Windows 7 SP1 Surprise

[christoffe]

And have a fine glass of whiskey of course.

Which does not enlighten my senses necessarily.
Joachim

Hello Paul & Peter,

that should be joke. Typical German eh?

Joachim

[juanpmar]

I just applied full updates onto Vanilla W7 so it is bang up to date now. Unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to listen to SQ just after SP1. SQ quality sounds as good as I could imagine at the moment maybe I need more time to listen to it but it sounds completely satisfying now.

Hi Paul,

After two days struggling with my PC to apply the upgrades and make it works correctly I arrived to two conclusions:

1- With the SP1, all the important upgrades and none of the optional ones the sound is consistently oustanding, being the bass the most noticeable improvement which is now even tighter and deeper. I´d say that the sound is at least as good as the first time when I listened it with only the SP1. The difference is that now I get used to the sound and I´m still amazed.

2- My computer seems to work even faster and smoother now with all the upgrades.

At the end I´d recommend to give a try to the upgrades.

Thanks, Paul!

Juan

[ivo]

So, here is what I did and how the sound changed:

1) updated my W7 HP to SP1 with few updates after SP1 according to findings in this thread
2) upgraded HiFace MK2 drivers (started to use Young's driver instead of Hiface's as several people have conformed as sounding better)
3) installed the very latest XX (before was couple minors back)

Bottom-up:

Bass: improvement incredible. Depth more, clarity and power. Now when I turn up volume, bass gets stronger and goes more into floor them comes up under me in my couch. Before, it was dirty and cloudy.
Middle: not so steril as before. Seems like a bit more mud in there, however resolution still high. Have listened 2 albums so far, but I guess must get used to that.
Highs: Not so sharp as before. Still crystalline and mild, but less sparkling. I need to get to used to that.

Overall sound picture has moved down. It is more kind of attenuated I'd say. At higher volumes it is perfect as sound does not attack you, it rather fills the space.

Afterall, very good indeed!!!! Thank you Peter for your work and do not pay attention to my topic with JPlay, just wanted to share the new finding and my experiment with both players. (Haven't bought the other one )

Ivo

[Robert]

1) updated my W7 HP to SP1 with few updates after SP1 according to findings in this thread
2) upgraded HiFace MK2 drivers (started to use Young's driver instead of Hiface's as several people have conformed as sounding better)
3) installed the very latest XX (before was couple minors back)

Did you install these one at a time and listen or did you perform all and listened?

I'm particularly interested in the use of the Young Hiface driver on your Hiface M2. Is this correct?

I can't find much evidence of the Young driver being better that's clear and used with W7.

I use a Benchmark 24/192 similiar to your dac.

[ivo]

Event sequence: SP1, Young driver, XX.

I listened to the sum of that because I had no time to do one by one. Overall I think the biggest + comes from SP1 and then the driver, leaving XX last this time because I was using 0.9z-6 version before.

Ivo