XXHighEnd settings again, Q, SFS, clock

[Bigear]

Hi Peter,

I was playing around again with the XXHighEnd settings in an attempt to further optimize the sound in my system. As a reference I used your settings. A couple of questions....

1. Memory settings: Using Straight Contiguous gives a nice and rich sound. However, in that mode I was not able to use your SFS setting of 430. Above 80 it starts to complain on memory (I have 6 GB). So how much memory is needed to get to the 430?

2. Q settings:  I try to understand what this Q1 setting of 30 does. It is not explained in the guideline section you set up (but I guess those mostly applies for XXHighEnd users only).
I played around with Q1 and found that you can also give it a -4 value. That sounded terrible deformed. However, I had the impression that using a lower value for Q1 of say 5 gave a slightly more musical sound then with the 'recommended' 30 which sounded a bit dryer.  What is happening here?

3. System clock settings: using 15 ms sometimes fails. So what needs to be changed in the PC configuration to meet that?

Cheers,
  Quint

[PeterSt]

Hey Quint,

(for others : this is only partly NOS1 related)

Your 6GB of memory indeed won't be enough for the "430" SFS setting. 8GB is (but briefly start playback right after booting to preserve that contiguous memory for XXHighEnd).
12GB is more convenient (contiguous memory will be available longer after a boot and before starting playback); 16GB is overdone (and notice that an SFS of 500 is the limit anyway).

I try to understand what this Q1 setting of 30 does. It is not explained in the guideline section you set up (but I guess those mostly applies for XXHighEnd users only).

I think it is explained in the NOS1 Install Guide. Both please don't be bothered too much about this 30 setting in 0.9z-6. Watch 0.9z-7 though ...

I played around with Q1 and found that you can also give it a -4 value. That sounded terrible deformed.

Look at the values of 0 and lower as "special", please. But I won't explain. Above 0 though, and for Kernel Streaming (Engine#4) you can look at it as a factor for the Buffer Size, with its base in the Device Buffer Size setting in XXHighEnd.
I don't think I ever tried the <=0 setting for the NOS1, but it seems logic to me that it won't work. Anyway, *if* one tries it, I'd start out with a Device Buffer Size of 4096. If it still works it can be lowered, until it breaks.

System clock settings: using 15 ms sometimes fails. So what needs to be changed in the PC configuration to meet that?

Two main reasons :
1. Some other program that sets it lower (numbered) for itself (like XXHighEnd herself can be such a program);
2. The OS determines that it is needed.

Two examples of the latter :

a. Using WASAPI (Engine#3); This will make it 10ms (but you can lower it; not higher it).
b. Playing Hires files.

Ad b.
I only found this out a couple of weeks back, and I have no idea whether this is influenced by other "environmental" things; I just didn't proceed on it. But for example, maybe if upsampling is 1x it doesn't happen (I always have the upsampling fixed to 705600 / 768000).
Also, I don't recall whether this happens with 96K (88.2) already or maybe 192 (176.4) only, or ... more logically ... that it happens with 352.8. I mean, it will be rare that I play the latter (there's just "nothing" around, hence why did I notice this only a few weeks back (when I indeed tested things with 352.8 ).

Just imagine that for certain processes the OS needs the faster servicing (what this is about) for itself.

I hope this answers your questions.
Peter