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In Reply to: RE: cPlay - the open source high-end audio player using ASIO posted by cics on May 05, 2008 at 12:31:58
Ever since I got to step 5, it reminded me as to how deceptive changes could get. I was lucky to have taken a back up at this stage, so that it's state could be exactly revertible. Going all the way to steppe 16 was most definitely, undeniably, an enthusiastic experience, even though it was an ordeal to almost all of us to have reached till there. With innumerable file deletions, settings & registry mods, the sonic balance did change to a very great extent, later to realise that it was more of a tilt than an overall improvement. At a certain stage (steppe 5.5, if I'm not wrong), the emphasis was more towards bringing the 'Air' out of the music. Each step thereafter brought about more n more transparency, more ambience & as I would say 'moisture' in the presentation. Agreed..!!
But.. !! As each steppe was done, & heard, we perceived a change, which had a sense of 'something new'. And it was said that each steppe be given some time for the so-called 'burn-in', which in another aspect made us Get Used to that new sound, thereby over-writing the sonic registrations which we previously had in our ears about our familiar music. This happens a lot to any of us. Atleast it has happened to me, inspite of trying to be careful.
After xplite, things started to change directionally. It was, as mentioned above, given Most emphasis on Air & Transparency. This Open sound was initially appealing, but started to show the downside it brought as steppes progressed, getting very Analytical by steppe 16.
I had always liked Steppe 5, amongst all the steppes starting from steppe 2 to steppe 16. So I decided to swap over to steppe 5 to cross-check if I was right. And Yes, it was ( atleast according to me).. Listening to steppe 5 for two days, & trying with the Bold Fortune route definitely gave a Plus. It was atleast not as bad as what xplite did. The sound was warmer, yet open. And the best combo was steppe 5 with The part 2 of BF. With Part 3, the bass was different.
All along this way, for about one full month, ever since I has started off with deletions, I was listening to a certain set of Music Albums. It was yesterday, when i felt bored listening to the same music all along, that I wanted to pop in another album which had been quite a while since I heard.
Very surprisingly, I felt many sections Missing in the presentation. This was alarming. It was at this point that I felt something somewhere has been lost, altogether.
And there came this time, when I restored our Original Optimised cMP with b38... The one we had set-up as per cics recommendations. And what more could I tell myself other than "what have I done..!!!
The qualities of the original optimised cMp had their own class. The IMPACT in the bass, the SCALE of the piano, the ATTACK in the drums, the BLEND in the vocals, the DELICACY in the treble, has totally been compromised along this route of Software-level mods. The FULLNESS in the mids is totally gone past the initial Steppes. The only downside I could sense in this stage was a little boost in the Upper midrange & a little Upper bass. If just these two aspects get rectified, the whole spectrum will balance itself & the Air which is now veiled by the above two things, would automatically be released.
I mean how could we lose that Bone & Muscle just to get some ambience & transparency. The foundation itself is wronged here.
I initially did not want to post this, because it might directly or indirectly offend the hard-work Serge has put into all this. Two thumbs up for him. Hats off to his dedication in this project. It's actually not him who is to be blamed. He did it for himself & posted to make others benefit out of it, which is a good thing. But somewhere it went out of track... May happen to any of us..
I don't expect anyone reading this post to agree with me. I know that Most of u will certainly disagree with my findings here. But whatever I have mentioned above, are my own personal observations.
So summing it up all, I intend to spend some time with the original Optimised cMp, & figure out a line of progressive implementations, that will give the best of everything.
This post has become quite long. That's all for now...
Thanks for reading...
Junaid
Edits: 10/15/11 10/19/11Follow Ups:
I agree with much of what you said.
When I got my regular, from WINDOWS disk, cMP optimized (what do you call it? What word should go here?) I was surprised by how good it sounded. The only thing that did stick out was that the high frequencies were now perceived to be grainy, very grainy in comparison to STEPPE 10. I never got to listen to anything past that.
I do not think you are being contrarian at all. There is always a compromise and as you put it this configuration (is that the word?) suits you better.
In my experience I perceived a greater impact and dynamics with #5 than with the baseline.
One can wonder are we doing things that are confusing the machine. I think of the AUTORUNS aspect which I assume is just a shortcut to registry changes. Of course, I do not know the details of these changes but one wonders if we are to do these file deletions and these registry changes, both STEPPE and BOLD FORTUNE, that we should not use AUTORUNS?
By the way, Mihaylov's tweak looks a lot like a full BOLD FORTUNE deletion regime. I went through number nine and lost my START button (again), RUN, and NOTEPAD. All of these can be lived without but one would like to know what it is that makes them go away so you could plan how to proceed with deletions and registry edits.
I continue to think there is much good in this idea. My mind finds it plausible that calming the veritable Tower of Babel that is WINDOWS in full has to make for a better device for playing music. This discussion is only a month old; there is much to be learned. The learning can be frustrating and is getting in the way of listening to music in my case.
I finally took the advice of doing images and made an image of the optimized basic cMP. I tried to use this image yesterday after a BOLD FORTUNE overreach and it was corrupted. Any ideas of what I did to do that?
Your comments are needed to keep this discussion going in the right direction. I must admit I was taking the easy way out assuming the more stuff you removed the better the sound would be. Rarely is anything that simple and your asking us to consider there is more to the process than simple subtraction.
Nonetheless, STEPPE deserves praise for getting us thinking about how to make this better. The forum has been exciting again. Something good is gong to come out of this. Just think how much we have learned about .dlls lately.
I think the BOLD FORTUNE approach is superior to XPLite. We just have to learn to tweak it for our purposes.
Bye,
I am not saying that the Original optimised cMp is the ultimate. What I'm trying to say is that, whatever Software-level changes we make, it's mandatory to revert back to the previous step to double-check if the upgrade is worth it. It's very easy to get carried away when we get to hear new details these changes make. An A/B comparison, I feel, must always be done after giving some time with the new sound. By this, I don't mean Burn-in. For eg. if we are happy with steppe 5 & then we delete some files, & if the new sound reveals more details & Air or whatever, we MUST go back to steppe 5 back again after a few days to be sure it's an Improvement. Else we would just keep going on n on leaving a lot behind. This was evident when I came back to the Original optimised cMp. The sound of the Original Optmised cMp may sound coarse or dry initially, because we are so used to the Ambience of the new steppes. But I stayed back & wanted to keep listening. And it made me feel, that there are so many aspects in the Original, which have been blown away with the mods we have made. The sound is fuller, more Blended, & Plays in the right Scale. Piano sounded more Realistic in terms of size & Scale. Also the IMPACT is lost after the initial steppes which I'm now hearing in the Original Optimised cMp. The sound of Barry White is so effective, which lost most of it's Body in the deletion process. The only thing I feel that needs to be rectified is the Upper Bass & the Upper Midrange. Because of the dominance of these two sections, it sounds coarse or grainy. And I'm sure, quite sure, that it does not need hundreds of file deletions & registry changes just to get those two things right. This is where our focus comes to play. We need to move very slowly & be extremely critical in our analysis. Just because we have all the Batches ready, does not mean that we go at light-speed implementing them. This will only lead to confusion & losing the sonic registrations we have in our ears.
For this reason, I have decided to choose only 3 tracks for this whole process. I am repeatedly listening to them so as to grasp the reproduction of each note being played.
Now at this point, where I have decided to start-over from the Original version, I intend to proceed very carefully, and go back & forth till I'm very certain, that the new sound is absolutely superior in every aspect to the previous one. I don't know if I would follow the order of the Steppes which I did before. In fact, I don't even intend to do each steppe fully. I know this may seem like a long procedure, but I feel it's high-time we get back on track. The qualities of steppe 5 are much superior to the Original version, but the performance of the Original version has so much more than Steppe 5.. The bottom line is that So far, every improvement made has been born with a compromise. And it's this compromise that I want to eliminate...
Junaid
The night before reading your post, I was listening to Van Morrison's "Too Late To Stop Now" (Remastered) and was very unhappy with the sound, no bass, too thin, and the human voice too artificial. Another bad remastered disc, thought I.
Then the next morning I saw your post and since I was never totally happy with any tweaks after 4.5 (steppe 4 + your first batch) I decided to go back to it. However, I discovered that I had deleted that partition image for lack of space! The latest version that I had was steppe 5.5 (steppe # 5 up to step (j)) so I restored that. Comparing steppe # 5 complete and partial (up to step j) is very educational. Yes, the partial brings the bass back, so is the bloom of a natural soundstage, and the human voice is human again. While the complete #5 has a very 'clean' sound, an expanded soundstage (quite intoxicating), tight but thin bass, and an edginess to the human voice.
Yes, the transition to artificiality begins with steppe 5.5.
KC
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