Thank you very much for your detailed outlay Scott.
Btw, please put your data as mentioned (and more if you think it's applicable) in your signature. This is very easy for me and others, when finding common denominators in problems.

Ok. By now, I myself had this WP error once, and in that sequence somewhere and empty small window showed titled "ChangeWP". Of course I recognize this because I created it myself, but I can't understand what happens when the window is empty. I assume you all have this empty window too ...

Then, when you say "Image of the whole CD" I assume you mean you made a Cue File of it (via EAC), right ?
Well, that this ends with a "Stopped working" is very recognizeable, and somehow I "introduced" that some 4 or 5 months ago. IOW, I still must sort that out, which is not the easiest thing to do because it seems to happen only at playing the complete album. Btw, since the ChangeWP thing it happened only once to me, I never thought of the relation to that, so I will dive into it via that angle. But :
That this will let crash your PC ... ...


This is an interesting one, because I never heard of that, nor did I experience it myself. It could well be though that I never recognized things to be out of sequence, as well as that I always thought the album finished playing, while actually another track is there. Or IOW, it seems logic that when playing is out of sequence (and is skipping a track), things go wrong towards the end because another track is expected.
It wouldn't be so that you know of an album where you can copy this behaviour, hence know in advance what will happen ? If so, please post (or send me) the .cue file involved; maybe I can make something of it.


Ok, but what is ? the out of sequence playing, or the crashes of XXEngine3, or the reboots ?


Never believe in coincidence, and rather prove it isn't ! Another thing is that it might not be the best idea to auto-perform the upgrades offered, because you then never know what causes which. In this case it might be an idea to Google for the KB's concerned (each upgrade will have an MS KB number, which will be listed under your "Software" (or "Programs", whatever it is exactly)) and see whether others have problems with it. You also could go the nuke and pave way, and uninstall those upgrades.

Please let me know anything new on this, and don't hesitate to ask whatever it is you might want to know (without knowing for sure it is even relevant I mean).

Peter

Ah, no hard feelings. Just a little sad. And yes, you have been very unlucky.

I have been thinking ...
You'll remember that back then (the time of your tweeters) Dogber admitted that his drivers didn't do something right (must have been this topic). I don't know whether you still use his driver, but now look at this :

Vista acts strange regarding the change of Exclusive Mode. You can check this yourself a little by unticking those two checkboxes in the Advanced tab of the device properties. ... from here on, the device will be always in use until you perform a reboot. Now :

XMPlay also acts strange regarding Exclusive Mode, and it can play in Shared Mode even if you don't want it (ask for it). E.g. my FireFace can play in Shared Mode only (XMPlay).

Then, XX acts strange regarding Exclusive Mode, because it *cannot* play in Shared Mode (anymore).

These both latter could be enough to let Vista choke at forcing it into a mode it officially can't (but which is wrong, see the checkbox test). If I sneakily add to that a driver which is not 100% following Vista's rules (and again, if you still use Dogber's driver that certainly won't do that for its good cause), we're all asking for trouble. I'd say, read that topic I just referred to, and you'll know what I mean, and how easy it is to blame a player (which would be both XX and XMPlay at that time).

So it is the combination, and no occasional coincidence. In your no-boot case, I bet that the status XMPlay left the whole WASAPI thing in, didn't match what XX makes of it, with Vista in between being wrong in the first place. Again, this is sufficient to not call it a coincidence.
That the system can get into a state of not wanting to boot anymore, is kind of logic to me, although I would never be able to explain it (I just don't know enough about it). I once followed a trojan being active, and how the OS fights against that. You really won't believe what all happens when the OS misses something (senses that it can't do something), and what it is going to install, uninstall, activate, deactivate, in order to recover. Thousands of happenings (and the trojan wins) which can go wrong by themselves, and if then the system dies, it can well be in a state of not being able to reboot.

I really can't think of a reason XX causing this. Never heard of such a thing either !

Below first picture popped up two times over time during XXHighEnd playback. Hmm ... this indicated that it restarted by itself. I mean, I did shut it off (but said "start manually" (should be somewhere in this topic)).

So now I disabled it (2nd picture).
This was 4 days ago, and no anomalies regarding this appeared.


Note that if it is running again on your PC as well, you must explicitly Stop it (see the Stop button). Or reboot.

... but my second email returned after 30 hours ...
Now I sent you a PM in the forum ("My Messages", above).

Careful there, because SPDIF really *can* get too long (grey sound). Your best option would be to have an external FireWire soundcard, but my 10 meters (33 ft) I used at sometime degraded sound as well (less snappy, and again more greyish -> highly dependent on the FireWrire output of the PC as far as I can tell).

What about moving the speakers and all to the toilet ?

The latter is true, and the first as well with me.

I'm sorry that I have disturbed you with this on-sense.

zaza, I sent you an email ...

I would say :

1. Go to the Library Area. At the bottom fill in the path to the new albums.
Note that everything you fill in there, will not be shown later at retrieval, thus, g:\wav\JZHolidyAquisitions\ is what you don't want to show (and copy to the Library !)
2. Now press Search, and all the albums in there will show. There can be more than the newly (16) added.
3. Next, browse through the result, and select (ctrl-click etc.) all the albums you want to add to one Library.
4. Then, right-click and and from there put them in the Library you want.

But this is what you knew, I'm sure.
You can replace 2 with pressing the little D button and enter a "rip date". Now you will get only those which were ripped at or after that date. This function works a little awkwardish, but it can fulfill a handy job.


Having said this, I know what you mean. It is kind of clumsy to know what is new, and how to add them fast to the Libraries you want (the new albums don't need to be in the same folder, and they certainly won't go all to the same Galery). But this is exactly what 0.9v-4 will be about. Also think of newly found coverart, and you can imagine that improvements are needed here and there, but also that it is all lot of work (for me I mean) because it is already hard to think of how things can be done best (by us, the users).
This is also about the "Reprocessing" the releasenotes of 0.9-v3 talk about.

Don't hesitate to come forward with ideas, because I can imagine that exactly this part is performed differently by everybody.
Peter

Thank you Fidelio, glad to help out.

If there's anything else ...

The Sample Rate in the Dac Is settings will never cause to upsample. This is what the checkboxes Double/Quattro do. However, when Dac Is is set to e.g. 44.1 these checkboxes are not available.
Generally you could say that the Dac Is is a kind of self protection. But :

For the bit depth this is another matter; when the bit depth is higher than 16 (and generally you should choose 32, no matter your DAC can do 24 only) it determines the output *when necessary*. Thus, using the volume slider at other than -0dB, would be such a situation.
Now the Dac Is works the other way around : when set to a 16 bits settings, you will force the output to be 16 bits.

There's some more things, which work as "natural" as possible, like the file being 24 bits, but your DAC just can't cope (XX can only know this by your Dac Is setting). Now the output sound will be downrated to 16 bits. Same with the sample rate but only in a special occasion : when the file is 352800 (DXD) and your DAC is 176400 or 192000 (which would be the most normal except for the few the world owning a 35200 capable DAC) downsampling will take place to 176400.

There are some more of these "natural" things, and in the end it comes down to that you should set Dac Is to what it really is, ... unless you e.g. want to compare a 24 bit file with 16 bit output. Note that forcing the other way around, like a 16 bit file outputting in 24 bits, has NO effect. Not when it needs 16 bits only (and which is not the case when you use the digital volume !).


So, this is normal, because XX can't know what your DAC really is capable of (which is not completely true, see the DAC Test (last option under Dac Is)), but anyway doesn't use any "over" settings as explained above. IOW, try a DXD file (2L.no), and you will see that it won't work, but it does work when the DAC is set to what it really is (and then it downsamples). Might you try this in reality, don't forget to tick the AA (Anti Alias) checkbox for noise free result, and tick the Mem checkbox because otherwise the (larger) tracks won't fit into memory.


It most certainly does. You would be the first one reporting this, *unless* you're using analogue out from the soundcard. Your description (first post) doesn't tell this, or otherwise I wouln't know how you go from the soundcard to the DAC.
Note that if you are using the latest XX version, XX is not able to play in Shared Mode (in earlier versions it was, but this has been eliminated because it could confuse users by it not being clear whether that would be bit perfect or not (and Shared Mode would not be that).
Please tell me that you are using analogue out because otherwise ...
Maybe you can use your mobo's sound for testing, although I'm fairly sure you will encounter other problems (they *never* work in full, opposed to what is needed here). It will allow you to compare and analyse further, when that indeed doesn't allow the Windows volume.


This depends a bit on your soundcard, but listening to you I'd say no (the 16/44 in the soundcard will be "hard" I guess).
Upsample to 24/192 isn't possible anyway, but upsample to 24/176.4 is. Tick the Quattro plus Upsample box for that (and tick AA for comparison, and which officially should be better, which I personally wonder).

Nooo !!


I didn't interpret that as directly connected.

So indeed, that is why the volume is so low by default, and it depends on your gain when you start hearing something. The steps are in 6dB (yes, that rough), so if you slowly move up step by step.
BUT BE CAREFUL ... if you don't have sound for other reasons, and at sometime you find the culprit, the digital volume may be way too high.
But in any occasion : Windows volume does not work (which you wouldn't want for SQ reasons, but that's another matter).

So please be careful.

The digital volume itself works like no other digital volume, and even with 16bit output it can be used with high quality up to -18dB. When your DAC is 24 bits (and tell that to XX) the output will be in 24 bits, and you are good until you can't hear sound anymore.

But first let's try to get any sound from it at all ...
Peter

Hi Fidelio,

Because you (obviously ?) jumped right into the middle of "some stage" of XXHighEnd, being today's version, you most probably didn't follow what is going on, hence why you have some of the problems you have. And I know, by now this needs a manual, which actually is in the release notes from bottom to top and which would take ages to read.
I'll try to explain a few of your issues in short :


You may not believe it, but this is not related to anything. It is just a bunch of coincidences at all your trials, not recognizing what causes what because there's too much. However, I think and hope I can solve all your problems in one go : choose Engine#3 and slide the volume slider fully up and set your primary device to the soundcard you want to use.
If this doesn't help you, we'll see further, ok ?


Engine#1 and #2 are not exactly obsolete, but what you expect from them might work by accidence. So, Engine#3 supports all the sample rates and bit depths you can imagine (up to 352800/24 or /32), and for #1 and #2 this was just never made, but some combinations might work. The development is in #3, and for that matter you can be glad that you like the sound of #1/#2, because you can't imagine what to wait for with #3. .
All 'n all, nobody here is even ever trying these bitrates for #1/#2, which obviously comes from the(ir) fact that #3 just works, which isn't (wasn't ?) the case with you.
Btw, I don't think that I'll ever let all the samplerates etc. work in #1/#2, which probably for the highest rates isn't even possible.


Here too, please ignore it.


Be careful here, because the "busy" indicates that you are, say, messing around a bit at testing and stuff (which you can't help of course). Important to know is though, that both the checkboxes on the Advanced tab of the Sound Device Properties should be ticked, and when that settings is changed, you *must* reboot (Vista bug). If you then still get "busy" messages, we'll work that out in detail.


I assume you talk about the window in the middle, or let's say the 2nd window (there are 3);
The principle is that there are machanisms to load tracks in the Playlist Area, and there are mechanisms to play tracks in Playlist Area. The latter generally is the Play button.
The first group, loading tracks into the Playlist Area can a.o. be done via the Library Area, and that by itself in a couple of ways (10 or so). One of them is double click the album, another is selecting the album(s !) and press Load, a next is rightclick - show / load tracks and choose.
Don't forget, only with Play music playback starts.


This only works for Engine#3, and note that *there* you can't use the windows volume anymore.
Note that the volume in XX is not meant for volume control, but for improving sound for two reasons which may not apply to you :
1. You could leave out your pre-amp (and that's why the slider is default set so low);
2. 6 or 12dB attenuation most probably improves sound, but it is up to you to determine this).


For Engine#3 yes. For the other Engines the result is unknown (please note that when this was created it was taken into account, but was never tested). With Vista you must be extremely careful, because when not working in Exclusive Mode (hence #1, #2, all commonly known players not working with Exclusive Mode) Vista will resample to the setting set at the before mentioned Advanced tab in the device properties).
If you didn't grow into this ... it's all quite confusing, but almost logic once you know ...


No.


If this doesn't get you started, please call again !
Peter

Guys,

I bumped into this one today : http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

Since this (see below screenshot) is free for the next 21 or so hours, I downloaded and installed it, with the thought that maybe this would be a good tool for the near future and remote control stuff.
The tool itself (at a glance) looks promising, but currently I don't know (and can't know) where it will be a good thing for XXHighEnd, and whether I can't do similar stuff myself (note though that it seems to be loaded with system info stuff, which always might come off handy).

Just in case, and since it is free today, install it and get a key yourself.
Note : the procedure is completely vague to me, and the .txt which comes along with it seems to talk about sending an email, while no email address can be found. Instead, I think you must start WireKeys from the tray icon that will be there, and enter the info from the .txt in the screen under the option "registration" at the bottom. That seemed to work, but from here I don't know. Will I receive an email ? do I need another key ? where to enter that ? is it already activated ?

The vagueness IMO comes from the other instance "Giveaway of the Day" which is in between now.
Btw, somewhere I found that the key (??) will be received withij 48 hours. So let's see what happens.

If you want to go for this, be sure to do it within 21 hours from the time of this post.

Peter

All agreed.

And no, that third graph is my (indeed PCI tweaked) XP HTPC machine. And FYI, that serves so many processes that I forgot them. For fun I name a few : IIS web server, heat control (via OPC might it say something to you) with hundreds of sensors, it runs satellite receipt (MyTheatre), DVD etc. movie playback (TheaterTek), servers Photoshop and stuff, all the Wave analysis tools, digital recording, DVD/Audio ripping tools, photo storage (over 100K photo's), serves network media playback (networked player, networked TV), audio calibration (think of subwoofers), anime creation tools (like icons, smileys), is the printserver, and some other stuff which count some 150 icons on the desktop.
This is not my audio PC, and it looks like I'm the only one on the planet who never saw a stutter (video) coming from it.
Also, this is not some kind of show-off, but it proves what can be done from a miserable P4 with hyperthreading shut off and 1GB of memory, as long as you carefully watch what happens when, and what causes which. The key is really there, and instead of reading the books or copying statements of others, I write the books. Hahaha.

For some trust or good feeling on your side, I was the very first on this earth that started and introduced legacy Enterprise Resource Planning on PC's , when the PC's were 12MHz and the servers (it needed two) were 33MHz, in 1987. That configuration served some 100 concurrent users, performing over 100K transactions per day.
A show off afterall ? ah, maybe, but at the time Microsoft bought Fox Software (the tool I used) and turned it into FoxPro, which later became Visual FoxPro, and which contained 1000nds of bugs I (my company) had to work around but sometimes couldn't, Microsoft told me that the tool was meant of 10 users max. ... but I had customers with 250 users and I gueranteed that the 250th user wouldn't notice the difference opposed to when he was alone in the system. Remember, it is the MS books you are reading !
Today you find this in e.g. the Library functions which is based upon the exact same (API stuff) as Explorer is based upon. You may need over 10000 albums with pictures (which I have here) to notice, but what happens in the Library area for speed is undoable in Vista itself including when the files would be indexed by Vista. It is not difficult to outperform the creator (MS) with his own tools, as long as you recognize the flaws, watch carefully where they are, and then avoid them (creativity comes first here).

Now you know.

Mr. ShowOff.