Whaaaat ?!?! So that's why. I never knew that. So I anticipate on 1, 2, 4 and now 8 by treating that as 4.
Note that this influences the Processor Core Assignment (hence sound quality) just the same ! Meaning : currently that won't work for you either and there will be no difference in those settings for you now.

Anyway, problem virtually solved, and apparently a kind of each number should be supported.

Never too old to learn,
Peter

Uhhmm ... Is it true that you have a double quad core processor ?? this would be the explanation ...

Before I get accused of wrong advises ... do not replace your OS disk with a SSD right now. IOW :

After a sufficient number of hours using the SSD for the OS, the one thing I can *really* say is that I don't recognize my albums anymore, hence the sound is so much different that I (and the family) have problems with determining the differences. This fact alone, so far, makes me want to move back to the normal spinning disk ...

I have many reasons to believe the playback is actually more accurate, but I have as many reaons to believe it just doesn't work out. Not for my system as a whole. Two main arguments for the latter :

1.
All tracks, no matter from which albums, seem to receive a signature, the best described as a "flair";
All cymbals start to sound the same over (tracks and) albums, and generally one could say that the color has gone, they are more hissing, but also more metal (which latter by itself would be something I was seeking for) .

2.
The bass output is so much more that the xover must be tweaked to that, which I feel is wrong (but didn't try anyway). Without this tweaking it really is too much of it, and the sound gets colored because of it.
The phenomenon by itself makes me believe the base now is wrong, knowing that lately (for 6 months at least) tweaking the xover to the bass side did not add coloration, and just more bass only. So, theories say that this is not just more bass, but more wrong bass.

At listening closely - which is very hard because all sounds so different - and listening to the elements of "sound" at my best, I can only say it is better. There is more detail, and to give one example of how one should come to the conclusion things just must have changed for the better : I get crazy of all those guys using a tamborine. Hmm ... they suddenly al do. This is related to the now so profound audible individual "bells" of that instrument, and one of the reasons to believe that things are more accurate. However :

The warmth has disapeared all over, and e.g. a trumpet has become an instrument with a flair, or even sibilance.

Knowing I am crazy anyway, I now imagine the SSD to interact with the PSU (somehow) at a high frequency base, and this is audible and what I perceive. Something like each individual memory element constantly telling its status to the cpu, and already knowing that the influence on the PSU is one of the most important things anyway, this just would be wrong if so indeed.

Added to this, I am fairly sure it is not the OS disk not spinning what I hear. It is too much of it, and besides that, the OS disk isn't always spinning although that would be a coincidence (depending on the coincidence of the (IIRC) in between 6 - 12 minutes no disk access by the OS is required, while the disk spins down after 5 minutes of no access. In other words, if it would be the "no spinning hdd" I perceive, this would have been be the most obvious in between tracks. And I never heard that.
And so it must be the other way around : the SSD just adds things. "Add" is literal, and for audio this means : no good at all.

Now what ?

I know perceived better accuracy can emerge by means of adding noise. Of course it is fake, but for certain frequencies it may enhance them, and make them more profound. However, looking at the squariness of a trumpett, it will work counterproductive, and the squares will receive side products (harmonics), just not belonging there.

I say it again : the sole fact of the sound having changed so much that I can't relate it in a relative manner to how it was, and what actually has changed, is reason enough for me to go back. It would be impossible for me to develop any further, which always comes down to relative changes, and hearing elements which changed for the better or for the worse. Now, this would imply a start all over, which is from theories already not good. It just can't be so this differs so much for the better (which I generally don't perceive either), while at the same time it just *can* be so that all differs so mucg because it changed for the worse. And I already tried to explain it : the SSD adds.

Now, I can imagine that I'm the only one on the globe coming to this conclusion (never investigated it really, but also never heard any negatives about the SSD), but let me be the first then.
Did anyone read about negatives on this somewhere ?

Dave, I know you are using an SSD. Are you able to go back ? Even if it takes you some efforts, please try it. You know you changed your whole system in one go, including using the SSD, and are satisfied. However, you could be way more satisfied without the SSD. Please try it for your own sake.


When I can find some time, I will try to prove what's happening by means of connecting the scope to the PSU or something like that. I think what I hear can be made visible.

Bweh,
Peter

Although I am not sure where you see something like a "Gallery section", I hope the below helps a bit.

First of all let's say a gallery is something like a showcase of what you have (on albums). But as often (museum, art), a gallery contains works of a specific type only. In our case this could be

Classical, Populair, Blues, Folk
but also
English, French, Portugese, World,
and also
Good Stuff, Throw away, New, Sortout
etc.

One album obviously may fit into several of these galleries, just because a French singing Folk group might be Good Stuff.

Galleries in XXHighEnd comprise of normal folder structures which you can view with Explorer as you are used to, although there's no real reason to do that. The point is though, that this way of working just integrates with the Windows OS, and since no additional (hidden etc.) data stores are used, you can manipluate them as normal folders (and files). Note though that "manipulate" comes down to searching/viewing only, because e.g. renaming/deleting etc. really should be done from within XXHighEnd because otherwise the consistentcy of things are violated.

A Gallery can me made from within XXHighEnd a.o. by means of rightclicking on an album in the Libarry Area, and appoint it to a folder which is equivalent to whatever it is you intend with it. E.g. c:\MyGalleries\Blues.
Here is a rather old page about this, but it will give you the idea : 0.9n and Galeries

Besides the obvious reaons of categorizing your albums as implied above, there are many more features, and some are very powerful not found anywhere else, mainly dealing with the huge piles of data this all can be about (think of many TeraBytes).

Without explaining all in detail and/or how to achieve things, here are some of the explicit benefits :

• No need to worry about how to organize the original album folders and files; it is the Galleries you work with, and they are not dependend on the original data.
  
  
• Similarly there is no limit to the size of the total data store, and as many disks can be connected as needed, and they can be of any mixed connection type. The only thing you work with is your "MyGalleries" main music root which is representative for one virtual drive containing all your music data.
  The disks providing the music data (hence contain the original albums) need to be connected, but must be connected when an album is played from them (hence you can have more disks than connections, and you can swap disks when needed).
  
  
• In a proper setup disks spin down when they are not used (generally SATA connected disks will). Because your Gallery will be on one disk only, only that disk will spin when browsing through the music data, and assuming this is your OS disk, this disk will spin anyway to serve the OS. Obvioudly when the OS is on a Solid State Disk, nothing will spin.
  Only when an album is played, the disk holding the album will spinup, and that disk will spin down according to your settings (could be 1 minute I think). Btw, a provision which will take care of not even spin up the disk when a new track is loaded, is due.
  PS: It was found that the less power consuming devices are on board, the better it is. Besides that, my 10 disks really need not to spin all the time.
  
  
• Since the Gallery (root) behaves as one logical drive, many benefits come from that feature alone; Example : When I want to make a manual backup of the albums I added since the last backup (bound to a date/time), the whole set of feautures just allow for this, no matter on which of the disks the new album was stored.
  
  
• Similarly, but almost more important, is that one command allows for the (permanent) conversion of WAV files to FLAC files (or the other way around) again unaccording where those files are. Keep in mind : thinking of the folder structures you might have, there's already no software around that can deal with that in one go, let alone doing so when all is spread over several disks. IOW, this is an inmense time saving feature, or better : base for many of similar stuff to you own imagination (but to be supported by XX hence to be created by me of course).
  
  
• Important or not, your Gallery can be zipped and emailed around the globe, and may give insight to whoever you want about your music collection. But think of this example, assuming it is legal (and which is just a stupid example of the power of the Galleries) :
  You can send the zip to your work's address, and overthere - where XXHighEnd runs just the same - you compare the Home Gallery with the one at work (hence you'd be comparing two collections), and the Album Compare feature will spit out the albums not present at work, but present at home. From that you create a new Gallery "FilesToCopy", and that Gallery is zipped back home again. At home you load that Gallery in the Library Area, and the only thing you need to do is "Copy Files" and appoint a sufficiently large target disk which you connect to your work PC (or copy the files to that PC somewhere). When you really want to keep your files in WAV all the time, you still could perform a Copy WAV To FLAC in order to fill up the disk mentioned, and at work the other way around : Copy FLAC to WAV. So, the transport medium has become FLAC, and you can transport twice as much because of this.
  Remember, this is all press of a button stuff, no matter how scattered your music data is, assuming you made nice Galleries from it.
  
  
• Since your Galleries always comprise of one Music Root (say, main folder) and all "genres" etc. are thereunder in sub folders, no matter you use Vista's search features, or just the XXHighEnd search features, when using the root as the source, all your albums will be at hand. This is the most convenient when looking for some (potentially) new album and whether you already have that (and trust me, when you have over 10,000 albums, you need that regularly). And no, there's not much to this when compared to Vista's search feature (when properly setup which is a tough job by itself), but then again, this works for one drive at a time, and you may have 10 or more ...
  
  
• Generally, your specific way of working may require a special feaure, with an example of it here : Library sort order.
  Remember, most of the features around the Galleries were born from my own needs, but this example is just one of those specific needs, and now when this requirement has been met, it saves much time, or even fulfills tasks not possible otherwise (ok, everything can be done, but with so much data things become just too much time consuming. IOW, don't hesitate to come forward with your needs.
  
  
• As a very general "feature" counts that when you put your Galleries on the one fastest disk you have, you can deal with searching etc. in there the fastest way possible, just because this is not related to the original location.
  Btw, a Solid State Harddisk is found to be the fastest to this matter, and this is hardly related to the "bulk transfer" times which are lower on a SSD opposed to e.g. SATAII because this is not about bulk transfer but many small accesses, just where the SSD is so good at. The net result (for me) is twice as fast at least. Also note that the OS, together with Galleries of over 10,000 albums worth of Gallery data, will easily fit on the now very much affordable 64GB SSD (I myself have 20GB left).
  
  

The downside of Galleries is that they are redundant, and that it needs XXHighEnd feautures for everything like Renaming, Deleting, Moving Gallery data, or original data for that matter. You can say that 50% of the necessities to this matter are in there now, but the other 50% is still lacking. This other 50% is mainly in the area of changing implied stuff by means of Windows Explorer, which really should incorporate the Gallery data. I hope to come up with solutions for that in the near future.

Peter


PS: Besides the running time of 30 minutes on average (per XXHighEnd startup), working with the Galleries is limited to 100 output items in the Gallery Area for the Demo version.

Ok thanks. The log file shows it all. What I see is quite unexpected though.

Is it true that you don't have a multi core processor ?

Guys,

Since I don't get a response so far from beto, is there anyone else who gets the "Path is not of a legal form" error when using FLAC files ?

or the other way around :

Is there anyone besides me who does NOT receive that error and can just plat FLACs ?

I actually want to upload an upgrade because of some annoying bugs solved, but since this one would be the most annoying one (especially when everybody has it) this is of not much use ...

(it is not neccessary to download the zip from my before post in order to give the answer)

Thanks,
Peter

Ok, here's an intermediate version which contains more extended error messages (but I don't know what will occur ar your site).
Some things have radically changed, although I can't tell whether it helped, and since I found nothing explicit related to the matter, probably nothing changed as such (but hoping for more clear messages).

When the error "Path is not of a legal form" still occurs, please copy all the messages occurring now, and note that after a first message, another may occur.
Then :

When indeed the error still occurs, switch on Logging (Settings Tab) and please email me the XX-...log file concerned (resides in the TemporaryData subfolder in your XX folder). Best is to do this in Attended mode, because then you will be sure the latest XX (not X3 !) .log file is the one to take (but don't stop/start XX in the mean time again, because there will be newer log files then).
I hope it is clear.

Careful : Many things have been put upside down in this version, mostly concerned about the Anti Alias conversion (which just appeared to be forgotton at all since 0.9w) and the combination with FLAC and MP3 which can occur at the same time. Since this is an intermediate version really, don't be surprised when other things now don't work, but please report them anyway.

Thank you,
Peter


Save your current XXHighEnd.exe, and past the one from the zip below in your XX folder.

Thanks. Good to hear.

Still don't know what happened; things can go wrong indeed with the emails and stuff, but then I can see that. Not this time ...
Peter

Not being able to paste the Activation Code I don't regocnize ... But the Undemo Tab stays, yes.
Anyway, are you ok now ?

Peter

Hi,

Nothing seems wrong at this side ...
Anyway, I just sent you an email.

So much sorry for the inconvenience.
And for others : If it takes more than, say, 12 hours, please shout outloud ! (this time you waited 8 days, and this has really not happeneded before).

Best,
Peter

And ?

Thank you very much for the nice words !
I'll be working on your problem !!


PS: Sadly, Leo's AA example (which indeed goes wrong -> will be solved ASAP as well) does not produce your error beto.

Ok, thanks. I will try to think of some things myself. Don't know what yet, but still ...

It is very strange, also because I really wouldn't know what can create this situation. Just like the subject of this topic with really the only thing happening is that XXHighEnd is started from within XXEngine3, so that is the only way to cause *that*.

You might try this (just to find the cause of the disturbed playback from other players, not the solution yet) :
In this post : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=544.msg3900#msg3900 there's an attachment 96.dat. Put that one in place of the one you have in your XX directory, and keep the one you have save (and keep track of it, because when you forget to set it back after the test, you won't be able to play everyting !).
So, with the replacement 96.dat things might be different. I don't know, but it is the only thing the other players for sure won't apply, so it is a difference.

Btw Andrey, don't waste your time on this too much, and only do it for yourself when you think you need the solution.
Of course it will be me who is glad when it gets solved in general, so I will be very glad to find the culprit. No obligations on your side though !

Beto,


I am sorry that I asked for the error, while you just gave it. I just never saw this error (would merely be "Illegal path"), and took it that it was your own interpretation.

At this moment I can only say that this will be a tough one, unless hopefully Gerard can find out what this is about by comparing situations ??

Gerard, please note : I am talking about above quoted message, and *not* about the "Music file does not exist" message. This latter is more general and can emerge for several reasons, like with Leo's example (I must be careful though, because the AA implies conversion as well, see below, and Leo too may mean that he gets the above quoted message just the same).

The message "The path is not of a legal form" obviously is about some path somewhere not being legal, most definitlely because I do something wrong. Think of presenting a path like e:\music\The Who\\Who's Next
It must be related to the conversion of files, but I can't think of what, since I don't have it (and also, the message is a strange one to me).

All together, if anyone can give some more insight, please let it know. Currently I don't know where to start ...

Thanks,
Peter