123 replies to this topic

[AudioPhil]

My PC is asking me tu update AO to a new version but I do not know where the link is. I only can find the 3.0 download.

Can someone give me the link for the AO4.0 update?

No. This link is not public!

You‘ve got it via email from me.

Best,
AudioPhil

[rsbrsvp]

I did email you...

[taxman2]

yeah, a real processor like my i9-12900ks will do it

 

I still get an SIhost.exe error after booting into optimized OS but HQplayer works on 2022 core

 

(I can install the 2024-1 security update for some reason...).

When running AO, don't disable drivers and services, plug and play and mini port drivers and Slhost will disappear.

[mops911]

The SIHost error has no obvious issues, HQP still plays, and I dont think its the right approach to turn off great features ;-) 

[Thuan]

Now that an ad-hoc WS 2022 / AO4 Beta / JPLAY dual PC has been set up, I've found myself sit down and listen non-stop for over 4 daytime hours. Materials are Mozart, light jazz, blues and ballad female vocals. Natural tonality, not in-your-face presentation, not great but decent dynamics, virtually non fatiguing, lovely most of the time, are characteristics that come to mind. Beethoven's symphonies had been my go-to classical materials, but this new promising setup has let me enjoy nearly every movement of Mozart's last 6 masterpieces, something I used to overlook. On the other hand, individual female recordings are sounding closer to true tone, distinct from one track to another. Accompanying instruments such as nylon or steel guitar strings, percussions, bass, etc. sound more honest. I'm sure the above impressions would hold for recordings of other composers and artists such as Mahler, Bruckner, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Beatles, and more.

Overall, music seems to come through better as an organic whole, less hi-fi impressive, less PhotoShop effect. I highly hope the final form of AO4 will retain those characteristics to say the least. Thank you.

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[mops911]

It looks that FOD loads ~120 DLLs into 2022 core. I am sure that not all are needed, some seem e.g. for video. Question, which ones and how to get rid?

[billgr]

In addition to @Thuan's impressions I noticed a really deep soundstage behind the speakers, better than ever before. I think the dynamics may be improved too. Win2022 + AO4 is amazing me with every listen, it sounds so beautiful. 

 

The only technical issue I had is AO wants an internet connection and was not happy with a static ip for some reason. DCHP works fine.

[AudioPhil]

Now that an ad-hoc WS 2022 / AO4 Beta / JPLAY dual PC has been set up, I've found myself sit down and listen non-stop for over 4 daytime hours. Materials are Mozart, light jazz, blues and ballad female vocals. Natural tonality, not in-your-face presentation, not great but decent dynamics, virtually non fatiguing, lovely most of the time, are characteristics that come to mind. Beethoven's symphonies had been my go-to classical materials, but this new promising setup has let me enjoy nearly every movement of Mozart's last 6 masterpieces, something I used to overlook. On the other hand, individual female recordings are sounding closer to true tone, distinct from one track to another. Accompanying instruments such as nylon or steel guitar strings, percussions, bass, etc. sound more honest. I'm sure the above impressions would hold for recordings of other composers and artists such as Mahler, Bruckner, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Beatles, and more.

Overall, music seems to come through better as an organic whole, less hi-fi impressive, less PhotoShop effect. I highly hope the final form of AO4 will retain those characteristics to say the least. Thank you.

Thank you very much for sharing your impressions and experience Thuan

[AudioPhil]

In addition to @Thuan's impressions I noticed a really deep soundstage behind the speakers, better than ever before. I think the dynamics may be improved too. Win2022 + AO4 is amazing me with every listen, it sounds so beautiful. 

 

The only technical issue I had is AO wants an internet connection and was not happy with a static ip for some reason. DCHP works fine.

Very glad to hear that, thank you

 

Yes, the AO beta needs an active and workig internet connction. This is only (and was always) the case during the beta phase. The final release will not have this requirement.

 

AO does absolutely not care about you using DHCP or fixed IP. Just be sure to configure things correclty, for example not using a DHCP setup and then say yes to "disable network  related services". That would not work because that feature also disables the DHCP client service which makes it mandatory to use a fixed IP setup. If you are using fixed IP anyway you can use all options and combinations of AO you like.

 

Very best,

AudioPhil

[rsbrsvp]

Hi everyone.

 

First, my thanks to Phil for AO4.  My music does indeed sound wonderful and the program is stable and effective.

 

A question:   Can I disable Remote Management services and Remote desktop services and still use a program like VNC viewer or SPlashtop or Tema viewer to control my PC?

 

Second question.......   I mean this in the most positive way possible.  What is the goal of AO?  What do we gain from it?  From what I understamd, by disabling the maximum amount of non necessary programs and optimizing a PC- we get less noise, less jutter, and better music.   We can all vouch for the extreme effectiveness of this reality.

 

But my question is; instead of doing all this tinkering, why not just use a network player/streamer which was made for the purpose of playing music and has no need to deal with these issues because it is 100% optimized for music playback?   In other words- what do we gain by doing this?  For me, I like all the DSP options a PC provides, but more recently, streamers such as the Eversolo A8 offer quite a suit of filters and DSP options.

 

Once again, I am thrilled with AO4 but I sometimes ask myself- why am I playing with Windows and disabling it to make it better for music purposes when I can get a Network player which has already disabled 100% of non essential music streaming apps and services in the very nature of it's build?

 

On the other side of the spectrum,  programs like Audrivana supposedly bypass the mixer and the OS of a PC entirely;- so how does AO or a dedicated streamer/network player make things any better if all the damage from the OS is being bypassed?

 

I'd appreciate Phil or other experienced users helping to explain to me........

 

Thank you to all.

[mops911]

Hi everyone.

 

First, my thanks to Phil for AO4.  My music does indeed sound wonderful and the program is stable and effective.

 

A question:   Can I disable Remote Management services and Remote desktop services and still use a program like VNC viewer or SPlashtop or Tema viewer to control my PC?

 

Second question.......   I mean this in the most positive way possible.  What is the goal of AO?  What do we gain from it?  From what I understamd, by disabling the maximum amount of non necessary programs and optimizing a PC- we get less noise, less jutter, and better music.   We can all vouch for the extreme effectiveness of this reality.

 

But my question is; instead of doing all this tinkering, why not just use a network player/streamer which was made for the purpose of playing music and has no need to deal with these issues because it is 100% optimized for music playback?   In other words- what do we gain by doing this?  For me, I like all the DSP options a PC provides, but more recently, streamers such as the Eversolo A8 offer quite a suit of filters and DSP options.

 

Once again, I am thrilled with AO4 but I sometimes ask myself- why am I playing with Windows and disabling it to make it better for music purposes when I can get a Network player which has already disabled 100% of non essential music streaming apps and services in the very nature of it's build?

 

On the other side of the spectrum,  programs like Audrivana supposedly bypass the mixer and the OS of a PC entirely;- so how does AO or a dedicated streamer/network player make things any better if all the damage from the OS is being bypassed?

 

I'd appreciate Phil or other experienced users helping to explain to me........

 

Thank you to all.

Main reason for me is, that I want to run HQPlayer and upsample my music to DSD256 together with a decent modulator and filter. AFAIK, no commercial streamer does that and you would need to upsample music offline before feeding to the streamer. Commercial streamers just lack the CPU power.

Second, many claim that Server 2019 (now 2022?) sounds better than Linux or Mac, and commercial streamer are mostly based on Linux afaik. Taiko with their 20k+ streamer uses Win10 LTSC which they indeed highly optimize, but still cant upsample to DSD256.

Bottom line, there are different approaches and preferences and budgets. AO requires some kind of DIY which is unacceptable to some and mandatory for others.

I am pretty sure that my setup with an optimized HQPServer (<$2000 with DIY power supply) and NAA (~$2000 with ASUS IoT board, Uptone power supply and JCat USB) and optimized software plays in the big league (>$10'000) in a commercial realm...

[rsbrsvp]

Thanks for the response.   Upsampleing is not an issue for me as my dac upsamples to DSD1024.

 

What sounds better is always a matter of many details and synergy.....

[mops911]

Thanks for the response.   Upsampleing is not an issue for me as my dac upsamples to DSD1024.

 

What sounds better is always a matter of many details and synergy.....

 

- Do you think that a small Dac chip or a i9-12900KS has more oompf to do heavy calculations?

- So if a CPU can do better with heavy modulators and filters which are very compute intensive, do you think your Dac would say thanks feeding it DSD1024?

 

DSD256 could not be done with 9th gen Intel....DSD1024 is still afaik only possible with a i9-14900 plus a 4090 GPU depending on filters/modulators....to do it right again, is crazy compute intensive...

 

why would you leave the upsampling to a Fiat 500 if you can use a Ferrari ;-) 

 

yeah, every DAC upsamples unless you feeed it its native sampling rate...except NOS dac, different story

 

The question is not if to feed the DAC upsampled data, the question is to do the upsampling off- or online...

Also, again, the data always gets upsampled, why not do it right?

 

Try it, HQP has a trial license

[taxman2]

Right now I'm over JPlay era and 2 PC setup connection. I am on one PC i5 6th gen and 16gb RAM, WS2022 core, AO4, TC 3.1server, Roon and HQP upsampling to DSD256. Sound 's never been better. The reason for this change was that I've upgraded my old Gustard with new A26 and somehow the new one didn't like 2 PC JPlay configuration. SQ was dull and worse even than playing with the old dac. A26 does one thing best and it is when playing DSD files directly. So, still no need for i9 13th gen PC.

[Thuan]

In addition to @Thuan's impressions I noticed a really deep soundstage behind the speakers, better than ever before. I think the dynamics may be improved too. Win2022 + AO4 is amazing me with every listen, it sounds so beautiful.

The only technical issue I had is AO wants an internet connection and was not happy with a static ip for some reason. DCHP works fine.

I’m listening to Igor Levit playing Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Beautiful and elegant, and I agree about the sound stage depth; it’s nicely located way behind the speakers plane.

After the audio PC is done with its startup routine, I just removed the internet connection, hoping to lose a bit of network noise and gain a bit of SQ.

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[AudioPhil]

Hi everyone.

 

First, my thanks to Phil for AO4.  My music does indeed sound wonderful and the program is stable and effective.

 

A question:   Can I disable Remote Management services and Remote desktop services and still use a program like VNC viewer or SPlashtop or Tema viewer to control my PC?

 

Second question.......   I mean this in the most positive way possible.  What is the goal of AO?  What do we gain from it?  From what I understamd, by disabling the maximum amount of non necessary programs and optimizing a PC- we get less noise, less jutter, and better music.   We can all vouch for the extreme effectiveness of this reality.

 

But my question is; instead of doing all this tinkering, why not just use a network player/streamer which was made for the purpose of playing music and has no need to deal with these issues because it is 100% optimized for music playback?   In other words- what do we gain by doing this?  For me, I like all the DSP options a PC provides, but more recently, streamers such as the Eversolo A8 offer quite a suit of filters and DSP options.

 

Once again, I am thrilled with AO4 but I sometimes ask myself- why am I playing with Windows and disabling it to make it better for music purposes when I can get a Network player which has already disabled 100% of non essential music streaming apps and services in the very nature of it's build?

 

On the other side of the spectrum,  programs like Audrivana supposedly bypass the mixer and the OS of a PC entirely;- so how does AO or a dedicated streamer/network player make things any better if all the damage from the OS is being bypassed?

 

I'd appreciate Phil or other experienced users helping to explain to me........

 

Thank you to all.

...what an absolutely wonderful question!

 

I will try to answer that one in detail a bit later on

[mops911]

Right now I'm over JPlay era and 2 PC setup connection. I am on one PC i5 6th gen and 16gb RAM, WS2022 core, AO4, TC 3.1server, Roon and HQP upsampling to DSD256. Sound 's never been better. The reason for this change was that I've upgraded my old Gustard with new A26 and somehow the new one didn't like 2 PC JPlay configuration. SQ was dull and worse even than playing with the old dac. A26 does one thing best and it is when playing DSD files directly. So, still no need for i9 13th gen PC.

 

I have a i9-12900ks and run it at 16w for dsd256, ASDM7-super and poly-sinc-gauss-hires-lp....no cuda...just 16 watts...my experience however is, that a separate NAA makes it even better...

[billgr]

Thuan and I have already commented on the differences between Windows 2019 and 2022 builds with AO4.

 

Now I've completed another build. This time with Windows 2022 standard desktop experience, AO4, Jriver, in ramboot. It all went smoothly and sounds very good indeed. So good that at first I wondered, why bother with the complexity of Jplay 2pc windows 2022 standard core, AO4, in ramboot. The comparison was fair as I ran the Jriver build on the same pc I use for the Jplay AudioPC, which has linear power, jcat usb and network cards, etc. 

 

After some time listening I reverted back to the Jplay Femto setup and realised: 

1. The sonic signature is very similar in both: very clean open, great tonally

2. The Jplay setup has better harmonics and depth of soundstage. This gives a better 3D sense of the space the music was recorded. Also a greater sense of awe and involvement. These are subtle but really important music cues that are difficult to produce.

3. The Jriver setup on it's usual (lesser) pc and downstream equipment is nowhere near as fine as the main Jplay system. As you would expect. 

 

Please don't cancel me for mentioning the evil "J" word in this forum. I use it in my second system, as it has richer metadata search options, EQ tweaking  and DSP. It was interesting to demonstrate how big the sonic gap is between the software.

 

Both setups demonstrate to me the real benefits of Windows 2022 and AO4. 

 

Thanks Phil for making this possible.

[Thuan]

Thanks Bill for sharing the interesting experience. Have you tried the JPLAY iOS app by a chance? I A/B-ed both control points today and liked them both on the WS2022/AO4 setup even though they’re different.

[billgr]

Hi @Thuan I'm using BubbleUPNP. I don't have an iOS device.