Settings

[CoenP]

This setting is driving me nuts. I suspect PE of adding hardness and zip on loud passages of the music. Occasionally it gets nasty.
Turning it off the sound looses some naturalness and colour, and that is a pity since WIN8 is allready very low on that quality (here). Next to sounding less "hard" and more pleasant, it gains some momentum and dynamics, but thats not the weak spot of WIN8.

Cant make up my mind here.

Regards, Coen

[AlainGr]

Just add one with the "ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver" utility (also on the IMdisk site). They even both seem to boot if you check "virtual disk drive access image directly" AND boot from WIN8 into WIN8.

And use a different drive letter off course.

In the timebar thread Peter advices to have the XX program IMDisk at 2Gigs (minimum?). For now this seems to cure some problems (not shure yet).

Regards, Coen

I am not sure about this myself and I was surprised when Peter answered that it needed to be bigger... I ran some tests and my conclusion is that:
- if you only use WAV files
- if you turn "Copy to XX-drive by standard" OFF

Nothing will be copied on the XXHE ramdrive, so it does not need to be that big.

This "going thru" the XXHE drive seems to happen when the initial format is not from WAV files. If that is so for you, then yes, the ramdrive capacity needs to be higher. 

In fact, I could have mine a lot smaller than 512MB, since it only receives XXHE and XXDATA and all my files are already in WAV format.

(Peter will correct me if I am wrong).

Alain

[Flecko]

I found the effect of peak extension music dependend. On tracks with high compression it can do wonders creating a 3D soundstage but with good recorded tracks it adds too much hardness.

[PeterSt]

Using a RAMDisk.

With this notice :

Nothing will be copied on the XXHE ramdrive, so it does not need to be that big.

... that this is not by guarantee or explicit design and may even change due to found bugs. So this is not in the Tutorial I linked to above, but after you have read it you will see that it is wrong habit anyway to anticipate on things you thought to be, while they are not - if not today then tomorrow.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Does Imdisk require .Net4 to work?

No.

[PeterSt]

All,

I like to make a remark on the RAMDisk stuff;

I notice, from this topic, that all iss presented in some sort of wild fashion nobody will be able to deal with well. Let's say I don't like it this way. And oh, nobody needs to apologize for it - it just happened this way, but I still need to point out that this won't work well. So, example (and again, nothing explicitly wrong but please think about it in the future) :

Someone comes up with IMDisk. But this happens in private.
Someone else (the adressed, me) starts to use it. He even puts in in his Sig (this is still me).
I don't think that anywhere a topic exists about this IMDisk and how to install and use it.
Now someone proposes a topic and even a batch file for it, but I don't like it much. This is accidental but it prevents from that topic being there.
Do notice that you won't find a word about IMDisk anywhere, but it is in my Sig.
Now another private communication starts, and a next person gets hold of some insight. Nothing wrong here.

But was it "wrong" (wrong-ish) that the people involved (this time not me) publically talk about it "all over the place" (when deemed necessary) without revealing the real insight. Thus, when someone explicitly asks about how to use it (see this topic) there's just no answer (by none involved). And no, also not from me because I don't even like to be involved. I like IMDisk for its SQ qualities, speed of use and maybe more, but it's a wackey thing TO ME.

It goes as far as while not answering, in the mean time referring to just another type of RAMDisk to solve the problem (possiby of not being able to answer). I think this is strange.

So, to be clear, Alain has provided great help in setting up IMDisk, after he was the first to come up with it either. Alain, you know I don't want to be involved in this, and after the posts in this topic emerge you ask me again. The answer is still No. I use it myself indeed, even after know knowing how buggy it is. This does not mean though that I will explicitly tell people how to use it because the "how" is sort of beyond me.
You though can do what you want. You can even create a topic for it, which I already told you. And yes, I understand that when you don't have my real consenus you are reluctant to do so. This too is great (decision). Still, with my emphasis on that you can do what you want *and* receive the credits from me (and others for sure), what should not happen is that there's half-talk about it like not answering upon questions you actually provoked yourself (well, through Juan maybe, but the originator is not him).

Please read closely (if possibky from my words at all), because I say again that no apologies are needed because nobody did one thing wrong. I just explained the outcome as seen through my eyes. This looks like "I have the best playback but I can't tell how because I'm not sure aout the how" (this would be Juan's message).
So, a racing accident.

All IOW, put up that topic now, if *that* message wasn't clear yet. But no half solutions please, and with means which can work for everybody. Let's keep in mind : what is a piece of cake for me and you, can be nightmares to others.

Lastly, referring to that Tutorial again, and with the explicit notice that IMDisk implies all sorts of chaos - not even recognized by me after months although I have been ready a dozen times to post about it but was not sure - the ONLY allowed implementation of IMDisk is with the advised max sizes in that Tutorial. And hopfully you see that I made this Tutorial on your advice, which should prove that I am all WITH you instead of against you.
So create that topic now and I will even jump in constructively when needed (but I don't think that is needed). And please, don't ask me off line whether it's okay, because I can't spend *that* time. You know it.

All summarized on IMDisk, by now I say that for RAMDisks the Playback Drive must be 2.4GB (I had 2GB in the Tutorial at first) and the XX Drive must be 2.8GB.
Do notice that this is all to be on the safe side and because IMDisk just overwrites instead of errors when the RAMDisk is full.
This does NOT assume Hires. See Tutorial.

Best regards,
Peter

[AlainGr]

[PeterSt]

[AlainGr]

Yah... I know

[PeterSt]

Just post those batch files Alain (new topic). I am serious ...

[boleary]

Peter just posted as I was about to send this:

 So, if we are done making faces  , I am eagerly awaiting a new thread that contains a link to a batch file for installing two IMdiscs, such as the one Juan described!

[PeterSt]

Yes, and we DO support it to all the extend needed. But it really needed that Tutorial. Not by my idea, but by Alain's.
So I hope that will help to get all decently started.

Peter

[AlainGr]

Well ok then, but it has to be accompanied by a few explanations. I will post as I did for someone and hope to be corrected where I would wander...

Alain

[Robert]

Well ram disk has opened a new can of worms. But using it in the playback drive field has increased SQ in my system by a large margin so much so I'm happy to only be able to load 20mins of 24/192 music files and play.

[boleary]

For a more "analogue" sound, I ve been listening with the following settings: Q1@30, Q1factor@10, Q5@5, Q2-4@0,SFS@60, clock res @1.25. Looks like these settings are very similar to those that Alain has in his signature.