Tír Na HiFi

jrling wrote:
The different combinations of software and hardware settings must run to the millions. How can us mere mortals make sense of that? Just by listening and finding one or two that please one. Which is basically what Gordon has been doing for over a year and extremely successfully to my ears.

Jonathan - standing by for a barrage of opposing views!

erin wrote:
Anyway, I have been listening to MQN 3.92 and found it to be very pleasant. Music should be relaxing and enjoyable and musical. 3.92 ticks those boxes. - A step in the right direction. Keep up the good work Gordon.

jesuscheung wrote:

erin wrote: ....
Anyway, I have been listening to MQN 3.92 and found it to be very pleasant. Music should be relaxing and enjoyable and musical. 3.92 ticks those boxes. - A step in the right direction. Keep up the good work Gordon.

yes. 3.92 is nearly leanless. leanless > details

3.94>3.95>3.96.

erin wrote:

erin wrote:
Anyway, I have been listening to MQN 3.92 and found it to be very pleasant. Music should be relaxing and enjoyable and musical. 3.92 ticks those boxes. - A step in the right direction. Keep up the good work Gordon.

But, 3.92 is not as good as my favorite version because it does not have much bass detail. The leading edge is lost. So, very relaxing, but not audiophile....

jrling wrote:A few comments on recent posts if I may -

Develop by scientific measurement rather than by ear - is a compelling argument - well actually I would do it by both - BUT there has been no method put forward to produce those measurements or for that matter correlate measurements with listening experience. jkeny started a good thread on just such an approach, but noone volunteered a method, I seem to recall. Certainly, not without access to mega-expensive equipment only available to those in the electronics industry.

Of course, SQ is dependent not only on hardware but software. But it is the interaction between the two that results in what we hear. We are all using different hardware and differently configured Windows OS and so even testing the same version of MQn, we are not comparing apples with apples, so it is not at all surprising that there are numerous quite opposing views of versions of MQn.

As far as I am concerned, having to get a soldering iron out to the PC, is a red line not to be crossed. A slippery slope. And IMHO, I can get really, really good SQ without that. Careful choice of power supply (see my signature for my cheap approach), good quality components like RAM with standard BIOS settings can give very good results. Tuning the Windows OS is where I get most gain and in my case that time is free.

To make the point, taggart's excellent utility 'Tasker' easily provides the ability to change Windows Priority and Affinity for MQnplay for instance. My WaveIO has the Thesycon XMOS drivers with latency settings configurable in the Control Panel. Just changing that latency to Minimum from Low can in my case change the whole tone of the music to sharp and digital. Similarly configuring MQnplay to its own dedicated core and High (but not Realtime) Priority can transform the SQ for the better.
.. and did I mention that I have a Chord DAC which has a 4 second RAM buffer in the DAC that reclocks the SPDIF input and theoretically should remove a lot of incoming jitter? But it is still easy to detect difference between versions of MQn (to Gordon's surprise).

The different combinations of software and hardware settings must run to the millions. How can us mere mortals make sense of that? Just by listening and finding one or two that please one. Which is basically what Gordon has been doing for over a year and extremely successfully to my ears.

Jonathan - standing by for a barrage of opposing views!

nige2000 wrote:

jrling wrote:A few comments on recent posts if I may -

Develop by scientific measurement rather than by ear - is a compelling argument - well actually I would do it by both - BUT there has been no method put forward to produce those measurements or for that matter correlate measurements with listening experience. jkeny started a good thread on just such an approach, but noone volunteered a method, I seem to recall. Certainly, not without access to mega-expensive equipment only available to those in the electronics industry.

Of course, SQ is dependent not only on hardware but software. But it is the interaction between the two that results in what we hear. We are all using different hardware and differently configured Windows OS and so even testing the same version of MQn, we are not comparing apples with apples, so it is not at all surprising that there are numerous quite opposing views of versions of MQn.

As far as I am concerned, having to get a soldering iron out to the PC, is a red line not to be crossed. A slippery slope. And IMHO, I can get really, really good SQ without that. Careful choice of power supply (see my signature for my cheap approach), good quality components like RAM with standard BIOS settings can give very good results. Tuning the Windows OS is where I get most gain and in my case that time is free.

To make the point, taggart's excellent utility 'Tasker' easily provides the ability to change Windows Priority and Affinity for MQnplay for instance. My WaveIO has the Thesycon XMOS drivers with latency settings configurable in the Control Panel. Just changing that latency to Minimum from Low can in my case change the whole tone of the music to sharp and digital. Similarly configuring MQnplay to its own dedicated core and High (but not Realtime) Priority can transform the SQ for the better.
.. and did I mention that I have a Chord DAC which has a 4 second RAM buffer in the DAC that reclocks the SPDIF input and theoretically should remove a lot of incoming jitter? But it is still easy to detect difference between versions of MQn (to Gordon's surprise).

The different combinations of software and hardware settings must run to the millions. How can us mere mortals make sense of that? Just by listening and finding one or two that please one. Which is basically what Gordon has been doing for over a year and extremely successfully to my ears.

Jonathan - standing by for a barrage of opposing views!

cant disagree with much of that

dont have the gear to do good measurements, if i did there'd be methodology to be considered etc etc,
cant say i ever felt the need to measure much

ya reclocking doesnt seem to fix it all, strange isnt it

when i use the xmos chip i use the lowest settings its handy for fine tuning

them xm21x's get around

erin wrote:

erin wrote:
Anyway, I have been listening to MQN 3.92 and found it to be very pleasant. Music should be relaxing and enjoyable and musical. 3.92 ticks those boxes. - A step in the right direction. Keep up the good work Gordon.

But, 3.92 is not as good as my favorite version because it does not have much bass detail. The leading edge is lost. So, very relaxing, but not audiophile....

2channelaudio wrote:

nige2000 wrote:

jrling wrote:A few comments on recent posts if I may -

Develop by scientific measurement rather than by ear - is a compelling argument - well actually I would do it by both - BUT there has been no method put forward to produce those measurements or for that matter correlate measurements with listening experience. jkeny started a good thread on just such an approach, but noone volunteered a method, I seem to recall. Certainly, not without access to mega-expensive equipment only available to those in the electronics industry.

Of course, SQ is dependent not only on hardware but software. But it is the interaction between the two that results in what we hear. We are all using different hardware and differently configured Windows OS and so even testing the same version of MQn, we are not comparing apples with apples, so it is not at all surprising that there are numerous quite opposing views of versions of MQn.

As far as I am concerned, having to get a soldering iron out to the PC, is a red line not to be crossed. A slippery slope. And IMHO, I can get really, really good SQ without that. Careful choice of power supply (see my signature for my cheap approach), good quality components like RAM with standard BIOS settings can give very good results. Tuning the Windows OS is where I get most gain and in my case that time is free.

To make the point, taggart's excellent utility 'Tasker' easily provides the ability to change Windows Priority and Affinity for MQnplay for instance. My WaveIO has the Thesycon XMOS drivers with latency settings configurable in the Control Panel. Just changing that latency to Minimum from Low can in my case change the whole tone of the music to sharp and digital. Similarly configuring MQnplay to its own dedicated core and High (but not Realtime) Priority can transform the SQ for the better.
.. and did I mention that I have a Chord DAC which has a 4 second RAM buffer in the DAC that reclocks the SPDIF input and theoretically should remove a lot of incoming jitter? But it is still easy to detect difference between versions of MQn (to Gordon's surprise).

The different combinations of software and hardware settings must run to the millions. How can us mere mortals make sense of that? Just by listening and finding one or two that please one. Which is basically what Gordon has been doing for over a year and extremely successfully to my ears.

Jonathan - standing by for a barrage of opposing views!

cant disagree with much of that

dont have the gear to do good measurements, if i did there'd be methodology to be considered etc etc,
cant say i ever felt the need to measure much

ya reclocking doesnt seem to fix it all, strange isnt it

when i use the xmos chip i use the lowest settings its handy for fine tuning

them xm21x's get around

Nothing wrong with using your ears to make system setup decisions!
But science does help qualify and quantify subjective feedback, which I find helpful sometimes.

I also agree with jrling's choice of mods to achieve good audio.
Most of which I have implemented.