On an in between the lines hint from Marcin In the "W7 Pitfall" topic (I even blamed him for stirring the pot about it), I installed a fresh W7/64 and on top of it SP1 (Release Candidate). These are my findings after two days of playing Christmas Albums (not always the best) :
(let me dedicate this topic to Marcin who may be afraid a bit to post about it; we talked about it off line too)
The soundFirst of all the sound is totally different compared to all what I heard before;
There's a nice dark brown bass, and it is way more profound than anything, especially compared to Vista. Ok, we knew that the bass of Vista isn't the best, but here basses have their nice own life. Also the veils of drums benefit of this, and while I earlier was happy that Vista made those veils nicely audible again (while native W7 did not do that at all), this W7 SP1 (RC) makes excel just that.
I am under the impression the sound is very clean;
Looking at this relatively from Vista, it may even be more clean, which is because this W7 is more fresh, and any "cleanness" jumps out more.
I do NOT perceive the "more dynamics" I heard from native W7 a few days back. I think this is a good thing. But, still there is a kind of "dynamics" from the more tight bass and slam. The slam seems somewhat less than from native W7 though, but to me it just sounds natural.
The highs seem clean too, but maybe with less colour than Vista. This is a difficult one, because for me it is back to the "close to the edge" thinking about the NOS1 which is "dangerous" in this aspect. Anyway, I went back from Core Appointment Scheme 1 to 3 just because of this. Scheme 1 overdoes it a litte IMO. But also to keep in mind : playing Christmas Albums from merely the 60's is a challenge within itself.
What throughout time occurred to me from Vista is a "jitter" thing. Maybe not really jitter, but a flanger and vibrato which maybe shouldn't be there. Btw, notice that XXHighEnd can have impact on this just the same, so it seems a software "control" thing. Now with W7 SP1 all sounds completely straight throughout. It (IMO) is this what makes distortion guitars sound realy good, although most people will know them as making noise only. Not true; When "processed" well, it is one of the most "airy" instruments, and the squariness of it can so nicely fill the room. Oh, for Christmass stuff this is about Lynyrd Skynyrd.
I always think that Enya is a typical test for a voice which can sound delicate, but which is a destroyer when things are not 100%. Well, I don't think I ever heard her so beautiful as she sounds now.
General observationsLet me tell you first that I did not do anything for tweaks. So, no "tweaks till death will follow" either. Nothing.
Even in this case, I/Os are hard to find. There are some, and although they are new and right now I don't know where they are coming from, you'd almost say someone listened to us, because all of the others are not there. To me this looks a kind of strange ... as if things have been shut down for this Release Candidate.
I can't compare much with the earlier W7 situation because I changed PC in the mean time. But, I did not notice any difficulties at playing.
Generally it looks like the priorities behaviour wasn't changed compared to the native W7, but I do notice that there's a difference regarding how the screen I/O is dealt with. It is not even difficult to let the system BSOD when moving around with things a lot while playing (at real time priority).
What sure *is* new, is that the sound may stop for a few seconds. This feels like "uh-oh, something is wrong or off a bit, let's recalibrate". This may be similar to not receiving "too many buffer errors" at format changes, which I always had before, but not now ?
Lastly - and this
could matter for what I perceive from SQ - I installed the OS on a spinning disk.
Maybe this encourages for a new "revolution", but at this time I don't think the SSD does good. It's merely theory, but if you (would be able to) read back what I wrote about this in the past, then you'd see that to me this feels like an emphazation of things going on anyway. So, if something is not right, the SSD will emphasize it. Of course this implies that if something is good it emphasizes it too, but honestly - this latter can't happen. It should be non-sense, never mind I said it myself. Merely it will impeed for a sibilance, and what I always said about (continuously ?) accessing the memory cells is something which is still in my mind, and which may spread currency draw, but first the currency draw then is not right in the first place. Just theory, but also not to forget that I like the sound very much, plus it is completely different. That SP1 will contribute to that somewhere is without doubt, but that the OS not being on the SSD just *will* add to it, if I must believe myself at perceiving the differences in general, and of course at believing everybody for perceiving vast differences. But is it for the better ? that is what I wonder now.
Besides, my previous OS-SSD which was still in the system, turned into a zombie, and Google tells me half of the world is bothered by this, solved by new firmware which half of those people doesn't help at all. Maybe by now I'm just fed up with SSDs.
I will have one in allright, just for the Galleries and the speed of retrieving it.
Additionally I believe that the OS disk spins down, and if not today than tomorrow after finding the source of those few IOs I mentioned.
AddendumWhile I wrote this originally yesterday awaitening Marcin's topic about it, I had an additional evening of listening to more normal (test) stuff. Well, let me add to the above similar to what boleary said in the other topic :
am sorta blown away by how good SP1 it sounds!Can't wait till it's play time again ...
There is such a naturalness, and what I didn't dare say earlier in response to Mani's first listening experience with the NOS1 : I guess this brings exactly what might be lacking when listening to Vista. It can always go deeper, and it can always go "brown café" browner" (we call a "brown café a cosey bar with not too much light and damn good atmosphere and music).
So, Vista was the solution to a failing Windows 7, but Windows 7 SP1 is the solution to Vista which seems to smoothen too much. It is like all was there in W7, but with distortion. Now it is without distortion and all is the best (??).
But I also think we must be careful;
As I said earlier, to me it feels that not all is there in W7. Similarly it can't be the final Release Candidate. I won't say all is wrong, but some too obvious things are, and it may happen that the RTM version contains sh*t we don't want again. Moral :
Get it now. You will need an official W7 (and can't upgrade from another version, nor won't it install on a beta or something) and it will be active until November 2011. Of course within the hour Marcin will come up with his W2008/SP1 (RC), and depending on the result of that it may be a more tough (and $$) job to get. So let's awaiten that too (I too can install it, but I don't want to loose any second on installing OSes at this time, and rather listen to these great sounds). Anyway, it should give you a more or less guaranteed good sound for the (almost) next year, and not to forget : I applied zero tweaks (and use a spinning disk for the OS, but which *only* contains the OS, and nothing else).
Maybe I come back on it all, but I don't think so. It's just too good ...
That's all for now ! - and thank you Marcin.
Peter
