Windows 8 and 09-z9, a match made in heaven?

[Scroobius]

I have been very busy recently building another hifi system and I will post about that separately soon. Watch out for something of a revelation on this !!

I have therefore been very slow to get round to loading Windows 8 and try 09-z9b with it but now loaded W8 and it sounds great as others have posted. Very clear precise, dynamic and accurate sound quality. I do not use the PCi capacitor card any longer as it now spoils the SQ.

Unlike Peter I do not use high latency settings mine are low latency (see signature) - surprisingly there is not as much difference in SQ as there used to be but I would say low latency is still slightly better SQ and I do prefer the volume control to respond a bit faster.

Even though the sound quality is clear and precise there is not a hint of hardness.

Paul

[PeterSt]

A small report about something possibly others recognize (actually asking) :

Ok, I will tell you in advance that I feel that this proceeds on the volume which needs to be right. But not sure and I like people to recognize some of the below and respond if possible.


I am used to rebooting the Windows 8 system each day before playback because I feel it is necessary. Earlier on I referred to a "memory leak" which makes me think so from technical reasons. Today I can't check this easily because of using RAMdisks and some more sh*t, but because of this some more sh*t I had the idea that maybe the reboot wasn't necessary anymore. So, day before yesterday I already did not (and I never switch off PCs anyway anywhere).

No problem that I could see day before yesterday. Ok, hear.

Now, it is almost commonly known (to me through messages from a few others) that Windows 8 can sound very diffferent from day to day. No clue why, and no reboot helps for it. Must be a mind thing, or washing machines otherwise.
Yesterday I had the most sh*t sound ever.

Normally I would reboot to be sure about that to begin with, but yesterday I didn't like that, knowing about my fragile setup which possibly would require 30 minutes of wasted time to let the machine boot again. And I didn't have time for that. So I played along and got more and more annoyed.

This stupid long lead in could be useful knowledge, but whether it is related to things I don't know ...

While I yesterday decided to have an evening of Rock, I didn't play that loud, because when it is not all the best (received) it better be more soft for volume. The more albums I tried the more annoyed I got.
In the end - after saying "what's up, nothing wants to sound right today ?!!" - I said "what the heck, I'll put on some hip-hop with an in advance feel that it would be okay for the next 60 minutes. So I did, and right away with some higher volume.

See ? that was okay now. Rest.
The higher volume could now be higher though, because it just sounded right.
And higher.
And some more.

Important for the whole issue is that EACH day it occurs to me that this stupid Windows 8 needs some burning in. Needs audio to be pushed through.
People could already agree with this, no matter if I say that I don't see how this can be true. But is it really this ?

For the very first time, yesterday, the totally odd situation occurred that
a. Playback was worse as it could be at the start;
b. Playback was the very best I EVER encountered here at the end.

I really really payed attention with open mouth to ever lasting cymbals, no single sign of HD hash or whatever which could be wrong, and I heard a colour in cymbals I never heard before.
The 100% sure feeling which went along with this during these past 60 minutes was that I could actually not find a loudest volume setting to squeeze out fine dynamic hits (I am used to), until it was loud enough to perceive just that, while in the mean time normal further instruments were perfectly in balance. If anything sound was more grey than what I'm used to, but at close listening I could not find a difference with e.g. the real drums I have here.

The worst sound versus the best sound (and I am serious !) in one session without changing any setting or otherwise ? This comes across as too extreme to be true.

So or indeed something needs a strange fashion of burning in
or
Each day when I think this already I - without real notice - increase the volume which is totally normal habit.

Or both, which just allows for the volume increase (like I yesterday really didn't dare to do because of the strange poor sound).

Yesterday ended with - without real notice - we couldn't talk to eachother anymore. So only there I noticed how loud all must have been in the sneaky mean time.

Not really related to the subject, I must emphasize that at these loud levels the dynamics worked again but without any hurting, and that I very explicitly noticed that no blanketing at all was in order (read : this is a mid thing and not so much about the higher ferquencies which stayed OK at all time), BUT that the louder level in this fashion allowed cymbals to last stupidly long. Logic, when the volume can be loud, the attacks don't become crazy because of that, while the sustain is subject to the volume increase.

One last thing : This hip-hop album I must have played a 500 times throughout life, and the reason I started to pump up the volume for it was because I hardly heard bass coming from it. Then suddenly things started to work.
Yesterday I really thought to ask you all to move out the spouse and pump up the volume to levels you are not used to. And then listen.


Peter

[PeterSt]

PS:

I (again today) didn't think about this :

While Ciska here 100% agreed with me (subject to not being able to have a conversation and all), she came up with the idea that possibly it now becomes apparent that the lost bits because of too much digital attenuation (which to some extend *is* true) imply the better THD.

So, Windows 8 could be so much more accurate (well, don't we hear that) that more harmonic distortion now becomes audible ?

I felt stupid that I never thought of this ...

[AlainGr]

Hi Peter,

I do not experience this here, but I use a preamp for the volume and I shut everything each day (except the preamp maybe). I am too conservative I guess...

Alain

[juanpmar]

I´m out of home for a few days and I can´t experiment at this moment with super high volume, but I remember the other day that the sound was not as good as other times and I keep listening and maybe around 3 to 4 hours later the sound was great again. If this has something to do with warming up the OS or not I don´t know but I related this to warming up the system because I turn it off in the night.
About the volume level, as I said before, there is a volume that for me is the perfect one, I could define that perfect level as the one where I perceive ALL the sounds in the best possible way, and if I go up from this level the distortion is evident. At lower volumes of this perfect level the sound is good but I can´t find all the sounds (are they lost?)

Best regards,
Juan

[AlainGr]

Hi Juan,

There are so many factors that can explain the different situations when sound is either low or loud... I can only express that depending on the ambient noise and the fact that our hearing will be less sensitive to high frequencies at low volume (and other factors), it would be normal that there would be a loss of details (I think). This was in fact the reason the "Loudness" button was introduced if I am right...

Regards,

Alain

[Flecko]

While Ciska here 100% agreed with me (subject to not being able to have a conversation and all), she came up with the idea that possibly it now becomes apparent that the lost bits because of too much digital attenuation (which to some extend *is* true) imply the better THD.

My 2 cents: Getting rid of my active pre (tube) was the right thing to do. It lowered the noise floor a lot and increased the level of detail but it also sounded flatter. I thought the flatter sound was because of removing the tubes from the signal chain but I was wrong on that.
After removing my pre I bought new and much better speakers and then a very good amplifier. Both I would call, within some limitations "state of the art". Still, I was not really happy with the sound. On some day I was and on some day I was not.
Also my system sounded worse in aspects of naturalness and 3D soundstaging than less expensive and less elaborated systems. I had no peace on my mind because of that and thought: WHY? WHY is my system not totally better than these systems? I also tried some components from theses systems in direct comparison to mine. None of the components was better. There was no reasonable explaination for me, except the one thing I could point out: These system use an analoge volume control. Finally I did some experiments with analog volume control vs. digital volume control.
For example I tried a DAC with an implemeted, selected alps poti. If I turned up the poti fully and used 40db of digital attenuation. The sound got flatter and less natural. AHA!
I tried the same with another DAC and a TVC (Transformer Volume Control). Same result!
Every time I tried and made a comparison the result was the same. Even some high quality pre amps can show some advantages in 3D soundstaging and naturalness over a properly implemented digital volume control. A good thing to do, seems to have an analoge volume control directly build in the DAC and have it "buffered" to avoid high frequency cut offs.
After using a good implemented analog volume control, I do not "suffer" from day to day sound differences any more. Maybe they are there but the sound gets not so much affected by these "daily variations". It sounds good every day. But the sound is defnitly not filtered to death. I can hear better than ever differences made in the digital domain.

Greetings
Adrian

[juanpmar]

There are so many factors that can explain the different situations when sound is either low or loud... I can only express that depending on the ambient noise and the fact that our hearing will be less sensitive to high frequencies at low volume (and other factors), it would be normal that there would be a loss of details (I think).
Alain

Yes Alain, you are right, there are many factors that influence the perception of sound, some of them are external and some internal. Maybe the perceived distortion at low level volume could have to do with the loss of detail, perhaps with the loss of data but at high volume level, I mean higher of a certain level, the distortion could have to do mostly with the room acoustics.

Best regards,
Juan

[listening]

Hi Peter,

I was more than once disappointed the last days when using XXHIGHEND and tuning Windows 8 - it's good to hear that you are experiencing the same issues. I observed another phenomenon: I used a ramdisk (imdisk) actually again and found that after rebooting Windows 8 the ramdisk was visible(existing) in explorer. That was not intended! After deletig and initialiszing again the SQ was really good again. Actually the drive is not shown anymore with all the hassles you write before. Maybe there is some mixture of "clean" shut down and "buffered" shut down.

Georg

P.S.: It did not help that I've bought a Dutch Windows 8 version to squeeze out every SQ bit   

[PeterSt]

Georg,

You have mentioned a maybe very interesting one : IMDisk and its visibility;

Without realizing it, I sometimes used drive Y and Z (always visible) for XX folder and Playback Drive respectively, and sometimes used A and B which will not be visible. I can well say that since I use A and B I like the sound of Windows 8. But this went along with other changes, so no way I thought of a possible difference here (but now you know why I can't really see the actual memory usage anymore - the drives are just not visible, haha).

Anyway, not that I saw any relation with the visibility in Explorer ...
Hmm ... Maybe we now see ghosts ?

Thanks !
Peter

[AlainGr]

? Could you have an explanation about how a drive letter would alter SQ ?

Alain

[PeterSt]

Not when Explorer is out of the way like it officially is with Unattended and shut off services. But I can imagine that under the hood this "sensing" stays up. And then Yes - then this can cause many "interactions" to have the lot up to date (like you see changes in one Explorer instance while making changes in the other).
It could be an interesting (new) view.

[AlainGr]

I don't know if I have it right, but of course, when you alter the content in one window, it can affect what we see in another ?

So drives like A and B (that were "reserved" for "floppy drives") could have a quieter behavior ?

Alain

[PeterSt]

My floppy drives are completely quiet since 15 or so years.
haha.
But probably because this is not set in the BIOS something goes "odd" here. For the better perhaps.

Not sure how Georg made his IMDisk drives appear or not ...

Peter

[AlainGr]

I just tried it... It works ok, but unless I would have something odd in the BIOS (I don't recall touching anything like this, apart from attempting to slowdown the CPU) to let the A and B drives be seen or not... I see the drive that I create. I guess it should when used...

Of course, the icon that I see in the explorer window shows a drive with a "floppy". This could tell us that not much has been done about these 2 drives through time and it could in effect be a good thing.

With Windows 8, I am not always sure that the OS is booting like the previous versions... What I understand is that W8 could sometimes restart, but not up to the POST that we normally see ? This could explain the imdisk ramdrive still there ?