XXHighEnd

I just went back to Win 7 for a quick listen. Having listened to Win 8 for a few days the difference was very noticeable. Win 7 sounds smeared (relatively) and less distinct. With Win 8 the individual strands and fine detail of the music stand out. Instruments and voices are more separate more distinct.

The above is with SFS2 in 7 and 8.

P

Hey Paul, isn't it down right weird that W7 now seems so different to us. What USB driver buffer size are you using in W7?

Guys 'n' Gals,

Those of you who are currently in a position to compare W7 to W8, here's a piece of advice for you. When you're using W7 make sure you have 'Cool when idle' in XTweaks set to 1 and not the recommended 0. I know it says 0 is better, but it's not according to me. 0 sounds dead in comparison to 1. I suspect it's because our PC switching power supplies are working overtime when it's set to 0, and kicking a lot of cr*p back into the mains. Dunno. In any event, if you set it to 1 you'll then be comparing like-for-like with W8 because you should keep it to 1 in W8 for now (a bug or something).

I think this should cure any issues with W7 sounding dull in comparison to W8. It does here at least.

Mani.

Hi Guys,

I did a disc format upwards reinstall of windows 7 this week, including re copying all music files. W7 was just ahead of W8 before the rebuild but after the rebuild it has addressed the bass and high end issues i mentioned in the W8 thread, and windows 7 is further ahead.

So today windows 8 also has also had the format up rebuild treatment and tomorrow, will do some listening again. I will try out the cool when idle setting Mani.

One thing that really helped with windows 7 for me was phase intensity set to 3!. I was very surprised by this but in my setup this really works.

Anyway will try W8 again...

Cheers,

Nick

Of course, it could well be totally the opposite - that I'm being lured by the dreaded 'false details' that 1 might be introducing.

In any event, it's interesting that this setting has such a profound affect on the sound. And it may well be a big factor as to why people are hearing W7 and W8 sounding so differently, if it's set to 0 in W7 and 1 in W8.

Mani.

Hey Nick, what's a 'disc format upwards reinstall'?

Mani.

All,

Not that I see it really going wrong, but it's challenged for that this is going to be a second "My first Windows 8 Experience" topic, and that would not be a good thing.
All is dealt with in the topic mentioned, and at this moment I like to keep it like that.

Thanks,
Peter

Peter

I will put sound quality comments to the other tread :)

Mani,

The "format up install" is nothing special just taking the disk back to repartition it and format it before installing the OS, XXHE etc.

I have installed the OS's in 100gb partitions of different HDDs and copies of XXHE and music on a second partitions on each OS disks (one disc for w7 and a separate one for w8). For sound tests I only have one disk connected at a time, either the W7 or W8 HDD and no dvd connected.

I was amazed at the difference the new W7 install made last week, I think my old install was probably getting a bit over tweaked  :). One thing that might be relevant to the really great sound is that I did not install the ASUS P9X79WS x79 intel chip set drivers on the Windows 7 install. This can be done because W7 media doesn't have drivers for the X79 chipset, the result is that Device Manager shows about 30 mobo devices uninstalled. The funny thing is I could swear I have never had W7 sound so good.

Anyway,

W7 vs W8 impressions in the other post soon.

Cheers,

Nick.

Nick - that is really interesting because I have just had a similar experience. I have recently installed W7 on one disc and W8 on another (no dual boot any more far too complicated  :)). In both cases the simplest possible installs - I mean really simple nothing that is not absolutely essential. And guess what I forgot to use the Asus driver install disc so just the MS drivers. The result is that both W8 and W7 both work no stopping no error messages everything just works fine. Also I would say I am getting consistent and great SQ for both W7 and W8.

In future I am always going to keep one disc that has the simplest install as the basic music playing disc. I will have a separate disc that is for "development" and playing around with.

Paul

Paul hi,

It's interesting there may be some consistency.

Both installs here are simple as well without OS tweaks. I'v been playing about with "prioritise background tasks" in computer advanced settings. I'm on the IPad so I can't easily look up a better description on the setting location but I guess you know it. The effect is quite significant in windows 7 with the otherwise simple setup. When set to "prioritise background" the smearing of the highs gets very much better, its very smooth and more like in windows 8. In am not entirely sure if for me the setting is a "keeper" because there is a smidgen of warmth that disappears with the setting but it's interesting how much of the windows 8 sound appears when I set this in windows 7.

In windows 8 setting to prioritise background tasks seems to upset things.

Cheers,

Nick.

Glad to hear this Nick cause that's how I've been running my rig from the beginning and I've often wondered about the drivers on the disc. The sound has been so good that I haven't wanted to go through the trouble of A-B'ing the drivers. I think I once even posted a picture of my device manager with all the "uninstalled devices".

I haven't played with the "backround Prioities" setting. Will give it a try.