XXHighEnd

Hi Peter,

Ever since I have switched over to W 8, I have been very disappointed with the musical qualities of the sound. Even with IMDisk, the musical qualities are missing & the music is no more involving.

I am so confused & depressed & I have no clue how to move fwd. Just yesterday eve I was listening to Neil Diamond & instead of hearing his deep throaty voice I could hear a thinner nasal voice, as if he was singing an octave higher.

I could reverse the process & go back to W 7 but I am holding back as yet. Any clue what might be causing this?

Regards,

Arvind

All,

I advised Arvind to put this on the forum, hoping for some useful response from others, because I don't have any. I will try some blahblah though in a next post.

Also, I don't see any single person being negative about Windows 8 anymore, which I find sort of hard to believe. I think that I am satisfied myself but which does not mean I can't see negatives;
If everybody is happy, so be it. But when not, please let know how.
And let's try to help Arvind here.

Peter

Blahblah :

Well, in between the last sentence and the first in here, I already thought of something which is not all that blahblah maybe;
Arvind, you don't have the new osciallators in your NOS1 yet, and this could be consistent (thinking) with the blah I had in mind anyway.

Having worked on Windows 8 for many months, I know how difficult it is to get right. As we know, many posts were spent on this and in the end I got it "working". Still, I think it is all the most critical (bad SQ borders are crossed easily) but as how it (XXHighEnd) is today, no setting changes really do that. External factors do, and the PC is suspect first. Or maybe the Windows 8 OS itself is. And washing machine stuff.

What I do recognize is that when not all falls in place properly, the sort of "sharp" rendering W8 implies fastly turns into literal nasty sound indeed. With that comes thin sound or better put : not filling the room. This latter for 100% sure is needed (I am convinced) and when this doesn't happen W8 playback fails to begin with. This is the "needs to be loud enough" story. But, who is going to turn up the volume while nasty sound is going on ? me not. Plus it doesn't help.
So, not really a chicken-egg problem, but once the nasty sound is there, the prerequisite of energising the room will never be met in the first place. Compare this with no nastyness being there and a too low volume. That brings thin sound or at least not the best. It now needs to turn up the volume, but at least in this situation (no nastyness) it can be done.

I keep on saying that it really can happen that on a random day SQ it totally bad and won't get good by any means. What I learned myself is to play music which doesn't show that, and see again next day. Not playing at all is a no-go (for me), and try to get it right is frustrating. It won't anyway.

Also, there seems to be something around a 30 minute of (first of the day) playback boundary, where things get better like something got burned in. Almost without exception I notice this. BUT, I always had a similar impression with W7 though less noticeable. This very well can be a NOS1 thing or just amplifiers (but all is always on here).
Not worth while thinking about this further, unless we all recognize this, and then still it is dangerous because these "all" can be NOS1 users.

Fact is also (for me) that almost nothing needs to happen or musicality has gone. Maybe I should say that it is less anyway than with W7. But here too, when such a day emerges, I just don't play the music that shows this much. Point is : there's so much goodies coming from W8 that I don't find it difficult to act like this.

Had enough blahblah ?
No ?? Ok, let's approach it from the other side; a more constructive one :

W8 *is* more lean. For sound I mean. All SQ properties show this, foremost the more detail. And today I don't think this is faked detail because of more sharp or distortion, but - as how I think - merely from less underlaying "tones" which should not be there in the first place. This is critical (and critical thinking) because I still do think that just a little tad of "under it" is lacking. I see this in many cymbals, where too few colour is in them. However, only when the recording is more poor (but as you know I don't like to blame recordings ever, so no excuse there if you would ask me);

When you are used to W8 for a longer time (and this is not 2 days), then switching back to W7 you hear it right away. But, first thing you notice is "more bass". However, it needs the being used to W8 to recognize that this bass is largely fake. It is not as defined and the more colour in cymbals is overwhelmed with distortion you can suddenly hear. Not that I heard that 6 months ago, but today this is easy.

Things are strange;
Before the latest XXHighEnd (0.9z-9) all kept on exploding because of too high dynamics. Today I often have the idea that something's wrong with my ears because of too less freshness. The complete opposite and actually unimaginable how it works ! But it does.
But to me it again feels like doing the smallest thing wrong, and you are at the other side of this coin. And this is not XXHighEnd settings. It is PC stuff though and all what's around it (environmental things). This includes the OS and what it does, which sort of sadly, is in a way "dynamically" for Windows 8 (it tries to be smart).
An example, which is also known from the "shouting" XXHighEnd versions, months ago, but now from yesterday :

I am playing something, sounds ok all over but one thing : no real music. So, I use Alt-x to pre-select a next album while the other was at its last track, and which bringing up of XXHighEnd switches on a few things in my situation (this is new). Well, right away I heard that "strings" were nylon strings with their beautiful property of singing (harmonics interaction). This could be easily seen because it happened during playing. But it is not much different from these months ago where people only would be satisfied when playing in Normal OS (and even Attended I think).
Still this "singing" can happen with all shut off just the same, but not every day. Well, the story above.

Because all must "match" so well and has a very limited bandwidth as it seems, it is my idea that actually nobody is really able to achieve it. This is how I (somewhere) advised to have a dual boot with W7 so you can go back and try again later. Still, what has been done in XXHighEnd seems to help most sufficiently enough, just like it helped me enough to not want to go back. But keep in mind my way of working, which is strange and not really intended (play something which doesn't suffer for this lousy day).
I also know how much the mains connections etc. matter, like the "switch all off" at the bottom of my W8 sig. I do that, but can't do it to all extend already because it is too complex to know what influences. And, since this helps, it can well be that at certain days something is on which I don't recognize. In the same realm "you" can have that something on always, and it now never works.

When not all falls in place, no warm sound will come from W8;
The micro interaction needed, which is at "micro level" in the first place, fire back at you or something. This is how I referred to the oscillators of Arvind which really really matter, and of which I think the better ones can help the falling in place of all.
Also, assumed that nobody else really complains, and only Arvin does, it could be noteworthy that I know of only *one* person having troubles with the sound from NOS1-USB (before that using its precedessor) and this was Arvind. I don't know how this eventually worked out, but here it could be important to see that the NOS1-USB really is miles better than its predecessor while for Arvind it worked counter productive. How ? Arvind needs a preamp in the chain. So, never mind the real merit, but as we know I sort of forbid that, and when it is in, its properties are more emphasized once the DAC is adding less (is more neutral);
As said, I don't know what came from this, but assumed the preamp is still there, the story can well be the same. But, only when Arvind is the loudest complainer; when actually all agree it says nothing and it is just W8 itself.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I recall the same sort of complaints from Arvind from the NOS1-USB version. So, things get better (like W8 should) but work out the other way.


Summarized, what Arvind describes is :

a. Very much recognizeable from older XXHighEnd versions (0.9z-8) as de facto standard (and including the fatigue Arvind describes elsewhere);
b. Will happen to me just the same once in a while (once per 14 days ?);
c. Is there as the general "tone" most of the days but nothing to be annoyed about because overwhelmed by goodies;
d. Is totally not there at all at rare days.

Peter

Hi,

You can count me in for not being a happy camper with WIN8. Though the IMDISK improved the sound over plain playing. I did also switch off unused devices in device manager. Maybe I need to revisit the BIOS settings....

The w8 sound is very dense and still alittle "mechanical" especially in the bass. Unconsiously I still start up win7 for ultimate listening.

Regards, Coen

Arvind,

There is a thing you could try;

Possibly you are keen on using the remote (which I recall from at least a few weeka ago), so you may try to engage "Shut off ALL Services" and don't use the remote for a test.

Also, and now derived from my own "nylon strings" story, it could be the exact other way around; you already engaged "Shut off ALL Services" but now you can deactivate that. Just that (do not use the remote).
This resembles my "switching on a few things" from that nylon strings story. It thus might help you too.


I know that both suggestions are opposite, but it depends on what your current situation is of course.

Peter

Arvind, it really took me a while to get 9Z-9 on W8 sounding better than my W7 setup. I don't think this will completely solve your problem, but try making the clock res .5 or as low as your system will go. I found that the higher the clock res the brighter or thinner the sound became. Another thing that made a big difference for me was the drive that my music was on. (I have not set up any RAMdisc's yet.) You might try copying a track to the drive that you have XX on and see if that helps. I guess in your setup that would be putting the track on your IMdisc drive that you created for XX.

Don't despair cause you will sort this out, even if that means reverting back to W7!

Hi Arvind,

I can easily understand your disappointment - it's a nightmare to get the system right with Windows 8.  The hardest step is to leave behind a wonderful individual sound with Windows 7. We all expected another step in this familiar environment. But it is not there anymore - you have to find the paradise again! Trying hard the last weeks (sqeezing the PC environment, installing a separate mains supply, using shield fabric and more) I'm exploring my system the first time from the ground up. At the moment I'm feeding the Metrum DAC with 20 bit data - as Peter supposed some time ago - and I never expected the improved SQ. Aditionally it was necessary to set  clockres = Nothing and set the right Q5. Actually i have found a new stable environment with beautiful SQ.
So don't give up and try some unconventional things, even if they will appear foolish in the retrospective.

Georg

And Arvind - everyone ...

Especially for this topic I forced myself to have an evening with Windows 7 again. Just my normal audio PC as I used it forever and which I was very satisfied with.
Btw, nothing different I already told about in this topic - W7 isn't it anymore, but I wanted to try again just in case ...

All summarized first : This has been a more annoying session than ever with W8. "Ever", because what I heard was in everything, while W8 from the start in January or so always allowed to pick music which didn't annoy and worked for the better only. Not so with W7 as we perceive it today ...

First what occurred was a totally booming bass. I couldn't believe it myself. Checked corners for standing waves to check by my own "measurement" means whether maybe something else had changed, but no standing waves anywhere. Still the bass was booming. And not a little bit ...

Next thing a knew already : the sort of recurring highs which should not be there. Elsewhere I described this as grey, but  now with more Windows 8 (subsequent) experience it comes to me as a repeat of hight frequencies like ringing from a wrong filter means (like not using Arc Prediction but something else - or a normal Sigma Delta based DAC). This is (now suddenly clear to me) where Windows 8 gets its detail from - better separation / accuracy in the high frequencies.

I was not able anymore to "see" better colour in the cymbals. Possibly this was because I was too annoyed, but I actually now heard the same as in Windows 8 (were it for seeking more colour there).

I paused playback at least 15 times to change settings for the better, and somewhere in the middle of that I received a shout from someone in the room "yea, that's not the best album eh !!?". Of course I know this only happens when playback ain't right to begin with. When it is OK all albums are OK no matter the type of music. Of course I didn't tell what I was trying to do, but to me it tells that it was not only me.

I ended with settings which allowed to play the last album with not all that much annoyance, but still thought it was (and has been) a waste of my time of listening nicely to music. That didn't happen anywhere. Too many disturbances and actually too bad sound.

Still it was this I had been completely satisfied with not so long ago. But a sheer booming bass ? unbelievable.
It even occurred to me when being outside the room (say toilet) and there perceiving the over-weight of boom-boom-boom. And then to think that this too is a measure for me (listening outside of the room). Well, I think our brains are not the best in judging things in absolute fashion.

Time alignment

Arvind (but also others), I now recall from your first NOS1-USB experience that I suggested to recheck your time alignment of the speakers (which I know you can adjust). So, when things get more precise, this becomes more important (I hope this is obvious). Windows 8 is a sort of multiple of this AND ... if one thing is super important for perceiving emotion hence "music" it is time alignment of the drivers.

So check that.

Peter

Peter, To time alignment add "the same absolute polarity" connection for all speaker drivers in the speaker array. When loudspeakers designers start with time alignment and absolute polarity driver alignment before designing the crossover there is a better chance that "everything" will truly click into place musically.
Frank

Hi guys,

Thank you everyone for making me see the light in the tunnel. I must say that the comraderie in this forum is amazing.

Without any serious changes in the settings, other than changing clock resolution to 0.5ms (thanks Boleary) the SQ magic is back.

I really don't know how, maybe the new OS takes time to settle. I had adjusted the time alignment ever since I changed to W8, so that wasn't new either.

It's still a mystery but in the end its turned out well. I hope it continues this way.

Thanks again everybody.

Regards,

Arvind

Tonight I took some time to turn some XXHE-knobs in W8, because I wasn't totally satisfied with the W8 sound.

For me me it lacked some "emotion", while being very detailed, open and spacious.
In the end I found that the SQ is very sensitive for the Q5 setting and that Q5=3 is a "no" at this stage.

A Q5 setting of less than 3 brings back the emotion, but I will have to do further listening to be sure.
For now I settled with Q5=2.

Stanley

Hi,

"Emotion" or "music", these are the things I am lloking for too in win8.
I found that this quality is served by NOT having XXHE on a Ramdisk (or IMdisk) and with a timesres of 1ms. Xxhe is in this case on the c:\ os partition.
When xxhe is on the IM disc crescendos are unlistanable and the sound is reminiscent of a hi res mp3. The higher timeres calmes the sound and causes more "flow".

That is on my system of course.
Unfortunately it is not on par with win7 (yet).

Regards, Coen

Totally agree in my system too, Coen. I 've been trying the IMdisk with XXHE and as playback drive and, despite some other problems ( header data not found, sound interruptions and more ) I've found the sound is worse with XXHE in IMDisk and the "magic" is lost.
I've not tried different clock resolution settings for now.

Regards,

Maxi

Hi,

I made another sep forward to better WIN8 sound by switching PeakExtend to OFF.

This made for a much bigger difference than I can remember from my WIN7 environments. The hypercontrast sound went away together with the sharp silibants and booming lows. Voices and bass sound way more natural now. The "emotion"/"music" quality is also improved.

regards, Coen

Please notice :

Although I use the RAMDisk for Playback Drive myself (which is for technical reasons in my case) I never said that this would improve sound. Or deteriorate it. I just don't know.
What I did say though is that running XXHighEnd from the RAMDisk should improve (this is theory only, but often my theories work out. :)

Peter

FYI

Neither did I. I just like the sound with the Playbackdrive (accidentally on the IMdisk) better than no Playbackdrive!

Not shure yet if I subjectively agree with the second statement on SQ. Maybe this is just a matter of settings.

regards, Coen

Coen,

I just was not sure to what degree at least Maxi thinks that XXHighEnd on the RAMDisk and use the RAMDisk as Playback Drive is the same thing, while everybody would find it logical that it is about the Playback Drive.

So, both (either) carry different SQ implications.
And to summarize possible confusion :

If I read all literally and nobody (you, Maxi) is confused in the first place, you both say that the Playback Drive from RAMDisk is for the better, while using XXHighEnd from the RAMDisk sounds worse.

The latter would be against my theories, but this is OK of course. Notice I can not check this because of the technical reasons which just need both to operate from RAMDisk.

I hope this clears up things somewhat.
Peter

As posted before there have been some glitches with shutdown and booting Windows 8 again. Sometimes the ramdisk appears, the SQ was terrible or the Metro appeared unexpectedly. Even shutting down via command line did not work. I have identified the hibernate mode as the cause. Sometimes it was functional for no reason. So I disabled the hibernate mode completely using Windows commands: powercfg /H off. This deletes the file hybernate.sys completely too. From now on everthing worked flawless. :)

Georg

A strange start up issue I've had for months now has been the sudden ability to turn the PC on by hitting and combination of two keyboard keys. In my BIOS there is an option for using the keyboard to turn the PC on after a power failure; however, this has always been disabled. (A while back I enabled/disabled this to see if it helped but it didn't.) Yesterday, for the first time in 3 or 4 months I went into full OS mode from minimized to do basic maintenance--defrag, etc. After going back into minimize I am now not able to start the PC with the keyboard. Just an FYI.

I find another Windows SQ setting which seems to be worth to try out: Setting the process priority from foreground to background. Gives better separation of instruments in my system.

Georg

Georg, all,

This is a setting which typically CAN NOT BE REVERSED.
You will think it can (just set it back) but the internal schematic will be all different.

This must be an XXHE setting which btw I recall is already active (somehow, I forgot and can't look in the code at this moment).

Regards,
Peter

OK, I send it to department placebo  :innocent:

Georg

Hi Georg,

Nah, that is not what I implied. Your changed settings for sure will do something. But changing back is not possible. So real comparison is not possible either.

Regards,
Peter

It is time to admit it (again): I cannot reconcile with XX and windows 8at this stage. It is not as bad as the title of this thread suggests, but dispite the many improvements in sound  made by tweaking, I still prefer the trade-offs that XX and windows 7 have.

Do not mistake me for stating that windows 8 does not have excellent sound qualities, it does, sometimes. Yet everytime I (un)voluntary boot into win7 and play some tunes I realise I still much prefer the gentile, spacious and easy presentation .

Next to that every time I boot or shut off win 8, anything can happen. I've had many stalls of the process, sudden hybernates, changed BIOS settings, disappearing and reappearing icons, clicks and interruptions in the sound, etc,etc. and the latest is the systemclock running at half speed.

Win8 seems to work for the forum members with Extreme series CPUs and premium mobos, like the XXHE pc. They are also experiencing some strange stuff though.  Maybe my system is not fit for WIN8 yet I cannot compare.

Regards, Coen

Coen,

Why are you not using 0.9z-9b ?
The Q5 parameter really matters you know ...

Peter

Hi Peter,

Never upgraded in win7, dunno why....

Win8 is like in my sig 09z-9b.

I've done a lot of q5 experimenting in win8, it does make for significant diffences but so do other settings. It also about the annoances with the OS though.

Regards, Coen

Ah, ok Coen. I was talking about W8 only. No need to change anything fo W7.

But maybe something is wrong with your OS install ?
(notice that this may well be the first time that *I* suggest something like that ...)

Regards,
Peter

I purchased a win8 upgrade disk and I use a dual boot configuration with all practical programs on win7 and win8 as audio only. I suppose this does not work well. Maybe some of the stuff is used between OSses.

Well I thought these are the usual bugs with new software. Could be also be about the RAMdisks, but I prefer the sound with them.

Regards, Coen

FWIW Coen :

My "final" setup I am using for the best SQ these days is also a dual boot with W7.

Peter

I suspect the sq part is due to my pc setup, apparently better suited to win7.

Others experience(d) also problems like cracks and stops with win8. I think all the booting and shutting off issues are due to "infant diseases" (a nice Dutchism eh!) of the OS. I am not applying any updates since they are shut off and have no permanent internet connection.

Regards, Coen

Coen,

FYI, I also did the upgrade path from Win7 to Win 8 then to Win8Pro via one of those credit card serial number upgrades (which included Media Server). I could never get it to work. So I went to the Microsoft store with my two installs and told them it wasn't working for me—I wanted t a full Win8Pro Build Installer. They gave it to me for free. Now my Win8 install works great. A few minor annoyances with the Win7 shell, but sound is really good.

LM

Coen,

This last post is exactly the situation I had in mind which urged me to propose that your install maybe "failed" somewhere. Again, I don't think I ever said something like that (just can't imagine it to happen), but this situation seems to be such a case.

We still need to be careful because many issues can spring from XXHighEnd (hence me) and they are not always obvious. Example : My current W7 install "suddenly" can show cpu usage times in Taskmanager which run as crazy (like 5 seconds per second). As far as I know (but never looked at it) this won't show in the running time of an album, but still this "suddenly" happens and without doubt this is related to one service too many shut down. I don't care about it because it doesn't show anywhere (but I always use Unattended where no time cursor is visible) ... unless it starts to bother others. It *could* be your situation.
IOW, let's be careful not to start seeing ghosts while it can be a sheer bug on my side.

And I too never can keep my icons in place, but this possibly is a W7 Shell issue ?
And yes, I am pretty sure W8 behaves like a drag when the chips are down, but this only occurs when you try to use it for something else like the regular thing (meaning our playback of audio). Still totally nothing bothers me, but I use it as how I am used to. One thing though :

I am quite positive that strange things can happen with NOS1 drivers which suddenly fail, file names which cause problems and which do not under W7 and other strange anomalies I never saw with W7. However, strangely enough they can all be dedicated to bug and/or too much shut off by me (XXHE) and it takes a bit of learning/experience to find out where the problems are and what exactly causes them.

I guess my message is that nobody with these kind of issues should give up, but instead should try to recognize what the cause is. Only then I can solve it.
But of course, if one thinks the sound is not OK it can be the most frustrating, and reason enough to give up. I have been there too (on and off). In the end though it is very much worth while *if* you can get it done. At least for me W7 by now sounds totally distorted, no matter how happy I was only a few months ago.

Regards,
Peter

That is my experience also , I remember going to a couple of concerts in the last times using W7 , and ... and .... remember commenting like : nobody would mix a record the way I listen to it in W7 ...


stefano

Please understand me correctly, I am not saying that the win7 sound is without flaws. Actually win8 isn't either. I just prefer it over win8 at the moment. This is still about musical flow, naturalness of instruments, especially the voices and freedom of "stress". Now, Win 8 highlights different aspects of the music. I have to add that tweaking improved this significantly compared to a previous win8 trial, but not to the extend that it "wins" over my win7 sound.

Peter, What do you suggest? I have reported some of the issues in this forum, I could add the ones I run into from now.

Regards, Coen

Just read this:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/164209-windows-8-banned-by-worlds-top-benchmarking-and-overclocking-site (http://www.extremetech.com/computing/164209-windows-8-banned-by-worlds-top-benchmarking-and-overclocking-site)
maybe this is related?

Any comments on this?
Looks important to me...

Hmm ... Gerard,

I thought I already responded to this, but apparently that response was in my mind only;

I did not read the article again (since 3 days ago), but IMO that is already covered for. But, denote "Time Stability" Yes.
Or No. :)
Anyway, just try whether it makes a difference for those who have the idea that something is wrong. To my ears Yes is the better one. But the change is marginally, as I recall.

Regards,
Peter

I've been re-reading this thread, because I still feel like Arvind in the first post. Moreover I've tried so many things that I do NOT believe anymore that there is a reasonable chance that I will ever succeed.

Worrying is that after carefull listening to my current win8 setup:
- i hear less detail than in win7
- the bass is allways booming and "thick"
- i hardly can differentiate between low end drums, bass and other percussion instruments
- voices allways sound "dark" or "heavy" with little character and are less intelligable than in win7
- high pitched instruments are subdued exept for small rough bursts of noise (hints of triangels)
- strong instruments eclipse others. (Ie when the violins play crescendo I have trouble to hear hobos, flutes and the like)
- it remains a bit mechanical and sometimes "hard"
Plus the stuff I mentioned a few posts back

That is a whole frustrating lot of negatives especially because this is the best I could do after hours and hours of tweaking. The sound moved in many directions, but never enough in the right one. This gives rise to issues out of the scope of the software. Where to proceed? Pc? Power? EMI? Grounding? Could I ever get fine win7 sound with big issues in these areas?

To be blunt all my cd players including the 14 bit philips cd-104 of 1988 do a better job still.
I will categorize the above as Peter's "bad windows 8 sound" that seemingly cannot be cured on my system.

Fortunalely the win7 sound is still delightfull and does not suffer from the items above so no worries for those who run into the same situation...

Regards, Coen

Coen, this might be a stupid question, but sometimes the simple places to look are the best solutions.  I can concur with some of the sound symptoms that you describe when I switch back to XX after using another software player and forget to change Switch 5 on the NOS1 to the 768 position.  It could not be something as simple as this could it?

Anthony

Hey Coen,

I just looked at your Sig and see a couple of tubes in there. Not even sure whether that includes a preamp.

So tell me, volume fully open ... from what distance can you perceive noise from the speakers ?
And don't you dare to come up with more than 1mm ...
haha

But you know ...

Regards,
Peter

It is NOS 1 into de ECC88 (correction: ECC83) of the amp so it is at full gain. I can hear a very low level 50 Hz hum form the ac filaments at my listening position (@3.5m). For hf noise i have to proceed to 1.5m from my HF horns. It is a white noise hiss. Even with my ear in the horn it isn't very loud or annoying.

Regards, Coen

Thanks for the hint, I checked the NOS1 and switch #5 is on.

Regards, Coen

Ok Coen. As far as my experience goes, don't let W8 loose on that. I mean, I think I have sufficiently proven that not the slightest "noise" is allowed to be there, while you have the hum at -50dB or worse. Not acceptable.
Well, not acceptable in any event in my (persistant) view, but for W8 a no-go really.

So, easy; just give up on W8. And why wouldn't you ? Right now you only get annoyed and instead of listening you are always working on this issue. And whatfore ? You just don't even have the reference. Only a couple of guys blahblah-in that W8 sounds so good. Well, for you it does not and you don't even know about it.
Period (I'd say).

In the end (much later, whatever) you really should be looking for a noiseless (amp) design. Drop the tube idea and try to adopt good THD figures instead. That really works you know. Just because I say so ... :scratching:
:)
Peter

Thanks for the reply Peter,

Ironically my little tubeamp has less noise than a gainclone I slammed together a couple of years ago, actually less noise even than any solid state amp in my possession. Yet those are not the great ones for shure.
The noise thing has to be addressed in due time, not even leaving the path of vacuum bliss. 50 year old carbon comp resistors don't help in this department.

Anyhow I now feel confident to look outside of the settings into the hardware settings involved.
The recent grounding scheme revival seems a good place to start without changing everything. I haven't given this consideration for at least a year now and stuff has changed. Its got some potential for improvement.

True that I have no reference, you all could be happy campers with this cr*ppy sound and I allready have better sound here than most of you.  ;). OTOH I know you and feel capable of identifying good sound, so no chance!

One wonders how minute noise levels influence the macro sound of win8 so much. Intuitively I would suspect someting like win8 playback to trigger more hf resonaces (oscillations) in the amp distroying the sound. Such a marco phenomenon better fits the sound impact.
 I do believe that going from very good to great one must take care of everything and that includes the tiniest amount of noise.

One more thing:
This thread is really a big warning for newcomers to XXHE that want to embark on a WIN8 platform only to get disappointed for reasons outside of the XX software. Some "minimum" requirements for getting it all going would be very nice in the future. I realise we are not there yet!

Regards, Coen

Coen,

Let me first correct myself with mentioned -50dB; I realized that you use horns which a. are more sensitive in the first place, but b. won't drop SPL much because of the directivity (but both are a bit of the same of course). Anyway, I think my -50dB should have been something like -65dB or so. Or -70dB when "just" audible. No matter the 3.x meters distance.

About W8 and how it does it ? I really have no idea other than that the OS itself is so much more lean that other frequencies of noise become more profound. But that is just guessing.

I didn't want to propose Gainclones because it may be "vloeken in de kerk" (curse in church if that's an English expression at all) for you. But okay, since you already were on that path ... mine are totally silent. Notice though that for their first 2 years or so they were not silent at all. But at that time I didn't know. So that was all mains issues as it turned out. My Gainclones are just silent (mesasure at -140dB or so), but the sh*t around it needs to be under our control.
Well, I think we know that by now ...

Regards,
Peter

Hi Peter,

I just noticed Phasure and B-D designs presence on the x-fi in Veldhoven next week.
This looks like an ideal local opportunity to get myself a reference for WIN8 sound with Bert's latest creation the Orelino which looks mighty interesting.
I guess they are running in and being tuned at your place right now...

Regards, Coen

Haha, you don't want to know what post I just finished preparing. Now I am waiting for a photo to add to it ...

:whistle:

So what's wrong with this one?

Mani.

Edit: As always, very interested in hearing what you think. And depending upon what you say, I may be in the market for a pair. If so, I'll be selling my Swings. If anyone here wants them, I'll be selling them for what I paid - i.e. 1/4 of their retail price!

This developement did not go unnoticed by the Cat:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=1&postID=19794#19794 (http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PageIndex=1&postID=19794#19794)

High praise for Bert (and Peter) indeed, with the usual characteristic rough borders.

Regards, Coen

Unexpected answer :

That I just had to change everything because ...

Because I heard a slight hum from the mid-high. Trafo-like.
So yes guys, these things don't happen only to you all - also just the same to me. Just get yourself a new couple of amps, speakers, and there you go ... AGAIN.
Still nothing should have changed ...

So many hours further and with taking many deep breaths to change a few rather drastic things for actually other reasons, it is my conclusion that a too closely mounted filter section (XOver) to the transformer or maybe other voltage regulators picked up in the filter coils etc.
Result ? to-tal-ly silent again.

If this wouldn't be me. I would have thought "oh well, some bit of noise with your ear in the speaker". But it was me, and with a dose of "reference" I couldn't sleep of it until it was solved. So it is now. Time for a re-listen ...
(but a beer first :party:)

Peter

Murphy's law ? Since I came back from vacation, all sort of things are happening at work... Most of them related to a person that is on vacation...

Loudspeaker filtercoils pick up a lot of stuff. Once I disconnected the amplifiersignal to the filtersection of one driver (you can do that with biwiring). Still music was playing though that driver at a low but hearable level. It turned out to be the coils of the filter coupling with eachother. With a relocation and repositioning I could attain silence. I was surprised how much apart they had to be even with orthogonal axes.
This is very noicable with efficient horns of course.

Plus I can make disconnected speakers hum by just touching the loose wires.

Regards, Coen

I never thought I would write this. Since I switched to W8, my intention was to go forward and never turn back, whatever W8 would have something inferior or not compared to W7 (unless it would have been too obvious). At the time, while I was unable to differentiate the 2 of them, now I can better express how each of them behaves.

In comparison to W7, W8 is precise, forward and detailed.  It acts like a "lense" that increases definition to a level that W7 can't pretend to reach and it really gets the best subtleties from the instruments. As for tonality, I am less sure that W8 beats W7, but for definition, there is not much comparison (to my ears) - W8 is a clear winner.

In comparison, W7 sounds a bit "blurred", without the deep LF and HF that I can hear with W8. It is "softer", less clinical... Peter used the word "distorted" and I believe him. At the 2 extremities of the spectrum, W8 is the best, while in between, W7 feels a little more natural. Again, I could be wrong, but I feel that W7 is less affected by different situations that could emanate from problems in the chain.

Living with W8 for almost a year now and switching to W7 brought this as a surprise. There is something so precise about W8 that the word "surgical" comes to my mind, but not as a negative note. I have always liked definition and micro-dynamics.

Recently I changed a VGA cable to a DVI > HDMI  cable. Right after that, it started. I began to hear something around the singer's voice. This reminds me of a similar phenomenon when I changed many of my AC cables for "audiophile" ones: there was a "halo" around some women's voices, but it finally disappeared after a few months. I can't explain this, so the word "break-in" could apply here.

With the DVI > HDMI cable it started with many voices exhibiting a strange sound, something like a microphone saturation, a kind of "edgy wrap", sometimes "granular", not always stable though. Certain passages show this. It is audible not only with women, but also with men's voice. In fact, it acts like the AC cables did a few years ago, but it does not look as if it will disappear through time.

I brought back the VGA cable. But after observing this, against my will, I started looking for that strange behaviour around voices... Now, each time there is a man, a woman or a group of singer's, I am watching for this. I wish I never did, because I can't get rid of it now !...

Since I have 2 pairs of speakers and 2 power amps, dacs, PCs and USB cables (one PC and a laptop), I tried different combinations to see it that was coming from one of my components. I even brought back my bad habit of using networking to access my music PC through Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). Direct connection between dac and power amp or through the preamp did not change that behaviour. I swapped the AC cables since I have 2 different kinds. I switched from the electrical AC outlet, disconnected everything that could have some effect on my components (TV, router, subs). I even disconnected the supertweeters, assured that there was no other speakers around. I even got my Paul Pang USB 3 controller card that replaced the SOTM USB 3 PCIe card (was removed), reinstalled W8 from a backup (was backed up right after its activation, without any attempt on my part to "tweak" something, nor deactivate any port from the PC)... Of course the PP card has to break in, but this started well before its arrival (about 3 days ago).

No matter what I did (playing with all possible adjustments through XXHE), nothing seems to tame this. I played with the NOS1 buffers (from its control panel) also.

It is as if the microphones were saturating with the voices. There is too much details, up to a point where it "wraps" the voice tones with a "granular halo" that badly affects SQ. Nothing of this happens when there are no human voices ??? I thought about a lot of potential culprits, but I can't find a common denominator.

I still have to get a different power bar just to check if this can explain that, but what I can't explain is how could I let this pass for so many months without hearing it ?

So for the moment, I am back with W7... Until I find what is causing this, I will alternate between W7 and W8, but I sure wish I can use W8 without this happening... I have to think about a few potential solutions (line conditioner, different earth connection, regular AC cables, etc...). This will take some time, but while I am not asking for a solution in the forum, I am a little exasperated about this. Always remembering that this is a hobby, I also repeat to myself that all I have spent is aimed towards music and the pleasure if brings.

Turning back to W7 does not eliminate totally the behaviour I describe here. Now that I heard this, I can't help myself but always look for it. This is now an obsession and sometimes I am so fed up with it that either it dictates my choice of music (like instrumental) or I don't listen to music at all.

I still hope I am forgetting something. Maybe the change of season here (less humidity since I started heating), maybe noise in AC line...

Maybe I should call this "The Windows 8 sensitivity syndrome"...

Alain

My friend Alain,

Assumed that this is because it took you a couple of years to be able to discern *any* difference in the first place ... what about a big congratulations that you are now in a leage you did not expect to reach. And I am serious.

Anticipating a post about SQ and Windows 8.1 in my next morning it is my advice to reinstal just that and observe ...
You can easily be ahead of me because I won't post today anymore, which btw is not necessary at all. But might you feel challenged please open a new topic in "Your thoughts about the SQ" board.

:teasing:

Best regards,
Peter

Thanks Peter. I had the same thought about my ability to discern differences (...). At least I can through enough time.

I will do the turn to W8.1 in the following days (this week-end is one of those where I can't do much listening). 

But... I am not very optimistic... :(

Regards,

Alain

Hi Alain,

Did you observe less intelligability of voices with win8 compared to 7? To me all seems a bit too "concentrated" in windows 8, paradoxically leading to less structure and musical detail.

Fwiw I have my n-th rebound to win7. This was unintentional, just wanted to listen to some music while developing RAW photofiles (win7 setup only). There is something in that sound that I really like, haven't listened to win8 since while that doesn't sound nearly that bad now as it once did.

Regards, Coen

Hi Cohen,

Yes, I could use the words you picked to precise what I hear with voices.

That would sound like a microphone that picks up all that comes from one's throat... Some artists have a sizzling air blast with their voice... This is exaggerated with W8. Would "sibilance" be the right word ? I can't tell...

I still have a long way to go for audio vocabulary, but like you I feel the need to listen to W7, to "breathe" for a moment. I need some rest, just listening to music... And hoping :)

It comforts me not to be alone in our journey...

Regards,

Alain

Tried W8 yesterday with my bnc interconnects. The sound was good but not as  tonally balanced as W7. With W8, kick drums sounded incredible but voices had a bit too much mid range emphasis, or were a bit congested compared to W7. If this is the result of W7 distortion, then I guess I'm a distortion freak, or perhaps a distorted freak.....maybe a little bit of both.  :)