Allright. Three evenings of playing further, and I must say that Special Mode is definitely better. But as far as I could judge in this time period, it takes some special settings you won't be able to perform at this moment
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All starts with my own "desire" to play with 32/352.8 (or 384), which I myself (with my not the fastest PC) can't get done properly with the perceived necessary low latency without glitches here and there. Of course, this is not all that much different from when we startet out with the ultra low latency playback, but while (I guess not only me) accepted those glitches with the positive tradeoff of better sound, by now I am used to the good sound anyway, and the glitches now disturb. Oh, it can be without glitches (or merely small ticks), but it is so fragile that it depends on the mood of the PC or whatever it is. and I don't want to run into this.
The acceptable low latency for me is 64 samples at a buffer size of 512, and with the 32/352.8 playback this depends on the mood of the PC.
Before proceeding, first what I think of the sound with those settings :
For "normal" music it is hard to distinguish from Adaptive, Q1=1 and a buffer size of 2048. This firstly means that the warmth and emotion from this latter setting can be achieved with the ultra low latency just the same. Notice though that I dedicate this to the Phasure NOS1 in its latest setup for a large part, because before this wasn't the case (Special @ low latency was too sterile IMO). However, the in fact outrageous difference emerges at playing the better ambient stuff, like Shulman, Ott and even Jens Glad. The difference with this better ambient music is the high transient information which is in there, generally coming from unnatural (high transient) synthesizers. So, this is about the "strange" sweeping sounds, which are not there at all with Adaptive Mode - or are excessivley there with Special Mode.
Thinking further, I guess this is what Adaptive Mode is giving its better warmth, BUT -and it luckily always goes like this- which will be the case when not all is 100% right. In other words, when the higher transients are not processed too well, they are smeared, and credit to the overall sound quality. This would happen with Special Mode and the not 100% operation. With Adaptive Mode the high transients won't be fed to the DAC in the first place (well, that is what I think of it), and smearing is not in order. But high transients neither !
So keep in mind, to me it seems that it is now highly dependend on the DAC (and possibly more), and never mind the details which must be at sub-micro level, the net effect is huge.
Now, the way I got it working glitchlessly, may be of special interest for Marcin.
To keep in mind, this is about the difference where ticks and glitches are audible regularly, and where bringing up XXHighEnd (from Unattended) will show a lot of crackling on one side, and totaly nothing the matter on the other. Well, this is the other side :
I still have 64 samples of latency, and the buffer size is still set to 512 (btw, I didn't try lower, but I guess lower is possible now). The output is still 32/352.8;
Where the Phasue NOS1 is full of tricks, I applied one of them, and this is letting the driver run at 88200. In the mean time though, the DAC runs at 705.6, which thus is twice as fast as the "with glitches" situation.
Of course everybody is confused now, because the "resolution" output of the DAC is only 352.8 in this situation. But this is about my applied trick (see the DAC thread) at achieving better jitter figures (theoretically 6dB max). Anyway ...
Here we go again : it is the driver which lets things choke, because at twice the output, but letting the driver run at half the speed (with still net twice the output), all is infinitely better. And this includes SQ too - apart from the joy of "being glitchless".
And better not ask about my tricks ... I'm full of them. Haha.
I think normal audiophools ends up in bed late when things sound really good, but since I never play music after dinnner, in my case dinner is just a little late. Like yesterday, 11:30pm.
If I am right and not on dope, this is just pure extasy. I must emphasize again though, that there is music beyond normal music. This music -as far as I can tell- only expresses in special ambient. And this is the most rare. If I have 20 of such albums it will be many. It is not just synthesizer music, because all what is commonly known (Vangelis, JM Jarre, Schulze, Eno, 50 more) doesn't have it. At all. It's the ones I mentioned. Add Shpongle to it. It takes digital synths with sufficient bit depth (the early Vangelis days used 8 bits, to name something), and a high amount of intelligence to make this music special. Notice that even the good old Yello doesn't come close.
I want to ask Roy - who I dedicate to be our modern ambient specialist - whether he knows more, the above mentioned in mind. It may be hard to recognize if you don't have the sound yourself, but since it was Roy who put me to the mentioned artists in the first place (some year ago), maybe by now he knows more of them. Good to know : Carbon Based Lifeforms doesn't cut it either. Each 60 minute trip without using is welcome, and when you are not sure, mention it anyway and I will sort it out. Thank you !
So far,
Peter
