Bit perfect software changing sound. How?

[Racerxnet]

24 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

Well well, we have someone claiming something to be a story when yours is based on a fairytale.

I'd suggest that you are the one with fairy dust at the end of a rainbow, looking for a pot of gold. This is a objective forum, show proof or take it elsewhere. You deleted my reply like a wimp with no credible evidence. They pushed March Audio out on the other thread. Provide evidence on the software you are supporting. 

[Racerxnet]

10 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

That could be correct. And I say this genuinely because give me a new 6 months and something new will have emerged improving again (eh, vastly). This can only happen if boatloads are still present.

Btw, I am going to invest constellations (which btw is true for noise source that may let computers fail (falling stars)).

 

 

I'm afraid you must help me on that one. What do you mean ?

OK, you mean the playback PC itself, right ? well, because everything else is worse ? (I recall to be a first with "network player" experiments instead of CDP, although Squeezebox was there too at the same time.

Not that money is telling, but I came from a Teac P1 transport. And mind you, people these days are still claiming CDP transports to sound better than PC's. But then people also try to tell that Vinyl is the way to go.

 

Nobody said it is easy and in fact I claim (all over the place) that it is mighty difficult to let sound digital right (as in: surpasses vinyl by many audio miles).  One thing: where needed I /Phasure can supply the whole shebang. But this thread is not about that.

Does the footprint of the CDP reduce the inherent noise vs a computer?  Can the reduction of processing power and ARM help in our quest for better playback. 

[Racerxnet]

4 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

Well you were building upon a claim by @Currawong and putting blame on the developer with your narrative skewing. The dev never claimed the software to do defragmentation and there is no evidence for the software to be doing defragmentation. Your post might have been worthy elsewhere but it is off topic and misleading in this topic with an irrelevant and flawed base so there's nothing wrong in me deleting it.

 

And here you make an abusive remark on me. (Calling me a wimp).

I never claimed the software was defragging per say, just stating the fact that defragging is not nessecary for a SSD. What we are trying to find out, is what is the software actually does and how it is improving the playback based on your claims. You don't seem to have any plausible explaination based on science. 

[Racerxnet]

1 minute ago, manueljenkin said:

Different strokes for different folks. I see more value in a 3000$ PC that I could use for data crunching and one that I could just turn into an audio transport of acceptably low noise when I want to listen to music (if I'm critically listening then I'm unlikely to be doing any other task, but that's me).

How do you tame all the noise from the onboard switching power supplys from the MB manufacturer. 

[Racerxnet]

8 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

You wont be able to distinguish the recording of this from the real thing, which obviously can be listened to over here subsequently. This includes the feel in the stomach of mainly the kick drum.

Are you suggesting they are playing while the washer and dryer are running? Those items are effecting the sound? If so, that scenario is so far removed from reality in a recording studio, that it makes no sense.l

[Racerxnet]

11 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Of course not. That was making fun.

Glad to hear that. I hope they don't leak over time. Look out below!

[Racerxnet]

9 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

You can't. But we must wonder whether it is about those. I have no real evidence of that. And people over at Phasure really tried in this realm (in vain, if you'd ask me).

But the audio playing PC itself and its main (Linear) PSU are of vast importance. More important than a DAC these days.

But then we have Jcat and others claiming that if we power the USB card from its own supply, we have mitigated the gremlins. I'd like to have Maunueljenkin get back to the science behind the software. The Jepardy tune is running in the background. 

[Racerxnet]

4 minutes ago, March Audio said:

Oh so noise from the ssd ruins the sound but noise from a dozen switching regulators is fine.

 

You are a comedian.

 

Can you explain why the main supply is a problem but the switching regulators that come after it are not?

 

Somewhat defeats the object of a linear main supply when its fed into multiple switching regulators don't you think?

 

 

Then you have the CPU running at 3.7 to 5 GHZ. 

[Racerxnet]

As much as I try not to buy into the magic, I bought the Jcat card and did a comparison to the DACup ports on the Gigabyte board. I could not hear a difference. What the Jcat did do is provide a more robust connection. It seems that the Gigabyte boards suffer from lag/interupts to the connected devices on USB. I run a custom Bios which gives me greater control to stabilise the OS, RAM timings, and CPU. Maybe people should start tweaking the bios for better compatabitity and a stable OS first. 

 

I did notice a definite improvement with the Berkeley Alpha USB to Spdif converter. I have isolated the noise/jitter fed to the DAC. 

[Racerxnet]

8 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

Well your arguments again stem from an assumption that PC power supply is sloppy work. Far from it. A 12V supply is regulated in multiple stages to ensure that there is enough buffer in place to take any disruption that changes power consumption would bring and it is generally very low noise because it'll have to run through multiple layers in the CPU. Can they be improved by a better power supply input? Surely yes, and a better power supply input can also help the rest of the pcb. You can afford to do this much level of buffering and filtering because it is power (a specific fixed voltage and current with some transient deviation). But you can't do this multiple levels with data which is a switching sequence of pulses or else you'll be losing speed.

 

Data lines hence are non deterministic as mentioned earlier. There's not much ways to fully control it other than controlling your software, and since they use ground as reference, they both play together creating the problems.

 

 

A linear supply does not gaurantee the best fit for the application. We can find that switching supplies can be engineered to fit the application much better and have a lower noise floor over the demands applied from the device. So as above, I agree. But, you have explained nothing in reference why your software is creating a better listening file experience. How does the code work within the operating system and data memory device? 

[Racerxnet]

For anyone looking for a custom bios for their motherboard, you may be able to find it here.

https://www.win-raid.com/

[Racerxnet]

1 hour ago, manueljenkin said:

The dev hasn't explained so I don't know what the code exactly does, but it does copy the files to RAM as the dev claimed (verified in task manager twice and another person also saw part of code corresponding to that execution having mov to ram operation). I only can make guesses on where the changes come from physically and the only place I know of for this case is access noise differences from the charge distribution differences in the storage cells. It could be some other digital noise phenomenon too but I donot have other guess.

 

And if you're wondering about noise due to different data access, the entire last 7 pages is for you, don't want to repeat all those again.

 

btw the Berkeley alpha looks cool but crazy expensive. Any teardowns available?

The software moves the file to RAM (volitile) and then back to the drive (nonvolitile)? Is this correct?  If I remember correctly, it stores the new file in the software subfolder. So you have taken the file, moved it to RAM, and copied it to a new folder and it sounds better. 

 

There are only 2 instances where I actually heard a diffrence between Foobar2k and other playback software. One was with Cic's software some years ago, and HQplayer. After some investigation, on my Pc, I set the MMCSS mode in Foobar to Pro Audio, thread priority to 7, and disabled all non essential background applications. I did a A/B comparison to HQplayer and found the playback consistent between the 2. There have been some registry tweaks per some online discussions for foobar also. 

 

The best estimate of wide gaps in playback from my perspective is: 

Stabilize the OS and hardware to run consistently. (memtest 64)

Use quality components that do as suggested with evidence. (berkeley Alpha)

Don't overclock the bejeesus out of it. Don't under volt it either.

Watch your 'RAM timing and get compatible sticks. 

Adequately cool it.

Look for and think about qualified tweaks that can make a difference. (mmcss Pro Audio settings)

Prevent the hard disk from sleeping to limit voltage transients.

Use ASIO drivers if possible. (theysecon for the Berkeley) 

Don't digitally clip the volume.

Room treatment with DSP and the best speakers you can afford. Amplifiers to match.

 

With that said, I don't hear all the hype from people about drastic improvements in playback. That does not mean I will not keep looking. I have tried many different things along the way, but am skeptical of many. 

 

Here is a link to some foobar tweaks I used along the way. 

https://www.tirnahifi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=2456&i=1

[Racerxnet]

1 hour ago, idiot_savant said:

Ok,

 

so I’ve decompiled some of this optimiser thing. 
 

it’s written in C#, so I already hate it. 
 

there are functions called scintillate and harmonize 

 

it opens a couple of files inside the windows page file, that it seems to write random numbers into before swapping them around in a ping pong, using a number of threads. 
 

The decompilation doesn’t help, but whatever  it is trying to do looks pretty pointless to me - but it *is* trying to do something, even if misguided - I’m not sure if there’s a magic sequence it’s trying to write to the disk whilst copying a file at the same time? 
 

anyway, I’ve seen nothing ( so far ) that could explain any difference in sound

 

your friendly neighbourhood idiot 

I can look at it with IDApro as well .

[Racerxnet]

18 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

Thanks. Those are a lot of hardware tweaks, so I'll have to see how I can go about it, but I'll try to experiment. I have tried a few tweaks on foobar before giving up and moving to other players, but I'll try again after a while.

I changed some registry Dwords based on the linked article.

 

[Racerxnet]

DSP with the convolver on Foobar2k.

 

[Racerxnet]

11 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

I asked my doctor the other day if the degrees on her wall were an "appeal to authority".

 

Unfortunately, I should have mentioned this after the prostate exam, not before...

She must have really stuck it to you...

[Racerxnet]

34 minutes ago, manueljenkin said:

Ah, sweet appeal to authority. Fyi I'm an EE as well, so are a lot of people here.

At least he attempted to see what the code was doing and is much more intuitive than the power of suggestion. If you care as a EE, run IDA Pro and reverse engineer it for your own peace of mind. Maybe you can then explain what it does in a more definitive manner. Right now it appears to do nothing. Maybe the developr can come forward and explain a bit better? 

 

Sorry about the Foobar tweaks, I know it is off topic. I'll leave this discussion alone for now.