XXHighEnd

Background : V6a vs. W3 SQ (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=627.0)

Yesterday I rather extensively A-B'd 0.9w-4 with 0.9v-7 (so not with 0.9w-3 !), and I came to the conclusion that 0.9v-7 is better.

Better might be subjective, and I didn't find it was a big difference *and* the main difference I heard was "horn distortion" at a certain frequency of a snare drum. This hardly can be called an absolute anomaly (because horns are horns :)) but for me 0.9v-7 worked out for the better anyway.
Besides this I saw a very small widening (of stage) of very very tiny fragile sounds and a feeling of a more organic sound.

Because of my new DAC it is still difficult for me to judge in absolute sense (because my mind works in a relative fashion), but I will test further tonight.


The above is not to placebo you with data or anything, but to maybe warn you to not to spend too much time at upgrading to 0.9w4 and be disappointed afterall. But on the other hand : please keep in mind that I did not compare to 0.9w-3 !!
But if you downloaded 0.9w-4 already anyway, please let me now what your think !

Peter

I download 0.9w-4, listened to a few tunes then compared those tunes using 0.9w-3.

At first hearing, "4" seemed to work well, but when I went back to "3" my Buffalo Dac gave me a richer, better-resolved musical rendition of the well-known (to me) tracks I chose.

"3" seems to have more energy, more top-end. "4" seems to have a smoother, darker sound.

I cannot say one is "better" or more "true". But I enjoyed listening to 0.9w-3 more.

Mark

Goto, try V6a or V7. Much better than W3 SQ-wize.
Haven't had time to test W4 yet myself.

Will do ;)

I've got some vacation time starting this weekend...and put my ears to it.  W3 is what I have felt was uneven/distortion? or it was just too good for my system hehe, but could be.  I find myself going back to V7 for a more relaxing listen/feeling.  I'll listen to W4 this weekend... could be darker would be better for me than W3.

Just spent some time listening to 0.9w-4, and reverted back to v7. v7 is the best sounding version of all I have heard. w-4 blurs transients a bit, timing suffer (this is excellent in v7) and bass is less tight and less defined in w-4. v7 is more in your face, with excellent timing and pace. It sounds really really good. Bass is superb (as in musical and tight).

I also just spent some time listening to w-4, and here is my .002 cents worth.(but my favorites are V7 and V6a)
this is how I hear it:

W-4: the mid-range is wider and the voices of singers have moved forward in the stage compared to w-3.

V7: I like it very much, everything sound right, but I think the bass is not as strong as on v6a... to me, not as involving as v6a

v6a: I just love the bass on this version and the fact that its so musical/involving (whatever that means!)
,the hi frequencies are not as high as on v7 (I am talking a very small difference here) but in Unattended mode, they seem to come out more.

But overall, XXHE is great and it beats other players I have heard.

Another thing that I noticed for the first time is that,there is distortion in music when listening to music from files residing on my hard drive. I mean the difference was big in my case and I could not beleive it, so Smooth...

what I did was setup a 2 gigs Ramdisk and moved xxhe with the wav files to it, then proceeded to listen, wow, the first thing I noticed was, there is less distortion in the presentation, its like a blanket or a cover of distortion was lifted from the music, the bass became more defined, cleaner and stronger... everything sound cleaner.. I am really enjoying it to the point that I will get a SSD as soon as I can.. Pretty interesting... although this is old news for you here, its news to me...! :smile: :smile: :smile:

cheers..

The problem is always space.
Even who hasnt huge collections like Peter, will fill a SSD pretty soon. 2x160gb intels just wont cut it.
BTW i thought xxhe loaded in memory each track. Now I'm confused...

It does Telsar. But it still matters (a lot). That's why I said elsewhere that there should be an explicit option to copy the file to the "XX" drive first before playing it (currently this only happens when it has to be converted (like from FLAC), but it could be copied for standard). It really seems to matter ...

I thought the important part was taht the OS and XXHE were on the SSD, not that the wav needed to be loaded from the SSD... in any case, you all saw my review of having the OS and XXHE on a SSD vs a fast HDD ... it was a pretty significant difference in the end, but all those files were loaded from an external firewire HDD.  So even better if I load my wavs from the SSD too?

anyway, maybe tomorrow night for W4 ... still no time to listen yet except for background... V7 playing Nutcracker Suite.