Peter, what did I say some posts ago, maybe the 12/24 is the sweet spot

Well, some words about my experience with the Mach III 14/28, I’ve had it for about a month now – upgraded from Mach I to Mach II and now Mach III… And just to make it clear, I do not for a second miss some umpf with the 14/28 in my setup, it’s there in spades.  And the mentioned light-foot sound presentation I will say is its force – the more liquid and refined sound presentation is what I’ve always been looking for, my choice of hi-fi components reflects this.
 
Peter has said much about his Mach III SQ-impressions with his Phasure NOS1, myself I still have an older none NOS DAC, but interesting to see that I recognize many of Peters words about the new SQ.

First, the upgrade to Mach III was a bigger step than going from Mach I to Mach II, I agree with one of Peters description, the sound from the Mach III is like using a new DAC-technology.

The main difference is increased realism, like going from HD to 4K resolution on you TV. Listening to Sade, Kari Bremnes or other female singers, all sorts of muddiness, glory-filters, photo retouching, or whatever we shall call it, they are all gone. What is left is an utterly clean and natural voice, and a liquidity in the sound that is addictive. In addition, the holography and 3D-feeling are extremely good, if the soundtrack has preserved this information in a god way - the difference between a good and a bad recording however is shown even more clearly now

It’s indeed interesting to see/hear how much the PC’s influences the DAC, and how sound can be bettered in my setup, even if the the DAC and loudspeakers are not any longer the newest models.

Regarding the price for the PC, I did some research before upgrading this time, and evaluated several other Audio-PC products. They all costed the same, or more than the Mach III. I admit some with better design than the Mach, but they were all PC’s put together with old/low class PC-parts and CPUs. Parts costing considerably less than what Peter uses. At the end, the choice was easy, Peters PC is indeed in another class than the rest out there!

A final tip, take off the lid and replace it with a black cardboard, sounds better

Regards
Stein

Dear all, I’m in the process of tuning in the new Mach III from Peter, I'll post my impressions later .

But, Maxi, in this tuning proses, I would be happy to try Special Mode (SM) again, but can't find any settings that work without distortion. I originally preferred SM over Adaptive, but got used to Adaptive I suppose, and forgot all about SM. Do you have a SM-setting that works for you? Maybe open another tread on this…

Regards Stein

Hi Peter,
Seems like the new Phasue Mach III is the way to go, so I consider replacing my old Mach II

Reading through this and the other treads, there are some issues raising that I hope you can enlighten for me:

1. From what I read in your postings, the SQ-difference between Mach II and the new Mach III with 10 cores is in the same league as the difference between the 10 and 14/16 cores CPUs in the new Mach III. Is it still so, or is the 10 cores CPU closing in on the higher cores CPUs? It’s hard to see why 10 Cores version sounds that different from the higher number cores CPUs, if the CPUs are technical identical, except for the core-numbers and the CPU-cache size! And the higher cores-CPUs sound even better when you make them work with 10 cores only!

2. If they are not equal, is the 12 cores CPU similar to the 10 or to the 14 cores CPU? I ask because the sweetspot regarding which CPU to choose seems to be the 12 cores version. After all, 750Euros (incl our VAT) less than the 14 cores CPU is a lot of money if they do sound the same! At the same time, using the 10-Cores CPU seems meaningless when 1250 (again including our VAT) more Euros give a much better SQ from an already expensive PC!

3. So, the big question remains, do you plan to listen to the 12 cores CPU, and are they available? There are several versions of the Xenon Gold CPUs with the same core-numbers, is it OK to ask which 12cores CPU you use?

The lifespan for these PCs are short, and second hand value low. Feeding Intel with unnecessary money doesn’t feel right

Regards Stein

Lucky you, acg! Nearly everyone in Norway is against it, many campaigns and lot of lobbyism has not been successful. 20 mill FM radios are no thrown away in the public waste...

And the government boasts we will be the first one in the world to change to DAB. Just thinking about it makes me bitter

Thanks, Peter, this will be highly appreciated in our country (and maybe some more when they adapt our silly closedown decision )

Stein

Maybee a silly question...

The reason for asking is the FM-network closedown in Norway this year. I've a reference FM tuner, and have tried to reach the same SQ as the FM radio with:

• My TV (Phillips 8008)
• A small DAB adapter - to amplifier (Argon DAB 2+)
• Streaming, PC - DAC
• Reference tuner

Sorry to say, none of them are even close... The DAC is the best, but not much better than the el-cheepo DAB adapter. I've tried playback software WMP, JRiver, but they sound just the same. 

XXhighend already can playback mp3, and the radio-streaming is mostly 192kbit/s mp3-format. Any chance for you to include the possibility to copy in a link to a radio-stream in the future?

Regards
Stein

Peter,
No , from the tutorial, I’ve all the time believed entering the Tidel password was a part of the XX-install-procedure...
Meaning, I have not tested the Tidal-search-function, so I know what to do, today!
Thanks!


Stein

Not quite the same problem, but the Tidal log-in window has never shown up for me . I use the OS-disk from Peter, but after booting up all the different OSs, still I've seen no Tidal login.

Is it possible to enter the password in one of the XX-files, or do I need to reinstall XX? I recently used the 2.07-upgrade patch with great success, but no Tidal in sight...

Stein

Peter, yes, you are right, I can confirm it works, thanks

What still concerns me is the uncertainty around the expire date, but I guess we just have to wait and see...

Stein

Hi, it seems like we now are caught in a catch22 situation with the Paypal-activation under W10 (but we still have the txt-file option). IE11 reports certificate error, date, I have to adjust PC-date, which is not possible without WIN10 being outdated. It seems to be no workarounds, also tried deactivating checkbox' under IE11 advanced settings.

I also noticed that it's OK to adjust the PC-date, whatever date, before having connected the PC to internet. I could also go back to an earlier restore point (at least one year back), after accidently have adjusted the PC date to 09.10.15 (started WIN8 with it's automatically date adjustment not deactivated).

However, it seems like WIN10 after internet has been contacted, do not accept this, and we are back to what you and others have reported with time adjustment issues. My PC-time is now 01.09.15 (stupid me, without noticing, this was the time I set right before connecting  to internet for the first time).

If it's not possible to activate XXhighend directly via internet (certificate issues), it might be vice to totally avoid connecting the PC to internet? Next time, this will be my install procedure.  I'm also unsure if WIN10 now will stop in some days, weeks, I don't know, because WIN10 knows from internet that my PC-time is incorrect. The final countdown might have started... 

The only reason for connecting to internet might be to solve display/graphic setting issues, which was totally messed up after my WIN10 installation, the internet connection did an auto-update on that.

Stein 

A bit late, but I'll give you my experience with laptops and Dell in particulare (please see my signature). As long as you get rid of all the unnecessary software that is included when you buy a PC, a laptop is very fine indeed! This means you have to do a clean installation before you start installing XXHighend.

I use my Dell laptop as a multimedia center, with multiple partitions and OSs. W7 for the video and streaming etc, and W2012 server for XX.Highend.  I'm very satisfied with this solution, the sound is very, very god, but must admit that I've not tried a desktop in my setup, so I can't tell if a desktop would have bettered my sound even more. But most important, I'm satisfied with my today setting and do not want to put up a big/ugly PC in the living room!

I've not run into major problems, can easily go as high as 495 with SFS, the laptop is dead quiet, can also run with batteries (almost perfect power delivery!),  I can take it with me everywhere and plug it in to another DAC, looks good at the top of the rack, small. There are many, many reasons for going the Laptop route...   

But, but... I've used PA with adaptive mode with my Ayre 24bit (first XXhighend version with PA), and it worked all right! Now I use 7-4 and is not allowed to use AP anymore, will try the 7-5 later.

The effect when turning on PA was a noticeable bigger soundstage. The lower the values, -1 down to -3, the wider and higher the soundstage, but at the same time shallower. -2 gave the most balanced result.

Still, in my setup Special gave an even wider soundstage, and more important, deeper and more dynamic. The shortcoming with Special listening fatigues, is not anymore an issue when using W2012-server, I suppose W8 gives just the same result, please see another tread.

Yes it does, and it works great! Since I've free access to W-server software, I've tried out W2008/2008R2SP1/2012. The very best of them is the newW2012, the sound is fuller, less edgy, more analogue like, the difference is not subtle! XXhighend on W2012 runs like on W2008, but so far I've not tried the Min OS funtion, first I need new activation keys, I had to do a fresh install because off partition problems.

Now I've W7 for media purposes, loaded with functions, and a minimal W2012 for XXhighend (I know Peter doesn't like me to mess up with to many OS's )   

Some small problems here as well with the XX-installing and minimizing OS.... After installing XX- and, starting it for the first time, I got the screen where Autohotkey asks to be installed. Hitting the run button brings nothing, only the cancel button. But, the window dissapear if I first start Autohotkey manually from the XX-catalog and then start XX.
 
Hitting the minimize OS-button brought the same problem (with W7/W2008SP1/W2008R2 just the same). XX asks to reboot, but the window showing nircmd64.exe (can't bring the problem back, but quite sure it was this program)does not react on pressing the run button. Manually rebooting though took away the problem, and XX started OK. When again hitting the min-OS button, rebott works OK, but after the restart, I can see no difference from before, and have no clue if I'm in the min.OS state (for server 2008SP1 2008R2, for the time beeing W7 is in demo state - my fault, so can't use the min. OS-function. Need a new code...). So the question, how do I know in wich state the OS is in?

Dear jnoneiliv1!
I'm in the same situation as you regarding the need for having a laptop/notebook to do other things than just listening to music. In my home, I've no other place for my music equipment that in the living room, it's therefore a continuously struggle with the rest of the family to keep it somehow nice looking, integrated, compact AND at the same time having a good sounding gear, a great challenge!

The good news is that this is possible, and my Dell laptop is doing very well with XXHighend. My sollution is to have the OS' on different partitions. W7 for multimedia setup, internett for the kids, etc, while W2008SP1 and W2008R2 are only for XXhighend, and nothing else! From my signature, you can see how XXHighend is running on this laptop, and the sound is astonishing!

But, you can also see from my signature that W2008SP1 (which is indeed is a light Vista) and W2008R2 (similar as W7) act differently, and I can tell you, sound differently! W2008SP1 can reach much better settings, especially with the SFS, than the W2008R2. W2008SP1 sounds extremely good! It might be that W2008R2 with the future SP1 upgrade will do the same (waiting for the official SP1 to be available the 22.th of February, I won't spend time on the SP1 RC), but today W2008SP1 is far superior in my set-up. For difference in sound, you’ll find a lot of comments in the forum.
One solution for you could be to do your upgrade to W7. But, if you are allowed to do so and have the space on your HD, make another partition (you will need min 25GB free space - look into other treads on how to do this). Install your Vista and XXhighend, boot to Vista when you listen to music, other ways use W7. This is based on my findings that XXhighend stresses the PC more running on W2008R2 than using W2008SP1. Feel free to PM me!

(Sorry, when rereading your posts, I see that you indeed use a desktop, anyway, the same is valid for the OS'!)