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Subjective comparison of Software Music Player


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On 3/21/2021 at 4:08 AM, manueljenkin said:

c. On first run of the executable it does certain things, one of which is making your windows background screen black (point a). It doesn't have a progress bar, so it would be necessary to wait for a while.

 

Hi Manuel - what a great effort you did there - again !

 

What will be happening is that you run XXHighEnd on to a random W10 version, while only certain versions are "certified" (by me). For example, the latest normal Desktop version is 14393.0 and nothing newer. This all relates to which services can be shut off while the OS keeps on running stable. This includes the normal UI - just saying. And the first thing which will o wrong at newer versions, is indeed that UI (like the screen staying black forever).

 

Also notice that nothing within XXHighEnd is made for "Attended" playback really. So all you'd see from that is emulation (the UI emulates what the Sound Engine is doing). So others said it as well: all is about UNattended playback, which kills the UI and about everything from Windows (desktop UI). Next its own OSD "interface" remains.

 

I can provide the 14393,0 version, if you want. You will see that all is the most normal and outside of playback the OS is normally usable (even in MinOS (= audio) mode). During playaback (Unattendedly) it is an audio PC only and lame for anything else. But now watch the SQ ... :-)

 

For your special interest: When you apply all correctly, the OS becomes something like 10000 times more lean. The most crucial in that, is the Windows UI (already known from people with Server OSes without GUI). Regarding this latter, it won't matter whether using such a Server OS or just the Desktop OS because XXHE turns both into the same anyway. Server OS is supported up to WS2019.

 

 

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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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And @manueljenkin, You mentioned the playing from RAM, which is very true in itself (in the beginning advertised as a first "Memory Player" (although something with a same name existed at the same time with hardware around it) ...

... As mentioned by others without much notice, the RAM-OS is the things where *all* runs from RAM. So if not clear already, that also boots the OS from RAM and leaves totally nothing in the PC (no SSD or whatever). Of course you must first have a PC like that; The less you have in there, the better the sound (trust me). So only a CPU and a network connection is what you'd need. The network connection is used to load the albums from another PC (/NAS) into RAM.

 

Again watch the SQ ... (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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3 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

I would like to know if it would be possible to pair up xxhe with a headless single board x86 computer (after undervolting)?

 

It will work as long as it runs Windows 10 (from X86). But all "undervolting" will sound as bad as can be.

Please keep in mind that I work the other wat around: The Ferrari which drives 80Km/h and wants to accelerate to 120Km/h (high transient etc.) which we do with over-power and not with underpowered 2CVs (which won't even reach 120 as they do 110 only).

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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8 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

I am looking to see if I can take any existing x86 SoC boards

 

Same thing; you can do that but the SQ will be lousy. You will find that this sounds worse than what you had running.

 

You put so much effort in this all ... why not have a simple separate HDD (or SSD) with the OS and all for XXHighEnd ? All you further need is replace that with the OS(-disk) you normally have. And have it more or less removable. Or put both the disks in there (and change boot by means of boot menu). Or make a dual boot OS.

 

12 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

It will have its own hard drive/storage with music collection

 

Remember, it is again not the way to do it. Have a network connection to your "main" PC and connect the music (by USB or whatever) to that PC.

 

But otherwise, just go ahead as you deem is fine. It will work all right. :-)

Btw, Ferrari's don't do too well these days anyway. Or maybe next Sunday ?

 

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 month later...
1 minute ago, lotusaurus said:

While I see that I need only a CPU and a network connection, what sort of CPU do I need? The more powerful the better? Choose speed over cores or vice versa?

 

Nah, I don't know where you read those "requirements", but you seem to have found the specs of the Mach III Audio PC.

Any normal desktop Windows PC will do the job, BUT there are requirements on the Windows version; this should be W10-14393.0 and when needed I can provide it.

What you should not do is use a low-power processor as found in laptops (that simply won't sound good). Otherwise it would be true that the beefier the processor the better the sound (and still, any normal modern Desktop will do). The more cores the better, with the notice that XXHighEnd will rev the processor down to 500-750 MHz anyway (this is a setting). Think of a Ferrari with over-power.

 

In the more extreme setup indeed a processor with network connection, plus a 2nd PC which provides the music files. is "best"/ But since that requires inordinate configuration because the OS boots from RAM (in the Audio PC) we provide the OS RAM Disk/SSD. All is on that, including (several) configured OSes and XXHighEnd activation. Of course this will cost you (like 360 euros) but all you need to do further is move it in a removable drive bay, boot the system and remove it after booting. And make some network mappings a first time. This is really not hard and everybody can press Play etc. after that. You can't even destroy things because the OS runs in volatile memory.

 

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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5 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

I would also like to know what are the possibilities of running xxhe on a hyper v windows server running on top of a lean windows server.

 

I am not sure whether I addressed it already (probably Yes), but the Mach III Audio PC is explicitly based on a server board. So *the* main difference with its predecessor (Mach II) is the server MoBo.

But this is not really what you asked, and the hands-on experience of several months of trialing with virtual machines (the leanest possible) told me that this was a no-go. Theoretically it already won't work well because of too much in between. This is one layer at least and you will notice it in everything (buffers can't be that small etc. etc.).

 

5 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

My friend who has an RME adi2 (slow filter on the dac) also finds it amazing running xxhe at 8x. Is 16x exclusive to phasure NOS1, or can other DACs support it as well

 

Hmm ... it should be able to work; I have one myself but I did not try it so far, but the fact that @manisandher also has one *and* tried it on XXHighEnd (or on his NOS1 DAC only ?) without further complaints, tells me that it just works. Maybe it is the choice between "Needs 24 bits" and "Need 32 bits", although I recall from ever (RME) back that it will do both. Of course the ADI2 is 32 bits inherently ...

 

5 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

Any good choices of Linear Power supplies that can supply this GPU and CPU?

 

Personally I have no other experiences than one customer who applied an external LPSU to his Mach II back at the time, had that LPSU even heavily modded (like making it 3x more expensive by an experienced LPSU EE), now has a Mach III with our own LPSU in there, and likes the latter for the way better. So No, I don't know about third party products, but I do know what we apply to our own (and this is about response speed explicitly - see ATX specs).

 

On 5/4/2021 at 5:47 AM, lotusaurus said:

Which would mean AMD chips with more cores but slower speeds would be better than a faster Intel CPU with fewer cores? Would a GPU be important for processing power?

 

I actually forgot to respond to this ...

I have no hands-on experience, nor feedback from customers about the Ryzen CPU's. They should work out for the better (because more lean), BUT since it also requires a new MoBo obviously, it is too far for me to just try (the development of a new Audio PC around a new MoBo takes many months).

XXHighEnd does not use GPU cores/power, so no, that does not help at all. Contrary, the Audio PC should not contain a GPU in the first place (although Server boards like we use, (always) do BUT not on-board of the CPU, which would be forbidden).

 

Btw, the greatest hidden gem of 2.11 (which came without real release notes) is ending your listening day (Unattended Playback) with Pause (E on the On Screen keyboard pad), which causes all to be really "hot" until the next listening session which you'd start with P(lay). This is way better than a listening session of 3 or so hours, because the other (say) 20 hours are really doing more to your system. I myself have only experience with the NOS1, but I think it will apply to all DACs. Remember that this only works when Unattended is in order (works outside of MinOS the same).

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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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7 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

I'll be curious if you ever make a ryzen based one 😬.

 

I should, because the upgrade path of the Xeon's is a bit dead at the moment. This is BIOS related (super slow boot into/from memory) and Memory related (the required ECC memory sounds like sh*t).

 

7 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

and the on experience of several months

 

*hands-on (I corrected that in my post by now)

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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2 hours ago, manueljenkin said:

Can you guide me through this please. Is this for getting a low footprint windows 10, or windows server 2019 or windows server 2014? I would like to explore this.

 

Please don't do this when using XXHighEnd or everything will be one big out of control mess. This is because XXHighEnd does this herself already (called "MinOS" mode).

 

On another note, XXHighEnd should be used with 14393.0 for best (and super stable) results. This is something for that other thread you created, but it is not easy to incorporate because the thread is already there and it should be in the first post. That means you should be able to edit that (you can ask Chris).

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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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  • 11 months later...
On 4/4/2022 at 11:21 AM, ArnaudA said:

but i do have a serious problem concerning Windows 10, i have got a simple family 10 version (19044.1586 V) and i think that causes all of my trouble

 

Hello Arnoud,

 

Yes, that is indeed the problem; not all random W10 versions are suitable and as a matter of fact, the last one which is, is 14393.0.

This will sadly mean that you can't use a "family" computer for it, but eh ... one should not do that anyway because of the infringement of other processes which really influence SQ (e.g. a virus scanner).

 

I have 14393.0 available for you. Just drop me an email at sales phasure com.

 

It is to be emphasized that all the real stuff is happening in Minimized OS Mode (which is not what you can have attempted), which in real time strips the whole OS to an audio OS and/but which allows you to go back in one minute when required (it just takes a reboot). In that mode all is operative, but during playback in "Unattended mode" nothing is. This gets back as soon as you press Stop.

 

I guarantee you this is worth while, so any dedicated PC you may get for this, will have a best cause. But please make that not the smallest PC power wise (like a laptop would be the "smallest" and far from the best sounding). Meanwhile it (the 14393.0 OS) will free you of all the hassle because it just works flawlessly with XXHighEnd.

 

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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