Fidelizer Pro - Real or Snake Oil?
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Jan 7, 2017 at 2:42 PM Post #406 of 683
   
Compare to a CD transport?
 
If you had listed a high-end network transport / streamer from someone like Auralic I would get the comparison.
 
You're comparing to old tech.

 
My point is to try listening to something like $10-30k CD sources first. See if yours can sound better than that or make hifi shop vendors agree with you. If you haven't done that yet, you still lack highend audio experience.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 2:42 PM Post #407 of 683
   
People often mistook it for process tweaking. I used to write like optimizing multimedia runtime platform using API call to increase audio thread and stuff. Those contain a lot of jargons and confuse many end-user. So, I wrapped them up again to make things easier to follow and grasp the concept better. If you want to read about detailed features, please check Support > About Fidelizer here.
 
http://www.fidelizer-audio.com/about-fidelizer/
 
I wrote detailed explanation about its technology there and hope it'll help you understanding the product better. :)
 
Regards,
Keetakawee

 
Are you kidding me now?
All that page talks, is about adjusting process priorities and scheduling policies.
Let's move along, nothing to see here.
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 2:44 PM Post #408 of 683
   
Are you kidding me now?
All that page talks, is about adjusting process priorities and scheduling policies.
Let's move along, nothing to see here.

 
Here's the list of features from Consumer level containing Fidelizer's core features:
 
  1. Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS) optimization: You may see some DAW software having MMCSS options and we have no clue what they do specifically, as if it’s the developers’ secrets. At least you can find an explanation in Fidelizer and here’s how it’s done.
-Keep audio tasks working steadily without losing focus to other tasks.
-Raise audio task priority, over all others, like I/O, etc.
-Increase more frequent time slice for audio resource utilization.


 

2. Kernel timer resolution optimization: I first discovered this from DPC Latency checker software. I used to have stuttering audio for low latency playback but running this software stopped the stuttering. I looked further and found it changed the kernel timer resolution from 15.6ms to 1ms, fixing this stuttering issue. I added this to Fidelizer and set it to the lowest possible resolution (0.5ms). This would solve most low latency issues in digital audio.

 

3. Audio thread priority optimization: Here’s a real gem. This is the only unique feature that I couldn’t find any software claiming to do and it needs to be done from Core Audio’s API call. It will increase audio thread priority, real audio thread not increasing process priority in Task Manager so audio performance is improved from its core.

 
The only mention about process is
 
"It will increase audio thread priority, real audio thread not increasing process priority in Task Manager so audio performance is improved from its core."
 
I don't know how you reached that conclusion but feel free to move on if that's more convenient for you. I'm sure you haven't even tried Fidelizer though it's free and took few minutes to listen. I did all I could.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 2:54 PM Post #409 of 683
   
Doing it right? He also work on PA audio, digital audio mastering, and highend audio equipment service industries. I and he played around with a few highend network players, built a few Windows/OSX/Linux models together. I also played around with Dante/Rednet and Merging NADAC too.
 
I also have Nimitra customers who work on famous audio recording studios. He's also an audiophile using Playback Designs for DSD256 playback/recording and Nimitra makes his album sounding a lot better. I recommend you to have actual experience with highend sources. It'll widen up your experience a lot.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee

 
LOL...I have extensive experience recording and doing live sound real live symphonies.
 
Your pattern is the same as the past: you lack data.
 
So you have nothing to fall back on except personal attacks. 
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 3:00 PM Post #410 of 683
   
LOL...I have extensive experience recording and doing live sound real live symphonies.
 
Your pattern is the same as the past: you lack data.
 
So you have nothing to fall back on except personal attacks. 

 
LOL...I have extensive experience with real highend audio sources in many highend systems up to nearly $1m system room.
 
Your pattern is the same as the past: you lack experience with highend systems.
 
So you have nothing to fall back on except pesudoscience theory attacks.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
P.S. Have you ever wondered why most audiophiles who use highend CD players won't move to network players?
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 3:07 PM Post #411 of 683
 
 
P.S. Have you wondered why most audiophiles who use highend CD players won't move to network players?

 
What are you talking about?
 
Who do you think is buying the more expensive network players?
 
Again -- show me data.  Do you have sales data for who is buying network players?
 
But all of this is red herring.
 
You can either realize that network streaming is the future and come up with a new product, or continue trying to sell your old stuff into a market that will shrink in the future.
 
I know what I would do if I was trying to make money selling something similar.
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 3:18 PM Post #412 of 683
   
What are you talking about?
 
Who do you think is buying the more expensive network players?
 
Again -- show me data.  Do you have sales data for who is buying network players?
 
But all of this is red herring.
 
You can either realize that network streaming is the future and come up with a new product, or continue trying to sell your old stuff into a market that will shrink in the future.
 
I know what I would do if I was trying to make money selling something similar.

 
I'd have used network players long a ago if it can sound as good as highend CD players. Recently I can see some Windows-based solutions performing pretty close to highend CD players. Some of my Nimitra customers are using with Esoteric CD Players and they're pretty pleased with result. They all said it's the closet thing to Esoteric since their journey.
 
Again, show me the result of comparing to highend CD players. I don't have sales data but all people I know who's using highend CD players refused to switch to network players, globally.
 
I agree that network streaming is future and I didn't say it was bad. My Nimitra product is also configured for network streaming by default. My products work with all solutions so there's nothing old to sell from me, honestly.
 
The point of our debate is your suggestion about using network streaming will eliminate those problems with this and that is incorrect, both in theories and actual practices. For example, using asynchronous transfer will eliminate random jitter but add deterministic jitter instead. Random jitter is like natural noise in digital audio. Removing it will make audio sounds cleaner. But adding deterministic jitter will affect the sound itself and can make system sounding wrong. There's no way to remove all kinds of jitter effectively.
 
So, network players won't be magically perfect and can outperform good CD transport anytime soon. Please, go listen to highend CD sources and you may share your result here in this forum if you'd like to.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 3:21 PM Post #413 of 683
  Removing it will make audio sounds cleaner.

 
Only up to a point.
 
My cheapie Raspberry Pi based S/PDIF streamer has jitter specs at -140 dBFS.  That's both as good as many high end products and, more importantly, waaaay below audibility.
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 3:22 PM Post #414 of 683
   
Only up to a point.
 
My cheapie Raspberry Pi based S/PDIF streamer has jitter specs at -140 dBFS.  That's both as good as many high end products and, more importantly, waaaay below audibility.

 
Have you actually compared your Rasberry PI with highend product yet? What model? Is it Esoteric? Maybe Emm Labs/dCS/Wadia/Weiss is also OK for reference.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
Jan 7, 2017 at 6:19 PM Post #415 of 683
   
Here's the list of features from Consumer level containing Fidelizer's core features:
 
 
The only mention about process is
 
"It will increase audio thread priority, real audio thread not increasing process priority in Task Manager so audio performance is improved from its core."
 
I don't know how you reached that conclusion but feel free to move on if that's more convenient for you. I'm sure you haven't even tried Fidelizer though it's free and took few minutes to listen. I did all I could.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee

 
Yes, they all are scheduler tweaks. Let's outline them:
 
Keep audio tasks working steadily without losing focus to other tasks - Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Raise audio task priority, over all others, like I/O, etc. - Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Increase more frequent time slice for audio resource utilization.Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Kernel timer resolution optimization: ...Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Audio thread priority optimization: Here’s a real gem. ...Check (scheduler tweak)
 
 
Essentially, what you are doing, is trying to solve the audio skip issues that arise when audio data is not timely fed into the device, which cause the device to not have nothing to play for a certain time window (even a few ms are noticeable).
And, as I said in my other emails, whether you need it or not, should be pretty obvious because so are the audio skip issues.
 
Jan 8, 2017 at 1:46 AM Post #416 of 683
   
Yes, they all are scheduler tweaks. Let's outline them:
 
Keep audio tasks working steadily without losing focus to other tasks - Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Raise audio task priority, over all others, like I/O, etc. - Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Increase more frequent time slice for audio resource utilization.Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Kernel timer resolution optimization: ...Check (scheduler tweak)
 
Audio thread priority optimization: Here’s a real gem. ...Check (scheduler tweak)
 
 
Essentially, what you are doing, is trying to solve the audio skip issues that arise when audio data is not timely fed into the device, which cause the device to not have nothing to play for a certain time window (even a few ms are noticeable).
And, as I said in my other emails, whether you need it or not, should be pretty obvious because so are the audio skip issues.

 
Yes. It's resource scheduling optimizations not process scheduling optimizations. It doesn't only solve audio skipping issues but also improve sound quality with reduced digital glare problems. If you're audiophile listening to music from decent CD transport and vinyls, you may find computer audio sounding harsh and doesn't sound close to real sound. Fidelizer will improve the situation making it closer to real sound performance.
 
It looks like you're 'bits are bits' believer so you probably don't own any decent CD transport to compare with yet. It's not surprising if you find it hard to believe without actual experience to realize. I recommend you to try using free version and see if you can notice improvement first before passing any judgement.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
Jan 8, 2017 at 5:06 AM Post #417 of 683
  Hey guys just wondering is there a general consensus if this actually works or not?

 
The general consensus is that it doesn't work.
 
Computers are complicated and there's an almost endless number of variables involved which could theoretically impact playback performance, plus of course the variables of how any particular external DAC handles the data output by the computer. So there is a possibility that your particular set-up of equipment, drivers and settings etc., is is not optimal and a slimmer possibility that it's not optimal to the point of audibility. There's also the possibility that Fidelizer might just happen to be changing the particular settings/variables which are causing the problems in your particular set-up (if there are any problems) to a degree which could be audible. However, that's quite a few possibilities and slim possibilities multiplied together and the little actual data supplied by WindowsX in this thread demonstrates that Fidelizer's changes are below audibility.
 
For these reasons, we cannot truthfully conclude that Fidelizer never works, only that it won't make any audible difference to the vast majority. Of course, the word "audible" is rather ambiguous because differences which are inaudible or which don't exist at all can be perceived, due to the various biases involved in the perception of sound. This fact is presumably why WindowsX is so keen to supply testimonials and get you to listen to Fidelizer, rather than supplying any convincing data or logical rationale for why it should work for Everyone as he claims.
 
Of course there's nothing stopping you from trying it, especially if you''re one of those audiophiles who essentially don't believe or care that they're only hearing the results of a bias rather than an actual difference but I personally don't fall into that category and I also have concerns that Fidelizer is making some low level setting changes which may impact the other tasks I use my computer for and which may prove difficult to precisely reset, should I wish to uninstall it. I'm sure WindowsX will strongly dispute this concern and I have no evidence to refute him but I'm personally not willing to take the risk, especially as some/many of his responses in this thread have demonstrated (to me at least) that he has a very limited or even no understanding of some of the issues discussed.
 
G
 
Jan 8, 2017 at 5:57 AM Post #418 of 683
When playing music on PC, all the user/audiophile should care about is getting all bits worth of audio data from analog inputs. Turns out, it's not that difficult to accomplish. And it's measurable. To decode 44.1/16bit 2ch stream, only very little processing is required. 100-133MHz Pentium I can do it with extra processing headroom. Modern ARM9E CPU can decode FLAC at measely 7-9MHz, bit accurate [1].
Implying that modern Intel i-series based PCs running Windows can't do reliably what on-chip solutions did in 1986 somewhat lacks in credibility.
Granted, PC can output audio distorted with all sorts of pops and clicks. But there fault lies either in software drivers, poor grounding management or faulty DAC. Assigning different priorities to Windows services can easily break more things than fix.
As long as it's not about 100+ms dropouts which often results when CPU, FPU and Memory is fully loaded, the gain here might have been measured in amplitude and frequency of those already inaudible CPU noises when using dedicated audio interface.
 
Jan 8, 2017 at 9:29 AM Post #419 of 683
Is there anyone in this forum having decent CD transport to share your experience with? So far everyone who's been arguing with me avoided this topic somehow. If Fidelizer doesn't work, I wouldn't have received orders and feedback like everyday with no complaint at all.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee
 
Jan 8, 2017 at 9:36 AM Post #420 of 683
  Is there anyone in this forum having decent CD transport to share your experience with? So far everyone who's been arguing with me avoided this topic somehow. If Fidelizer doesn't work, I wouldn't have received orders and feedback like everyday with no complaint at all.
 
Regards,
Keetakawee

 
It's your product and your claims.  Get yourself a high end transport and the appropriate measuring equipment to vet them.
 
Relying on customer testimonials/subjective opinions in the absence of data isn't appropriate in the Sound Science forums.  This isn't the first time you've taken this approach - time to put up or move back to your product forum where everyone here has respectfully not challenged the validity of your Fidelizer claims.
 
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