We all fell in the W7 pitfall

[Nick]

Welcome back to Vista guys...

The only bad thing about this otherwise positive step for sound it that I never migrated from Vista 32bit, so I will not be sharing in the recovery of the beautiful sound quality that Peter describes .

IMHO I do think the OS and PC's ability to run fast is very important. I would really like to hear your impressions Peter when your new mother board and processor are in. I suspect it will be quite important to your systems sound. If your results are good, I might spend a little myself on a new mother board, CPU and memory.

Mani hi,
With regards to your 2 SSD setup, I think that the extra performance the second drive brings coulds be the removal of a spinning drive motor and drive electronics from the system. My PC runs one SSD with my normal hard drive "parking" after a 1 min of not being used (it doesn’t spin back up at all during music play back). I got similar musical results to what you are describing, no placebo. I seem to remember reading that you have a fanless setup but hears one to try if I’m wrong. Temporally disconnect your CPU fan's power (and other case fans) and listen to a track before and afterwards (Sorry I know you know this, but others reading may not - be VERY careful with CPU temperature, I can listen to about a track and a half before my CPU get to about 60 deg C and I put the CPU fan back on). This gives simlar improvements in sound to adding an SSD in my system.

Does anyone know of any reasonably priced, good fanless heat sinks for CPUs, do they exist?


Nick.

[Marcin_gps]

OK, so I'll install x86 and x64 version of Vista on my SSD (fresh) and make some A/B tests with sound card drivers and XXHE installed only - no 3rd party software, default OS settings, same XXHE settings for both systems. I'll keep you posted

Marcin

[PeterSt]

PS: For me its come to the point of loosing interest in music completly. (yes, really)
      And its not me struggling alone, I see Mani, Boleary, Marcin etc ect
      Something is way off

Roy, part of it will be psychologically. Again this is about "a" reference you have obtained at some stage, hence learned how something can sound. That "something", sadly, is only part of the total music, and could be one instrument. So, having that one part right, but the others wrong, and you'll get crazy. Obsessed.
Because of my "absolute memory" I know rather well how things sounded before, and sometimes hear that back at other places. To me it is totally unimagineable how I could have ever been satisfied with that, but I also know that a large part comes from not playing as loud. I mean, I think we all experienced the being able to play more and more loud, when SQ improved. Now, when that degrades again, but you keep on playing at the same level, it will disturb as hell. But, decrease the volume again to earlier stages, and things could be quite allright again.

But it is true; No matter how others may think all sounds so great etc. at my place, the past few weeks so many times it was in my mind that I should have left alone the DAC at the moment I was completely satisfied. But I didn't know at what stage it went wrong, so nothing to go back to. But, also so much better it became on almost all aspects. So, the great danger is that once you're up to a certain level of sound quality, *all* which is not 100% right starts to disturb. For me this counts extra-extra, being afraid the DAC won't perform afterall, just because *I* hear things in some songs which are not 100%. So, throw out all those cymbals again, and it will be as good as one year ago, which is still crazily good - as it is just what you heard, Roy, back then.
But now ? now I am as happy as a child, because (as it seems) now at least I myself don't perceive those strangenesses. No curled toes in my shoes at every other minute, hoping it would be my horns over-expressing, you not having horns anyway (I know Nick, you have).

Yes, I will try to have various OSes ready for next week so I won't be alone at judgeing.
Peter

[christoffe]

Yes, I think we all wasted our time and money on an under performing OS.

Hello Peter,

please see my post on December 30, 2009, 12:12:42 am under the "Topic: Windows7 ? hmm ... maybe not ! "

Starting with your scepticism about W7, I went back to VISTA 64-bit and it was strange to read all the problems with XX, W7 and the SQ.

09z-2 is running under VISTA smooth without any problems, great sound, no glitches, SFS is set to 25MB. Even no problems with 4 x arcpre with 44KHz / 16bit wave files with SFS=25MB.

VISTA is the absolute preference for XXH.

Joachim
--------------------------------------------
Acer PC , Intel i750, 8GB RAM, Windows VISTA SP2 - 64bit> XXHE 09z-2 - Adaptive mode -  Q1/2/3/4/5 = 1/0/0/0/0 / No Invert / Playerprio = Low / ThreadPrio = RealTime / Scheme = 3 @ UnAttended /4x Arc Prediction ; palying WAVE files only

[PeterSt]

Yes Christoffe, thank you. You were probably that "one" person I mentioned, but maybe there were two.

I just read back what you wrote in there (two posts), and I recognize everything.
Well, I can only tell you to be sorry that I have been so "ignorant", but I guess it just sneaked in, also knowing that already at that time more people were on W7 than still on Vista, and I had something to do about the support.

Peter

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Also look at this one Peter:

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=548.msg10046#msg10046

[manisandher]

Mani hi,
With regards to your 2 SSD setup, I think that the extra performance the second drive brings coulds be the removal of a spinning drive motor and drive electronics from the system. My PC runs one SSD with my normal hard drive "parking" after a 1 min of not being used (it doesn’t spin back up at all during music play back). I got similar musical results to what you are describing, no placebo. I seem to remember reading that you have a fanless setup but hears one to try if I’m wrong. Temporally disconnect your CPU fan's power (and other case fans) and listen to a track before and afterwards (Sorry I know you know this, but others reading may not - be VERY careful with CPU temperature, I can listen to about a track and a half before my CPU get to about 60 deg C and I put the CPU fan back on). This gives simlar improvements in sound to adding an SSD in my system.

Yeah, I can see how adding an SSD for XX alongside an HDD for the OS might improve sound, for the reasons you cite. To be clear though, I was adding another SSD for XX alongside an existing SSD for the OS, and still hearing an improvement in the sound... I think! But I will certainly remain open to the chance that this may well have been a placebo. In a way, I hope it is - I really don't want to use two expensive SSDs in a single PC. So, your idea may provide the ideal situation - use an HDD for the OS (which should spin down during playback) and an SSD for XX. Maybe...

Yes, I have a totally fanless/silent setup, with CPU/GPU heatpipes connected to heatsinks on the outside of the case. Set to max clock rate, my average CPU core temps remain ~50 Celcius, with the GPU even cooler. So sorry, I have no suggestions wrt CPU heatsinks.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

So, your idea may provide the ideal situation - use an HDD for the OS (which should spin down during playback) and an SSD for XX.

Weren't it that the OS HDD will never spin down. Not with W7 (that's about those three logging processes which remain active, and write to the disk).
But also, I don't think this was Nick's proposition;
Just OS and XX on the same SSD.

[manisandher]

Yes, I've probably misunderstood.

In any event, it will be very, very easy for me to check whether 2 SSDs are better than one. I will simply install XX on both SSDs and figure out if there is a difference between them. Peter, I guess you could do the same with your current setup, no?

I'm not sure if this is important, but I have the XX SSD formatted as exFAT. Referring back to one of Roy's earlier posts, I will optimise the OS SSD, which is currently formatted as NTFS, before listening to the two.

But I'm bracing myself for a new Vista install...

Mani.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I'm not sure if this is important, but I have the XX SSD formatted as exFAT. Referring back to one of Roy's earlier posts, I will optimise the OS SSD, which is currently formatted as NTFS, before listening to the two.

But I'm bracing myself for a new Vista install...

Mani.

Oh, you are on exFAT !?, I have to dive in the subject again to see were I left it, exFAT why was that better ? (xp can do fat, w7 not)

Mani also use vLite, we on forum should make a proper pre-install (guide), that let you make your settings before install and THEN create a .iso (install)
http://www.vlite.net/about.html

I will also make a .reg file for the necessary registry settings, this all will make an install much easier, cleaner, slimmer and more automated


Roy

[Telstar]

Man, you have no idea nor clue how important it is to have a GOOD reference again. Sorry for my nagging, but this really is the most crucial.
So, I'm just imagining rebooting the PC for that 64 bit version and have a listen; if in one system not all (*ALL* !) is right, and in the other also not all is right, the decision on what is the best becomes arbitrairy (and personal, subjective). But if one is good (nothing lacks to your ears), it is so very easy to reject the other.

I think that now you can assume vista32 as your reference OS, which is SP1, right? not SP2?

I think you should put two OSes (lets say vista32 and vista64) on the same SSD disk, hoping you have space and then do the dual boot. I dont have a reference-quality sistem to do this myself. :/

[Telstar]

Yes, I will try to have various OSes ready for next week so I won't be alone at judgeing.
Peter

*blink blink*
I feel involved

[Telstar]

My PC runs one SSD with my normal hard drive "parking" after a 1 min of not being used (it doesn’t spin back up at all during music play back). I got similar musical results to what you are describing, no placebo. I seem to remember reading that you have a fanless setup but hears one to try if I’m wrong. Temporally disconnect your CPU fan's power (and other case fans) and listen to a track before and afterwards (Sorry I know you know this, but others reading may not - be VERY careful with CPU temperature, I can listen to about a track and a half before my CPU get to about 60 deg C and I put the CPU fan back on). This gives simlar improvements in sound to adding an SSD in my system.

Does anyone know of any reasonably priced, good fanless heat sinks for CPUs, do they exist?

Nick.

Big tower ones that are built for low-speed fans -not many exist.
I use a scythe ninja mini (anything bigger wont fit my case, all fanless), the very best would be oh i forgot the name, it's one of the thermalright build for fanless or lowspeed fans, ultima-90 i think but i may be wrong.

Check on silentpcreview in the review session and on the forums. Beware that anything too fast wont be stable fanless. My E5300 is stable when playing music and video at no more than 55°C. But if i run some stress test such as occt it will go to high 80s and then crash - which is a thing to not repeat many times since it can corrupt the OS.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Yes, I will try to have various OSes ready for next week so I won't be alone at judgeing.
Peter

*blink blink*
I feel involved

Yes, you are, hehe

I look forward to it, Telstar

 

[Marcin_gps]

Thermalright makes the best heatsinks, capable of fanless cooling. I used HR-01 Plus, now I have Ultra Extreme True Copper - almost 2kg of weight!! But the latter one is designed to use with fan, as copper doesn't spread heat as good as alluminum. Copper conducts heat better. but works best with a fan. Anyway, I currently got rid of all fans in my PC - including the one on CPU and the one in PSU. And eventhough copper doesn't work the best in fanless configurations, I get 40*C max during heavy load (CPU is underclocked to 1.6GHz and set as dual core). My next music server will utilise Thermalright HR-02, the successor of HR-01 - currently the best heatsink for passive cooling. The other heatsinks worth mentioning are:
- Cogage MST-140
- Prolimatech Samuel 17

But if you want the best performance, Thermalright is the way.