XXHighEnd

Mani, could you please tell me if 44kHz without upsampling is 'listenable'? :) Or for the best results ArcPrediction is needed? Perhaps it is, but I'd like to know how the native redbook sounds.

PS
There is plenty to improve. Your OS is a mess and even the best DAC in the world will sound decent at most when connected to the PC with just 'regular' or barely 'optimized' OS. Remember, this is where all starts and even the best player won't cope with the limitations 'under the hood'. And forgive my ignorance, but I wouldn't have said that if I hadn't checked and experienced the biggest improvements in SQ that I've had in my life and I've been trying very hard to nail this for few years now as you all know. I'm gonna leave you with some tips for Christmas, haha:
- block size
- usb polling
- MMCS
- IRQ affinities
- processes affinities
- performance counters
- event trace sessions
- OS RAM caching
- win32priorityseparation
- autoruns
- system timer interval

That's basically it. I'm sure that buying the best speakers, amplification and DAC wouldn't give so much...
Good Luck!

PS2
Tip nr 2: the settings from my other topic are pretty much useless

Marcin, have you been smoking something ?

No, I have not. What good would the best DAC bring when 'the core' is a total mess? Of course you can't tell anything, because you think that the sound is great and can't be better, hehe But writing about sound is like dancing about painting, so you won't know until you hear a 'clean' OS :)

Adrian (Flecko) may be a good case study here. He can't even hear the difference between Vista and W7. What's the conclusion? That he is deaf? I doubt that. That his system is really poor? Nope. It means that his OS is far from 'transparency'.  Before I found the right settings and it took me hundreds if not thousands of hours of listening, testing, comparing etc the sound was like if I had put a blanket on the speakers. No, blanket maybe not enough - a thick quilt is a better term. The sound was toneless pulp. No plans differentiation, no plans at all I'd say, lack of dynamics, and plenty of harshness with some level of detail. OK, enough said. I gave you some valuable tips, what you're gonna do with them is your thing. You can stay with what you have now and be happy, whatever. I just wanted to give you some advice.

Merry Christmas to all of you,
Marcin

EDIT
Ok, maybe I exaggerated about best speakers and amp comparison, but purchasing them wouldn't be the key to great sound. You would still be very frustrated about harshness, digital glare, artificial factor, jitter - whatever you call that. I can't stand few seconds with it without getting nervous, that's why I've been so restless and keep trying to fight this.

True I guess, but that seems to be exactly what you are doing.

What about your 44k1 question eh ? it seems that you didn't understand some basics here. :no: :)

No, I don't understand anything, I'm a total lame and yet everyone can't deal without ramdisk, how come?
I asked a simple question - how does NOS1 perform without AP. Is that inappropriate?


Cheers,
Marcin

Read back to find out who started saying that.

Marcin, sorry I totally forgot to reply to this.

In much the same vain as I've posted in the JPlay thread, using the NOS1 with no upfront upsampling is not a good idea. To give you an example, I'm one of those people who has never had a headache - I mean literally, I've never had a headache. I just don't know what one is or feels like (for which I count myself very fortunate, BTW). BUT... I'm pretty certain that if I listened to the NOS1 at 16/44.1 I'd manage to induce a headache eventually. There's something very uncomfortable about it - it's as if your conscious mind can't tell, but your unconscious mind is picking up all the distortion.


Thanks for sharing. I'll look into this once I've loaded W7 SP1.

Mani.

I take that option to explain how it was. I read about the Vista "downgrade" with improved sound quality and of course wanted to try that. I expected a big change but my experience told me:" be carefull don't just jump on a train, be carefull!" So what I did, you all know. The big change was not there. I was sure, that there will be some difference and with Peters help, I could hear and name it. But it was not the night and day difference that I read about. "Difference to small to care about". Then I tried W7 SP1. Again, no big differece, if any at all. But it can be, that some important updates were allready on my PC because of auto update. And that again explains, why I didn't thought Vista is a lot better...maybe, maybe not. The most important thing is, that we are now all on the same Train with W7SP1. From here it will go foreward.
Happy new Year!