9-Z3

[Josef]

Thanks Josef for the super-clean player.
Have not been able to break it, running along browsers/outlook/delphi.
It does not appear too hungry either.

Goon-heaven: Thanks for kind words!
But oh, don't worry - it will break (only player2, that is).
Eventually, Windows will be unable to allocate enough large blocks since this little player always starts 'from scratch'...

Are you developing it further?

I definitely did not plan to.
But, as I explained in my previous post, for some weird reason I'm now having trouble listening to other players so I may add a tweak or two before XX & other players incorporate this finding  

I think I understand rather well what would have to be done to make it go _all the way_ but it would involve some serious dedicated time and at this point in time it's just a hobby for me so no guarantees....

Can we have a version supporting smaller buffer sizes please? i.e. from 32 up?

Ah, the proverbial latency mystery

Well, long story short, I'm afraid it's technically impossible (it seems that WASAPI-induced overhead is putting a hard limit on how low you can go.... btw, I'm really not an expert on this so maybe somebody can chime in?...)

Notice e.g. that XX does not even offer buffer size selection in WASAPI mode - there must be a reason for it
jplayer can go down to 256 samples on my run-of-the-mill laptop with vLited Vista without problems (not that I find it sounding better though!).
In fact, the original MS sample code I used was programmed to use lowest latency possible by default (as reported by WASAPI layer) and, in my case, it turned out to be, think 132 samples. Unfortunately, that sounded really bad: as in: totally distorted sound, pops & clicks + the feeling as you were playing an SP tape on LP speed (if you're old enough to remember analog tapes lingo ).

Of course, there's always a possibility of replacing WASAPI with KS and, actually, it may not be too difficult to do it....
Hmmmmm: WASAPI vs KS: Sounds like an idea for a 2nd experiment...?   

[manisandher]

If you'd like to play multiple WAVs then simply copy them to same folder where players are and do this:

- in command prompt (in folder where both players & WAVs are) type: notepad jplay.bat
- Then copy/paste this line:
forfiles /M *.wav /c "cmd /c jplayer2 --file @file"
- Save & Close

I guess you meant:
forfiles /M *.wav /c "cmd /c jplay2 --file @file"

Personally, since I experienced what contiguous RAM can do for PC playback I find myself troubled when listening to any player.....(incl XX)..... Yes, yes, I know, it sounds radical and I don't want to start a controversy here so let's just say it's how it seems to me at the moment, ok? 

That's fair enough. I have to say that it's still too much of a WASAPI sound for me - clean but to the point of being clinical on my system. Some sort of KS implementation would be very interesting.

Mani.

[PeterSt]

Some sort of KS implementation would be very interesting.

Josef, please don't. I already have it in, but have problems of checking it. You told me the other day what to use for it, I said "oh" and "yes", but now where I'm up to it, it's hard to find. And also : I don't want to fall into the trap of looking at "contiguous" logical memory, as you told. If you think it is better to send me an email about it, please do. Maybe *I* think that is better.

Thanks in advance,
Peter

[Josef]

You told me the other day what to use for it, I said "oh" and "yes", but now where I'm up to it, it's hard to find. And also : I don't want to fall into the trap of looking at "contiguous" logical memory, as you told. If you think it is better to send me an email about it, please do. Maybe *I* think that is better.

Ok - I'll mail you download link.

[Josef]

I guess you meant:
forfiles /M *.wav /c "cmd /c jplay2 --file @file"

Yes Mani, my typo - you are 100% correct!

BTW - You mentioned that your RAMDisk is not allowing you access from command prompt - that is weird!
What RAMDisk is it?
Do you see its drive letter in Windows Explorer?

[boleary]

Not sure if this is helpful given all the "Josef" changes that will be made in Z4, but I recently gave Z3 another try and my original impression of sfs.ini set to 11 or 21 remains the same, though 21 is better than 11: very clear 'thin" sound; very similar to Josefs 32 bit player. However sfs ini set to 00 is a much rounder sound and, it seems, that there is no difference, or hardly any, in changing the SFS. I would say after a day or so of listening that its the most pleasing sound I've gotten from xx. I have the SFS set to 12. I think I can now change my signature.

[boleary]

After listening to Z3 for nearly a month, my wife started complaining about  harshness in the sound; after changing various settings in Z3 I tried Z2 again. The character of the sound is completely different from one to the other. Z2 seems a smoother, fatter sound but not as revealing or transparent as Z3. For vocals though Z2 again seems more pleasing than Z3.........

Both were played from ramdisc with tracks manually copied there as well.

[PeterSt]

Would that not be a kind of "logical" when you're now using W7 again ? To me, the high frequency output of W7-SP1 is a kind of infinitely higher, and so will encourage for what you described. Of course it kind of will be about how your further chain will cope with this, but I certainly will agree that W7-SP1 is more "difficult".

So, about your ... before you used Vista, and I think you can imagine that 0.9z-3 can work for the better there (compared to z-2). Thus, nothing strange ?

Before getting confused all over, please wait for 0.9z-4. Things will be so different that all pieces of the puzzle may start to fit suddenly. At least here I'm totally happy - and even with Special Mode (which really will "worsten" your description in the base !).

Peter

[Flecko]

boleary, as we both have a hiface, you could try my settings. The sound I have is very clear and pleasent. The best I had so far. No harshness at all. I also use jplay in the background to reduce "noise" while playing xx. I was not so happy for a long time with the sound but at the moment it is realy good.

[boleary]

I almost started my last post with:"Have you heard Z2 on W7 sp1?" but I didn't want to overstate this finding. Am very much looking forward to the Z4 experience.

Adrian, I did try those settings. I also tried letting my dac upsample straight 16/44 from xx, hadn't tried that for a long time and forgot how bad it sounds. In my system arc prediction with peak extension just dramatically improves everything when playing 16/44. Straight 16/44 is just too hard edged and jittery sounding here.

If Z4 can capture the midrange width of Z2 and the depth of clarity/transparency of Z3, without the janglyness (new word for HF distortion  ), I may never have to post again!

[Flecko]

It is so fascinating how different two systems can sound, even if thay have the same important parts (hiface). I tryed z2 too with W7 and have it still on my ramdisk for testing. I would confirm your description of z2. I did not tryed it now, but from what I remember it has less details and a softer, fuller, pleasent sound with less definition in the upper highs and the lower bass. With z2 I was always completely happy but I think with my actual set up it is even better. Will test again if I got time to do it.
Greetings

[PeterSt]

After listening to Z3 for nearly a month, my wife started complaining about  harshness in the sound; after changing various settings in Z3 I tried Z2 again. The character of the sound is completely different from one to the other. Z2 seems a smoother, fatter sound but not as revealing or transparent as Z3. For vocals though Z2 again seems more pleasing than Z3.........

Both were played from ramdisc with tracks manually copied there as well.

You read my response to this, right ?
Well, let me do that one all over, because maybe I wasn't 100% honest. Or maybe what happened was too short ago to be able to judge myself. So ...

Exactly the day before your post about this, *my* wife started complaining. Actually I could just copy your post. I only did not try z-2 to compare.

After this, there has been some misery in our listening room, because my wife kept on complaining, and *somehow* I couldn't agree. I always do, but not so now. But there is more, and only now I can talk about it with some sense ...

It came to me that playback via W7 SP1 is not consistent. Not consistent over albums I mean. Actually very much like when I started with PC playback. One album is good, the other is not at all.
The "not at all's" have something like my ears are covered with some thick blanket. No highs. Dull. Flat. The opposite is what my wife complains about. Very fresh, but apparently too fresh to her ears, and resulting in harshness.

Of course I wasn't playing with normal z-3 as you know it, and slowly it contains more and more of more tricks. Yesterday at last all was in there so I could play around with settings, and I think I have found back the sound how it should be. I also found the reason why Vista sounds as it sounds, and I think that sound can be copied now (in W7-SP1). The other way around I don't know yet (didn't try).

If my observations are correct, it may well be that things are getting too complicated by now; somewhere there's this "super" setting, but who is going to find it ? And, how many will explicitly have wrong sound because of not applying that one combination ?

My point is this (well, it is at this moment) :

The OS is "contributing" much more to the sound than we like. But, the way it all works (I know now), has a "flattening" influence on that general influence itself. What we are heading for now (0.9z-4) is avoiding the flattening of the influence, and influence it far more directly. It can be totally wrong, and I guess it can be utterly good. It needs this guide I'm afraid, and the guide is not there (yet). Also, there's hardly a way back. So, how z-4 works, does not allow to let it work how it worked before. Not in one program.

In between lines, but a major subject for the near future maybe, is my observation of how bass can be influenced, and also how highs can be (no judgement about mids yet). It is the highs which worry me;
I have examples of so few high output that we all may wonder what ever can cause this. And my personal problem is : I think the less highs are better. That is, I *can* reason out why highs -before rather espressive- can turn out to be lesser afterall, while I cannot reason out the other way around (to be better). Something like : when highs of which you can proove them to be not there, can be there with another setting (or OS), it should be distortion. No matter we (or I) don't perceive it like that, it should be. This too is about the flattening influence, because when not there it exhibits things which are hard to accept : all albums sound right. So, if I listen to that blanketed albums from the past week (or two), it seems normal to me that those albums sound like that (it's about the recording year, the artist, how it sounds in general). A next album shouts from the speaker, and that too seems normal to me (it is louder, more compressed, more commercial, blahblah).

But do I like that ?

I should, because all theories are better.
But I don't.

If this is all true, and you all will be perceiving 0.9z-4 the same as I do, I really will have a problem. It will mean that I must start to apply illogical things to make the sound better again. My quest for the 1:1 has been reached and now turns out to be wrong, and now I'll have to find a way back. I don't think I will be able to. Oh, I could revert to the 0.9z-3 code and start again from there, but I'd still know that at making something theoretically better it will turn out for the worse. So again there it stops.

But ok, there is hope. Hope from "yesterday" where I seem to have found a setting which sounds good again. Hope that it will last for the next week.
Or hope that *you* can make something of it.

We'll see. I will put up 0.9z-4 soon now. A "beta", just to try it. 0.9z-4-0.

Peter

[Klinnilk]

If this is all true, and you all will be perceiving 0.9z-4 the same as I do, I really will have a problem. It will mean that I must start to apply illogical things to make the sound better again.

Hello Peter,
interesting problem seems to occur. Decreasing quality of signal for the benefit of better sound. I don´t think this is the right way; going this way consequent, it will end up with equalizers, enhancers and other stuff to generate the sound one person likes.
I think the way you went was correct, even for the prize that some recordings do not sound like expected or wanted. I think that an audio reproduction system should accurate reproduce the signal it gets, whether analog or digital (i know this is theory). What you get for this kind of reproduction is a closer step to the music the artist plays, nobody knows which intention the musician had about the sound of his production (take the last Neil young Album, distorted, not very smooth sound) and therefore the music lover "must bare" the bad sound but he gets for the prize of a more realistic music reproduction. And on a good system which is focused on correct timing you`ll forget very fast the bad sound. When both comes together, good sound and good music, well everybody is happy but what is more important and gives you more joy, Music or Sound?
The biggest advantage form Z2 to Z3 was a much better timing and accuracy of music reproduction and I hope this won´t disappear on Z4.

[BrianG]

My quest for the 1:1 has been reached and now turns out to be wrong, and now I'll have to find a way back.

Chin up Peter, you are doing a fabulous job which we are all grateful 

Perhaps we need a big knob on the front of XXHighend that we adjust from "1:1" to "1:?" and we change it depending on what we like and what we are playing, perhaps if we had two they could be called "Bass" and "treble"   

Brian

[Telstar]

If this is all true, and you all will be perceiving 0.9z-4 the same as I do, I really will have a problem. It will mean that I must start to apply illogical things to make the sound better again. My quest for the 1:1 has been reached and now turns out to be wrong, and now I'll have to find a way back. I don't think I will be able to.

Here is where digitally tampering the sound does come handy to make more pleasant what horrors have been registered in the CD.
AP does a great job but sooner or later i was afraid that it wouldnt be enough. I'm not by principle against applying some filters in REVERSE mode of what has been done to the signal at the beginning (compression, but not just that), but I know that you were.
But I think that it has to be left to the end user what and where to adjust (i.e. as simply as a treeble DEboost), because in truth is album-based.

I'm also afraid that when all albums sounds great, there IS second harmonic added, be it by the OS, the player, or another part of the chain (that latter is ruled out in your system).

For the records, I use z2 with my studio PC, where i have a pretty bad OS dac and it does sound easier to my ears than z3, and it's more responsive, which i NEED when i'm working at the same time.

Lastly, remember the priority thing about W7? Maybe it is JUST THAT the cause of unpredictable SQ from one day to the other?
Or they fixed it in the SP1 (which will be retail 2-3 weeks btw)