Tír Na HiFi

Win 8.1
I have tried 8.77, 8.80, 8.84 all Normal.
I like 8.80 best.

As Nige said: 8.84 bloated sound (piano, voices).
8.77 more noise compared to 8.80. Also 8.80 tighter, better orchestral bass.

hmm, think 8.87 might have something

janh wrote:Win 8.1
I have tried 8.77, 8.80, 8.84 all Normal.
I like 8.80 best.

As Nige said: 8.84 bloated sound (piano, voices).
8.77 more noise compared to 8.80. Also 8.80 tighter, better orchestral bass.

ok, thanks. normal is quite different to avx, think avx is tighter.

sbgk wrote:hmm, think 8.87 might have something

uploaded multibit and unicode versions of 8.87, original 8.87 is character set not set, think the multibit is the leaner sounding one. think 8.82 was multibit.

Great you are back and hope you are well. Could test from 8.84 avx2 on my system running R2 in RAM. 8.87 avx2 > 8.84 avx2 But I would like to be very carefull with comments on sq as I need to listen a bit more, MQn with online convolving is working a couple of days only.

In general, MQn wins a lot in addition to its existing quality through OS in RAM. Center is much better focussed which comes along with sharper details and better orientation, bass is better focussed and outlined.

Gordon, I understand that mqnparam is not working anymore, the first device is allways choosen. Is or will there be any possibility that I can change to another device? That would help my routing with VSTHost, Fireface and future development of the system.

Thanks
Thomas

P.S. Unicode and multibit need to wait till tomorrow, you are to fast for me man ;)

Octagon wrote:Great you are back and hope you are well. Could test from 8.84 avx2 on my system running R2 in RAM. 8.87 avx2 > 8.84 avx2 But I would like to be very carefull with comments on sq as I need to listen a bit more, MQn with online convolving is working a couple of days only.

In general, MQn wins a lot in addition to its existing quality through OS in RAM. Center is much better focussed which comes along with sharper details and better orientation, bass is better focussed and outlined.

Gordon, I understand that mqnparam is not working anymore, the first device is allways choosen. Is or will there be any possibility that I can change to another device? That would help my routing with VSTHost, Fireface and future development of the system.

Thanks
Thomas

P.S. Unicode and multibit need to wait till tomorrow, you are to fast for me man ;)

some set up you have there, can you provide more details of how it works ?

thanks, guess the only option at the moment is to disable devices.

sbgk wrote:
some set up you have there, can you provide more details of how it works ?

thanks, guess the only option at the moment is to disable devices.

In short:
I built a VHD from a new, but full installed R2 on a 10GB partition. I built the VHD not from within that R2 but from another one as that has less hurdles.

Add the VHD with "EasyBCD" to your bootmanager.

Boot the VHD and install Firadisk driver to the VHD. You need this driver to boot into RAM later on. Switch "Testsigning on" with bcdedit.

Reboot to other R2 you have used to built VHD. Install Grub4Dos into your bootmanager. EasyBCD offenes a way to do that as well but I have not tested that.

With next reboot you should have Grub4Dos as another choice in your bootmanager. Ok, boot into the R2 you used to built everything. Look for "Menu.lst" which I have in a folder called "BOOT_BCD". Edit menu.lst to point the way where the VHD is stored.

Reboot, choose Grub4dos and choose your VHD. Here you go with OS fully running in RAM.

Ok Gordon, as mentioned in short. There are many traps and many little steps I needed to learn over the last couple of weeks. But the result is an amazing jump in quality.

I know there are a couple of folks looking for smaller VHD. I decided to go with 16GB of RAM and a 10GB VHD as I wanted to know in principle what would be the result. I have even been down till 8GB and shrinking is no problem. But the risk of more hurdles grows. I concentrated on testing quality instand of shrinking.

I will be happy to provide more details, but I guess you folks have much more knowledge as I am just a blind one trying to get what I think is possible. There are also a lot of details of the dedicated Audio PC missing, there is another setup with a standalone Convolver PC in addition to the Audio PC working with both setups OS in RAM.

Take care
Thomas

ok Thomas, shall try and understand later.

uploaded 8.88 which is 4kb version of 8.87

Octagon wrote: In short:
I built a VHD from a new, but full installed R2 on a 10GB partition. I built the VHD not from within that R2 but from another one as that has less hurdles.......

..........I will be happy to provide more details, but I guess you folks have much more knowledge as I am just a blind one trying to get what I think is possible. There are also a lot of details of the dedicated Audio PC missing, there is another setup with a standalone Convolver PC in addition to the Audio PC working with both setups OS in RAM.

Take care
Thomas

Amazing stuff Thomas! Thank you for sharing this tip. I'm still getting my head around the mechanics, but I can imagine the benefits. I would appreciate more details - I believe this is worthy of a new thread.

goon-heaven wrote:Amazing stuff Thomas! Thank you for sharing this tip. I'm still getting my head around the mechanics, but I can imagine the benefits. I would appreciate more details - I believe this is worthy of a new thread.

Has been a bit late tonight for more details. ;)

After managing to run the OS from RAM I was able to identify some tools that are helpfull. You will find them on the net:

Disk2VHD - Builds a VHD from an existing partition. Use the VHD format, don't VHDX. Uncheck shadow copy! There are additional changes needed if building it from the running system, you better run it from another OS on another partition/stick.

Grub4Dos - Take a look at their page, great working for booting into RAM as a 2nd bootmanager in the Windows bootmanager.

EasyBCD- Amazing tool which makes it easy to attach any VHD to the Windows bootmanager, rename it, sort the ranking etc. In addition it may help you to get Grub4Dos installed but I did that manually, check it out and report back ;)

Firadisk driver - needed to boot into RAM. Not certified driver, so testsigning needs to be switched on.

As soon as you have the VHD running from the Windows bootmanager you can install drivers, software etc. All will be stored in the VHD and later be available when you are booting this VHD into RAM. Never forget where you are: Any changes in the VHD bootet in RAM will be gone after rebooting! Great for testing, but .....
You can easily backup different versions if you just copy the VHD before changes in another folder.

Finally some hurdles I needed to overcome:
* VHD names are not working with blanks in Grub4Dos
* Have enough RAM. Shrinking is possible but a timekiller because of unexpected rebooting. I am running 16GB of RAM, my test VHDs have been working fine with 10GB which leaves around 2GB open space for the ramdisk and additional 6GB RAM for the running OS for my music files. I have been down to 8GB VHD without any problems.
* I build a dedicated Audio PC, very pure and focussed on sq. You might see more hurdles if you have more stuff running.
* Check the net, you will find details. I have used that stuff without being an expert, you can get there as well! :)

Finally, just start with a pure player like MQn and some files for testing. Watch the result and enjoy. From that you can build the next level. I have meanwhile different VHDs for testing purpose, there is one pure MQn in Minimal Server, one JPlay in Core Mode, all fully optimized with AO1.30 and running online convolving with Acourate. I am testing VLC in Minimal Server in the same configuration for BlueRay, DVD and Internet access.

Results: Ok, i have mentioned a bit in the last post. Just from the technical perspective the activaties of the system are absolutely down and below measurement. MQn is amazing running in the mentioned setup with 0-1% CPU activity (overall activity not only MQn itself), remember including online convolving. With loading of the files I reach a max of 2-3% very short in between, for the whole system! The JPlay version has a bit higher activities: Minimum 3% maximum 5% allthough running in Core Mode. This is what you hear....

Next steps: I am optimizing the usage of the cores with Taggerts "tasker"; the convolver will be optimized as I recognized some possibilities, VLC version .....

But I need a lot of time just to listen now :D (Anne Bisson, With a little help from my friends; the right song at the right time) A special thank you to Heinz for all the exchange and support, we got it working!

Hope that is helpfull for you folks!

Enjoy the music
Thomas