XXHighEnd

Hi,

I played around with the latest developements on this forum and wanted to share my findings for those who are still not up to the VISTA challenge.

After weeks of gradual tweaking I obtained quite good sound from 09y-2 on my senior XP system. Of primary importance have been shutting down services, degrading videoperformance and sonically optimising SFS and driver latency. Unfortunately no cores to play with.

Installing the DataRAM ramdisc and running XX on it was quite revelatory. The sound is now at a new level I did not imagine possible from my set-up. Especially the high end is much more realistic and all instruments/voices have much better timbre, detail and seperation. Most importantly, with the right settings (not all permutations tried yet) the music makes perfect sense. I recognise these qualities from analog, I guess it has to do with the Allan Wright proposed sensation of 'downward dynamic range'.

Now I have arrived here, I noticed that everything seems to make a more noticable difference. The sound is kind of 'fragile' in this respect, ie having an open (file)explorer window is now noticable in the way -previously unheard- musical nuances express themselves.

Like stated in other posts, I had to reduce the SFS size from 40 to 17 (now) and have better SQ with a latency of 256 in stead of 512. Especially the SFS is very critical. To low a SFS and the sound becomes more dynamic, dark and distorted, to high the SFS, the less detail is heard and the less interesting the music becomes.

Still, as good as it is now, I have the feeling of not being there yet. That is I sense even more potential from XX, possibly improving on the qualities I admire in my analog set-up (quite a challenge). There are some tweaks left on my system and of course I will have to experience what optimed settings will bring me. Nevertheless I follow the corefilter and windows2008sp1 threads with great interest.

Happy listening,

regards, Coen

p.s. I have no signature, but my system setup is: PIII-833, 2x512 = 1G of SDRAM internal memory, Ramdisk 400Mb, XP-pro SP3, 09y-02, Q 1/0/0/0, SFS: 17; latency: 256; lots of shut down services graphics on native screen resolution 256 colours, Firewire PCIcard with TI chip, 1mtr of audioquest 1394 cable, M-audio FW-audiophile 24/96.

Thanks a lot for sharing Coen. Great.

Why not paste that descrption in your signature, now it's there anyway ? :)

All the best,
Peter

Ok, here it is

I have been too busy tweaking  ;)

Well, I have to thank everybody on this forum for their persistence and commitment to maxxed fidelity from whatever setup.

Therefore ya'll get an extra and free tip from me (if you didn't figure it out yourself allready):

If you have a soundcard of BoB supporting 2 or more (stereo)pairs of analog outputs and are listening to two channel sound only, dedicate one listeningchannel to one outputpair and the other to an other pair (if you can follow me...). You can also try if muting the unused channels works out even better. This is a hardwaretweak making shure there is only one opamp in use per stereo channel. This reduces interference greatly and there is more psu power availably per channel to drive the load (cable+amplifier impedance). Worked great for me.

regards, Coen

BoB : Breakout Box.


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