Hi Peter,

lately I'm playing with an open baffle speaker, using a wide-band field coil unit. One of the issue's of open baffle designs is that there is a strong interaction between speaker and room design which (in combination with the use a a wide-band speaker unit) normally results in a lack of bass below 60 Hz or so.
I was wondering if the filter option could be used as a room correction. Any thought on that and on how this could be implemented?

Regards,
Quint

Using 2.04c now. Got the message when preparing:

Michael Matthes  Saint Saens-Symphonie"Avec Orgue" - Le carnaval des Animaus.

Searching on Michael Matthes @ TT bring this album up.

- Quint

Hi Peter,

I got an error message when I tried to prepare a music stream from Tidal which mentioned that filenames can't exceed 260 characters.  After that, xxHIghend crashed.
Any way to get around that?

Thanks,
Quint

Hi Peter,

thanks for explaining. A sound which is "more effortless" is what I am looking for...

Cheers, Quint

Hi Peter,
 
not 100% sure what is mend with "more powerfull bass".
You mean faster / more controlled and deeper? Could this affect the sound balance in your setup ending up being to bassy?

If so, would you be able to select the amount of B'ASS stages used in parallel in the new device you propose?

Also I'm a bit worried that my tube amplifier (more voltage amplification)  might behave different from your solid state gainclone's (current amplication?) on adding a B'ASS stage?

- Quint

Hi Peter,

I'm in for the BNC one.

Regards,
Quint

Download doesn't seem to work?

Thanks for the confirmation that upgrading to Windows Server 2012 is not worthwhile when using xxHighEnd. Better to put my money in the NOS1 upgrade..

BTW, Qobuz does have 44.1/16 streaming of high quality, but good to know that xxHighend is supporting the streaming service Tidal.

Cheers, Q

Hi Peter,

looking for a way to optimize the Qobuz streaming sound, I was triggered by an article http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2014/06/improving-the-sound-quality-of-qobuz-spotify-and-pandora/on Hobi's Audiophile Optimiser http://www.highend-audiopc.com/audiophile-optimizer which works only on the Windows Server 2012 R2 edition.
Many users claim that the Server edition sounds better then the consumer versions of Windows already without any optimizations and after using the optimiser the gap becomes even larger.
Do you know / expect any difference when using xxHighEnd on the server 2012 R2 edition vs Windows 10?

Cheers,
Quint

Hi Peter,

I was wondering if it would be possible to go to a 100% passive cooling solution for a 6core CPU. There might be an opportunity to make use of the variation in processor load (and thus dissipation) over time when playing a track.
My guess would be that the CPU load will be close to 100% directly after you pressed the play button and it starts upsampling the tracks and putting them in memory.
However during the actual playing (when happening straight out of memory) the CPU load is small?
Did you ever track that?

Cheers Quint

Hi Peter,

please mark me for 2 pairs.

Cheers,
    Quint

Hi Peter,

I was playing around again with the XXHighEnd settings in an attempt to further optimize the sound in my system. As a reference I used your settings. A couple of questions....

1. Memory settings: Using Straight Contiguous gives a nice and rich sound. However, in that mode I was not able to use your SFS setting of 430. Above 80 it starts to complain on memory (I have 6 GB). So how much memory is needed to get to the 430?

2. Q settings:  I try to understand what this Q1 setting of 30 does. It is not explained in the guideline section you set up (but I guess those mostly applies for XXHighEnd users only).
I played around with Q1 and found that you can also give it a -4 value. That sounded terrible deformed. However, I had the impression that using a lower value for Q1 of say 5 gave a slightly more musical sound then with the 'recommended' 30 which sounded a bit dryer.  What is happening here?

3. System clock settings: using 15 ms sometimes fails. So what needs to be changed in the PC configuration to meet that?

Cheers,
  Quint

FYI, I gave the guy from Kemp Electroniks a call (he used to import the Entreq stuff. He told me he was going to supply (in a couple of month from now) a USB cable that would sound even better then the ''Challenger'' cable.

http://kempelektroniks.com/

Cheers

I agree with this, as this is also my personal experience. However, I guess it will also depend on your system, output, cable and input impedances in the whole chain. 
What this normally means IMHO is, that when you own a good pre-amp it acts as a better driver/receiver for the cable and main amp load. Therefore, you get the above described benefits + (most important for me) more 'lifeness'  = dynamics. 
But again, it might depend somewhat on the main amp and cables you use how large this effect is.

Latest upgrade on the spike front... African Blackwood cubes (I bought them at Musical Affairs), put below the NOS1 gives a significant improvement in sound. A huge soundstage and improved instrument/voice seperation. Voices and instruments get more 'body', an effect I have not heard before when using spikes.
A great bang for the buck....IMHO.