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Operating systems and their sound signatures


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14 minutes ago, zackthedog said:

 

Jriver MC 23 64-bit runs just fine on Server 2016.  Of course I haven't tried any of the tweakier players yet.  I know that Audiophile Optimiser "broke" Resonant's Wasapi output ability on Windows 10.

I'm just quoting Jriver advice, not they 'help' much anyway,  seems enthusiasts on the Jriver forum answer with better replies than management. 

 

What I did try to install Winserver2016 on a 8Gb ram Sony Vaio 2008 vintage before the i5, i7 processors.

 

It was far snappier than the supported Win 7. The install wasn't complete,  since support for the models dried up Dec 01, 2017 with no drivers for the odd unknown devices.

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35 minutes ago, One and a half said:

I'm just quoting Jriver advice, not they 'help' much anyway,  seems enthusiasts on the Jriver forum answer with better replies than management. 

 

What I did try to install Winserver2016 on a 8Gb ram Sony Vaio 2008 vintage before the i5, i7 processors.

 

It was far snappier than the supported Win 7. The install wasn't complete,  since support for the models dried up Dec 01, 2017 with no drivers for the odd unknown devices.

 

Would Server 2012 work on your machine?

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3 hours ago, zackthedog said:

 

Would Server 2012 work on your machine?

I bought an el cheapo license for Win2016, as it turns out I need not have bothered. Tried a Lenovo m93p very small form factor PC and that worked OK as far as drivers went.

The music performance went downhill compared with the HP-Z800, leaving the rest of the chain intact. Stage height was down a little, but the micro details voice and instruments was nowhere near as fine and resolving, that veil was back, well a blanket of fog really. The sharp focus of minimal instruments and vocals were hazy and indistinct. [Autumn in New York, Hilary Gardner] Hilary's voice has inflections and quite a lovely character full of detail, when the playback system works properly, that is!

 

Could a linear power supply change things, nah, faggetaboutit, had enough of pi$$ing in the wind. Wasted half the day and yesterday on a lost cause, but at least learned something quite valuable. The smaller the computer, the less noise? Fallacy. A server OS? Dream on. Pull files from a NAS to make an improvement? Fallacy.

 

What does work though is a Xeon platform, ECC RAM, consumer OS and files on large HDD PCIe fast pipe.

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1 hour ago, One and a half said:

What does work though is a Xeon platform, ECC RAM, consumer OS and files on large HDD PCIe fast pipe.

 

There was a report in Hi Fi Critic Vol.6 No. 2  that claimed the faster the better, including RAM too..

 

How a Digital Audio file sounds, or a Digital Video file looks, is governed to a large extent by the Power Supply area. All that Identical Checksums gives is the possibility of REGENERATING the file to close to that of the original file.

PROFILE UPDATED 13-11-2020

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1 hour ago, One and a half said:

I bought an el cheapo license for Win2016, as it turns out I need not have bothered. Tried a Lenovo m93p very small form factor PC and that worked OK as far as drivers went.

The music performance went downhill compared with the HP-Z800, leaving the rest of the chain intact. Stage height was down a little, but the micro details voice and instruments was nowhere near as fine and resolving, that veil was back, well a blanket of fog really. The sharp focus of minimal instruments and vocals were hazy and indistinct. [Autumn in New York, Hilary Gardner] Hilary's voice has inflections and quite a lovely character full of detail, when the playback system works properly, that is!

 

Could a linear power supply change things, nah, faggetaboutit, had enough of pi$$ing in the wind. Wasted half the day and yesterday on a lost cause, but at least learned something quite valuable. The smaller the computer, the less noise? Fallacy. A server OS? Dream on. Pull files from a NAS to make an improvement? Fallacy.

 

What does work though is a Xeon platform, ECC RAM, consumer OS and files on large HDD PCIe fast pipe.

 

Just because the computer is smaller does not mean it will be less noisy.  I mean, stick with what works for you, by all means, but we use those things at my office.  I wouldn't consider them optimal for audio, by any means.

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21 minutes ago, zackthedog said:

 

Just because the computer is smaller does not mean it will be less noisy.  I mean, stick with what works for you, by all means, but we use those things at my office.  I wouldn't consider them optimal for audio, by any means.

All goes to show where the goal posts are, and they are a long way away...

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3 hours ago, zackthedog said:

 

Just because the computer is smaller does not mean it will be less noisy.  I mean, stick with what works for you, by all means, but we use those things at my office.  I wouldn't consider them optimal for audio, by any means.

 

I agree, just because the computer is smaller does not mean it will be less noisy, many times it just mean it is made with more compromises. Components that are used in NUCs and laptops are often made of lower capability and quality, use more switching power internally to keep heat and power low, use more non discreet components, nasty M.2 SSDs, cheap cables and printed circuit boards.

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The OSes from another perspective, subjectively (but judged by 100s of people the very same) and relative to each other (which we can only know in retrospect) and dealt with by XXHighEnd :

 

XP - The beginning of Computer Audio. Mostly not bit perfect and therefore psychologically "wrong".

 

Vista - Great improvement and WASAPI debunked ASIO. From here on all plays bit perfect, if only WASAPI Exclusive Mode is used.

 

W7 RTM - All the timings changed and months of work were necessary to make it sound right.  Somewhere here we stepped away from WASAPI and started to use Kernel Streaming exclusively. WASAPI is not lean as it sits on top of KS.

 

W7 SP1 - Timings changed again and for the worse. SP1 never made it for good sound - everybody could roll back to RTM by trickery means.

 

W8 - Phasing problems for everyone. Here the ultimate optimization was necessary, far beyond W7. Nice thing is that W8 allows for much of it (W7 relatively "nothing"). Took a small year to get it right.

After that, W7 RTM appears to show strange raw bass sound. Rough. Bassy but rough.

The main problem with W8 is that it tends to play the music by robots. Foottapping ratings remain under par. Still better than W7 RTM.

 

W10, 10074 - Very special sound. Most palpable. But not neutral at all. And very odd : today with the Lush USB cable, there is plainly no mid present. None. So with that USB cable, 10074 is rendered useless.

 

W10, 10586.0 - The first OS since possibly Vista which sounds normal again. Neutral. When you're used to this, you can't use W8 any more, because now that is definitely robots playing all over.

 

W10, 14393.0 - The first W10 OS which makes things special again. More color in the highs than 10586.0. From here on W8 is without any color. 14393.0 has the palpability of 10074 (which also was special) but without a sense of not being neutral. 14393.0 is the least digital sounding OS so far and also is open the most to external parameter settings (like buffer sizes in playback software).

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Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

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From again another angle and only mentioning it because I saw it passing by as a subject :

 

Yes, the more powerful the PC, the better the sound will be. This has always been the general consensus, and in 100% of cases where people thought they'd be good with their laptop or other "mini" system, they had to admit they were no good at all, after finally implementing the hefty desktop.

 

General consensus too is the more processor cores the better, and what's fairly standard by now is 20 core hyperthreaded Xeons. But mind you, without anything further in that cabinet, and preferably fully powered by a linear power supply. So no fans, no disks, no SSD, no USB connected stuff and also no SD. Nothing. Only LAN and the music stored somewhere there.

 

And regarding NAS ideas : Might that be beneficial in the first place, then try to envision it is not about any peripheral which doesn't spread noise to your precious Audio PC; it is about the Audio PC being able to run lean. Run evenly (no spiking).

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XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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1 hour ago, Summit said:

 

I agree, just because the computer is smaller does not mean it will be less noisy, many times it just mean it is made with more compromises. Components that are used in NUCs and laptops are often made of lower capability and quality, use more switching power internally to keep heat and power low, use more non discreet components, nasty M.2 SSDs, cheap cables and printed circuit boards.

With the CAPS devices, they are small....? but under their single 12V rails, they are still a regular type computer. There are too many generalities and vague descriptions of how and what to select, then tame a standard mobo. HDD's can be supplied with a linear supply, that's not a problem, but the myriad of other SMPS on motherboards is crazee. No wonder the likes of Aurender, Lumin, Linn use their own boards to reduce the noise emissions, fine. But. No regular player like Audirvana, Jriver, even Clementine and iTunes can run on the stripped down boards. That only leaves MPD software or others like it, and they just 'suck'. It takes a lot of effort to develop software, especially with a large database of differing requirements for user searches and wants like presentation of classical data compared with pop, the columns not right position, sheesh.

So for now, my perspective small computers, like the m93p, NUC, Elite are verboten, done with them, desktop workstations, with plenty of air inside and another box like it to house a power supply next door. Perhaps one day a streamer will come along a be a good match for a quality DAC, it will be a while.

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On 24-12-2017 at 11:04 PM, ALRAINBOW said:

I have read so much on what sounds good and now after this conclusion I don't know how anyone can post win 10 is good .

 

Hi Al,

 

After better reading your original post, I only now see what it is all about. Should be your question above, right ?

OK. I am not sure whether I answered the question indirectly with my previous posts, but the answer in direct fashion should be : because all is so stripped down that it comes down to a server version. And now both server and normal W10 should sound the same or very similar. However :

 

Do not underestimate those .0 versions I mentioned. But maybe you did take that into account already ?

 

Peter

Lush^3-e      Lush^2      Blaxius^2.5      Ethernet^3     HDMI^2     XLR^2

XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

Hi Al,

 

After better reading your original post, I only now see what it is all about. Should be your question above, right ?

OK. I am not sure whether I answered the question indirectly with my previous posts, but the answer in direct fashion should be : because all is so stripped down that it comes down to a server version. And now both server and normal W10 should sound the same or very similar. However :

 

Do not underestimate those .0 versions I mentioned. But maybe you did take that into account already ?

 

Peter

 

How is the OS stripped down, is it something you provide as a service?

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I river 20.132 is the last j river that works with AO period. 

J river newer ones work fine on won server 2016. 

Hq player works fine as well also works on any windows and AO combo.  

For me win 10 is the least sounding good of the Windows but I get why most love it as it’s gui is most normal. 

But win 2016 is very much like win 10. Or win 8. 

But allows for AO to do more including tidal. 

If I were to advise someone on server for music 

it would be software wise as follows 

win SER 2016 

AO 2.20 beta 5 

roon 

hq player 

fid pro as an add on 

a 200 watt hd plex LPS 

hd plex 400 dc to atx internal psu board 

no Audio card use 3.0 usb on back 

one ssd for os 

two 1 TB ssd for music 

I7 6600K cpu 

fan or fanless but if fan and this is fine use a cheap 12 was wort for the fans both cpu and case and don’t use fans with led lights. 

Main board any really I like MSI and Asus or gig byte 

4 gig of ram. You don’t want more as this makes things worse 

 

read AO Manuel well ask questions about bios settings this really matters. 

Turn off all cache and page files for All drives. 

 

Enjoy the great digital 

 

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1 hour ago, Lebouwsky said:

 

How is the OS stripped down, is it something you provide as a service?

 

This is part of XXHighEnd (not the Demo version). It is downloadable software. It lets you boot into the stripped down OS.

Or if you refer to those pre-installed OSes (I showed the boot menu of them) - this is available on HDD/SSD.

 

Btw, maybe I should be sorry for posting in this thread. By now I don't understand the questions alrainbow purportedly has/had. Good that I actually responded to SandyK and Rando so it doesn't feel too much as a waste of time.

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XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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12 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

This is part of XXHighEnd (not the Demo version). It is downloadable software. It lets you boot into the stripped down OS.

Or if you refer to those pre-installed OSes (I showed the boot menu of them) - this is available on HDD/SSD.

 

Btw, maybe I should be sorry for posting in this thread. By now I don't understand the questions alrainbow purportedly has/had. Good that I actually responded to SandyK and Rando so it doesn't feel too much as a waste of time.

Sorry if I confused your thoughts not my intention. But the stuff that gets posted that is contridicting is.  I make no claim as a high tech person but do know good sound 

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     Thanks, PeterSt, for your breakdown on the Windows OS's, very informative.  I was going to mess with Server 16, just for fun, but after your post and my own optimization of Windows 10 Pro, I am going to bag the idea.  Don't see the point, like you say, once you have reached a non GUI mode with either of these OS's, basically you have similar results.  

   

Also, my own experience with the modified mobo using the sCLK-EX have changed the game and any further attempts at change or optimization of OS seem to be for naught.  

 

  As far as choice of mobo, I also think the sCLK-EX is a game changer and choice is not nearly as important, thus smaller with clean power, less foot print is more desirable in my system synergy.  Would be interesting to hear from someone using a more powerful ATX mobo and sCLK-EX.  I think the results would be the same.  If your system synergy requires upsampling with HQP,  then the sCLK-EX mod would also benefit you greatly, maybe more so.  But not necessarily better than a low power system.

(JRiver) Jetway barebones NUC (mod 3 sCLK-EX, Cybershaft OP 14)  (PH SR7) => mini pcie adapter to PCIe 1X => tXUSBexp PCIe card (mod sCLK-EX) (PH SR7) => (USPCB) Chord DAVE => Omega Super 8XRS/REL t5i  (All powered thru Topaz Isolation Transformer)

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Just now, ALRAINBOW said:

But the stuff that gets posted that is contridicting is.

 

OK Al, thank you. But what is contradicting then ? The only contradictions I see is in your lists(S) of your own observations. At first it looked like questions to me (or asking for a second opinion). But it merely looks like you know all better than any of us. Btw, you don't need to be a high tech person as ears could be enough (no disagreement there).

 

Hey, I count 21 topics in your last list. Of those, there are 13 that I category disagree with. That is quite a lot.

So there's some contradiction indeed. :ph34r:

 

Anyway, I thought to contribute a little. Now it looks like my opinion against yours or something. That wasn't my intention.

OK. All cleared up now. Everybody can have his opinion. Let's continue ...

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XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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Not going to byte on your reply 

so picking on my grammar while it seems grade school is not going to stop me 

how about you post a question or one of my confusing thoughts and let’s reply to it meaning ful just one thought at a time. 

Maybe we both can learn from the esxpereince 

what I have posted is done by me in trials not read from others. 

I really do mean no harm or foul play 

please let’s do this.  

Thanks in advance 

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10 minutes ago, ALRAINBOW said:

Not going to byte on your reply 

 

Al, was that addressed to me ?

 

11 minutes ago, ALRAINBOW said:

so picking on my grammar

 

I sure did not do that anywhere.

 

11 minutes ago, ALRAINBOW said:

how about you post a question or one of my confusing thoughts and let’s reply to it meaning ful just one thought at a time. 

 

That must be addressed to me. But I really don't know what you want now. I don't have a question and don't question anything either !

I only disagree with many things of your list. I myself don't care about it. We all have different opinions and experiences, right ?

But if you like, one example which should be easy to discern (and one of the 13 I disagree with) :

 

Quote

one ssd for os

 

a. SSDs are worse than spinning disks for SQ (my subjective opinion);

b. As I implied, I use nothing in the PC. No, I said that explicitly but maybe it was not clear.

 

I hope we can agree over "nothing is better". And I use nothing (all Operating Systems run purely from RAM).

 

The thing for you to consider is to what degree this small change alone would do to the audibility of the OS itself.

An other thing to consider would be : the more sources of "noise" you eliminate, the more others become profound and the harder it gets to *not* make it worse.

 

Here is one which should be explicitly NOT clear :

 

1 hour ago, ALRAINBOW said:

But allows for AO to do more including tidal. 

 

So you stream from Tidal;

Did it ever slip your mind that if you from one side do all your stinking best to eliminate OS processes but from the other side bring in a multifold of misery by means of streaming, that you put the horse behind the wagon ?

So you see, this is an example of you yourself being contradictionary to yourself.

 

I now realize this was 2 steps in one post, so I will stop for now.

No picking on grammar anywhere. You nay not notice readily, but my own English is worse. So I wouldn't dare to ever blame someone else for his/her language. Never.

OK, Belgians. Haha.

Lush^3-e      Lush^2      Blaxius^2.5      Ethernet^3     HDMI^2     XLR^2

XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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6 hours ago, PeterSt said:

From again another angle and only mentioning it because I saw it passing by as a subject :

 

Yes, the more powerful the PC, the better the sound will be. This has always been the general consensus, and in 100% of cases where people thought they'd be good with their laptop or other "mini" system, they had to admit they were no good at all, after finally implementing the hefty desktop.

 

General consensus too is the more processor cores the better, and what's fairly standard by now is 20 core hyperthreaded Xeons. But mind you, without anything further in that cabinet, and preferably fully powered by a linear power supply. So no fans, no disks, no SSD, no USB connected stuff and also no SD. Nothing. Only LAN and the music stored somewhere there.

 

And regarding NAS ideas : Might that be beneficial in the first place, then try to envision it is not about any peripheral which doesn't spread noise to your precious Audio PC; it is about the Audio PC being able to run lean. Run evenly (no spiking).

 

Have you ever tried your software with a low-power renderer/buffer akin to HQPlayer's NAA?

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira de Pascoaes

 

HQPlayer Desktop / Mac mini → Intona 7054 → RME ADI-2 DAC FS (DSD256)

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1 minute ago, semente said:

Have you ever tried your software with a low-power renderer/buffer akin to HQPlayer's NAA?

 

This question is quite similar to the question whether the Phasure DAC can be provided with I2S input to improve on the USB interface.

 

Low-power is unrelated, unless low-power can be seen as bad in itself (and I am of that stance).

Try to catch the CPU cycles XXHighEnd uses while playing 32/768. You won't. Not even with the processor running at 500MHz (like I use it myself).

The "Audio PC" as Phasure proposes it these days (since 4 years or so) is running nothing but a "sample renderer", all the other work (think FLAC decoding, MQA decoding, uhm ... streaming O.o) already done ahead of it. Of course you can think that pumping those samples over Ethernet is better for sound than "pumping nothing", but then maybe it is time to reconsider. :P

It is a bit old-ish by now, but XXHighEnd ever back started out as a (first) memory player. It still is that for a full 100%. The fun (for me) with it, is that as a user you don't even notice anything of this.

And may it help (to set your mind), Audirvana+ is nothing like this. It looks to be like this, but it is not at all (it is always preparing tracks during playback - in XXHighEnd this is all done ahead of playback (like 2-4 seconds for a complete album)).

 

Btw, others for sure tried it.

Lush^3-e      Lush^2      Blaxius^2.5      Ethernet^3     HDMI^2     XLR^2

XXHighEnd (developer)

Phasure NOS1 24/768 Async USB DAC (manufacturer)

Phasure Mach III Audio PC with Linear PSU (manufacturer)

Orelino & Orelo MKII Speakers (designer/supplier)

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1 hour ago, PeterSt said:

 

This is part of XXHighEnd (not the Demo version). It is downloadable software. It lets you boot into the stripped down OS.

Or if you refer to those pre-installed OSes (I showed the boot menu of them) - this is available on HDD/SSD.

 

Btw, maybe I should be sorry for posting in this thread. By now I don't understand the questions alrainbow purportedly has/had. Good that I actually responded to SandyK and Rando so it doesn't feel too much as a waste of time.

 

Your post was very interesting, thank you.

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My take is that Linux is the best operating system for audio playback. Not because of sonic signature, but because I have complete freedom to modify it in any ways I see fit. For example compressed size of my latest NAA image for x64 (PC/Mac) hardware is 86 megabytes, with the OS and everything, even bunch of rarely needed extra utilities. With some extra squeezing effort, it could be made much smaller. BeagleBone Black image is 67 megabytes and RaspberryPi3 image is 77 megabytes, smaller because ARM code is smaller and there are less drivers needed because the full hardware configuration is known upfront.

 

Equivalent image of HQPlayer Embedded is 157 megabytes, also with the OS and everything else needed.

 

No graphical environments or similar included at all, since those are not needed. Just plain text console.

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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