Sadly, I can now confirm that even the Firewire conenction can make a huge difference ...
I mean "sadly", because before I thought this was a consistent thing for playback quality. It now appears that it just is not.
Sidenote : no matter what, I can measure bitperfect playback in either case, so it can be about jitter only (or some high grade phenomenon and the lack of intelligence to recognize it).
So here goes :
The first time I noticed "a" difference, was when my Firewire PCI interface (of 10 years old btw) seemed at its end of life, because more and more I had to switch the cable from the one to the other connection on it, in order to let my Fireface recognize the proper connection. Note that I'm on a 10m Firewire cable here (the Firewire is externally powered), and for that matter things will be at the critical level anyway. So :
So at one time I couldn't either connection going anymore (while before the "rest" of a connection helped
), I moved the PCI 6 months old Firewire interface card from my Vista machine (which machine was temporarily out of order anyway).
The most strange things happened with this : some -which I call "Crazy" again- channel separation seemed to appear suddenly. Huh ?
This was so much occurring (wrong, *happening*) that from now on I could listen to rather perfect "stereo" information at listening at the couch right in front of one of the Orphean horns (at watching movies with the family), and therewith some 60 degrees out of line with the other one. Mind you, at this angle there is no way to see even a part of the throad, while looking right into the one of the first mentioned.
Another sidenote : you most probably recall a.o. my words all over the place about such and so good playback whatever. Wrong ...
Wrong again (how many times is this supposed to happen in the future ?
)
Where this was the first occasion, here came the second :
My Vista PC was out of order, because it was awaitening a new motherboard. Of course I got one with on board Firewire. Convenient.
Well, got it up and running, and although Vista sounds different than XP anyways, it did not sound good anywmore at all. Not this day, not the other day, no day.
Note that I'm always listening to one situation for many days, in order to be sure it's not the mood, the booze, or whatever may influence which shouldn't.
But then I gave up on it.
Now, on this mobo are two Firewire connections : one directly connected to the mobo at the back, and one somewhere in the middle of the board, leading to the back with a cable.
Problem gone !
So that was the third indication.
Btw, the Vista machine is close to the equipment, and uses a 1m or so Firewire cable.
As always at expecting things which may differ or seem to be different, I told this to Bert. Well, that's a difficult one, because now we are in the area of subjective matters, and no way of measuring, knowing the logic or what else to check it remotely.
But as I just heard from Bert, he can, say, copy my behaviour.
Well Bert, what's your advise on this ?
Currently I can't do better than : checkout a few situations, and at least buy a (cheap ?) PCI card. The differences are enormeous, but they are hard to qualify. Channel separation would be one of them, a bit depending on Bert's findings. The other
seems to be tiny sound. Less full.
Apart from the fact that I can't explain these huge differences, I think it is a sad thing that it is so by itself.
Otoh I achieved an improvement once more.
