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

[Scroobius]

Last night I was listening to W8 and without doubt the sound quality was easily the best I have heard through my system to date. The sound was clear and clean in a way I have not heard before. But to complicate matters I have had other hardware problems which I appear to have fixed (I think!) at the same time as loading W8.

I have not listened to W8 for very long so cannot comment on the possible variability of the SQ with time, however, I am listening to 88db sensitivity speakers at the moment (not my usual AN's) and I would say that the sound quality is good at high volume (-9db) and low volume (-30db). At least at low volume I do not notice any particularly problems. Not sure if that helps but anyway those are my first impressions.

Best Regards

Paul

[arvind]

Hi Guys,

I moved on from W 7 to W 8 on saturday & then spent the weekend extensively listening to music. Without any shadow of doubt the SQ with  W 8 is far superior to W 7. Its clearer, bass is more true, differentiation between instruments is far better.

However I had a disturbing feeling which I want to share with you guys. Ear fatigue is more with this version as compared to the earlier ones. The music in its totality sounded marginally less musical. I just hope that in our quest for clearer sound (less distortion) we dont lose out on this important aspect.

Regards,

Arvind

[CoenP]

However I had a disturbing feeling which I want to share with you guys. Ear fatigue is more with this version as compared to the earlier ones. The music in its totality sounded marginally less musical. I just hope that in our quest for clearer sound (less distortion) we dont lose out on this important aspect.

Well,

I had this same feeling yesterday. I heard unbelievably NHB clear and realistic guitars, voices, pianos and synths and fantastic rich instrument bodies (however only at an almost uncomfortable listening level), yet the music left me cold.
Another bad sign was that I found myself very selective in the playlist material.

I revisited my report on my unease with WIN8 with a previous XX version, and I found my objections to still stand. Those are a lack of connecting of the instrument melodies and some tension/stress in the presentation making it all somewhat mechanical. Also voices are still less intelligible than I am used to.
Switching back to WIN7 with 8e immediately made these points very clear: back was the relaxed, open and dynamic sound with every note in its right place. A delight for the tired late evening mind. Yes, on the downside way less of the WIN8 "realism". A nasty trade off.....?

regards, Coen

[phantomax]

Hi Arvind and Coen,
I guess that W8 is not the culprit, well I mean not W8 per se, but some type of configuration of PC or XXHE. I tell you because I need to use headphones very often and the fatigue with them when the thing goes wrong is very evident. This was not the case with the latest versions of XXHE on W7, but with 9-z9b on W8 is even better so the only signs of fatigue are the need for sleep at 2 A.M. and beyond...

Regards

Maxi

[PeterSt]

Might it help :

[...] making it all somewhat mechanical.

I am almost sure that I never put this to the forum (but otherwise the proove is somewhere already), but this is the exact description I had my self on the path of getting Windows 8 to work - and the only reason why I said it was not there yet. From my own words it would have been : ... but the music sounds mechanical like robots produce it.

And I don't have this anymore.

Big problem is that I by now travel a path which I did not make clear so far because it will be too difficult to lay out or achieve without guidance which seems too hard to provide anyway. Also it is not completely stable I think. Lastly I can't even be sure that it is all about this. But point is : I run the OS and playback without any disk in there, a post 0.9z-9b version optimized for that - dynamically starting and stopping the LAN to load the music from. All as convenient as can be and without hassle.

Part of the "cause" will also be that I run the processor at 0.76GHz which our "XXHighEnd PC" can do and for which I also don't have a clear guide yet (so not even for customers of this PC) because all is based on OS/BIOS bugs.

When either or both of the above is the cause of getting rid of the robots, then we know it can be done. But then it can also be a kind of a wild card for anyone whether similar is already achieved by other means, or that it can't be reached at all.
So all I can say that it is theoretically possible to get out the best of all worlds, with eventually the possibility of at least partly applying what I apply myself (no disk anywhere).

Peter

[CoenP]

Those are hopefull replies!

But where to start to "fix" it.

Did I read correctly that Peter uses no drives in the pc? So no SATA connections, only USBx, even for the OS?

Do you still use the win7 Shell?

Regards, Coen

[juanpmar]

Did I read correctly that Peter uses no drives in the pc? So no SATA connections, only USBx, even for the OS?

And what about the Playback Drive?. Peter, you have in your signature a 1TB SATAIII 7200rpm but I´m not sure if you use ImDisk as Playback Drive.

Juan

[PeterSt]

Signature is old. But as more often, no real use in mentioning things in there you won't be able to apply. At least not with the longer distance to a next version which will allow for whatever it is in there.
So with my earlier post I am only trying to be careful to put my own judgement in some proper context.

Yes, IMDisk for XXHighEnd and Playback Drive. The drive for XXHighend is needed for technical reasons.
These reasons are speed related and from this I should say that everybody will have a good chance for better SQ just because of this alone. So, try it.
Put XXHighEnd in a RAMDisk (drive), and of course start it from there. XXData can stay where it is, but I copy that to the RAMDisk as well (only because I feel that this is a consistent way of working - nothing else). And remember, as a: (and b:) drive, FWIW (see posts about this elsewhere for context).

Peter

[Jud]

Yes, IMDisk for XXHighEnd and Playback Drive. The drive for XXHighend is needed for technical reasons.
These reasons are speed related and from this I should say that everybody will have a good chance for better SQ just because of this alone. So, try it.
Put XXHighEnd in a RAMDisk (drive), and of course start it from there. XXData can stay where it is, but I copy that to the RAMDisk as well (only because I feel that this is a consistent way of working - nothing else). And remember, as a: (and b:) drive, FWIW (see posts about this elsewhere for context).

Peter

I have this on my Win machine, though not as A: and B:.  And I know better than to ask this, but will anyway - So that really makes a difference, eh?

As you know I'm wanting to get -9 set up on a MacBook Boot Camp partition.  It has just 8GB of RAM, no possibility for more.  With -9 is it the same situation as before, where you will not want to take away RAM for a RAMdisk below a certain point?  Would I even want to chance making a small (how small?) RAMdisk or disks with only 8GB of RAM total?  If just one, would the drive on which XXHE resides or the playback drive be the more important one for the sound?

Edit: I should mention, a MacBook of the vintage that I have is limited to running Win 7 in Boot Camp, Win 8 is not possible.

[juanpmar]

Yes, IMDisk for XXHighEnd and Playback Drive. The drive for XXHighend is needed for technical reasons.
These reasons are speed related and from this I should say that everybody will have a good chance for better SQ just because of this alone. So, try it.
Put XXHighEnd in a RAMDisk (drive), and of course start it from there. XXData can stay where it is, but I copy that to the RAMDisk as well (only because I feel that this is a consistent way of working - nothing else). And remember, as a: (and b:) drive, FWIW (see posts about this elsewhere for context).

Peter

Peter- I´m not sure if I understand it well. In one external drive you have:

- (C:) for OS
- IMDisk (a:) for XXHighEnd and XXData
- IMDisk (b:) for Playback Drive

Is it correct?

More questions:
How do you connect that external drive? (Coen question)
Why do you talk also about RAMDisk?, isn´t it a choice between IMDisk or RAMDisk? (I know that IMDisk has more capacity).

Best regards,
Juan

[CoenP]

Juan,

De IMdisk drives are not external they are in RAM.
The corresponding files that store the data when the computer is off (and RAM empty) are most likely on an external harddrive.

You can boot the OS from a bootable usb and even from an ethernet connection afaik.

The IMDISK program seems quite simple to deploy. Let's give that a shot first.

regards, Coen

[juanpmar]

De IMdisk drives are not external they are in RAM.
The corresponding files that store the data when the computer is off (and RAM empty) are most likely on an external harddrive.

Yes, you are right, I should have expressed the previous post this way:

"I´m not sure if I understand it well. In one external drive you have:

- (C:) for OS

and also you have:

- IMDisk (a:) for XXHighEnd and XXData
- IMDisk (b:) for Playback Drive

Is it correct?".

To tell you the truth Coen, I don´t understand that configuration, maybe someone could explain it in an easy way.

Best regards,
Juan

[CoenP]

Juan,

We're going slightly off topic here. I'll give it a shot.
Just think of it as three different drives (SATA, USB, whatever). The mobo and OS do not really matter where and what they are.

With IMdisk you can create in windows an extra A:\ and B:\ disk in your memory (provided that you have enough PCmemory to spare). I just created a 3Gig IMDISK as A:\ for use as Playbackdrive. No sweat. The OS shows in (file)explorer that a new disk appeared and you can explore it with windows (nothing in there). XX now can use this disc as playbackdrive.
So you create another IM Drive B:\ (or the other way around) and install XX in there (last time a new activation was required). Note that XX can be installed in and run from (almost?) any drive.

The playbackdrive and XX are now on disks in RAM having the fastest possible read and write performance.

Of course you first have to make a bootable USB disk (flash or HDD) with WIN8 on it to get the OS out of the PC. This is somewhat tougher and trickier. If you tell the BIOS of your mobo to boot from this disk then it will automatically boot from there when you turn on the pc.

Let's first have some fun with the IMDISKS.

regards, Coen

p.s. pm me if you need help with the IMDISKS

[juanpmar]

Thanks Coen, I have used some time ago IMDisk and RAMDisk in previous configurations for Playback Drive but I always had the the OS/XXHE in an internal hdd. So what is new for me is to have the OS in a bootable external drive (and XXHE in other place different than the one where the OS is), maybe this part is the one I need to know better.

Thanks for you help

Juan

[Scroobius]

I just started using IMDisk again in W8 for XXHighEnd and for the playback drive and there is a further reduction in "edge" to the music. The sound quality is fine and for the first time I think it is clear that using a playback drive does make a difference here with IMDisk. Always in the past I have not really heard much difference using playback drive.

Paul