2.10 sound quality

[Nick]

Hi,

I have been holding back posting on 2.10 sq to have some time to try settings, understand what changed, and particually understand changes in the bass.

The stand out 2.10 changes for me are mids and top end, there seems to be a massive amount of digital colour removed from the sound throughout these ranges and there is much more sparkle and clarity to the sound.  Voices in particualr are much clearer, there has been a slight haze around voices for as long as I can remember which has now gone what is absolutly fantastic. Precusion has an ease and clarity with serious dynamic that adds to the sense of realistic presence. All super stuff but there a cost IMHO moving to 2.10 from 2.09.

First is bass. 2.10 is very well controlled and damped but I have had to increase my dsp bass gain by more than a 1db to get close to percived bass levels that 2.09 produces. 2.10 can sound powerfull in mid and upper bass but low bass is rolled off very much compared to 2.09. The sub bass floor response that 2.09 excels at here is just not there to the same degree. Using Orelos with there 17hz rolloff point this is quite apperent and although it is perhaps the last half octive it makes a big difference to the low bass foundation of music.

Second is PRaT. In 2.09, taken overall across the range, PRaT has an edge this is despite the unmistakable mid high improments that 2.10 brings. Here 2.09 is still delivering a more life like overall enery into the room and has toes tapping more. For complex music with crescendos and high energy where you are not concentrating so much on "strands" of the performance but more on the overall power and drive of the performance 2.09 delivers more spectical and scale.

Overall right now I cannot decipher which version is better, to the point that I have had to set up two  OS versions on my RAM OS disk, one with 2.09 the other with 2.10. I find myself listening to the 'event' woven by 2.09 more often than 2.10 despite the very much  is better in mids and highs, 2.09 provides the bass foundation and overall slam with 2.10 being a small step behind in these areas and its timing.

We will all hear different portrayals due to system components and setups so I understand if the above dose not resonate elsewhere. Although 2.10 is a massive step forwards in mids and highs, my perception here is that low bass and overall PRaT have stepped back somewhat.

Regards,
Nick

[manisandher]

I think we're very much on the same wavelength Nick.

I find the extra "sparkle and clarity" of 2.10 really, really nice. There's so much going on in the music that I'd never noticed before - a cliché perhaps, but true in this case, I think.

Also, the mid and high dynamics are now utterly 'real'. My eldest son is currently practising for his grade 2 piano exam. I am constantly asking him to play more gently - even with his 8-year-old fingers, the initial transient attack of struck keys is quite forceful even a good distance away from the piano. For me, this is where virtually all replay systems fall down - they can get the 'macro dynamics' right, but not the immediate transient attacks of instruments (including vocals). With 2.10, my system now sounds utterly real to me. I listen to my son playing the piano, I go and listen to a piano track on the system, and the illusion of a piano sitting before me is so real. I listen to my younger son playing drums up in the loft, I go and listen to a drum test track on the system, and the cymbals, toms-toms, etc are for the first time as powerful as they are in reality. Only the kick drum doesn't quite cut it - the speed and tone is there, but the sheer air-moving volume isn't.

My speakers drop off rapidly below 40Hz or so in my room, so I don't have the ability to hear whether very deep bass is different between 2.09 and 2.10. On my system, I suspect the level of the bass is probably the same, but because the mids and highs are now more dynamic, the impression is that the bass is shyer that it was before, though tighter and more tuneful, I'd say.

Overall, I'm really enjoying 2.10. I just have to figure out how to get the low-end to sound as dynamic and life-like as the mid/high is. A good problem to have...

Mani.

[Arjan]

Hi,
Have you tried, clock resolution=0.5, nervous rate=1 and Q3=0?
See my details for the other settings, this gave me some extra drive in the low end.
Regards

[Nick]

Hi,
Have you tried, clock resolution=0.5, nervous rate=1 and Q3=0?
See my details for the other settings, this gave me some extra drive in the low end.
Regards

I will give it a go, keen to do what ever possible to recover the extra bass depth, thanks.

Kr Nick.

[Nick]

I just wanted to add a perspective to my earlier post which gets lost in some of the details.

2.10 is absolutly a masive step forwards in that the sound is sooo much more transparent. Getting rid of hash is very difficult and 2.10 sounds like a masive step in this regard.

I guess the high level point is that in my system low bass foundation and drive sounds light by comparison here. If i can tune to co bine the lows and slam of  2.09 with the goodness in mids and highs in 2.10 i will be a very happy camper indeed. :-)

Regards,

Nick.

[Rmalits]

Hello Nick,

all this is very interesting for me, because I had similar experiences with XXHE 2.10 since I installed it more than a week ago.
I agree with all the post above, 2.10 brings amazing improvements of SQ, but I too missed something in the low frequencies.

I have one question:  Do you use the same SQ paramenters for both versions: 2.09 and 2.10?

After reading your post today I did some intense testing again with both versions: 2.09 and 2.10.
I am using SQ parameters with large buffer sizes (see my new signature), very similar to Peter's settings. As many others here I changed to that because 2.09 was too punchy in my ears compared to 2.07. And I was very happy then with the SQ, especially for the bass range.
With 2.10 it went the opposite way somehow. With Peter's actual settings (SFS: 5.19, Balanced Load: 52) the basses didn't sound so well with my audio equipment: louder, but not precise enough, too smooth and mellow.

Today I changed some settings, which brought back the amazing low frequencies of 2.09, still using the high buffer sizes:
- SFS: back to 10.19 (as I had it most of the time with 2.09)
- Balanced Load: back to 43 (52 makes the basses louder but much more unprecise in my ears)
- Nervous Rate: between 10 and 20. I am using 16 right now (with 2.09 this was set to 100)
- I am now using AP (what I never did before)

With these settings I feel no need any more to switch back to 2.09. The punchy and precise lower bass range is back again. With 2.10 the mids and highs made a big step foreward anyway.
And it's amazing how SQ can still be influenced by small changes of Nervous Rate.

Kind regards
Richard

[PeterSt]

Hi,
Have you tried, clock resolution=0.5, nervous rate=1 and Q3=0?
See my details for the other settings, this gave me some extra drive in the low end.
Regards

I will give it a go, keen to do what ever possible to recover the extra bass depth, thanks.

Kr Nick.

Hi Nick, sorry to disturb you at this inordinate time  , but assumed your sig is up to date, you don't "comply" to anything much we are talking about. So, Arjan gives you an advice here, you say that you wil try it out, but meanwhile about all of your other settings are not consistent by miles with what we are talking about. And please notice that this started in the (your) 2.09 topic (somewhere under way, by me myself) and from there all was worked out in more detail.

I am using SQ parameters with large buffer sizes (see my new signature),

So that. This is super crucial because it is all about the combination of the large buffer sizes with the low SFS (this hasn't been done in 10 years until recently (2.09).

- Balanced Load: back to 43 (52 makes the basses louder but much more unprecise in my ears)

I think this is crucial too and it resembles my remark about this, I think still in the 2.09 topic or maybe it was 2.10 already) that I used 41 (which works since some W10 build) but which I found later to have dreamt because my system was at 52. So I re-applied that to my sig (after having changed it to 41 the same day). This 52 is probably wrong (creeped into it because of RAM-OS not saving because of whatever (power) failure) with also the notice that I don't even use that system at this moment. Long story short : at this moment I have more trust in Richard's findings than I have in my own memory. And btw, in the system I *am* using at the moment, the Balanced load is at 18 ... (this implies 380MHz and less it can't bear (stutter)).

Best regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

Have you tried, clock resolution=0.5, nervous rate=1 and Q3=0?
See my details for the other settings, this gave me some extra drive in the low end.

Hi Arjan,

I only wanted to add to this that this is not a real fair proposition, were it about more bass as such. What the Q3=0 does (I also noticed the Q3,4,5 = 0 in Nick's sig) is that it takes down a level of detail and with that crispyness, which indeed will make the bass more profound, but thus in a somewhat illegal fashion. Take out all the treble and your system will be way bassy. But no bass was added as such.
Btw, someone else just said similar and I only want to emphasize that your Q3=0 does that.

What I should also add in the same context, is that Nick is a real "bass heavy" guy. He will have set his Q3,4,5 all at 0 emperically found for that very reason. This is a matter of "to each his own" but in the mean time it is a bit hard to communicate over matters.

Btw, Nick nicely and rightfully announced that his system can't be compared to others and actually I should do too (in either situation I am referring to the Audio PC).

Best regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

First is bass. 2.10 is very well controlled and damped but I have had to increase my dsp bass gain by more than a 1db to get close to percived bass levels that 2.09 produces. 2.10 can sound powerfull in mid and upper bass but low bass is rolled off very much compared to 2.09. The sub bass floor response that 2.09 excels at here is just not there to the same degree. Using Orelos with there 17hz rolloff point this is quite apperent and although it is perhaps the last half octive it makes a big difference to the low bass foundation of music.

So Nick, what I actually scratched in my initial response of the bass is that I have spades of more sub low now. I of course fully agree with the second by me bolded sentencem but for me it went the exact other way around. The whole room is energised because of this and because of *that* the hihgs can bear much more (so this effect is opposite of what I said in my previous post). It also implies/creates the abnormal transparency.

But our systems can not be compared.
So I don't want the "I have the better bass" guy, but I do need to point out that consistency for relative changes, is crucial. So once more : If I change my SFS from 10.19 to 5.19 this seems to be out of context of anything else. But it is all about the combination with Q1 of 30x40. Don't do that and nothing new or special or anything is there about any ".19" SFS setting. Well, that is what I think ...

Peter

[Nick]

Hi Peter,

I will look again at settings, I have been playing about for a while with them based on your signature settings before posting, mids and highs are great but not much luck so far with the low bass.

One quick test I use is to watch the Orelo bass cone excursions from the back of the drivers. Its easy to see lower frequency notes and watch the driver during  bass pitch slides. 2.09 produces much more visible excursion on sub bass notes. It is just the last 20 or 30 hz I think, its not missing altogether in 2.10 but excursions are much much smaller.

Definatly time to revisit software settings and possibly retune my pc elsewhere.

Kr,

Nick.

[Robert]

2.09 produces much more visible excursion on sub bass notes.

Nick

When I fired up 2.10 new settings this is what I observed on my subs immediately. I reduced output to subs on active crossover by a click or two. This resulted in a cleaner more open sound. The bass was much more detailed and accurate.

One could feel you had lost some bass weight but this is replaced by a much better bass definition(I use live unamplified and amplified double bass in music recordings to test this).

My sub drivers(12in, 300mm) barely move even at volume(85 to 90db).

I have always preferred a leaner bass sound as it easily over whelms the mid/highs. In reality most live bass is not low/deep unless amplified/boosted for DJ dance/reggae/pop or some jazz/rock fusion. 

Personally I do enjoy this music particularly bass/drums, having been a drummer in a previous life, but a lot is recorded poorly often with exaggerated bass, so is difficult to get sounding right on a home system particularly in the bass region.


Robert

[Nick]

Robert hi,

My comments are not born out of being used to an old sound and not likeing a leaner more damped reproduction of the new. I will try to give more background.

Regarding the bass driver excursion observation, in my system this is very relevant. The reason for this is that Orelo speaker bass is generated by open baffled horns. These require relativly large cone excursions needed to reproduce low bass frequencies. They Orelos have a flat respone down to 17hz iirc, to deliver this resonse the dsp which drives the bass has dbs of signal lift into the drives in the sub 40hz region in order to move the speaker cone sufficently to produce the flat resonse. For Orelos a drop in cone excursion to minimal levels at low frequency means there is a significant drop in output.

I think your PL Audios subs may be enclosure or possibly reflex loaded meaning that its excursion can be much smaller relative to an open baffel system so I would expect quite a difference in low frequency cone excursion behavior between our systems.

I have not really provided the full system context for my comments. To explain, I have spent almost two years developing and tuning pc, dac and speaker modifications which I have not posted about. These really elevate sound quality to a very high level (this is in the context of the already high starting point of my phasure / db design system). With 2.09 the bass performance is very realistic in energy levels whilst staying well defined, damped and delineated. I do not measure room response but I would say response is good down to the 17hz roll off of the speakers. This means that kick drums and electronic bass sounds for instance go right down whilst retaining realistic energy levels and quality in my listening room which is quite large.

The issue is that in the last half octave 2.10 is just not doing this. I can try software settings again and see if these pull the sound back, but right now its somthing of a no brainer 2.09 excels in low bass, 2.10 is better in most other areas but if scale and PRaT are needed by the music I still find myself going for 2.09. Just hope there is a way to get the bass back to where it was with using 2.10. More work to do......

Regards,

Nick.

[PeterSt]

Regarding the bass driver excursion observation, in my system this is very relevant. The reason for this is that Orelo speaker bass is generated by open baffled horns. These require relativly large cone excursions needed to reproduce low bass frequencies.

Hi Nick,

Nah, the contrary. Unless you call 2-3mm (to one side) relatively large of course.

They Orelos have a flat respone down to 17hz iirc

It is 19Hz, but that does not matter. What does matter is if you really "think" the excursion is to be relatively large, then you are playing right in the distortion region. Because it just can't excur largely or else you'll just *have* the distortion.
Assumed this is your case (and you thus overblow the bass to begin with) something else is going to happen :

It now takes "nothing" to cross the border of distortion vs no distortion and even the slighest change in response will alter the audible SPL largely. It is a matter of e.g. 22Hz barely audible (but you will feel it) with no distortion vs a 2nd harmonic (44Hz) getting profound and of which you still think is is "sub low". You just wouldn't know the difference when this kick drum is playing, because it would produce both 44Hz and 22Hz (it goes down in the "ambient" to ~20Hz). So really, 0.2dB of output change in level may incur for 20dB of audible SPL (2nd harmonic distortion) easily. It is a very slippery slope there.

Do notice that the sheer fact that you mention a required "relatively large excursion" tells me all.
And let's also keep in mind that the speakers are rated for 19Hz without audible distortion (meaning that you will hear zilch of 19Hz) when the SPL (of 19Hz) is 89.

Hope this helps !
Peter

[Robert]

I *am* using at the moment, the Balanced load is at 18

This probably has gone unnoticed largely, but even more bass and detail.

Have to listen longer but worth a try.

Robert

[PeterSt]

Robert,

I *am* using at the moment, the Balanced load is at 18

All is quite vague for myself lately because of using an other PC with different processor with different (BIOS) settings possibilities and with nothing in there which can be set like we could with the ASRock known MoBo('s). Still things largely can work out the same, or do nothing for indirect settings and *still* work out the same. So for example, what I use currently implies a frequency of 670MHz of which it looked like the Balance Load of 18 is implying it, but actually at this moment my Balanced Load can be anything, the PC still showing 670MHz. I am not saying that I don't understand, but it makes communication (and signatures ) difficult at this moment.
Of what I recall, the Balanced Load of 18 should normally imply 320MHz.



Peter