You're right. It doesn't work with me either ... 

Hmm ... I'm not aware of this !
Do you load the tracks via the Library button, or by means of dragging from Explorer ?

Adrian,

I have been thinking about this very long;

First of all I 100% trust your judgement on the "highs broken", just because I recognize it. However, not from the current XX version ...

Although it is very hard to estimate what *is* going on in your system, I think in the direction of sibilance created by your amplifier.
Please note that things get *very* complex when it is about how matters interact with eachother, react to eachother, and destroy eachother.

Sidenote : Engine#1 and Engine#2 are not perfect as such, which you could (or should) note as a fact.

Once your amp reacts improperly to the "sharpness" of the player, your speakers may resonate to it and amplify it once again. That would be an example of even over-amplified sibilance (which for sure makes the sound digital).

The most common (to my experience) cause of highs really sounding broken (like with empty holes in it) would be caused by jitter. Thus, if you are sure your amplifiers are okay (and are not a Class-D ...) I would put my bets on that.

If your DAC can resample to 96Khz, personally I don't trust that. Note though that I don't have listening experiences with that, but it would follow theories I am not in favour of. So what does your DAC do ? oversample 256 times and then back to 96 ? Or is it a non-oversampling DAC which can do it anyway for 2 times ? Mind the latter, because it can't be true. I can when it samples at 88K2, but 96 is impossible.
So again, I think your DAC oversamples (256 etc. times), and then all is destroyed. I mean, all is destroyed what XX tries to achieve ... 

In the future 24/32 bit data will be supported by Engine#3 (thus on Vista) at 88K2 or 176400 samplerate.


The RAM thing ... I don't think it is possible, unless indirectly you caused anomalies in the system. Example : when you don't play from RAM, you play from hdd, but it is (this time for me) not guaranteed that you have enough memory, and that during the process virtual memory can get active (which means access to the hdd again). When you play from RAM even then (but in a different way) you can get virtual memory alive.
It can only sound different if your system is not okay (like in fact too few memory).
Note that whether the track is copied from hdd or copied from RAM, once that has been done, it plays from the same memory. UNLESS you took away the normally chosen memory by means of creating a RAM disk (that this could sound different is theory only, but I bet it can). So if you test this, always leave your RAM disk specified, whether you use it or not.

Peter

Hi Marco,

This is a very good description, because it is indeed one of the characteristics.
Things like a hit on a tom receive colour (hence a clearly audible pitch per different tom), which is caused by -like you say- the building up of the sound which is expressed better. Thus, a hit on something like a tom, or even a cowbell, has an envelope in its attack.

In the end this exists in everything, and it is one of the major phenomena which makes music playback far more natural (and analogue).

Peter

Not ... 
I've been busy with too many other (XX quality related) things. Sorry !

Okay, when I load a track that's too large to fit in memory (I think "just" too large) with Engine#2, it kills the sounddevice, hence no sound without further warning.

Oops, this is wrong. I have 1GB ...

Thank you Adrian,

Well, my XP playback machine has 512MB, and I play it Double all the time. But I suppose you talk about Windows2000, and on that one I don't know yet.

Your DAC can do 88K2, right ?

Hi there Adrian,

I have the PC at home, and this weekend for sure I will try it.
Peter

Changed :

• If everything is allright, all about the trackselections is stable now. Therefore I ask you to please report any further anomalies. Concentrate on no sound at a next track (only when the player suddeenly quits it’s normal because of the demo version), more than one visually selected track while you didn’t ask for it (you can you know), skipping a track, prematurely ending a track (one or two seconds currently would be normal ), or anything else you probably are good at.
  There *are* issues left with sliding the playposition pointer, so there's no need to report that.
  Note : Just before publishing this version I had to change something on the above, and since testing all the combinations takes many hours, I can only hope I didn't destroy something ...
• Clicking an empty Playlist area caused an error which is now solved.
• Added some lacking ToolTips.
• Disabled the Pause button when appropriate.
• Changed the content of a few error messages.
• Loading a saved Playlist onto an empty Playlist area would give an error, and didn’t show the coverart for the first track. This is now solved.

Note that this version is prone to sound different. If you have any comments on that, please put them on the board !

Edit : If you're downloading this version for the track selection stability ... never mind. There are still issues.

Well, since a manual for this can grow rather large, it's my current idea just to create a topic for it, and start mentioning the most important things.
It can grow by time.

Everybody is free to add his/her subjects in this thread, which I then will try to merge into this first post of it.
I'm not sure yet this is the way to do it, but otherwise there's nothing for a long(er) time, while in the mean time many of you might have the problems.

Even those who think they know are advised to at least briefly skip through the subjects. Many things are not as they seem ...



A Guide to PC Playback


Don't just start ripping your CDs

This is the about most important advise of all;
At this moment, no means is known that guarantees that your rips are perfect or even "good". So yes, this is about computers, but no, ripping CDs is not the same as reading data from a CDRom drive (which would be guaranteed for perfect reading).

When you firstly start ripping, just assume you won't do it right at the first time(s). So there's a moral here : don't rip too many for now;
If you have 500 CDs you will find it takes much time. Also, it is very dumn work, and you really don't want to do it again.

Currently this part of the manual does not contain explanations about how to best rip your CDs (do I know that myself ?). What I can say though, is that XXHighEnd will contain a function to check your rips. In fact it is already finished, and I use it myself already. It will TELL you if your ripping means are good or not. It's that easy.
The function is not obtained in XX yet, just because currently there are some other priorities.

Get decent coverart

This too, can be very time consuming, although it is actually fun to do it;
Note that you can get skilled to get the pictures fast, which mainly comes down to knowing a few places where to get them. For that too, I won't eleborate at this time, if you only know that you don't want to do it again because you got the not-so-good pictures.

Very important is that you really shouldn't try to get the 200x200 pictures anymore. Most often larger pictures exist, and the larger they are, the better the quality is. No matter that they are shown at 200x200 again.
Also, there will come a time that the pictures will show larger in the player. In fact it's an easy job, and it just takes the time to think about it a bit (where, when to resize etc.), but it will be there.
Maybe even more important is the fact that in Vista (itself) those larger pictures will be used in Explorer (and settings accordingly); if you find out later that bigger is better, in Vista it will very much show, because the smaller are not upsised (and jump out as small thingies).

Name all the (jpg) files folder.jpg, and put them in the folder of the album (so, an album is a folder).

Tip : If you have a good scanner, you might be better off in scanning the pictures from the start, instead of trying to find them (never knowing how long it will take, *if* you succeed at all).

Think about the structure of your folders

Think it over very very very carefully. If you don't do this right, chances are that it takes you days and days to correct things.
Of course more structures are possible, but one who works guaranteed is this :

Make one main folder on the particulair disk (you could name it "Music").
In there, create a folder for each individual album.
In the folder of an individual album you put the tracks from that album.
Note that an album consisting of more volumes (CDs) must
OR be per track preceeded by the volume name (like CD1)
OR have a subfolder per volume (like CD1).

Now carefully look how to setup the albumnames and tracknames. Thus, when -in this proposition- there's no artist in the album name, you won't know the artist. Or, when the artist name is in the trackname (too) you'll have redundancy.

Always let the trackname start with a track sequencenumber, or otherwise you will have the tracks in alphabet sequence.

Here too, don't start ripping (where the naming of all takes place !) for ages, to come to the conclusion you really want(ed) it differrent. Instead, setup a few combinations (don't forget the multi volume albums), and see if you like it.

Make a backup

No matter you are not organized properly as of yet, immediately start to make backups of your rips. Remember, the ripping of 10 CDs might take 50 minutes of your time, and getting the pictures for 10 CDs may take an hour sometimes. Of course you *have* a backup ... but do you really want to do it again ?


... to be continued ...

Okay, clear.

Somehow Klaus made the exact same misstake ... 

What remains is the perceived huge difference.
I have some W2K systems at work hanging around. I'll drag one over and listen ... 

Thanks.
Peter

But ... you *do* imply that XX runs on NT, right ?
You mean the Windows NT4.0 or 3.51 etc. ? (I ask this, because I hardly can believe it)
If so, what Service Packs ?, DirectX version ? (must be 3.0 or so, haha).

 

But Adrian, are you saying that just XP is so bad, and nothing can be done about that ? I mean, if that were so "we" XP users must be completely blind/deaf ?!?

 

Continued here : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=34.0