[this will be a fairly long post, but I guess I'm at rest now somewhat
]
Hectic as things are already, and with in between jobs a died main server (took me 5 full days to recover it), I forgot about a tiny winy little thing : XXHighEnd.
Yea, this is a totally stupid thing;
I am listening myself through a rather "tweaked" XXHighEnd from right after 0.9z-5-2 was put up (2.5 monts back), but it was merely about manual control to keep things right than that I could really use XXHighEnd to do it. This was also when I said it would take a LOT of programming to get it all done. Ok, I had been working on that ever since (again in between jobs of course), and along the way I got sort of distracted by that other improvement I found, really working on the first NOS1-USB to go out. That by itself kept us busy for an unplanned month. Still a good decision, I say afterwards.
As we know, again in between, I set myself to finding decent playback means for the Mac (succeeded), and while over two weeks back I sat down to finish the driver on the 768 part that server died.
Next thing I knew is that we started to send out a few first DACs while they were physically ready anyway, and at being late already I finished the driver in 384 fashion which was already prepared for a longer time. So, all set !
Well, no, because when Mani had unpacked a first NOS1-USB, I only then managed to think of XXHighEnd not being finished yet. For what ? well, for that sheer fact it just needs that better OS environment I already talked about in another topic. So, it worked allright at my place for long, but this really is different from having a fool proof production version. Normally only a commercial issue (too many bugs maybe), but this time a dangerous one (unbootable PCs maybe).
In the end I got it done with only 1.5 days of NOS1's being under mains control and steaming up - doing nothing further - at Mani's place. Here I want to thank Mani for his patience and offering his "no problem Peter !", but while I'm at it anyway, I must *also* gracefully thank a few other people, eager to wait for the box to arrive, that box arriving when they themselves had to leave before that. Yes, I am referring to Norwegian people, who all seem to work offshore.
And yes, I could also extend the story to such people sending me an email about the good time to send the NOS1 for their upgrade, that email not being read by me because that server being down, and *when* I read it, the man in question just left the day before for his little-long boat trip. NOS1 at home, wife at home - wife does not want to pack and send it. Yes, I would be mad.
Maybe I tell these totally seemingly unrelated stories, because indeed I care. At least I would hate it when something like this happened to me.
Allright. So I think it was last Friday when I could send an XXHighEnd version (denoted 0.9z-6-0) to Mani of which I thought it was reliable enough to do its job.
What I/we did not know, is that it didn't do a thing of what it was supposed to, and let's say that a stack of coincidental circumstances prevented showing its real state and merits.
In the end it was only yesterday late afternoon that it could be determined that one stupid little program just didn't do a thing, while it was supposed to do all. At this moment I still don't know why, and all we can tell is that on one PC it just doesn't run, while -so appeared- on the other it nicely works.
At this moment it must be so that now first this XXHighEnd part is finished into a reliable state, and only next I can proceed on those 768 drivers. It really shouldn't be a problem, as nowhere I judged or measured anything with the 768 drivers myself. I have them running allright, but only for technical testing and never for listening so far. But you can bet I'm eager myself, because it only can get better again.
Firstly, I'm not sure how much of this amazing performance is down to the new NOS1 interface or actually the 'Minimise OS' function in XXHE. All I can say is that before I managed to get this function to work, the NOS1 sounded good, but not particularly much better than the original.
If the latter would have been the end of it, I would have been satisfied myself. At least that is how it started out with the USB thing, because it's realy tough to get it going well. So, when it happened for the first time that everything started to sound normal, I was happy as a child. Remember, it would be able to replace a nice - though awkward interface. This is worth something.
I think if you listen longer to that normal XXHighEnd situation (all tweaked as far as it went in 0.9z-5-2), you would have "seen" that there is more. You can just feel it. At least that was my response to it back then (3 months back ?). There seemed to be more potential still, but it merely tells you "hey, my environment ain't right man !". I started to hear my amps (and they indeed were wrong), and I started to hear "XX needs more control over it" while it couldn't.
Yes, this will sound like much blahblah, but it really is true.
Also, I hope that it is allowed to refer to my own words very similar to these from Mani :
Actually, I'm finding it hard to write anything constructive.
I had the same problem, and said it needs new phenomena to decribe music experience. All we know of, does not work anymore. Today I still have this problem myself. But what it does, and this was the current subject, is that it tells you where to be when something doesn't sound right - or urges for more. It is really strange, and so far it always led me to where to be (well, looking at how the solutions concerned worked out indeed).
And so, this main part is about the OS which needs to be tweaked far more than before. Something like : before (original NOS1) the DAC could mask quite some, but today (NOS1-USB) there is nothing masked.
On this matter I must notice that during the past month all has been undertaken to improve on the gain stage. I talked about that allright, but this was *before* this last month. So, I saw some lights, and really thought I had to finish that before a first USB would go out, or otherwise it had to be shipped in again, later. Now, that too brought improvements which are hard to describe, but anyway I never talked about them (who cares since all will be new anyway, and I'm exaggerating always of course).
Where was I ? ah, that OS. Yes, I can imagine that without NOS1 too, it will be the biggest improvement ever. But also a maybe dangerous one. At this moment I can't tell whether now for everybody the Q1 etc. won't do a thing anymore, but if it doesn't it means that you will be hearing your DAC way better. Whether that will be a good thing ? I sure hope so. But let's see, because it now won't take ages anymore before it's put up. May still need two weeks or so - we'll see.
Anyway, I'm sure it will be before people start to send out their original NOS1's for upgrading it, so they will be able to judge too. I honestly never did and as a matter of fact I had removed my own "nice old interface" physically removed from my own NOS1 last week. So now I really can't anymore.
Allright. So far for now. Mani, great thanks for all of your efforts, and I'm so glad we could find the culprit just before I went off for another death last night. Very important to me, because
I'll post more thoughts/experiences when I've got anything new to say.
... I know you won't be there this week. So, still something to work out for this one stubborn PC, of which of course there will be more out there. But I will work it out.
Peter
