I have tried it and all I can say is that I heard the music just fine, but I don't know if this means it is actually processing he 88.2 or 176.4 signals or not, or just upsampling.
The only reason I think it just may work is that before I had these drivers I never tried at these sampling rates without the XXHighEnd option to upsample to 96 or 192 in the settings because I thought I had read somewhere in the XXHighEnd tooltips or forum that you would hear an awful sound if the DAC would not support 88.2 or 176.4 kHz. Not sure where I read it.

In any case, my questions are then:
1) Can someone confirm that the Double or Quad wouldn't work if the DAC wouldn't support it?
2) How would one use ASIO with XXHighEnd?

thanks a lot guys
PietPara

Hi,

I have the Xonar Essence ST and recently installed the latest beta drivers which now support 88.2 and 176.4 kHz.
However, from the Xonar Control Center you cannot select these sampling rates and it is said in the forum at Asus that the sample rates get automatically selected now, and from what I understand only when using ASIO.
I am unfamiliar with ASIO. I'd like to know if XXHighEnd can now be used at these rates and how I can check this.
I have tried them and hear the music but does this mean it is actually playing at these rates without upsampling to 192 or 96 kHz?

Any help is appreciated.
PietPara

Hi,
if we speak of reproducing pure 1:1 sound, does anyone here know anything more about Bybee Technologies and their Quantum Purification technology used to purify the sound traveling through cables?

See here: www.bybeetech.com

Sound interesting to me, but somehow it also smells like someone selling a Heisenberg compensator.

Maybe some of you have heard about it and know the truth.

cheers
PietPara
 

Hi,
I am interested in trying a DAC connected to my PC but I am a total noob at this. Thinking of the HongKong Gigawork DAC, for instance, to start playing.
I imagine that I connect the DAC to a soundcard and I have een many methods being discussed here (COAX, I2S, HiFace, USB etc). I have no idea what the implications of these choices are. Also I don't know what to look out for in choosing the right DAC with the outputs of my soundcard (Xonar Essence ST). Obviously I want a versatile setup, so that I can play with XXHE's options and learn, learn and learn.

Can anyone help me with understanding what's right and what's not?

thanks a lot!
PietPara

Happy Easter Peter,

Not sure I understand you. Switching of the Xonar in Device Manager will obviously diable sound all over since this is my Soundcard and I have onboard audio turned off in BIOS.
Yes, Xonar volume control controls the windows volume slider (and vice versa) indeed.

Moreover, I did a test. I tried to play another sound in Windows (I ran a movie and I used Control Panel's sound test) and indeed there is no sound from these. So it seems that XXHE (or foobar) are indeed taking exclusive control of the Xonar. It's just that the Xonar still control volume too (probably indirectly also controlling the windows volume slider).
Can that be?

I guess I should leave the Xonar volume control to 100.

cheers
PietPara

Hi all,

after a full days of twaeking around and trying out dífferent settings I got this far:
- Performed nearly all tweaks from the "Tweak Vista dead" thread.
- XXHE runs pop and buffer error free with KS Adaptive (buffer 512) and Double with Anti-Imaging upsampling.

The latter is actually not entirely true, for some reason XXHE still comes with pops and gaps/dropouts occasionally and it seems that restarting XXHE solves it! Go figure.

But apart from many a question I still have, one more urgent and annoying thing I'd like to solve is the almost always switching tracks with a gap. As said, not always but almost every track switch. With so many parameters to "play" with I don't know where to start. Sometimes a track is not finished and it stops to start processing the next track, which sometimes never starts, giving a "Couldn't start engine #4 on time" message.

Can anyone give some hints as to what to try and configure better?

Another question, maybe related, I have a CPU throttling utility (CrystalCPUID) that throttles the CPU down when there is less activity (to keep power consumption lower). Is it advised not to throttle?

thanks again and happy easter!!
PietPara

Hi,

I saw this thread and thought to try and see what happens when I use the Vista volume slider. Unfortunately it still controls the volume! I am in KS mode.
What can I do to fix this?

In foobar KS does indeed bypass Windows volume.

I hope someone has an idea.
PietPara

Thanks Peter,
When running in Adaptive without Double or Quad with a buffer at 512 I get no Buffer errors at all and no opos either. At buffer of 384 I get buffer errors, so according to tooltip explanation, I should use 512. And tooltip explains that this is the actual devices buffer size.
Therefore, I do not understand why I would still need to change the buffer again when trying Double or Quad. Doesn't that contradict the tooltip explanation of the buffer having to be set to the actual device buffer size?

Actually, I must correct myself after more experimenting, the buffer errors occur only under Quad, not with Double.


And regarding Special Mode, how is it explained that the distortion only starts after a few minutes of playing, before that being fine? Should I still increase the Q1 or does this point to a another issue with e.g. the soundcard?

PietPara

Thanks guys, I'll try that. I could have know but since the tooltoip says that for Adaptive it is important to set the buffer to the actual buffer size of the device, otherwise adaptive is useless, I thought I shouldn't change that buffer size anymore.

So I interpreted the buffer size incorrectly(?).

PietPara

Wonderful!
Thanks

Hi,
I wasn't able to find an explanation of two items in the XX GUI. Maybe someone can explain this.

1) There is a small graphic of an "f" with green, yellow and red dots next to the volume slider. What is it? It's not always there, and don't know why it disappears sometimes.

2) There is a small green bar at the left edge of the GUI next to the Double and Quad buttons. What does it mean? It turns green sometimes when I select AI upsampling.

thanks
PietPara

Hi,
I finally bit the bullet and purchased XX.  With some advise from Peter and using the explanations of the tooltips, I now got XX working "errors/distortion/pop free" with following settings:

- KS Adaptive (Buffer 512, found using method described in tooltip)
- Scheme-3
- PlayerPrio / ThreadPrio = Nothing / RealTime
- DAC settings: 24bit / 192kHz, 32 bits, 96 and 192 only (since soundcard driver doesn't support other)
- Split file size 60MB

I tried Special KS Mode but fund that I had to set the Q1 to 270 or higher (buffer at 1024) and even then after a while the sound would start to distort. So, I went back to Adaptive. Anyone know, if it is still worth trying even higher Q1 settings?

However, I wanted to try out Anti Imaging with Double or Quad. This works but only for a few minutes(between 5 and 15), after which I will get a "Too many buffer errors" message and the sound stops.
Does anyone know how to get around that?


Any help is appreciated!

PietPara

Looks like good stuff those horns. I still do prefer those Magico's, just for shear majesticness of them. What a construction. Anyway, just dreaming... probably will cost around half a million a pair or so.

Those BD-Designs, though, I see that they don't include any bass drivers, and go only down to around 200Hz. That means you need subwoofers. So far all my experiences with subwoofers is that it just doesn't make it. Especially people with just 1 subwoofer, that's got nothing to do with the origins of the recording. There are people argumenting that with such long wavelengths you won't hear stereo anyway, but that is just a bad excuse, since the uniformity of bass in your room increases with more bass units (standing waves and better room correction). Anyway, I'm really a sucker for good bass representation, and have not yet heard a qualifying setup with subwoofers. It always leaves a big gap of sound between what your speaker delivers and the sub. It's too difficult to match to each other, I think.

cheers
PietPara



 

Great stuff Peter!
I think I am getting your message. Actually, I know exactly what you mean now. In fact, the last few weeks I was having a very long email discussion about this topic (digital, pc audio, CDPs versus "the real sound") with two of my dearest "high-end friends". The discussion started because of my statements about PC-audio and in particular the versatility a PCI soundcard can bring to the equation.

[ back to the PCI soundcard topic ]

And believe me these friends are not faint hearted connaiseurs of what good sound should sound like. They will agree with what you say. One of them has a great Pass labs XA.5 amp, which is really a fantastic piece of equipment. The first experiences with that amplifier are like you described. It was like a background curtain falling away. The curtain normally would hold all the musical instruments and whatever sounds flying stereo through the room and give the listener the imprssion that there is a huge soundsstage with depth and all you think you like. But this Pass Labs brings one to reality and shows that the sound does not need to be held up by a curtain for it to be sounding real. With this amp you really hear the band playing in the middle of your room and you can walk in between the band's players. (As a matter of expression of course). For me it has been the first time I really hear an audio set sound completely and utterly natural. I must add, though, that this sound may not appeal to everyone because, as you say, the quality of the source may be worse than you thought and was always masked by the other components in the chain. Not sure if I could bring across what I mean. The next step this friend will have (DIY built) is a pair of Soup Ceramique speakers (also Dutch made!). With every step he is reaching what you are explaining. The only step still missing, due to his digital reluctance, is PC-audio. But he told me that I am there to convince him of it.  
I have to be quick because he would like a Wadia or a dCS Puccini.

BTW, when you speak of sensitive speakers, do you mean these Magico's at >110dB?  

OK, then, I am getting closer to the urge of trying out XXHE, even though it's just with my measily Soundcard and not some brilliant DAC. But I am convinced though that one does not need money to throw around at equipment to get high-end sound.
There are still other ways.

 

PS maybe we should move this thread.

Hi Peter,

thanks again for your sharing!

(The point was that I want to test XXHE before paying 72 euros for something that I don't know whether it is better than foobar for me, even though all of you say it is. Just as I wouldn't ever buy Bose even though there are millions saying it's great! ;-) )

But I'm not sure I understand your recommendations. You say "remove your preamp". Do you mean I should try connecting my sound card's (Xonar Essence ST) output directly to the end stage amp (Duson A10 in my case) and see what the sound is like (using XXHE)? I have done this before (with foobar) and thought it sounded purer but less warm (which matches your statements BTW), but it didn't sound horrible at all.

On a side note: I want to actually do this preamp bypass thing for my 5.1 HT that I am going to build (probably with a Rotel RMB 1565 5 channel Class-D poweramp), just to save me the money of buying a AV receiver.

But then, after removing the preamp and listening to the "purer" or more direct sound from the XXHE player, what am I supposed to do with what I learn from that exercise? Sorry, I don't think I got the point you were trying to make.
 

cheers
PietPara