Aha, but could you re-phrase your answer. I'm not quite sure what it is your doing.   


Gerner

Hi Peter

From time to time when I load a folders *.vaw tracks into the playlist, MS Windows tells me that Engine#.exe has stopped to work. MS then tries to look up for a solution. Ha...

It seems to be related to a few music folders of mine and all tracks in it, as I cannot just skip the track provoking the message and go to the next neither it helps to reboot XX again.

Would you think it's related to a bad rip or?


Gerner


PS! Bert has the same problem.

Hehe Dave..

Well Peter is long gone to Alkatraz. So just play with your Q controler. It is undangerous..absolutely. And you found a setting too : CLEAR AS A BELL!

Here it's Friday evening and everything here is everything absolute out of topic or booze away. However I alowed Benjamin Britten to play for me at this very moment.
Have to offer him tea after he is finished.

Gerner 

No problems at all...and I only use the reverse when the recording benefits from it -> Single stereo mic recordings etc... and of course if there is any need to reverse it.

I had a reverse switch on my old OS-DAC. The only thing that was wrong about it were, it was not remote controled. And lazy me didn't want to run back and forth. My wife didn't want it either....ha.

Gerner

Johan and all other good fellas..

It is strange to me to read about all kind of different problems related to 09i and former stepstones to it.

I did never ever experience any of the anomalities reported on this forum. Is it of pure luck or is there a pithole in the different combis of Vista etc. and the DAC's related? I can't tell.

But to me it looks like it.

Gerner

Peter are you "off line" and on Holiday now?

However it is I have no clue of what you are talking about, but when you talk there is a reason to it.

I did not experience any of your findings. The reverser works fine here. So?


Gerner

Gerner, it is amazing how you express about the "trapped" the waves in the horn, because I actually posted later than you did. Okay, since you are buildig speakers for ages you must know better than me anyway, but/and the other way around : this is how I felt it. So let it be true.

Yeah, but you explained it too and I derive from it we hear the same and express it a little differently.

Now let me emphasize this: There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Orpheans as a horn. It is the best exsisting to my knowlegde. But no matter how good this horn is, it is governed by Mother Natures Law: It is a horn. And thereby it's signature. Bert did an amazing portion of magic to his horns, and I know what it is, that this horn is hardly comparable to any other horn. The remaining signature is however, even for Bert, impossible to come around with.
Ha..let me see who could knock on a piece of wood and it sounds like you are knocking into the open air. Ahh?

and

Peter, your explanation therapy starts to work on me. I start to understand what that digital let's call it himpsy-pimpsy actually acts and how jitter is able to influence sound in the way you explain it. Thanks.


Gerner, you keep on saying that your speakers disappeared. All is relative as it appears now.
But this time *I* say my speakers disappeared. Hehe.

Yeah where are they? Just filed the disappearence to Interpol. He...no I don't want them back. 


Gerner

Ha ha ha Peter...

One could beleive we syncronized our posts. But we really didn't.

So with the same observations at "even" the same Q setting, it's twice as objective what we write compared to the past where nothing were written. Jihaaaa

Gerner 

Hi Edward

Certainly I prefer 9h over 9d.

I did set the Q at 24 and compared to 9h. What I heard was they are not completely alike. But as I did it only once to check it out, I left it and did no further comparation.
Neither I compared the Q14 to 9d.

I merely just concentrated on what influence the Q controler had and found the preferable settings to my gear. And the DAC also influence here...and the speakers indeed does. Neither we respond to phase the same way. But I think everyone could say it's audible.
Propably we shall all find our prefered settings to be quite different from each other.

Also the Q setting, as I said, is determined by the quality of the recorded track. But I do rarely listen to cr*p tracks even I like the music. That's why I left it for now at 7. But let's see if it matures along the way.

Gerner

That is understandable Frank.

And thanks a lot of your kind comment.

Gerner

Dear all

Well it is seldom that I don't have a rapid remark to drop on an empty page when something new is applied to the XX. E.g. when Peter launch a 9d and a 9h or whatever had come over the time.

This time however I have been forced to keep my pistol in the belt as with the 9i incorporating the Qt controler, it has been much much more difficult to find a vocabulary to elaborate about it, even its so obvious impact. I had to run zillions of A-B'ing between my prefered 9h against the 9i before i felt sure what the big change is about.

I see I'm not alone. No one really commented it until sofar.

Let's start with the easy part: The polarity reverser.

Bravo. Not much more to say about it. On most recorded music it does not make a big difference as they all are multi-phased and screwed up by studio machines and engineers who does not care about this. But fortunately the are simple stereo-mic recordings, single voice, single instrument and alikes, where this feature really makes a difference. The blow-suck feature is a goodie we now have on hand and it's so easy to detect the difference it makes. So 

The Qt controler on the other hand is a major step towards perfect playback, but in a completely different compartment.
What does it do? Well yes, it does what Peter says it does. Removing square distortion or resonances appearing from sound trapped in a horn. Removes the walls from the horn as if the horn is not there anymore. What a story I'm telling  (And Peter did'nt say excactly that, sorry).

If we imagine how it was possible for the XX to eliminate irritating standing vawes in the listening room without actually removing them at all, but just made them far less anoying it is maybe more easy to understand what I try to say here. As well as standing vawes is an outcome of traped sound in a given room, eventual resonances is an outcome of trapped sound in a horn.
The big difference is that trapping sound in a horn however is appearing in a much higher frequency specter and a specter where our ears are much much more sensitive to it.

Conclusion: Yes. The horn is there but it's audibility is gone. It's own footprint disapppeared.

I'm not capable of explaining the scientific reason for it. Peter is maybe as he's the one who found the medicine. But for me as a "user" i neither need to know. I can just be a widness to reject or like it.

But let me give you a bit more.

So A-B'ing now 100 of tracks against the 9h (left the 9d in the drawer somewhere) again and again, it is certainly not just about to find one setting of the Qt controller and just leave it there. There are simply too many different fiaskoes and succeses between the numerous recordings we have.
But to give you a beta-version of my present conclusion, so called audiophile recordings needs a tweak of approx 4 to remove resonance related audibility and make the speakers completely disappear, and some awefull squared and harsh recordings needs a setting of up to 15. And still it does not not cure everything, but God damn, it helps. The latter is the best example of how good the Qt controller is and how much it just spots the problem and attack it based on the right diagnosis and the precise medicine.

I cannot do anything but leave out what I know nothing about: How it is possible that a piece of SW can deal with it. But it can.

Now I mentioned trapped sound in a horn as being part of the fact that a horn by it self is audible when listening to music. It's unavoidable as well as we have footprints from each and every piece of mechanical thing that forms the whole speaker. That be from the cabinet to driver colorations and whatever affect the final result.
But I see now that much that provokes or emphasize those things to be audible is triggered by the signal feed to it. And my equation tells me that it does the same trick to any playback set-up. If not tell me.

Hence Peter saw it. Hence he knew what it was. Hence he made the Qt controler. Hence it deals with the phase and it's ability to provoke distortion and resonances and in particular "HOW WE PERCEIVE IT", because it is still there. He didn't remove the horn or anything related to the equipment or the other speaker ingrediences. He did'nt make any surgery in our brains or changed physical laws by it.
He just knew how phase is related to perception of sound. That's it.

Have I now better sound....Oh yes yes yes... As I said the speakers are gone and I mean they are really gone. Where I noticed sound emitting from the speaker itself on most recordings and thereby used a lot of brainprocessing to place that sound to the right place in the sound stage, I am now free'ed from doing that, as each and every bit of information suddently ran home to it's own source, namely the instrument or voice where it originally came from. Bang!

I filed of course a complaint to Bert that my speakers disappeared and I want my money back....ha ha ha.

The only anoying thing is a beginners one. You try and retry again and again to find the right setting for a given track until you are satisfied. But along the way you compromise as a result of lazyness or lack of interest and leave the Qt controler mostly in one final position. And mine became 7. At least for now.
Most of the music I listen to are treated best here. And if I play some Dave Sanborne sax it goes immediately to 15. I just know it by heart now. Many close mic female voice recordings goes likewise to 15.


And I completely forgot to address that the bass improves from the Qt controler as well, so if any got the impression that this is only medicine for horns, it isn't.

So for now....enjoy the magic of the Qt.


Gerner

I could not have expressed that better Frank. 

Maybe Peter can make a flag function, but it could maybe also be done in the music folder as well as we get the CD cover pic dragged over into the XX display?

Gerner

That was certainly some old XX versions you tested out. 6d and 6h.

Still I must stick to what I hear here as it is.

Since I quoted my upper remarks, nothing changed here since. 

Gerner

Dear participants in this thread 

Well I have now spent hours to verify one or the other versions being "best".

I assume we can agree that it is impossible to be objective as no one of us have the same gear to detect it with, neither we are listening the same way.

There is in my place, with my gear and my ears no way the 9d sounds better in any aspect compared to the 9h.
The spaciousnes and details combined with cutting edge location of each and every instrument, it's timbre, it's harmonics the whole natural way of presenting the musical event is compared to 9d so enourmous superior that it is almost as day and night....

Now this clashes of course of what you hear Dave express and what you Peter almost felt your self convinced about was true.

I beleive that any given version of the XX could work as a tweak to personal preferences because the gear benefits from either the one or the other XX version. Also of course wether we use Vista or XP for that sake. Even the DAC has a bit to say here. NOS or OS.
If I beleive in what I am writing myself, then admitted the 9h is a tweak here.

Another comment on the perception of what is called phase here:

The 9h simply is so much more resolving things and less distorting. It is is offering a much much bigger "room" to contain the music, that it seems there is a phase thing related to it. Like it is reversing the phase to suck instead of blowing. Turns the polarity.
No it does'nt as you can just reverse the speaker cables and you hear it's not related.
 
But here it comes: Go to a live clasical concert. An ensamble of few instruments. Hear the same thing. It could sound like the polarity has reversed on all instruments. It can't naturally be so, but my perception of it is similar to what I find in the 9h and do not find in the 9d.
Why could that be? Because the small group of instruments appearing in a big hall simply sounds like that. It is the same thing with 9h bigger spaciousness that really can contain a musical event without adding blurr or pressing it.
The 9d adds body which is not there. It's "thicker" than reality. It "adds" what I have not found in real life music, where as the 9h leaves the music of unspoken beauty and naturalness.

THIS IS HOW IT SOUNDS HERE WITH ALL MY PREFERENCES AND SUBJECTIVE GEAR AND EARS.

With all due respect. 



Gerner

One more thing....

I noticed if the CD is dirty or greazy or even worse : SCRATCHED...then my typically 8 - 10 times ripping speed certainly slows down. Certainly.

My EAC is set up for 5 times overreadings.

Gerner