We all fell in the W7 pitfall

[Marcin_gps]

've had this post written and ready to post when I accidently closed my browser, so I'm gonna be short now (frustrated...)

I did a comparison between underclocked/undervolted PC (CPU set as dual core at 1GHz, 2x2GB RAM DDR3 at 800MHz CL5) and default settings (2.8GHz, RAM at 1600MHz CL7). I have few important things to say:
1. THe faster the PC is, the larger SFS setting is needed for XXHE to sound right. (12MB for very slow PC is fine, but once I brought the power back, I needed to increase it to 150 MB)
2. Underclocked/undervolted PC (slow) could help you bear with wrong system/settings (like W7) - it will cover its flaws and hide details at the same time. But now that we have tuned Vista and XXHE on RAMdisk, there are no flaws to cover.
3. The fastest PC will get the best out of XXHE, but if you have something wrong in OS or bad recordings - it will throw you all the flaws right on your face.

So I guess I should wait until Sandy Bridge (next generation of Core architecture) is released and get the fastest one

[Marcin_gps]

And one more thing: underclocked/undervolted PC really works great for CMP, but not for XXHE. They wander around just like I did...

[Nick]

And one more thing: underclocked/undervolted PC really works great for CMP, but not for XXHE. They wander around just like I did...

Marcin,

Great work, a myth busted ! Its easy to wonder off down the slow CPU route but system responsiveness in the right places suits HighEnd IMHO as well. It will be interesting to hear Peters thoughts following his earlier post.

You make a very important point about a poorly tuned PC masking issues in the overall replay system. I also think this but have never expressed it so clearly. The better the tune the more you hear so the basics have to be right but if they are  .  As Peter's software as taken great leaps so access to the last 15 or 20% of audible performance from the system has become much more important IMHO.

Regarding your PCI card. I have modified a USB PCI card to run from linear supplies. The only connections to the PC are the PCI bus earths and the signal channels of the bus to the card. There is still going to be some RF transfer through the earths / signal and general environment but the card was far better. I don't use it any more (gone over to internal USB which works better with the asynchronous mode HiFace) but this might be a great modification for your PCI card. Its a fiddly one to do though as the tracks that you need to cut and solder are very small. I am looking forward to seeing the PCI interface that Peter has put into the Phasure NOS. It sounds like it doesn’t need much tweaking ! but....

Nick

[Marcin_gps]

Nick,

Do you install drivers for your GPU?

[Nick]

Nick,

Do you install drivers for your GPU?

Marcin,

No, I was careful to select a mother board with a very basic Intel on board GPU built in, I use the basic out of the box Vista drivers and over clock it in the Bios then limit video traffic as much as possible in config. I have used PCI and PCIe video cards and tried to buy the slowest most basic possible. The problem is they all have mega 600Mhz +++ processors and complex drivers these days. They have high IRQ priority and can command a lot of CPU interupts. As a principle try to limit the PCI traffic to the card by doing whatever you can with the config to do this.

Sorry forgot you question on power schemes. I start with the max performance one then go with

Never sleep
Display off in 1 min (I read an interesting comment from Peter saying this may platue CPU speed so I will look at this)
Hard disks off in 1 min
And turn off everything that means the OS has to monitoring something.

For a bit of fun (sad) I used to follow how quickly the PC shuts down, it gets quicker and quicker as things are stripped and tuned. From the moment you click the power down button to the PSU relay clicking off with a dead screen it takes 3 seconds ! Now RAM disk is installed and writing the disk from memory it takes ages 

Nick.

[Marcin_gps]

Nick,

Do you install drivers for your GPU?

Marcin,

No, I was careful to select a mother board with a very basic Intel on board GPU built in, I use the basic out of the box Vista drivers and over clock it in the Bios then limit video traffic as much as possible in config. I have used PCI and PCIe video cards and tried to buy the slowest most basic possible. The problem is they all have mega 600Mhz +++ processors and complex drivers these days. They have high IRQ priority and can command a lot of CPU interupts. As a principle try to limit the PCI traffic to the card by doing whatever you can with the config to do this.

That's like I thought, but didn't you mean underclock in BIOS? GPU speed is not required for XXHE

Sorry forgot you question on power schemes. I start with the max performance one then go with

Never sleep
Display off in 1 min (I read an interesting comment from Peter saying this may platue CPU speed so I will look at this)
Hard disks off in 1 min
And turn off everything that means the OS has to monitoring something.

For a bit of fun (sad) I used to follow how quickly the PC shuts down, it gets quicker and quicker as things are stripped and tuned. From the moment you click the power down button to the PSU relay clicking off with a dead screen it takes 3 seconds ! Now RAM disk is installed and writing the disk from memory it takes ages 

Nick.

Same here

[PeterSt]

Now RAM disk is installed and writing the disk from memory it takes ages 

Is your Image saved to an SSD ? (mine is)
Or maybe your RAMDisk is 4GB or so ? (1GB here)
I really don't notice it. Yes, at booting ! (the RAMDisk is created before the Numlock, Capslock and the light besides that lit).

Peter

[Telstar]

For a bit of fun (sad) I used to follow how quickly the PC shuts down, it gets quicker and quicker as things are stripped and tuned. From the moment you click the power down button to the PSU relay clicking off with a dead screen it takes 3 seconds ! Now RAM disk is installed and writing the disk from memory it takes ages 

Nick.

I never turn it off, I just put it to sleep It consumes 4-5W when sleeping.

My power settings are 1h for HDDs (one), anything else never turn off. When i want it to sleep, i do that MANUALLY. Recovery from sleep is 2seconds.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I think I have a GOOD working Vista Install (vLite), with RAMDisk.

I mean really good sounding, felt the bass on my hands from meters away, could play very loud and have clean hights.

I think this is the foundation for further tweaking for me........most tweaks still needs to be done.
BUT with CAUTION.

Also changed some BIOS settings, like EIST off, and overclocked Q9550 @ 2.83 --> now @ 3.48, RAM also overclocked a little.

Roy

[PeterSt]

[Nick]

Thats great Roy 

[AUDIODIDAKT]

@ Special Mode 32 samples, SFS 12MB, Q 1,0,0,0,0
But to premature, will take more time to test further.

Peter, thanks for the fast reply on the new activation code, this get me going fast

[Nick]

I have attached the Autoruns for my thin Vista build.

These are for EXPERIMENTATION only at the moment. They are not supposed to be applied verbatim to systems.
PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL changing system config with Autoruns it can make your system unbootable very easily. Trust me I'v had a lot of forced rebuilds getting here. The settings are are specific to my system (eg my drivers and hardware) but the general config items should work on most Vista builds.

The best way to proceed is to;
1)   Open you systems Autoruns in one window.
2)   Open the attached Autoruns in another window.
3)   Position the windows on screen so you can see them both.
4)   Transfer the setting of my Autoruns to yours in blocks of about 10 at a time. AVOID changing anything that looks like it is a hardware driver specific to your system (sound cards etc).
5)   Reboot and see if the last block of changes works, it’s worth playing music each time as some can stop HighEnd working (see recovering if you cannot boot)
6)   If you cannot boot you need to press F8 after the BIOS posts to get to the safe boot screen. When you are in the F8 screen USE LAST KNOWN GOOD CONFIGURATION. This will normally get you going again.

Note that there are no WinSock entries in my safeboots. This is only because you cannot toggle on and off, you have to delete them one by one. It is fine to do this and well worth while (no network on your dedicated music OS!)

There are endless permutations and it’s taken months / years to get this listing and its defiantly possible to go further. If you do go further than these settings you do need to A/B test changes you can easily end up harming sound (sometimes is a subtle way like slight loss of a little dynamics or timber).

Have fun.

Nick.

[Nick]

I should have atteched a link to the Autoruns program in case you don't have it.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

Nick

[AUDIODIDAKT]

What a great sounding OS i have installed here, FABULOUS !
Untweaked even on spinning disc

I dare to say and try for yourself, but its SPEED that we're after. (CPU/RAM/mobo)
Overclock as much as you can, because the cpu wont get really hot, just dont over-volt too much.

XX is really responsive from this, meaning a 9min song wil play within a second. (dep on settings and needs)

And the sound:

well, how about a field of sparkles in a dome of sound, what a soundstage, hmm

What happened here ?