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In Reply to: RE: Also be interest as to what if any update Apple might plan for the Mac Mini... posted by Ivan303 on August 27, 2014 at 09:04:27
Zero to do with better audio. This post demonstrates your other focus of interest.
Follow Ups:
Where you blessed us with the wisdom stating all system video data handling could never possibly affect sound quality and so therfore has nothing to do with audio. To be clear, sata cables ok but video data handling not ok as potential topics for discussion? Please let us know asap!! Your viewpoint on this matter is very important to me.
n
I'm pretty sure fmak reacted to the fact that posts in question mention video processing OUTSIDE of the context of audio - unlike the SATA cables discussion you refer to.
You'll hopefully agree - how else would you interpret this:
"I'm sure your first rule is that there will be no more posts that refer to computers used for any purpose other than audio"
I interpret a working audio computer as being a useful multi functional tool which can perform a broad range of non audio related tasks while processing audio and achieve equal audio performance as it achieves while only processing audio. I can't be sure this isn't what Ivan303 was doing. It is certainly something I'd want to do.
"I interpret a working audio computer as being a useful multi functional tool which can perform a broad range of non audio related tasks while processing audio and achieve equal audio performance as it achieves while only processing audio"
Well you are a minority of one... Did you also surf the web with your CD player? IMO if you are really serious you would not a general use system to be the best audio system. Would slice sushi with a saws all?
It's like speaking a totally different language - and we're not even dealing with the main culprit, the Mac-fixated, Apple-shilling Bobo the Clown.
Voicing skepticism = not understanding in your world? I doubt it. I just consider crippling the entire computers ability to be useful for something other than being a cd player by removing cooling fans due to the electrical interference more of the backyard rednecked jerry rigging approach to fixing the problem than I'd prefer.
You can call it "skepticism" all you want (the abuse this word takes from naysayers, audio and not only, is simply staggering), but it doesn't change the fact that you simply don't know what you're talking about.While magnitude of improvements brought by an optimized system is something that only you can assess, and decide whether it's worth it for you personally - expressing an opinion without actually doing it is absolutely meaningless.
Build a system, adhering to the guidelines that are freely available (cMP, AudioPhil etc.), and then we could have a meaningful conversation. If it's too much for you to bother with, buy a quality commercially-produced, Linux-based streamer, and compare that with your "working" audio computer.
Edits: 08/30/14
nt
"You can call it "skepticism" all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that you simply don't know what you're talking about. "
You may think you are clever or a debate god or whatever in your mind but you certainly don't appear anything other than a jerk from the outside. How would you know anything about what I know other than I've disagreed with you.
I tried plenty of tweaks got long ago and quickly became bored with them when they didn't do anything but make my computer suck.
While I'm sure they are fantastic at taking your 60hz issues from 20dB down to a blisteringly low 25dB down, since I solved those issues long ago in my hardware I saw none of the benefits of tweaks designed by guys like you.
I'd like to try the thing Mercman mentioned if it's easy just to verify if anythings changed over the years but I'm not holding my breath.
nt
more of the backyard rednecked jerry rigging approach to fixing the problem than I'd prefer.
Your point of view is fine by me but why keep banging on about it and, more seriously, be offensive with it?
(I don't know the nuances in US English but, here in Britain, "redneck", though imported, is pretty much a euphemism for racist. It's not a word I'd use lightly.)
I didn't mean to be offensive. I'm sorry if it was. What carcass said is more or less the way I was using it. I believe it's derived via the red necks of farmers due to all the time in the sun...traditionally uneducated, ignorant, inbred often racist etc. when sampled from the inner core of our country. Some here see it as a term of endearment, actually.
BTW did you see the list of responses questioning me when I woke up this morning? I'm not sure why you'd choose to chide me for banging my views and not address any of the peanut gallery.
I didn't mean to be offensive.
Thanks for the explanation. My (British) dictionary has it as:
(Disparaging) in the southwestern U.S., a poor, uneducated White farm worker; a person or institution that is extremely reactionary; adjective - reactionary and bigoted.
In Brit English, the term bigot nowadays strongly implies a racist.
I'm not sure why you'd choose to chide me for banging my views and not address any of the peanut gallery.
I do not on principle read instrusive posts dominated by "animated gifs" of cats and ignored most of the others. However, my eye was caught by the term "redneck" as I'd be included in the group you defined - I use a dedicated audio PC with a slimmissimOS. (To good effect BTW.)
Wikipedia defines it as "a bigoted and conventional person, a loutish ultra-conservative" - which I guess is close to what Ugly was trying to imply.
"I just consider crippling the entire computers ability to be useful for something other than being a cd player by removing cooling fans due to the electrical interference more of the backyard rednecked jerry rigging approach to fixing the problem than I'd prefer."
So then you are also saying that every manufacture making a streamer or any other music system that uses a computer is wrong...
No I'm not. In fact I'm very selective when it comes to my hardware and how it's hooked up. It's just that the strip down tweaks have never proven drastic enough to me to take much interest given their extreme downsides for my usage.
I'm still entertaining the idea a less is more crippling tweak may someday emerge which will prove worthy in my opinion but for example consider the number of points in the FIR filters used in convolver room correction algorithms, something I'm apt to play with on occasion. More points is better. The way to get more is with more compute power not less. Many argue that this software adds quality to the listening experience. Crippling the machine as I've seen is becoming popular with some will limit the effectiveness of getting the most out of it. I also play video games. Crippling the machine does not make them better either.
then you hadn't done it properly or played thru a high end system
Yeah, in my case I use lots of convoluter points. The number increses with higher sampling rates as does the CPU load. This makes for great convolution quality, but 1 second worth of samples at DSD rates uses almost all of my CPU horsepower. This leads to two problems. First, no other applications better be running since even a mouse click to one might cause an audible glitch. This includes various periodic operating system functions that manage to schedule their activity in the middle of listening sessions. Second, my room had better be freezing cold, otherwise the CPU will start heating up and the nearly inaudible 1200 RPM fan will speed up to 2500 RPM or even higher and become audibly annoying.
With the right software, I could probably create a batch job to make new DSD files that are pre-convoluted and all of the fan noise would happen in the middle of various nights... Then I could just play the new files straight through.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"The way to get more is with more compute power not less. Many argue that this software adds quality to the listening experience. Crippling the machine as I've seen is becoming popular with some will limit the effectiveness of getting the most out of it."
Using an OS like Server 2012 with the Audiophile Optimizer for example does not cripple the computer. Computing power is unrelated to the software. Foe what you are doing, or if one uses Jplay or HQ player CPU horsepower is definitely beneficial.
"I also play video games. Crippling the machine does not make them better either."
One can have more than one computer if one wants. Many people have more that one computer/smart device these days...
I'm perfectly willing to test out non crippling tweaks but trying to separate the wheat from the chaf on this site has historically been way too tedious for me. I wasn't even aware there is a more rational tweak culture which had emerged.
I even took your suggestion and have lurked the Computer Audiophile site a bit.
getting better audio in no way cripples a PC. It appears that you either don't know what is involved, or don't want to know.
"non crippling tweaks but trying to separate the wheat from the chaf"
It really is totally different world. IMO the word tweak is inappropriate.
It is a seriously mature product using a superior OS. When you are done it will provide a path to IMO the best possible sound from a computer.
"It's like speaking a totally different language"
It is actually kind of sad. Like our hearing impaired friend has no point of reference to actually base anything on. What he is doing is making uneducated assumptions with no actual facts, just being clueless and disrespectful.
Now at least if he said he actually put together a system and said he ran software X with OS Y and compared it to Z and I am using this DAC, Amp, Speakers etc. At least he could express an opinion based in fact, and one could agree or disagree, and at least have a discussion. Otherwise it is just total BS...
He has not done one thing that is being discussed but has absolute knowledge! I am impressed...
Well stated Bob. Thank you.
audio diffmaker's listener's challenge.There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house!
JE
Edits: 08/30/14
"audio diffmaker's listener's challenge."
Maybe you should take the ice bucket challenge, then make a donation.
This is not how one listens to music... Do people run to one jazz club, then run out the door to another to compare sound??? The enjoyment of life, this is the key! is not using a ruler everywhere one goes. This is a small minded existence... sorry...
... that people with hands-on experience building systems, and making meaningful changes to these systems to audibly improve sound quality, would bother with his retarded childish garbage.Not gonna happen - and what's more, I suspect even our resident Apple-shilling clown, who posts nasty anti-tweak diatribes every day, while being unable to hear a difference between Redbook and hi-rez, is not gonna bother with that.
Edits: 08/30/14 08/30/14
of the history of audio development on either platform....
Having worked in IT for 8 years for Lucasfilm/LucasArts in CG and computer game development, one couldn't avoid observing how shitty & almost entirely ignored audio was/is. It simply wasn't any consideration whatsoever.
3 words: Creative Labs SoundBlaster
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
??? Does being a sound card historian somehow give you insight to the physics of electrical issues in malfunctioning electronics circuits?
Sorry, for most of us here with experiences of superior SQ, - computers that simply "do sound" is not good enough, and certainly is of low value.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
The company I worked for in Mountain View sold tons (literally) of high-end graphics workstations & rendering servers to Lucasfilm for CG in the 1990's. This was before PCs could do decent graphics. Do you recall IRIX? When were you there?
We bought a ton of them for Grim Fandango, - since it was a Softimage platform, - or so we wanted. They were just porting over Softimage for quad processor PCs running Windows/NT, and it worked so badly that it was largely unusable. We used the quad-processor PCs for Jedi, which a lot of was based on 3DStudio and Lightwave. Those SGIs were powerful little toasters. Amazing video, for the olden days.
ILM was running tons of them in their server room. We got a great deal cause we were the biggest SGI purchaser outside Boeing.
I was there from 93 to 1999.
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
It was a cool game. At a guesstimate, how many folks worked on it?
Cool.
Yup, I was with SGI from 1991-1995 in Mountain View (saw a few Dead concerts at Shoreline), and until 2000 in Colorado. The biggest 'event' I remember were huge buses lined up on the SGI campus loading employees for a private screening of Jurassic Park somewhere in San Jose. I don't recall the theatre. The party after the show featured Todd Rundgren.
Lucas / ILM were not my customer but it was "Hollywood" that brought attention to SGI, not NASA Ames, Boeing, Sandia Labs, Lawrence Livermore, Lockheed, NCAR, etc.
Fun times.
My Colorado NCAR customer back in the day
"How about a nice game of chess?"
Jim Tavegia
Cool photo of our tax dollars at work in an earlier decade. At least they weren't being used to kill people. In another few years a computer system like that will fit in our pockets. :-)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
At least they weren't being used to kill people.
Well, not at the likes of NCAR, NOAA, NIST, etc. But the spooks at "the fort" and related IC agencies were big customers too.
"In another few years a computer system like that will fit in our pockets. :-)"
But will it be able to play decent audio without extensive third party modifications to the hardware and software? ;-)
JE
Out post release party budgets were massive, and the spectacle...Mark Hammill riding a BMW with side car to the premier of Full Throttle, - hilarious....
"Asylums with doors open wide,
Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"
Silicon Valley was a fun place to work back then, beer bashes and concerts all the time for the employees. Do they still do that or did it all go away after the dot com crash?
Here in the heresy inquisition room I can only imagine the rules which would have been placed on proper usage of Herons steam toy. Not only does my PC do adding, it will also multiply and more. BTW I use my cd player to surf the net everyday though only rarely do I ever put cd's into it anymore.
Here is the way I see it.
One can enjoy music listening to an unmodified Mac or PC. But on the other hand, turning off services running in the background, unnecessary services for music reproduction, can result in superior sound quality. Also optimizing services, etc. can also help.
One can prove it to himself by trying the new Fidelizer 6 with Windows 8.1
It made a significant improvement in my setup.
Now there are other ways to optimize the computer without turning many services off and screwing with the OS. I just turned in my review of the exaSound e22 DAC and it will go up next week. I will be discussing some cool things that come with this DAC.
I appreciate your diplomatic approach to the subject.
I'd be interested trying something like Fidelizer to see if I could measure a difference in my system using the rudimentary tools I have available. Is there a windows 7 version?
you have been consistently preaching me and others on computer audio without even trying some of the minimisation techniques or power supply mods. You say you have a lab, but you have never to my knowledge posted any measurement results.
All you need to do to try Fidelizer is to Google. It actually doesn't do as much or as well as other Minimisation scripts and techniques.
In this, you have in common two or three other posters here, who work on the basis of preconceived 'convictions' that do not have a basis in fact.
Did you even read the post you responded to? My point has been all along that I just don't have time for the undetectable improvements by tweaks those like you are prone to drone on about endlessly. Your goofball descriptions with complete lack of substance to back them up makes your crap about worthless to me in most cases I can recall at the moment. I'd be very interested in something which actually catches my attention as making a noticeable/measurable difference. I will try and make some time to try this software test it to the best of my ability in my home environment and make a decision about whether I like it or not. Maybe I'll comment here about my results, maybe I'll post screen captures, maybe not. Unlike you I doubt I'll make broad sweeping claims with no way to back them up other than worthless claims full of hyperbole.
I have posted various screen shots etc on occasions though it doesn't bother me you can't remember them even though you have commented on them in the past. Of course since I am not the one constantly making ridiculous claims the burden has rarely been on me to provide supporting evidence of anything.
Indeed I do have a lab in my home. Not as well appointed as I'd like but improving slowly as the need and funding arises. Seems to accomplish what I need done at the moment. It's the labs I've had at work in the various companies I've worked for where the nice stuff has been available to me at times.
So, how do to find the time to make nonsensical statements on what others are doing, who can and do find changes for the better.
It is your inadequacy, not that of others.
I have plenty of time for doing what I feel like doing since I'm not spending all my time trying to fix my broken audio PC like you are constantly doing. It still doesn't mean I have time for your nonsense.
You can spend endless time testing an astronomical number of potential PC audio tweaks. Since you aren't inclined to do so, then I suggest you try a very simple one first to see if you can hear a difference. Experiment with buffer sizes in your hardware driver and/or your player software. Find the smallest size that works without audible glitches. Find the largest size that works. Now play music to your heart's content switching between old and new settings and see if you hear any differences. This test involves only one or two parameters, so it's hard to screw it up or do any damage. Just write down what the parameters were before starting and then put them back when you are done.
If you hear differences, then you go on to all the other tweaks. If you don't hear differences then there is no need to hang your head in shame. There are a large variety of reasons why others might hear differences that you do not:
1. The music you listened to was not suitable for uncovering the differences.
2. Your system has problems that limit its ability to show up differences that would otherwise have occurred.
3. You didn't hear any differences because you have not learned how to focus your attention so as to be able to hear them
4. You didn't hear any differences because you have hearing damage
5. You didn't hear any differences because there weren't any to hear because your system and its setup have excellent isolation between the digital and analog components and your DAC has excellent isolation from jitter and other variations from the ideal signal that an ideal transport might send to the DAC.
6. Others who hear differences are hearing defects in the corresponding portions of their systems, e.g. they have noise coupling through cabling, they use a DAC that lacks excellent isolation of digital noise, etc. They may find it more effective to tweak their computer than to get a new DAC that lacks this isolation, or they may have such a DAC but prefer not to use it because it is deficient in other characteristics such as clean analog sound.
7. Others who report hearing differences are fooling themselves. They may be misinterpreting random sensations as definitive results. This may be due to inexperience, carelessness or even dishonesty. From reading posts it is difficult to know how careful and experienced these posters may be. "On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog".
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
you have read and digested my posts, you will have learnt that I did this years ago and have posted on the subject.
For you personally, on your system - what is the result of that simple test with buffer size?
If I remember correctly (and I might not), at some point you insisted that it doesn't really affect sound quality.
discussed this with him several times; he just didn't or couldn't get it.
Now he brings it up as though this has been a revelation for him and others.
There is plenty on the audio web on the issue.
I have been aware of the buffer size issues from the very beginning of my use of computer audio, all the way back to 2005 when I first started using a computer system to record and playback music. They were already in print in that period, and cics explained some of the issues in his long thread. (Actually, my understanding of buffer size issues goes to far earlier periods, see below in this post.)
My position was and has been that if buffer size issues exist it is because of a deficiency in the DAC, not a fundamental defect in the transport. Adjusting the buffer sizes may be a free system tweak, but if it works it is just proof that the DAC is not as good as it might be. Ditto for decoding FLAC in real time. Again, this is a case where if you hear a difference it's because the DAC is not up to snuff. I doubt very much that either of you have experience designing audio cards, drivers and DSP software and understanding how all of the components fit together, from both a practical and a theoretical perspective. Instead you appear to be a bunch of tinkerers. It has been a basic principle of mixed signal systems to separate the digital and analog portions back as long as I can recall, which goes back to a summer job in 1961 working on a hybrid computer consisting of a digital computer coupled to an analog computer. The principles are well known, but the consumer audio marketplace has done a crappy job of following them. In general the best mixed signal engineers have not gone into consumer electronics. They have gone into military electronics, telecommunications and the computer industries, as this is where the money is.
Fmak, you make a lot of cryptic comments, but I can't think of much that I have learned from you. There are others here whose engineering comments have proven valuable and non-technical reviewers who have made a many cogent observations as to what they have heard.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I am not here to teach you and I do not preach to others either.
"For you personally, on your system - what is the result of that simple test with buffer size?"
Well, I don't recall what I may have posted in the past. However, the last time I checked this, my impression was : 1) smaller buffer sizes don't sound worse and 2) smaller buffer sizes probably sound better. I don't like to make definitive statements unless I am prepared to put my life, fortune or sacred honor on the line. :-)
While I am not certain that playing FLAC files doesn't sound worse than playing WAV files, I suspect that is the case on my system. I do not make a practice of playing FLAC files in real time. Instead, my practice is to convert them to WAV and then play the resulting WAV files. I get an additional benefit from this conversion: I store the resulting WAV files in a RAM disk, so I don't have to worry about I/O taking place from my 4 GB piece of spinning rust. While I have not personally heard differences between WAV files that were converted to FLAC and then re-converted back to WAV, I have observed that the two WAV files are not necessarily identical. While they have the same PCM samples the headers are sometimes different. Accordingly, I consider claims that WAV to FLAC and back to WAV produce different sounding files can be valid if the player software is not written appropriately. For this reason, I do not consider Cookie Marenco’s claims to be kooky. (I love the sound quality of her recordings, so I am certain that she has good hearing.)
Unfortunately, that Asus tablet that you suggested I purchase has proven an excellent device for reading documents and I have yet to butcher it up to use it for audio. (Thank you!) It seems to be fairly low power, but not as low power as I would like for an audio transport, probably because of the Intel processor and the use of DRAM instead of static RAM. So if you leave it on standby for a while the battery runs down and then you have to put up with the back of the unit getting warm while recharging the battery. My metric for a system being low noise is the equivalent of one that I came up with for cars in the 1960's. The less power consumption the better. So if you look at power consumption in watts, that's a single number where lower is clearly better. The metric for cars was gas mileage. I figured that worse gas mileage meant less efficiency and hence more wear and tear, and the general rule back then was that one dollar spent on gasoline translated sooner or later into one dollar spent on repairs. (Or more, in the case of my 1965 Lotus Elan.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
fmak,
I haven't been that impressed with Fidelizer in the past, but the new version 6 made a big difference in Extremist Mode.
I'm trying to purchase the Pro upgrade but haven't gotten a response yet.
S
I don't see special versions for OS, just the latest - 6. I requested to buy the Pro, but haven't heard back yet. The free version in Extremist mode worked well for me.
I make no promises that this won't screw up your system.
with Fidelizer is that it is opaque, unlike other published scripts that are transparent.
Fidelizer 5 can paralyse your PC, requiring a reboot, and all one has is the guy's say so that the script 'optimises' audio quality.
I'd rather use AudioPhil's.
One of the more effective scripts is to put the player and associated software into realtime or high priority mode and to move everything possible to low priority. Also assign audio to a single core and everything else to the rest. This is really simple to do and also assumes that the unneeded services and programs wrt to audio are disabled or not used.
I think Fidelizer 6 is much better than 5. But thanks for your suggestions; will try some of them.
and try lowest possible but good sounding buffers and minimise ram usage - no memory play. This reduces your power consumption from maybe 16G - to may be 500 M +- which I find on DoP. 100M- on native hirez files.
.
Sorry, Bob. This one is a swing and a miss.
JE
But Ivan303 has been an 'audiophool' for many years and knows there are compromises and limits in ANY area of audio one wants to explore, be it speakers, amps, TTs, and yes, even digital replay which is lower on my list of priorities, being he's first and foremost a vinyl kind of guy.
If my only playback source was bits of rust, then I would certainly be more likely to explore the best possible computer/DAC to turn those bits of rust into analog waveforms(music).
Thankfully that's not the case here.
You don't have to buy into all the hot air. Modern computers are perfectly capable of being audibly transparent while doing any number of ancillary tasks. Vivid imaginings, however vociferously held, are not evidence of reality.
JE
But as with everything 'audiophool', audible improvements CAN be made. Time CAN be wasted on tube rolling, TT cartridge alignment, even material (Delrin(R) vs. wood) used to make an identical TT spindle clamp can make a audible difference.
On the other hand, a computer working optimally to reproduce audio ? No way - that is something totally different, not having much in common with your version of "working audio computer".It definitely is not going to "perform a broad range of non audio related tasks while processing audio" for these obvious reasons:
- it would screw up sound quality;
- there's absolutely no point in doing that, since computer is dedicated solely for high-quality audio playback;
- it simply is incapable of doing pretty much anything besides reproducing audio.Will have to agree to disagree. Vehemently.
Edits: 08/28/14
1. "Fall on deaf ears" - in more than one sense.
2. "Cast pearls before swine" - again.Nothing matters for sound quality - and as side benefit, computer with fan sounds exactly as fanless, music from network drive sounds exactly as from internal SATA drive, hi-rez sounds exactly as CD, and Led Zeppelin sounds exactly as Deep Purple.
Edits: 08/28/14
"Nothing matters for sound quality - and as side benefit, computer with fan sounds exactly as fanless, music from network drive sounds exactly as from internal SATA drive, hi-rez sounds exactly as CD, and Led Zeppelin sounds exactly as Deep Purple."
And I'm sure you can find posts where I made any or all of the claims listed above?
One post?
Please find it and share it, if you can.
Also, can you reply without name-calling?
Sorry, that's not easy for you, is it?
hunting for words again. This is typical and demonstrates the lack of assimilation and comprehension of what posts have been about.
the fan on my MacBook Air turns on at full speed?
As you are our new Moderator, I'm sure your first rule is that there will be no more posts that refer to computers used for any purpose other than audio.
If anyone dares to even post here using a computer, you will be BANNED, because NOTHING destroys the SQ of a computer used to play back audio files more than posting here. =:-0
Perhaps he is referring to video with minimal memory that depends on the main memory.
which probably means that playing complex video games or editing large movie files during music playback might be pushing it a bit. ;-)
Many personal computers that use 'integrated graphics' share system memory and allocate a chunk of it for the graphics.
If I enjoy music videos now and then and want to post about their audio quality, will the new moderator ban me?
I'm guessing yes.
;-)
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