Up and Running

[fmanheck]

Hello Peter
I am a newbie and just got up and running yesterday. My system is a Vista OS in a dedicated Quad core computer w/ 2 terabyte NASD. RME HDSP sound card going to a Digital Audio Denmark AX24 DAC. DAC and computer are slaved to an Antelope wordclock. I am using DB Poweramp to rip into wav files. Other equipment: Absolare Pure preamp, Mastersound 845 monoblocks, Echole Obsession cabling. All attached to Kaiser Kawero speakers.

Until yesterday I was running through Izotope RX music editing software. Music sounded wonderful....only problem was I could only access one wave file at a time with this software. Mediaplayer, J River were availible, but sounded mediocre. XXhighend sounds AWESOME  I have not yet thoroughly evaluated, but it is certainly something I am satisfied with and I have not even started tweaking yet. It is wonderful to actually be able to set up playlists.  I am not the most computer savvy and get considerable help from my son in law. So set up did not come easily to me.

I did have a few questions and you have probably answered them already. If you can direct me to approprite posts that would be great. First, What do the Q controls actually do and do you have some basic initial settings? I assume the double and quad settings are not needed when your DAC is already set at 176.4khz for example. Finally, any suggestions or comments you might have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[PeterSt]

Hi there !

First of all, thank you for your nice words. And oh, you might edit your post in order to let the come through (small typo there). Haha.

Well, in brief for now ...

This is about the Q settings : Q Parameter Settings (FWIW).

Before you actually setup "playlists" as such, invest some time in setting up Galleries, and at least try rightclick on the coverart in the middle pane where most of the functionality springs from. The Galleries are the most powerful and mimic playlists just the same.

For the best sound quality in general, Unattended must be used (checkbox at the bottom in the main screen).
In order to let that work conveniently plus again better SQ, you must a. setup the AutoHotkey stuff which let's you control XXHighEnd by means of the keyboard (meaning not the mouse) and b. tick the checkboxes in the CoverArt section (Settings Area). In that sequence, or otherwise you won't be able to do antyhing after music plays (ok, who cares) like bringing up XXHighEnd again by means of Alt-X which also restores the normal environment (you will see what I mean by the time you are dealing with this).
For AutoHotkey look here : AutoHotkey Install. A typical son in law little project, but maybe you have already done it.

The priorities can be set best with a large distance between eachother, and PlayerPrio at the lowest and ThreadPrio at the highest usually does not harm.

The Core Appointment setting differs per PC and installation for best SQ. I use 3, but this is not for everybody. Just try it.

Last but not least there's your DAC;
Wel, true, if the DAC does the upsampling herself, why would I outdo that. Well, even the best DACs (and let's call your DAC such a the best DAC ) you may be surprised. Set all filtering off in the DAC. If that is not possible carefully judge each (when more are availabe) of the filter settings with Quad and Arc Prediction upsampling. If there is pure analogue filtering without digital filtering that is supposedly good, but still try without also.
Let me know what happens on this one, but be ready for that surprise (and notice that it never has been my intention to let Arc Prediction "work out" for Oversampling DACs (like yours) in the first place, but there it does too).

For now this should get you going a bit, but when your son in law is over, he might be looking at this for you : How I tweaked my Vista virtually dead.

So far for now ?
Regards,
Peter

[Rainer Weber]

Dear Fred,

my friend.

If you have any problems with xxhighend, I would be glad to support you as far as I can.

Just call me and I will give you some tipps.

Im my case (with the Trinity DAC) I run with quad upsampling and arc prediction.

Q1 in my case is set from -4 to +2 depending on the track I play.
The lower the Q1 the more the voices are in front, it is more analytical but also a bit more edge like with +2.

Play with Q2 and Q3 and listen to piano. Impact and secondary harmonics on that are really influenced.
I set Q2 and Q3 between the lowest level and mid (both Q2 and Q3 settings I used to be the same, when I change one I also change the other. I have to test more on this)

Peter, maybe a wish for the future:
Might there be a way that in the play list there would be a submenu on each tracks where you can define individual settings for each track (as an option to the general settings)

Best regards

Rainer Weber

[PeterSt]

Hi Rainer - Thank you for your help.

About the storing of settings per track (or maybe album) ... I never liked the idea of tracks "needing" individual adjustment. I mean, my theories tell me that would be wrong, similar to pump in some bass for tracks of which we think they need a little more of that. Or what about the bass and treble knobs we "should not have" in the first place ?!

Anyway, by coincidence - right now I am working on a first "situation" that data like this indeed is stored with the album. I mean, the principle is in now, so a second application is relatively easy to make. When 0.9y-5 is out you will see what it is, and no, it is not what you now ask for.

In the mean time you may consider whether what you want is actually a good thing. I am not going to talk you out of it, but some consensus would be nice (which implies that you can also talk me *in*to this haha). Take for example your outlay about Q1. I think you are right on that. And, because the very low settings can become digitalish (e.g. for violins), I use the lowest setting violins can bear (which is +4 for me). This is not because I'm afraid to run into violins unexpectedly, but because I *know* that everything will suffer from the exact same (too much digital), no matter it goes unnoticed. And remember, this is not about recordings which can not bear the lower settings, it is instruments, or harmonics if you will. So for this reason I think it would be wrong to perceive more detail (which I think is what happens) because it must be fake. If it weren't fake, the violins would benefit just the same.

With the other Qs it is no different. I think it is perfectly allowed to put up Q2/Q3 to perceive a more realistic piano, but if, say, a trumpet becomes too hollow of it, we may wonder what is actually wrong in the first place at wanting to improve on the piano (many reasons for that, which you can all make up yourself).

But I guess it will be in some day, because it would be a nice feature. Keep in mind though that it will be a kind of complex thing for the user (you, also me), because we may wonder what it actually is we want to store with the track. So, is that Q2/Q3 only ? also Q1 with it ? The means of Upsampling if at all ?
Each of these elements have their own influence, but maybe it is not allowed to re-use only a few of those elements, while at "saving" them there was a consistent (judged) set of all the elements together. A kind of all or nothing thing.

We'll see. If you have further ideas on this in the mean time, just let me know.
Peter


PS: And I understand that such a feature springs from rather special needs at using it all in a commercial sense. So this would be reason enough to have it in usefully.

[Rainer Weber]

Dear Peter,

thank you for sharing your experience and opinion.

I completly agree with you!
For sure it is not as intended to "sound" a certain track into a specific direction. When the recording is not so good then also the playback should give you an idea accordingly about that.
I really have the same approach to test the different settings but I am more looking on the focus of voices and staging in general (width and depth).
And what you mentioned before, the commercial use to demonstrate a system:
Here you want to really perform each track at the utmost possible performance, which might be a little different from track to track.
Something which we have to consider in my situation is that the Trinity DAC can work at 176,4 or 192 without any digital filtering (see www.gte-audio.com).
This is a major difference to the other DACs I know.

One option which would be really convenient for me (maybe only me) is as follows:
If I have playlist with contain 44/16 and 192/24 files, it would be nice to define Quad and Arc Predition for 44/16 and no upsampling on 192/24.

But I have to really congretulate you. The sound quality is so awesome now with quad and arc prediction that I am really stunned.

Best regards

Rainer

[PeterSt]

Dear Rainer,

So ... I only just learned that my own Phasure NOS1 is not the first NOS/Filterless around hahaha. And 1704 as well (the only option out there for this).
Well, this means that the Trinity will exhibit the full potential as how I meant it, and I can only be the most glad that you can confirm it is good by this indirect way (referring to my own DAC which has a lousy 8 chips in it only ). As you can imagine, it is a rather high pretentious thing to be as ignorant as I am, and create a means of filtering that is beyond common technology and knowlegde.

Of course you are completely right about the format switching, which now (with Arc Prediction On) does not work. So, what will be in there (maybe not in 0.9y-5 but then in the next version), is Arc Upsample from 44.1 to 176.4 if set so (Quad) and automatically from 88.2 (or 96) to 176.4 (or 192), and "do nothing" when the material is 176.4 or 192 natively.

If there's anything else, just ask !
Kind regards,
Peter