Hi Peter.

I have not had a problem with RDC in unattended before although randomly and occasionally the below happened but was fixed by a re-boot. Now it is a constant problem. I have not knowingly changed anything in the setup menu.

When operating in unattended the network shuts down and I lose remote control ie unattended music play starts and there is a black screen (ok so far!) but alt x, u d etc controls do not work. Therefore I cannot use RDC at all until the music stops at which time the network comes back up, xx appears back on the screen and remote control is restored. Always before in unattended I was able to use the Alt commands without problem.

"Keep LAN Services" is on (red)
"Persist" is on (red)
"Use Remote Desktop" is on (red)

Cheers

Paul

Hi Robert  -  Am listening to Melody Gardot she is very talented great recommendation. Decent quality new (to me) musicians are very hard to find so this is very much appreciated.

Paul

Thanks for posting your story Todd an unexpected and very moving response but which I found life affirming.

Rhiannon G is performing in Oxford later in the summer I will certainly try to get along to see her live. If I am lucky enough to see her I will for sure be thinking of your story.

Cheers

Paul

Every year it gets harder to find good quality, interesting and original material to listen to. Well so it seems to me!!  So rather than post about hi-fi technicalities for a change I thought I would list a few albums I liked from 2017. It would be great to get some feedback and hear what interesting music others on this forum have come across!!!

First a tribute to Geri Allen. What a sad loss in June 2017 and only in her sixties. I was fortunate enough to see her at the Barbican. She was a truly great jazz artist and there aren't many left now so she is a huge loss.

I try to find albums by new or little known artists - and for that reason I exclude classical from this list. I found a few new (to me) artists this year but not many   Starting with the lesser known and working down to the well known:

Rhiannon Giddens - Freedom Highway. An artist I had not heard of before and could be the find of the year. With plenty of awards to her name she is a quality musician and looking at her education a very smart girl. She also was a founder of the "Carolina Chocolate Drops" a quality country group.

Robert Finley - Going Platinum. Better late than never Robert Finley released this album in his early sixties. This is his first properly put together album with top quality supporting musicians and only happened because he was "discovered". What a voice! great blues - enjoy.

Battle of Santiago - La Migra. If complex African rhythms are your "bag" you could like this. They are Canadian   .

Baxter Dury - Prince of Tears. Maybe this should not be in the list on musical merit but how could an album by Ian Dury's son not be mentioned. There are some attractive riffs and Baxters voice is unerringly like that of his father in fact if you didn't know ...........  I would love to see Max perform with the Blockheads that would really be something but I suppose that would be anathema to Max  

Sleaford Mods - English Tapas. OK its a 2016 album but hey rules are for bending. WARNING make sure your wife has taken the kids to her best friends for a chat before you put this on. You will for sure think I have gone completely mad. But hey I am sucker for simple bass lines - and they don't get simpler than this. Just drums and bass guitar on most tracks. But oh those simple bass lines I just love em and they sound FANTASTIC on Orelo's.

James Holden - The Animal Spirits. This is genuinely unlike anything else currently out there. Don't be fooled by the simple ambient first two tracks things will get much more complex. I love this for its originality and, well, I just like it. That's good enough for me.

Vijay Iyer Sextet - Far From Over. Mmmm. Tricky. I suspect most will turn this off soon after putting it on. But I have persevered and the more I listen the more I like. Not easy - but then the best things in music are not easy. At least this is a jazz group trying to push boundaries. Something that does not happen in jazz now which is a sad thing for sure.

OK above are the lesser known artists the following are well known.

LCD Soundsystem - American Dream. I just like em. Nuff said. Anyway James Murphy provided many musical ideas to BlackStar album of David Bowie a really great album of 2016 so he has proper street cred.

Bjork - Utopia. I like this album. Best not to overthink, just let it flow. If ever there was a descendant of the 2nd Viennese School then surely this is it. This is Bjork somewhat happier than she was. Anyway Bjork can do no wrong as far as I am concerned.

Bob Dylan - Triplicate. Its Bob no other words necessary.

Jeff Beck - Loud Hailer. This is angry Beck, angry with politics but the old master can still pick a guitar.

John Mellencamp - Sad Clowns and Hillbillies. I guess the overriding reason I like this album is the way the organ plays a thread through the music. Very similar to The Band of old. Not that much to the music but pleasant to listen to.

Neil Young - Hithchiker. This is NY at his best and sounding much like he did in the seventies. This is a good album.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. This could be one of his best and that is saying something as NC is pure class. Tragically Nick Cave's son died during the period of time this album was being made. There is much feeling portrayed. Can be a tear jerker.

Willie Nelson - God's Problem Child. An excellent musical album WN gets better with age.

The National - Sleep Well Beast worth a listen

The War on Drugs - A Deeper Understanding as is this

There are many other good albums not mentioned here and it is difficult to know where to stop but of the other albums nothing really stands out above this little selection.

It would be great to hear from others that have discovered interesting music in 2017!!!!

Cheers

Paul

Peter,

I have not spent much time with MQA but so far I have not been able to get it working. I will try again but first I have a question: Mani visited a few weeks ago and brought a couple of MQA files with him on a USB stick. The files work fine on Mani's Stealth but they would not play as MQA files on my Stealth and IIRC I don't think they would play at all not even as flac. We did not have time to investigate further.

Should they have worked?

Paul

Hi Ramesh - Your Orelo's look fantastic you are set for many years of musical enjoyment now.

Cheers

Paul

Hi Peter,

I found out what MQA is today (dduurrgh) anyway I'm having a problem decoding MQA. I've tried a couple of albums from Tidal, and both give the same error (the same as Mani's) just before playback is due to commences. There is no error message when I download from Tidal on another PC here (Tidal PC). But when I try to play the MQA file on my Stealth it comes up with error message. Also the MQA symbol does not appear in the library area to replace the "flac" symbol and the sample rate indicators do not change to the sample rate shown for the MQA file. The decode HDCD + MQA button is selected (red) in the settings area so should work !!!.

Can you help?

If I switch off 'decode HDCD + MQA', then everything works fine.

Cheers
Paul

I had a chat with "golden ears" Nick about 2.09 just after he had heard the differences he so eloquently and accurately described in his post. At that time I had not had a proper listen as I had been rushing round like a mad thing doing other things. Now I have and 2.09 is superb. Detail is crazy bringing good quality live recordings to life.  I have just now increased the bass level a tad (via Hypex) and in my room it gives a more natural balance. This might be anathema but that is how it sounds on first listening but I have many different recordings and types of music to listen to before I select final settings.

Cheers

Paul

I have been rather busy with other things recently (like cycling !!) and did not install 2.08d until the other day.

Listening last night the sound quality is simply superb natural sounding. I had not had time before to really appreciate it so I just wanted to say thanks Peter.

Cheers

Paul

Hi Peter - I am using two RDC icons now one for my laptop and one for my phone as they have difference resolutions. This actually seems to resolve a problem I had with my phone (its res was higher than intermediate PC's) in that if I zoomed in on any part of XX and forgot to shrink it back to normal size before logging out then there was a good chance that I would not be able to reconnect using RDC and XXHE would need a reboot. So it is useful and solves one problem but it does not solve the scrolling problem which I think you now realise as your subsequent post points out:


It is not a problem for me being presented with a scroll bar when my music directory gets bigger than its window (which mine will in Galleries) its just that X at the bottom covering the down arrow that is the problem.

But I think you now can see that !!!

Cheers

Paul

To be honest I have never even thought about it. Because the file tree in the left window is longer than the window the scrollbar automatically appears so that I can scroll down to the bottom. How would I scroll down to the bottom of the file tree without a scroll bar? or maybe I can scale down the size of the window never even thought about but I will have a play.

Cheers

Paul

Hi Peter,

Would it be possible to make a small change in 2.08?

When I start up XX there is an "X" button covering the bottom of the slider as shown next to the arrow in attached photo 1. If I click on the album art divider partition the X button goes back to its normal position as indicated by the arrow in photo 2.

I often run my system from my phone and every time I have to click on that partition to get rid of the X button so I can get to the bottom of the slider. That is somewhat of a pain as whilst it is otherwise easy enough to operate from the phone clicking on the partition isn't.

Would it be possible for the X to be anywhere else that it is when XX is first started?  or even better for it not to start in that position at all?

Cheers Paul

Well I am sure I mentioned this in a previous post but anyway here goes. I don't think that the previous posts do justice to just how good "lush" is particularly in the bass. I also mentioned that recently Peter made a significant change (or rather correction) to my system during his visit. The result of that correction was that to caused an "apparent" reduction in the impact of the bass. But as what I was hearing was wrong anyway that was no problem. So imagine my surprise when installing "Lush" seemed to bring all that bass back again. But even that is misleading because it is the quality of the bass that is really the most notable thing. I could go on about the tone and timbre of instruments now sounding much better and more natural but I won't cos that wasn't the question ( )

So simple answer is yes here bass is very much improved but so much more than that.

Cheers

Paul

Mani,

Have you got a Lush? I have kind of followed recent posts but not sure if you actually have one or not. If not, then get one NOW NOW NOW and then all rules will be changed and anything you think you know - well you really don't - forget them and start again. 

I don't think the posts on Lush quite do it justice but see below because things are a bit different here because..............

............................. a fundamental problem (I think you know what) was fixed in my system by Peter during his visit but since then and with the Lush all rules are re-written. In other words anything you may think you have heard here before needs to be forgotten.

Ha ha I guess that's an invite.

Oh and by the way when you install the Lush you will need to COMPLETELY change your settings. I love getting back to ultra small latency settings - always did love em and now I am back to them - well WOW.  But actually can you say WOW with just a natural sounding system - how can you WOW someone with a system that just sounds well RIGHT.

Cheers

Paul

Hi Peter,

Recently I have started to appreciate the advantages of using "Galleries". But I have come across a problem.

I have some directories where file names (actually the total path spec including directory names) have exceeded the maximum length allowed by Microsoft. It took me some time to find out the cause but it is down to excessively long "path spec". It is strange because in Windows this sometimes causes a problem and other times not (so somewhat unpredictable) but for sure the problem detailed below is caused by "illegally" long file names.

So what happens in XX when there is an excessively long path spec? - well sometimes its a problem and sometimes not just like W10 so not surprising. The problem is, however, that lets say in directory "CLASSICAL" there are a few sub directories that have excessive long file names. In XX those directories it is not possible to play the files. OK so to sort the problem reduce the length of the file name yea? well partly but then XX seems to remember the old file names and still displays them and I cannot find a way to delete them.

So very simply I had problems with my "CLASSICAL" directory due to long path names. Having fixed the file name lengths XX still continues to display the old files so lets call them "phantom files" because now they do not exist.

So for example I deleted the "CLASSICAL" directory created another by a different name and moved over all files (having corrected file name lengths). No problems with the new directory it works fine.

So now I have a new directory called lets say "CLASS" and everything works fine. BUT if I now create a new directory called "CLASSICAL" (i.e. the same name that had the problem files before) but with nothing in it then XX displays all the music that had excessively long path specs previously.

It would be easy to say "well you have fixed the problem by creating the new directory" but actually it is not that simple and to say why would take forever. So very simply how do I delete the "history or memory" that XX seems to have of the old file /directory.

Maybe XX creates a file somewhere whose filename in turn is longer than MSoft allows and can't be deleted?

** OK Maybe I have sorted this by deleting everything in the XXData folder **

Durrgh  - will leave this post just in case anyone else has same problem.

Cheers

Paul