Praise for xxHighEnd

[charliemb]

Peter

Your software sounds so good that I owe you more than the currency I paid.   Hence this testimonial.

I thought JRiver sounded just fine.  Then I was compelled to try xxHE just because I could.  Eventually I purchased it and I was able to tweak the sound enough to slowly track improvments. 

Now I've reached an amazing plateau:  With my current settings, 44.1/16 sounds so good that it is difficult to tell the difference between 44.1 and HiRes versions of the Norah Jones Come Away with Me release.  Further, in some other cases I even prefer the 44.1 over the HiRes release.

In many cases, I prefer the sonics of HiRes, but even in these cases, the 44.1 material can be more engaging even if the sonics are inferior.

The sound is smooth and very analog like using a Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 through its USB input, yet amazingly detailed.  Things just sound right and true. 

Congratulations 

I look forward to .9z-7 for at least its functionality.  I hope that if I keep my settings, it does not alter the sound because I need the functionality enhancements but don't want to jeapordize the sound.   I say that  because I've seen that little supposedly insignificant changes make big differences.  This is tricky business and you've given us a fantastic tool to deal with that trickyness.

[praphan]

Hello Charlie,

Welcome to the club and congratulation for your new journey on XXHE.

As to the sound quality between redbook and hires format, there is an article in the latest issue of TAS (224) walking through the production process of digital audio materials. Hires does not yield better sound quality at all. Well recorded redbook played back through cutting edge player like XXHE can give much better sound quality than poorly recorded hires. With arc prediction upsampling on 44.1/16, it is sometime hard to hear SQ difference than playing back the native hires from the same track recorded by well respect studios like RR or Chesky.

From your signature, I am sure you can explore more and achieve better result. Arc prediction is a unique feature of XXHE that you should try. Almost all folks here run W7 already.

Good luck !
Praphan

[charliemb]

From your signature, I am sure you can explore more and achieve better result. Arc prediction is a unique feature of XXHE that you should try. Almost all folks here run W7 already.

Thanks Praphan.

Actually, I started with arc prediction and have since landed on the settings in my signature line.  I plan to post about this in a separate thread once I get some time.