hurdle : MinOS. Veeeeery nice, but nothing works in there (but sound). So whatever could be of some theoretical help from the OS itself - no-go.

So this is what I got running last Sunday at 5pm or so. All now works completely normal. ALL.
It will need XXHighEnd 2.03 to control this all in good fashion. Like "Hey you fool, you are going to shut down the OS but you never saved the settings to permanent storage; are you going to attach that or what ?!".

Or the more simple task : Just reboot and find the system rebooting in RAM Mode completely automatically.

Peter

[PeterSt]

I could also add this :

Supposed you have changed a few things and settings need to be saved, then a reboot will take about 2 minutes.
When no settings need to be saved, it also takes these same 2 minutes (to make clear how it is NOT working - haha).

A quite large part of these 2 minutes (maybe over 30 seconds ?) springs from how Windows 10 deals with a dual boot (which is what this is - never mind you saw 3 boot options). This means was introduced by Windows 8, but only the cold boot takes this "larger route". With Windows 10 this always happens - at least with this 10074 build.
So for recognition : such a dual boot now always takes two subsequent boots and I can not help that.

Peter

[acg]

Some additinal info to make it somewhat more "believable" :

So this is what I got running last Sunday at 5pm or so. All now works completely normal. ALL.
It will need XXHighEnd 2.03 to control this all in good fashion. Like "Hey you fool, you are going to shut down the OS but you never saved the settings to permanent storage; are you going to attach that or what ?!".

Or the more simple task : Just reboot and find the system rebooting in RAM Mode completely automatically.

Peter

Well this sounds absolutely fantastic!  If I understand you properly there is no easy way of getting past the pages of instructions that many of us will not be able to do without considerable help, but once we get there XXHE should operate pretty much as normal.  

If so, I can see why you think you will spend forever answering questions about why things don't work when/if we try to get this operational ourselves.  Can you think of any way around that?

Cheers,

Anthony

[PeterSt]

Can you think of any way around that?

That is the sort of sad thing - No. But maybe you made an unintended combination, Anthony. So doing it yourself I regard out of the question (just BECAUSE it will be way over the head of most). But supposed the HDD can be provided, then you'll have this :

but once we get there XXHE should operate pretty much as normal.

So this is quite crucial and the anser to that is a full YES. You won't even be able to see that all runs from RAM, unless you see your HDD laying on the floor and think

There's one other thing not mentioned, though logical because of the whole objective : all anticipates no devices in the PC indeed. Thus, music is behind the LAN.

Lastly, all I can guarantee at this moment is that it will work fluently for all with the XXHighEnd PC. Outside that I just don't know (yet).

Peter

[PeterSt]

Last thing for explanation from my own initiative :

At booting you insert the normal HDD, or USB3 stick with bootable OS on it. Or USB3 disk. Etc.
Once booted, remove the medium.

Want to shut down ? then put it back in again.
Logic : You need it at the next boot anyway, so put it in which meanwhile allows for saving the changes (which goes automatically).

Furthermore :

Boot into that normal medium (HDD etc.) in normal fashion (the BASE version you saw in the screenshot) and you can apply each change to the OS you like. Reboot and you will find it applied in the RAM version.

Or

Be booted in the RAM version, let XXHighEnd 2.03 give the command to open the normal HDD (etc.) after you inserted it, and change files etc. "behind the  back" of the RAM version. Reboot and you will find those changed files in the RAM version.

Dizzy ?

Peter

[Gerard]

Sounds Like foodoo   

[PeterSt]

I had a post here I didn't like and which wasn't relevant to anything anyway.

That was because I misread something. But it was a response to this, I now will re-attempt :

Still, I do not understand why this should have implications for sound quality. XXhighend makes minimal requirements of Windows OS so I imagine both CPU draw and power consumption are negligible.

Rakesh, of course you can think what you want. But I am telling you again that your ideas are 180 degrees the (opposite) direction of what's "main stream" these days.
Please stop doubting things publically while you did not even fire up XXHighEnd one time (at least that's what I think).

I can see how this would change practical aspects of building an 'audio pc' but I doubt it ought to make any ostensible change to sound let alone make it 'scary,'

... and take it from me (please) that you could be making a fool of yourself by expressing such a thing. I am saying this in good spirit !

Regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

How about that? Use a very fast SSD in PCIe slot that has Windows OS/XXHighend/Galleries/Playback in one place but with amazing transfer speeds to transfer everything at quicksilver speed to Ramdisk at boot-up and everything works at lightning speed from there on.

Is this so? That would be most remarkable! Please say it is...

No, it is not. Booting may be faster (who cares) and the remainder doesn't make a hair of a difference;
All was optimized already with zero I/O during loading of tracks and during playback (LAN I/O during loading Yes, but that remains).

Peter

[CoenP]

Last thing for explanation from my own initiative :

At booting you insert the normal HDD, or USB3 stick with bootable OS on it. Or USB3 disk. Etc.
Once booted, remove the medium.

Want to shut down ? then put it back in again.
Logic : You need it at the next boot anyway, so put it in which meanwhile allows for saving the changes (which goes automatically).

That's a simple instruction even I can remember. This sounds like a fantastic option!
 
I was guessing you used the Music PC as a "diskless boot server" and the XXPC as "diskless client". For making that work you also need administrator level Windows skills, especially with an unsupported version. I guess both solutions have some similarities.

regards, Coen

[Leo]

I will use very short sentences. To make it very hard for Rakesh to misunderstand. However hard he tries. I saw that Peter had taken out the HDD with W10, the OS. XXHighend  played from a PC with no hhd connected. What this remarkable step adds to the sound quality is hard to tell for me. Because it was the first time I heard the upgrades (NOS1a, the Blaxius, Clairixa, the Orelo's). And they were combined with this hdd-less development. What each of those improvements adds to the overall sound I therefore don't know. And sorry, I don't even have a theory about it. The combination however was very, very good. And as said before, with some music scary, really scary.

[rakeshpoorun]

I had a post here I didn't like and which wasn't relevant to anything anyway.

That was because I misread something. But it was a response to this, I now will re-attempt :

Still, I do not understand why this should have implications for sound quality. XXhighend makes minimal requirements of Windows OS so I imagine both CPU draw and power consumption are negligible.

Rakesh, of course you can think what you want. But I am telling you again that your ideas are 180 degrees the (opposite) direction of what's "main stream" these days.
Please stop doubting things publically while you did not even fire up XXHighEnd one time (at least that's what I think).

I can see how this would change practical aspects of building an 'audio pc' but I doubt it ought to make any ostensible change to sound let alone make it 'scary,'

... and take it from me (please) that you could be making a fool of yourself by expressing such a thing. I am saying this in good spirit !

Regards,
Peter

Hi Peter,

Of course I take your comments in the "good spirits," in the spirit indeed in which they were proffered, no doubt.

In some ways, if I may give myself some  credit here, about a month ago, I more or less imagined a solution which is indeed the one you seem on the verge of making reality, when I wrote:

So I understand the decision to have your playback motherboard with only the processor, ram (and I imagine your Silverstone EC04-P card must be located in a PCIe slot on this motherboard). So the Playback side is reduced to its bare minimum and separated from everything else, whether it be storage or system disks? This is a very purist approach indeed and fits in with your objective which is to make sure that there are no external demands being made on the generally acknowledged "dirty" PC power supply.

It seems to me that this is probably the most important design decision you made in your Music PC. If there is one aspect of your Music PC that I would like to be able to afford to implement, assuming I had a clear understanding of how to implement it, this is the one I would go for.


Best regards
Rakesh

As I said, I investigated that possibility later on, and I had made a mental note of finding just such a solution in the future...I am delighted that thanks to your non human attributes, as you put it, you have been able to resolve this conundrum of the "audio pc," where the pursuit of a minimalist set-up comes into conflict with the very nature of the personal computer.

So many thanks from me, and no doubt many will join me, for the remarkable result you have achieved although I suspect that it will be a little while before a boot-up XXHighend USB (or the like) will become available.

In the same post as the one above, I went on to consider the implications of such a solution:

the 2 PCs connected with a direct LAN connection.

...

Alain

If you have your OS disk on a separate motherboard, then of course it needs to be over a LAN. Is there a minimum throughput of data transfer that one should aim for in a LAN? This is a rather important question if one is thinking ahead in selecting the motherboard as most of these come with some form of inbuilt LAN, going from what I understand to be the run of the mill versions to 2Gbe, 4Gbe and 10Gbase-T...


Best regards
Rakesh

I imagine that this question, in due course, will now become more pertinent.

It is interesting that Intel has recently launched their 14nm  socket CPU which has integrated 10Gbase Lan and consumes only 45W at load even though it offers 8 cores/16 threads (only 32 pcie lanes but that will do and supports max 128GB memory). This could be the ideal solution CPU wise for that next generation "audio pc."

Again, what a wonderful achievement, Peter. I take my proverbial hat off to you.

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Leo,

My first post here was tinged with maybe some sarcasm and Peter suggested that I think it over. So I did. Below is the heavily edited result.
 
From your visit at Peter's which lasted several hours, you handed us this profound piece of remarkable insight:
 

...
What this remarkable step adds to the sound quality is hard to tell for me. Because it was the first time I heard the upgrades (NOS1a, the Blaxius, Clairixa, the Orelo's). And they were combined with this hdd-less development. What each of those improvements adds to the overall sound I therefore don't know. And sorry, I don't even have a theory about it. The combination however was very, very good. And as said before, with some music scary, really scary.

Now I do not doubt for one moment that Peter is so well tuned to the many characteristics of his system that he can instantly attribute changes in sound quality and improvements to the last change that he has effectuated.
 
So the other changes that had happened since your last visit were:
1. NOS1 to NOS1a
2. Use of Blaxius interconnect
3. Use of Clairixa USB cable
4. Change from whatever was before to new Orelo speakers
5. Other changes that may have been relevant but not visible, such as better electricity on the day and god knows what else
 
Well, Leo, you could distinguish among the different levels and characters that these many individual changes have made to focus on the core improvement brought about by the implementation of Windows OS in RAM. I am impressed by this ability that you have and that is quite unique amongst the people that I know and have known who care about audio.
 
This being so, thanks for realising the difficulties I have always faced with reading and comprehension, just being a little bit "slow on the uptake" really...
 
 

I will use very short sentences. To make it very hard for Rakesh to misunderstand.

So I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks for you making the effort of using "very short sentences."

English is a third language for me so my situation was always a little bit hopeless from the start, although my parents, teachers, and countless others tried their very best...Thanks for being so understanding.
 
Kind regards
Rakesh