Remember : UAC (User Account Control) must be shut off !
The XXHighEnd dowbload which may look like XXHighEnd-09-z7.rar (see Download Section for the latest version) is to be unzipped to a folder of your choice; Because more versions of XXHighEnd are allowed to be active as "installed" it is good habit to make a folder on your OS drive looking like this :
c:\XXHighEnd\
and under that a sub folder with the version number. In the end it looks like this :
c:\XXHighEnd\09z7\
So in there you put the .rar file and you can "unzip" it there with rightclicking the .rar file it and choose "Extract here". This will unpack everything in the folder you just created for it.
Now you can look for the XXHighEnd.exe file with the notice that when your Explorer settings do not show extensions, the ".exe" part in the below picture will not be visible.
Watch out : You must anticipate that or at this very first time of starting XXHighEnd.exe, or at the first time starting it after you worked your way through this section, a real error window will popup telling you "XXEngine3.exe stopped working".
If that happens, just close that program and continue with what you were doing. It won't happen again (but at again a new version it may).
When it indeed is the very first time you start XXHighEnd on this PC, the below screen will pop up :
Watch out : No message "Demo" will appear. Instead, other popups may appear (can be 10 of them easily) and they ask you to run the program concerned, and now it is important that you denote with the textbox provided "not show this message again".
Not doing so will lead to error messages for sure because under the hood these programs are executed with no possibility to answer the "Yes run please" upon the popups (which don't appear)".Anyway, the first screen to appear is this one :
and of course you are going to click Next here.
After this be prepared for quite some seconds (can easily be 30) that nothing seems to happen. But something is really at work for you, and eventually this will appear :
Click Finish.
After a while the next question *may* appear :
This is about the system trying to guide you to your possibly before used data like Favorites and Saved Playlists. Of course, if this is really your first useage of XXHighEnd you won't have that and you can just press Cancel. Otherwise click OK and a dialog will allow you to pick the "XXData" folder you used before.
When done with this, after again after a while, you will be seeing this :
and it is after this that these programs may execute and will show those popups we talked about earlier on. Please be careful with answering correctly to the popups !
Notice that it is very well possible that no popups appear at all ! It just depends on whether the programs concerned where ever before executed on you PC.
After clicking OK to the previous screen (see above) "in parallel" this message shows up :
This message is there to let you finish answering upon those popups which by themselves may appear in parallel (meaning : more of them can be at the screen at the same time).
So, when you answered upon the last popup, click away the above message as the last one.
Almost guaranteed this will be the next message popping in your face :
No worries; it is a general message that may pop up always when you start XXHighEnd and which tries to tell you that your lastly chosen sound device can not be found anymore. Obviously in this first case this didn't happen anyway, but it won't go without the message anyway.
In the mean time the message tells you that the first sound device available will be selected, which is to be interpreted as the default sound device in your system. Anyway, don't take it for granted it will be your nice DAC etc. So, we will look into the Sound Device later, as one of the first things to do.
And may you not have connected any sound device at this time, you can bet another message will follow telling you just that.
Remember, none of these messages will appear later, unless it is about something to warm you for. It's all obvious ...
Aha, another one. This one just follows from the implied (and virtual in this case) changed sound device and its important implications to the "Q1 setting". So, while this is an important parameter for sound quality, it can't sustain a "one and all" value because it is sound device buffer related. So, it is just there to inform you about the necessity to review your Q1 setting, *if* the currently selected sound device is the one of your choice anyway.
This tells you that you did not denote a music root folder yet. Of course this is correct because you didn't. But this too is a general message, and might it be so that in a later stage your Music Root setting gets lost, this will show up again.
Finally there !
Oops, what a colors. But no worries, you can set that all yourself.
You have been guided to the Settings Area for this one (first) time only, and you need to set a couple of things at least :
What your DAC is capable of
Just find the maximum capabilities of your DAC and choose that. Choosing "too much" is harmless by itself, but choosing the proper values also acts as self protection.
One little first issue may arise : will your DAC need 24 bits or 32 bits when it is capable of 24 bits (see screencopy above) ? This is hard to tell in advance. Always start out with 32 bits because it is the most common. Also it is not all that dangerous to try and generally no windows will break when it is set wrongly. However, when your DAC needs 32 bits and you set it to 24 windows *will* go out ("static") ! And so it is better in all cases to try all out with a preamp or other means of analog volume control so you can turn that down. And please note that a digital volume control won't help against this. Okay ?
The Sound Device as the representative of your DAC.
Further notice that although Engine#3 (WASAPI) shows as the default and you sure should try that, lateron you will want to try Engine#4 (Kernel Streaming). That makes things more complicated because more versatile, so better save this to later somewhat.
Yep, there you have it : that Music Root (see mouse pointer).
Important : Although for sure you want to play as quickly as possible, take care that you will be trying a "music root" (as temporary as can be) that looks like :
\MyMusic\Jazz\
and in there folders per album, each folder containing music files and coverart of you want. Comply to this, or otherwise unnecessary messages will be your part, and you are fed up by messages at this time. Later ? later you can do what you want because you will understand.
Watch this one (mouse pointer) because this is about Coverart and by default butten is set to "never mind Coverart". (Red means Off, Blue means On). This is important, because now no anomalies can occur from strange folder structures related to Coverart. It depends somewhat on your earlier set Music Root as well, which is more sensitive to things going all right than when no Coverart is shown anywhere.
But, when you ask yourself "where the h*ck is my coverart ?" then active this button.
About everything carries ToolTips and you might want to read them. However, notice that trhey can be quite disturbing and this is why you can switch them off. But please, take your time to read everything what's in there and notice that much is about Sound Quality what you all do this for.
See the "H" button at the top ? that gives access to the "Help Area" and it shows your last obtained ToolTip text. In this case this was about the Load button near the bottom.
No matter how long the text is, now you can easily read it and you can even copy the text in there with Ctrl-c (not with the mouse) into some general manual you want to keep for yourself (paste it in there with Ctrl-v).
Might you want to repeat the whole procedure because something went wrong, then there's there is a file
settingsreset.tss
in your XX folder. Rename that to
settingsreset.tst
als all starts from the beginning at the next time you fire up XXHighEnd. But, the install of the Phasure OSX and those popping up messages about the "under the hood programs" won't happen again, because that was done already.
A more reset (might it be necessary) will be about uninstalling the Phasure OSX from Programs and Features (Control Panel) and unzipping the XXHighEnd .rar into a new folder with a new name.
When you are ready to press Play, don't forget to turn up the volume (an analog volume control assumed, set the digital volume control in the left of XXHighEnd to -0) and have fun.
One last notice before you run into it and don't know ...
When XXHighEnd has been started once in a boot session, it can easily be started again with the Remote Command Alt-x. However, after the very first time starting it up (so, right after your install) Alt-x it will produce an error, and a reboot is needed first in order to use -as a matter of fact- any Remote Command.
Well, this was about it for your first XXHighEnd endeavours. That was hard enough, right ? And so the advice : take your time for everything, don't get annoyed and use the forum to ask questions. That's what is is for; we are waiting for you there !
