Win10 hmmm

[acg]

Hi Coen,

I love reading your posts about the various Windows versions and your experience with them.  It makes me wonder why your experience is so different to many others?  Obviously you have a keen ear for what you like and knowing "musical structure" and understanding "nuance" are very important things that I don't think everyone gets.

Personally, I liked W7 for a while but eventually W8 won out because of the extra nuance and better tonal shading, which is completely the opposite of your experience!  Based on the impressions you have made in the various threads I have this idea that what you are liking or not liking emanates from the upper-bass/lower midrange, say 100Hz - 1000Hz, which is where warmth and tone and fullness are really set by your speakers.  Would you say this is accurate?  I ended up not liking W7 in this range because is made things a little unfocused or muddy in my system but you are the opposite. 

Could the differences be speaker/amplifier related?  I notice you use a 16" high efficiency Altec woofer for this frequency range and I wonder if there is some interaction problem with the 0.8W SET amplifier you are using, be that by back EMF, clipping, OPT core saturation or some other mechanism?  Just putting it out there, I am really not sure and no-one is more familiar with your system than you, but it is something that I thought about when I read your signature.

Cheers,

Anthony

[christoffe]

Hi,

to replay all the amount of "informations" coming from a NOS1a we need a very fast system.
When you listen here:

http://www.monoandstereo.com/2015/09/zellaton-and-fm-acoustics-at-audioarts.html

the resolution of the bass is amazing. I don't hear the percussive sound of the body of the bass in my system with that details.
The piece of music "Carry On Wayward Son" is a track on the "Wood II" CD by Brian Bromberg.

Joachim

[CoenP]

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for your contribution! Likely you have a far more accurate system than me to assess the tonal differences between windows versions. In retrospect I concur with you about the upper bass/ lower mid being stronger in WIN8/10.  This undoubtably plays a role in my experience.

The thing is that I do not experience any of the mentioned negatives with neither my Phono rig nor with the mid-fi Rega player of the 90s. They are both as clear and flowing as can be through my system. At best my NOS1a rig extracts way more nuance out of the recording in tone, space and dynamics whilst sounding soft and delicate, just as in real life. This adds up to a total music experience that is my ultimate goal: awakening the sense of beauty and connection to the music. This is a whole different level of listening.

Now my WIN8/10 experience is unfavorable by any standard. How much worse can sound get when you can't understand what the singer is singing and when missing out on melodies played by others. More fundamentally I have a difficulty to connect to the music. The music leaves me cold and this is not only a tonal phenomenon.

When asked the question if the source is the negative influence of the underpowered computer is ameliorated by OS generated noise or that my amp and speaker cannot cope with a strong upper bass presence, I'm inclined to say the first. No such upper bass problems ever noticed with my other sources; yet I cannot rule it out since it all is related to each other.

We'll see in time what's the case, maybe even both.

regards, Coen




 

[acg]

Then it is perplexing if your other sources work fine.  The unintelligibility thing is quite an extreme symptom and it seems as though something is definitely amiss.  Is there someone nearby that can loan you a XXHE pc for a while just to see if the problem is computer hardware related?  I would send you mine (no playback at the moment  ) but I doubt we are even in the same hemisphere let alone the same country.