Are 2.07 and 2.09 better(?)and XTweaks nervous rate setting

[boleary]

Over the past several months I've had a harshness in the upper mids and treble creep into my system. Its been driving me a bit crazy, especially after having over a year of gorgeous sound in my room. Several weeks ago a friend suggested that all else being equal it  had to be either the source, audio PC/XXHighend, or the DAC. I took the DAC to another friend who has the same DAC and there was clearly a difference in sound between his and mine, so I sent mine in to the manufacturer for a warranty repair. Since then, though, I also discovered a significant cause of the harshness(Another friend has lent me a HOLO Spring DAC, Kitsune Edition, while mine is across the country.) Not sure when but at some point the "This is a Mach II PC" field became ticked in XXHighend XTweaks settings, which, when activated, takes over XTweaks settings and assigns presettings to all EXtweaks values. Thus, my XTweaks Nervous Rate, once the Mach II was activated, was reset to 100 from my usual setting of 1. I believe this happened when I updated to either 2.07 or 2.09. The 2.06a release notes suggest that  the Mach II tab be ticked to prevent the processor from being overheated via improper XTweaks settings. Well with the Nervous Rate set back to 1, about 90% of my good sound returned. I use the original XXHighend PC motherboard without a fan. A Zalman Reserator provides water cooling to the processor, so for me heat is also an issue. I underclock the processor as suggested here and can say that having a nervous rate of 1 does not cause overheating and it dramatically improves the tonal presentation (at least here in my system)

Also, I have gone back to 2.06a as best for sound. After sorting out my XTweaks issue, I briefly tried 2.07 but it wasn't as natural sounding as 2.06a. It might just be that I'm a little exhausted trying to get good sound and I needed to give 2.07 more time/adjustments. But I'm so pleased with the sound now that I'm not up for more testing at this time. I intend to try 2.07 and 2.09 again in the coming months. Of course YMMV.

[PeterSt]

Hi Brian,

Does activating the "Is Stealth Mach II" really setting that Nervous rate to 100 ? Maybe you are right, but I don't recall that.
Also, I think that only one setting is "taken over" and grayed out. For sure not all of them. So mind you, only when it is crucially important I would do such a thing *and* gray it out.
Of course it can be so that defaults sneaked in which shouldn't have. And they apply with a fresh install. But ...


Peter

[boleary]

Yes , activating "Stealth Mach ll" changes Nervous Rate to 100. As long as it remains activated, that value is applied every time the gui returns from playing a track. As soon as I deactivated "SMll" I could change nevous rate to 1 and it persists.

[boleary]

In Settings, the Processor section, there's also a new button "PC is Stealth Mach II LPS". It is very very wise to make this button active when you indeed have that PC, because it prevents dialing the wrong XTweaks settings, them heating up the processor and that causing the CPU fan to kick in.
Do notice that the XTweaks settings engaged when you activate this button, are also the best settings for SQ (by our ears over here), so it shouldn't cause "psychological" problems. Also notice that for Windows 7 the set settings are different than for Windows 8 and yet again for 10 but the same (best SQ) phenomenon counts.
-> This is at the moment of this writing and in the final 2.06 (and beyond) you may see that e.g. (!) all is the same for each OS.

Morning Peter. This quote is from the 2.06 release notes. The part in bold made me think that the Nervous Rate setting of 100 is automatically set to that value when one engages the "Mach II" button, because that is what happens here. As soon as I untick the Mach II button, I am able to reset the nervous rate to 1 and it persists.

HOWEVER: I noticed and heard this morning that upon boot up (I turn the audio PC off at night) the nervous rate value returns to 100 and I must manually reset it whenever I boot the system, even though the Mach II button is not activated. See photo below, which is taken imediately after boot. The left hand parenthesis is covering the 1 setting for the nervous rate. It stays at 100 until I engage the apply button. Again this is only after a reboot. This behavior also occurrs in 2.07.

Is this just my system or do all those with the MACH II button engaged have a nervous rate value of 100?

[PeterSt]

Hi Brian,

I can confirm this is a bug; happens to everyone. So regardless of the setting of the "Is Stealth" button, at startup it is regarded as "Yes" always. So it is not related to a reboot. And, how it can be that you don't see it go wrong at a restart of XXHighEnd, I don't know. So over here it *always* resets to 100 (and the Cool when Idle will be set to 1 as well, although I did not test this).

Don't forget to click Apply when you change it for the session.

It is solved for 2.10.

Thanks a lot for your efforts,
Regards,
Peter

[boleary]

Thanks Peter, nice to know I'm not completely crazy and my system has not gone wacko!