XXHighEnd

Have you ever wondered why your PC 'sounds' better one day and worse another and this is without making any changes in player or OS?
Well, here's a clue - ever heard of system timer resolution? The default value is 15.6ms, but some applications can force the windows timer resolution e.g. Media Player, iTunes, WinAmp, Flash all set the timer resolution to 1ms. The interesting thing is that this change is global  so all applications get the new high resolution timer while one of these applications are running. So gentlemen, start your browsers with some lightweight flash content and play some tunes :) How crazy is that?

You can view your system timer interval with that small tool: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897568.aspx
start it from CMD

Peter, you should be able to set the timer in XXHE as well.

Best regards,
Marcin

Nice Marcin. I didn't know it could be changed.

As far as I know this can't influence Engine#4. I think it can influence Engine#3. Not sure though (yet).

Now don't tell me we will increase SQ with this, somehow. :)
Peter

A bit of Googling later ... Yes, I think it can ...

I'm on Engine#3 anyway and Josef's player - it matters :) And in Vista you should be able to squeeze 0.5ms.

Marcin, thanks for this.

I can get down to 0.9ms by playing a flash demo on the net. But this has sound, so is obviously pretty useless when I want to use JPlay. Can you recommend a site with some "lightweight flash content" that I could try?

Mani.

apple.com ? I use safari browser and that's my start-up page.

Hmmm, I can't get low unless I'm playing a video. 'Apple.com' doesn't help. But in any event, it should be possible for Peter to implement something, if other (WASAPI) players can do it.

Mani.

It can be done up to 0.5ms, that's for sure :)

Marcin,

well done and thank you again! ;) This really works.

I use special-KS : engine 4 and the SQ change is way out of the placebo range.
Please keep us updated if you can get it to 0.5ms.

I just start DPC latency checker, stop it and minimise it so that I don't have to see it --> Clockres is 1ms. 
Now, I know why XXHE sounds better when latency checker is "on".

Peter,
possible to include it in the next version... ?

Raj

Raj, thanks for your little trick here. There is a definite improvement in sound in my system. Less HF 'hash'.

And thanks Marcin for the headsup in the first place.

Mani

Hi Raj,


What about the "minimise it" ?
As far as I'm concerned just quitting it leaves the system with 1ms ...
Not with you ?


What not ? haha.
So Yes. Still have to do it, but it can be done.

Peter

Peter,

I tried closing DPC Lat. checker and the clockres resets back to 15.6ms - SQ accompanying.
FYI.

Raj

Hmm ...

Btw, mine is default at 5ms; maybe it's related.

Ahum ...

Russ, Man of Down Under Latency World Records ...

I am sorry, but I just broke your record of 1 sample of latency. That is ... wasn't yours at 96KHz ? or was it 192KHz perhaps ?
Anyway, mine is now 1 sample at 352.8Khz (32 bits output) I guess 384KHz will work too.

How are you going to break that eh ?

I just tried it on The Moody Blues (does that matter ?) for a couple of minutes, Attended and with a bunch of tasks open, and maybe I'm afraid to let it go like this. Maybe I heard one or two ticks as well. But I'm sure you won't care ?

:whistle:

 :(

Enjoy wearing the crown Peter :) It's lined with kangaroo fur so it should keep your head warm this winter .. haha

I can use 1 sample at 96Khz, but need 6 samples minimum to get clean playback at 176.4Khz.

I also found running DPC Latency Checker dropped the system timer interval to 1.0ms. DPC doesn't have to be running, merely loaded, so I click "STOP" after load.

Cheers,

Russ (former champion)

[Now playing... Melody Gardot - Live in Soho]

Marcin great find  :)

I have tried Raj's suggestion of running DPC Lat minimised whilst playing XXHighEnd. The changes are significant in my system. Up untill this point I had suffered a little loss of musical timing with Z03 and was using .ini value of 21 to obtain good dynamics (.ini of 11 being a little flat in my system). Also I had started to use raw 2X sampling of 44.1 kHz material because Arc Prediction was sounding a little too smooth at the top and lacked a little presence.

The system timer change makes Arc Prediction sound correct again and I can use the .ini setting of 11 which give a more musical sound. Overall I find this a very musical tweek, there is more space, better tonal accuracy, frequency is extended at both ends, timing much improved and generally there is much less hash.

I have not had chance to run the Sysinternals system timer diagnostic yet so I do not know what default duration my PC has.

I would like to add my veiw to others that this would be a really good standard upgrade for XXHighEnd. It would be great if Peter might concider the timer value to be set via a parameter in the .ini file so we could try different values.

Nick

I cannot hear a difference if I use the 1ms or 15.6ms setting.

Tried these settings again. This time I turned off my fridge (got one beseide my pc  :) ) and my monitor that both make some noise. I used the test track "05 - The Hunted - Kodo". There are a lot of different drums scattered in the room and also very quiet parts. It is difficult to hear for me and it could be the "everyone is hearing that, I must too" effect but it seems, that setting this timer to 1ms makes the space between the drums a little bit blacker and the drums itself a little bit cleaner. It is not easy to hear at all in my system. I am impressed that you all can hear it so easily.
Just as an example: If I change the stop band attenuation from 130 to 90db of my digital filter, the difference is obvious hearable. Not problem to hear even with humming monitor in front of me.

I hope people realise how important system timer resolution is to sound quality.

If you're not doing anything yet, I suggest you download dpclat.exe and have it running in the background as you play music. Even better, download JPlay and simply minimise it... or use it to play 16/44.1 of course! Personally, I use JPlay minimised. This improves SQ substantially when playing XX. Peter, you should definitely incorporate this into XX if possible.

A massive thanks to Marcin for coming up with this, and for Josef for incorporating it into JPlay. Cheers guys.

Mani.

It's in XX allright since a week or so. Now it's only waiting until I upload it (0.9z-4). But, working on some other "impressive" stuff first.

:yes:

Hi all,

if you can't wait there is a little tool (XP for free) which tries to set the maximum possible resolution of the default windows timer.

http://www.lucashale.com/timer-resolution

Good luck!

Thanks for this software link, The improvement on sound is quite large when listening for long periods of time. Having the OS time resolution operating at 0.5ms, seems to bring the music into focus, cleaner, with blacker background. This is my first post here, and have to say this site has been invaluable for advice and tweaks on the windows OS.

G'day Blaine, welcome here.

It is good that you like it, but be "warned" this is not the best at all. On the other hand I'm fairly sure this will matter per playback software (and further settings).
But since you're here anyway, just for trials try XXHighEnd; in there (latest version) you can set it yourself to the possible values for your OS and perceive the difference. Of course all starts with the difference in SQ anyway, so I mean relative withing XXHighEnd. But use Engine#4 (Kernel Streaming) because WASAPI (Engine#3) really is history here for a long time. But you can try that too of course.

Anyway, nice to meet you here.
Thanks,
Peter

:welcome01:

Thanks, this made me understand better the way this tool works (within XX already implemented). I thought 15ms was high but apparently 0,5ms is higher (resolution, not value) and since I changed from 15 to 0.5ms the sound does improve here...

I will keep it like this for a while, thanks for the "reminder"!

Bert