Peak Extension AGAIN

[manisandher]

Anyone else with any ideas of how we are going to be "the most shocked"?

No takers? OK, here's another one from me...

4. XX now converts everything to DSD. If this were the case, I really would be "the most shocked".

Mani.

[Jud]

Well, we've had hints of laptops and wifi....

XXHE broadcasting DSD over wifi for Win8, Mac, and Linux laptops?

And the splitter bar doesn't move?     

[Stanray]

I've tried 3 different settings, with totally different results:

1. PE and HDCD on. Very laid back, smooth sound. Easy on the ear, but lacking a bit of sparkle.

2. PE off, HDCD on. Too bright and too forward. Slightly aggressive leading edges. (Might this be due to VC issues?)

3. PE on, HDCD off. The best sounding. Very smooth but with the sparkle intact. Maybe just a tad too 'holographic' sounding.

So, 3 is my favourite. But I'm worried that I'm missing out on the correct HDCD decoding.

Any thoughts?

Mani.

I tested this last night and for HDCD recordings "3" is so much better than the others. Silly of me I never deactivated HDCD before.

But also this setting sounds *louder*. I'm not sure if it's really louder, or it's because of increased dynamics.

Stanley

[CoenP]

I have the odd experience that the detrimental effect of HDCD "on" is also audible with non-HDCD material.
When cofiguring a new XXHE version this is usually the first feature I disable.

regards, Coen

[PeterSt]

Maybe an interesting sort of side-step :

With the notice that I disregard PE as a really influencing factor, except for the very subject of this topic (meaning : just count this out), I noticed this, and I notice it for a longer time now :

Q sound (think Amused to Death, Immaculate Collection (Madonna) and some Sting album) ... does not sound right anymore these days. Remember, this is severely manipulated (phase) stuff.
I don't need to be right on this, but I just noticed it and though that perhaps it is now very much audible when too much has been changed to the sound. Of course this is nothing much different from severe "DSP'd" mixing and such, but it sort of goes along with superb sounding albums from era's where no manipulation was done.

Maybe the HDCD manipulation (with actually no real idea about the severety of it) also is too much of it.

I'd have to add that I never A/B'd HDCD albums with HDCD decoding On/Off, BUT I always find it the most noticeable that HDCD decoded (so ON) sounds so much more silky. Of course this can resemble this :

1. PE and HDCD on. Very laid back, smooth sound. Easy on the ear, but lacking a bit of sparkle.

... which can be about the less sparkle just making it more smooth (silky in my words). I just never compared.

It has been said before, it is so, so (SO) difficult to differentiate freshness from distortion that we all can be on a wrong track for really long times (and I sure don't exclude myself from that). But at least for me, slowly, I start to recognize from other properties of the sound what is the "real" thing in this realm.
I could say ("state") that less sparkle never is good, if - and only if the more sparkle can be sustained as OK throughout your whole collection (within reasonable limits).

Notice the word (or phenomenon) "sparkle" here, which actually is a very good description of some more of these properties involved; for those with the experience, compare to Windows 8. No single way I would dedicate that any sparkle as such. Hard, to the point, sharp ... those would be descriptions for W8 and no way I mean these as negatives (to get the meaning of the words how I mean them). But sparkle ? sparkle contains colours, warmth, maybe even love - and most important as how I see it : colours in music notes. Call it timbre. So, even piano notes can contain sparkle as long as the harmonics are sufficiently shown.

I think you can well say that the more sparkle the system exhibits, the better you will hear colours in cymbals. So, I think the both go together. With W8 there is no sparkle and cymbals show the high frequencies only (too few colour) while at the same time I'd call that hard and pinpointed. But sparkle ? never. Sparkle sings. Sparkle makes inherently (??) too close high frequencies like with Enigma sing instead of being grey. Just like cymbals must sing, and the more they do the better you see the sizes of them.

And to (attempt to) complete it : when things are to "hard" (W8) frequencies get too high compared to how they should be. With too much filtering (just the word, no other meaning), things get dull. When too high frequencies are made dull, they become more pleasing to listen to. But not better. And once you are used to the higher frequencies, your brain can't cope with the blanketed sound.

Sparkle is in the middle of this all ...

Peter

[PeterSt]

I have the odd experience that the detrimental effect of HDCD "on" is also audible with non-HDCD material.
When cofiguring a new XXHE version this is usually the first feature I disable.

Well, aren't we all ready for the mad house by now.
So, no way there's strange or buggy code or anything involved. However, other processes run and since everything matters this can matter too. To explain this, think like this :

You play an album and use Normalized Volume. In this case it wasn't Normalized yet, so that has to happen first. Now *that's* a process of some "size" that won't happen the next time you play this album. And these things matter. Some more, some less, and depending on what it is what's being done.
HDCD decoding - just examining whether it has to happen - is also such a process, though tiny compared to my example.

So, don't lift off to the madhouse yet.
But things do get quite crazy these days, and I'm afraid it won't get less ...

Peter

[christoffe]

I have the odd experience that the detrimental effect of HDCD "on" is also audible with non-HDCD material.
When cofiguring a new XXHE version this is usually the first feature I disable.

regards, Coen

I have the same impression. Something is going on.

Joachim

[PeterSt]

Yea, but you were already banned to ...
well, somewhere far away. Or ?

hehe

[Jud]

Maybe an interesting sort of side-step :

Q sound (think Amused to Death, Immaculate Collection (Madonna) and some Sting album) ... does not sound right anymore these days. Remember, this is severely manipulated (phase) stuff.
I don't need to be right on this, but I just noticed it and though that perhaps it is now very much audible when too much has been changed to the sound. Of course this is nothing much different from severe "DSP'd" mixing and such, but it sort of goes along with superb sounding albums from era's where no manipulation was done.

* * *

But sparkle ? sparkle contains colours, warmth, maybe even love - and most important as how I see it : colours in music notes. Call it timbre. So, even piano notes can contain sparkle as long as the harmonics are sufficiently shown.

I think you can well say that the more sparkle the system exhibits, the better you will hear colours in cymbals. So, I think the both go together.

*  *  *

And to (attempt to) complete it : when things are to "hard" (W8) frequencies get too high compared to how they should be. With too much filtering (just the word, no other meaning), things get dull. When too high frequencies are made dull, they become more pleasing to listen to. But not better. And once you are used to the higher frequencies, your brain can't cope with the blanketed sound.

Sparkle is in the middle of this all ...

Peter

So BTW - and my apologies in advance if this is something that has been explained repeatedly before or is in a tooltip I should have paid attention to: Does "Q" have anything whatever to do with the Q of a filter?

Also: Might be interesting for folks to look at the iZotope SRC thread over at Computer Audiophile.  Has some interesting stuff, and speaking of "sparkle," I just lately made a comment in that thread that talks about how we are trying to describe (in that case, and partially also with XXHE) digital filter effects so inadequately with language from back in the analog days when all we knew about changing was frequency response and a little about time ("transients" and such).

[PeterSt]

No Jud, Q just stands for Quality. It originates from special and (still) secret WASAPI settings, while for Kernel Streaming it's nothing more than a part of the Buffer Sizes setting.

Thanks,
Peter

[christoffe]

Yea, but you were already banned to ...
well, somewhere far away. Or ?

hehe

Cool, we three, Mani, Coen and me are then ready for the madhouse ............. .

Never had time for a serious A/B comparison, but now …… .

The release 0.9z-7.5 has the best “sound staging”, “tonal balance” and “coherence” with the right size of the instruments.
(see a previous note by Stefano too - http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2490.msg25926#msg25926)

On my system I get the best results with the memory management “mixed” (better sound staging).

I’m in a concert by Chick Corea tomorrow and then I can compare XXH with the real Live.

Joachim

[manisandher]

Prepared to be shocked. The most shocked ...

There are only a few things coming from you that would truly shock me:

Don't apply Phase Alignment???

Well, consider me totally shocked.

Mani.

PS. Bert, I want my money back on those caps you put into my amps ;-)

PPS. Will try 09z-8-3 with Peter's 'ultimate' settings (and no PA  ) when I get back home this weekend.

[stefanobilliani]

Don't apply Phase Alignment???

Very glad To READ that .
BTW I am the first downloader of the new version :-)

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