0.9z-4-0

[Flecko]

Maybe it would help, if we first understand why Ramdisk doesn't sound good.

Bingo !

Maybe it was a typo, but at this moment I rather say :

Maybe it would help, if we first understand why without Ramdisk doesn't sound good.

No, wasn't a typo. Ramdisk sounds bad. Even if you say your theory is not a real theory, it seems to be right. With z2, it is even easier to hear as with z4.

We can discuss a lot, but you got to try it yourself. I am completly fine, if you think different.

[Suteetat]

Hmm... I experimented a bit with Z-04 on Ramdisk and on regular spinning HD.
Personally, I still prefer the sound of Z-04 on Ramdisk over on regular hard drive.
Yes, there is that smoothing effect, but to my ears, the sound is smoother, more liquid
but certainly not softer nor less resolving. Tonally, it is also slightly richer and denser. The difference is very
slight, unlike Z-03, I think. Comparing to what I hear on my analogue setup,
Ramdisk is certainly slightly closer and more pleasing to my ears.

[Scroobius]

Hi - I thought I would update my recent comments about z4 after a few days listening. I find 4 much clearer and precise than 3 and overall I can hear much more detail. Vocals are really much clearer. However the sound has a hardness to it that means I listen at a lower volume. I do not know if there is some inherent high frequency distortion or some such derived from the software or if extra detail is "pushing" my system into misbehaviour. Anyway I cannot go back to three but I it would be great to get rid of that hardness to the sound. I have tried changing settings but it does not get rid of the hard character of 4. Bit its OK at lower volume and the other improvements make it worthwhile.

All the best

This is an update after listening to z4 for a couple of weeks. There is no way I could go back to 3 absolutely no way. 4 is full of contradictions. I have tried changing all adjustments SFS everything but it does not change the basic character of the sound. Detailed - much more detail. Vocals just sound so good another layer of emotion I have not heard before - a personal performance now. It can sound hard with the volume too high but just turn the volume down a tad and all is absolutely fine. That is the contradiction - normally the sound is right or wrong at all volumes but not this time. The interesting thing is with the tendency to sound hard - I played some "difficult" recordings from the eighties. The early days of hard digital sound. They were never gong to sound good with 4 were they?. Wrong - I played "Doll by Doll" Gypsy Blood a really hard digital sound - but now for the first time hard sounds are dissected you can really hear what is going on - great and totally not what you would expect from a software release that can sound hard at a higher volume. mmm very strange and not quite like anything I have experienced before. But now 4 for me sounds really special. What will happen at the next release ???????????.

[GerardA]

Well, I just went back to Z2 and can enjoy the music again!
It's hard to describe what's wrong with Z4 but I really don't like to listen to it.
A lower Q1 seemed to improve a bit, but my main problem is with the bass.
A drum in Loreena McKennit's The mask and the Mirror sounds in Z2 like a recognisable boom, in Z4 like whoom whroom or something not natural and irritating.
The overall sound of Z4 is velvety nice, but a bit too much, Z2 is maybe a bit colder, but for me much clearer, cleaner and natural.
With Z2 I think I can hear the acoustics  better , like real depth.
And important more like my vinyl setup.
Maybe Z2 has some colouration in the bass-region to sound more agreeable with a NOS1-DAC?
Reminds me of the coloration of a Linn Sondek which had this effect and many people liked (not me )

[boleary]

Hey GerardA, what SFS are you using in Z2? Just wondering.

[Gerard]

Hi - I thought I would update my recent comments about z4 after a few days listening. I find 4 much clearer and precise than 3 and overall I can hear much more detail. Vocals are really much clearer. However the sound has a hardness to it that means I listen at a lower volume. I do not know if there is some inherent high frequency distortion or some such derived from the software or if extra detail is "pushing" my system into misbehaviour. Anyway I cannot go back to three but I it would be great to get rid of that hardness to the sound. I have tried changing settings but it does not get rid of the hard character of 4. Bit its OK at lower volume and the other improvements make it worthwhile.

All the best

And when you use SFS 1? Do that help?

 

[GerardA]

Hey GerardA, what SFS are you using in Z2? Just wondering.

Hey Boleary,
With Z2 I use adaptive, buffer 2048 and SFS 30
With Z4 I tried lower buffers, special mode and different SFS's and MC and Mixed.

BTW, did anybody try out garbage collect on/off?

[boleary]

BTW, did anybody try out garbage collect on/off?

No, man, but I did wonder if it would save me that trip to the back alley every Wednesday evening.....Ha!

[PeterSt]

Ok, here's a new one for a change ...

Yesterday I experienced a great "analogue" playback evening. Let's say I heard Moogs instead of Rolands. Bass was superb (as far as this can be judged for a few albums of listening), highs were "quiet" but with all the detail I could imagine. Say, all the most enjoyable.
Now, what did I do ?

Hmm ... had to test something for Vista-32.
No no, let's not all go back to Vista AGAIN, but maybe it's still good to share, where we are all tend to be confused anyway.

- No RAMDisk;
- SFS 29 (Straight Contiguous, and most probably you can't do this (0.9z-4-1));
- Special Mode and 32 sampes of internal latency on 2048 dev. buffersize (the latter was by accident, but so anyway);
- OS on an SSD.

I loved this.
The emphasis should be on Special Mode 32 samples of latency (32/384 output), which I really could not do before - not a single glitch heard. So, this by itself should be related to Straight Contigous or 0.9z-4-0 (but actually -1) otherwise.
Although my testing was about the SFS size in this combination, I deliberately played with this for listening, and *now* I left out the RAMDisk on purpose. The idea : bring back some of the freshness W7-SP1 exhibits (too much) without the RAMDisk. I'd swear it works ...


Alternatively, today I played with W7-SP1-64 without RAMDisk and an SFS (SC) of 100. As others reported, I'd say this helps for less annoyance (when the RAMDisk is left out), but actually I never found one second of WOW bass. Maybe I played the wrong material.
Some WAV (women attraction voiceover) : at the moment my wife said "I like this", I wanted to turn it off. I had enough. It annoys, maybe doesn't even show good highs when paying attention, and the only thing I could do tonight is watch for non-disturbances.
No Magic. No music anywhere.

Stupid computers.
z-2 tomorrow maybe.
Not to forget : I also love W7-SP1-64 with RAMDisk (SFS 40, SC). But yesterday's Vista seemed to show that "ease". Analogue ease.

Time for medical help ?

[Calibrator]

Time for medical help ?

Undoubtedly Peter .. hehe

I'm guilty of zero feedback since the release of Z4-0. In all honesty I couldn't imagine being happier with what I am listening to at the moment. After a brief foray into using mixed contiguous mem management I switched to straight continuous and left it at that , as I perceived a subtle improvement. Hard to define .. just an overall feeling. With my 8GB ram I can have a 3GB ramdisk and use an SFS of 128MB.

Transients and the even tonal spread are impressive, and if it wasn't for the acknowledged "tick" at the start of each track, I'd be happy to have it called XX 1.0 from a purely SQ perspective.

Stability has not been an issue and I've got into the habit of letting the PC simply "go to sleep", then wake it with a quick press on the power button. 5 seconds later and I'm ready to queue up another album or two. Haven't had a need to reboot in a week now.

I should also point out I have stripped the OS down to bare minimum processes, using Black Viper's guide. If anyone is interested I will post a screen shot of my minimal running processes.

Regarding tweaking with the release of a new version, my philosophy has usually been to pick a day when you are in the relaxed mood to want to listen to music, then spend some time playing with the parameters until you are satisfied. Once you have achieved that, put all notion of further tweaking from your mind. Trust your initial judgement ! It is a well known phenomenon that different days will harness difference perceptions, and if you continually change things you only end up chasing your tail.

Now, I simply queue up album after album after album, and just enjoy it all

Cheers,

Russ ( converted tweakaholic )

[Flecko]

I should also point out I have stripped the OS down to bare minimum processes, using Black Viper's guide. If anyone is interested I will post a screen shot of my minimal running processes.

Would be interested!

[Per]

...If anyone is interested I will post a screen shot of my minimal running processes.

Russ, please do. Thank you very much.

Per

[Scroobius]

Last night they came to take me away but after sedation and kind words I was allowed back again. All those adjustments aaaarrrghhh (calm, easy count to ten .............).

I had a good play with the controls last night - and at least I won't have to do it again I can just enjoy the music now. And boy do I enjoy the music - I just cannot stop listening to 4 it sounds superb but I said that in my last post. To summarise I ended up with the following:

Mixed memory
SFS 100
Clock 10ms
Adaptive
1024 buffer

Why the above? - well simply with straight contiguous SFS has to be set to 0.2 and that stretches my laptop it works but the sound Q is not so good probably because not enough resources  (OK OK Peter I know I have to get a big butch PC soon - its on the list OK). Clock 10ms seems about right - if I reduce it I seem to lose definition /resolution (I think) again laptop struggling?. Adaptive and 1024 well it just works fine. Special is just too much of a struggle even with the buffer increased muchly - I can reduce the little ticks and pops but cannot get rid of them. So I think the above is the best compromise for a resource limited laptop. By the way my laptop should not work at all - but I installed W7 a "tiny" version in dual boot config. This "tiny" version of W7 (not SP1) is so small it fits on a CD - it is a completely stripped down version with everything taken out that is not required - this frees up a lot of resource just to keep XX happy!!!!. I always boot to Vista when I have to do anything else. So my W7 is dedicated to XX.

By the way in my last post I mentioned that the sound can be hard. Well it can BUT but only with excessive volume. Changing the adjustments makes no difference to this aspect. If I turn the volume down a tad then everything is fine - I mean really fine it sounds fantastic. I think that maybe? at too high volume my system cannot cope - maybe it is all the detail - the speed required and it cannot supply at excessive volume. This is just not a problem at all - this sounds great. Bjork has just been giving me a personal rendition!!!.

Peter what on earth did you do? this is a great improvement - totally unexpected - now I really must go to bed - OK well just one more track just one.

All the best from a very grateful serious listener!!!.

Paul


**** Update Update ****

Well I have been listening more - a lot more. I noticed there were some occasional crackles in the background a bit like listening to my old vinyl albums. I had to change the buffer size to 2048 and now no problems - I have always used 1024 before but at 4 I have to use 2048 - can't imagine why.

[Maximum]

Hi guys,

I've been fiddling with the schemes today and also a couple of days back.  Has anyone tried scheme 4 lately?  I haven't seen many people using it, but I've been getting promising results.  More listening is needed though.

Rob.