Hi Peter,

You are right in your assumption: I used the slider in attended mode. I will try unattended mode as you suggest.

Hans

Hi Peter,

I tried this several times and for several days now, but the problem persists I am afraid.

I checked myself doing it exactly as explained above, but I might still be doing something wrong of course (i.e. I use the volume slider after about one minute playing on the first track that I play, reboot when I encounter problem and then use the volume slider again after 1 minute into the first track I play).

Hans

Hi Peter,

Thanks!

I will not call you crazy.

You are right that you answered it, and I did try the suggested solution. So far the problem didn't go away. I will try again because I may have done something wrong.

Hans

Hi,

I have recently purchased the xxHE PC and it works like expected except for one thing: when I am listening to music then after a few minutes (no fixed time interval but always less than 10 minutes) I loose the sound. The time counter keeps on going and everything seems to work if you look at the screen of the computer but there is no sound. The sound comes back when you move the mouse or type a key on the keyboard or move the volume slider or something like that. A time interval under 10 minutes later the same thing happens and the same solution has to be applied.

I have tried changing the volume settings with the first track I play every time after start-up (a suggested remedy), but this doesn't solve the problem.

I have two questions:

• Has anybody else encountered this problem? If so, did you solve it and how?
• Does anybody have any idea what is causing this problem?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Hans

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the answer. I think I understand how it works now. Consequence of what you are saying is that it is better to keep your files in flac because of the parallel processing that you do not get with wav's (assuming unattended playback). Correct?

Second, I think my observation on flac vs wav is correct but would be due to the fact that the wav files I referred to are on average around 30-60MB but the flac files I was referring to are between 150 and 300MB so they would become really big once transformed and uncompressed explaining the time consumption (ie apples and oranges indeed).

Regards

Hans

Sure a lot of you know it but I rather much like the CD "Gettin' to it" by Christian McBride and then especially the tenth track: "Night train".

Curious to hear how you feel it sounds on your system.

Hans

Ok, so I bought the xxHE PC from Peter and I have to say that it is a vast improvement.

I am left with one smaller issue though and that is the following: some songs still take a longer time (up to 10 seconds) to start playback. My collection of music is split in wav files that are all (no exceptions) 44.1kHz files ripped from the cd's I have. These files contain no tags. The other part of the collection consists of FLAC files that are all highres, i.e. 44.1 kHz and up and 24bit. These files do (still) contain tags.

The longer time to playback never occurs in the wav files. These start playback almost instantaneously. The longer start time is usually with the flac's, where bigger flacs take longer it seems.

Is this behaviour that others see or have encountered as well? If so, what could you do (if anything) to reduce the start time? Could the longer start time have to do with the fact that the flacs still contain tags?

Look forward to hearing about this.

Hans

I might be mistaken, but aren't these things (just examples) supposed to do (approximately) the same:

• http://www.bb-elec.com/Products/USB-Connectivity/USB-Isolators/USB-Isolators.aspx
• http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/HW/USB_Isolator.htm
• http://www.firestone-audio.eu/shop/products/allproductslisted/greenkey.php

The only problem with these things seems to be that there are severe limitations on it (only up to 96KHz/24bit) and I cannot see if this is different for the Itona device mentioned here (but that is probably because I am not hindered by too much technical knowledge .)

Hans

Hi Peter,

I can tell what is was set to. It was set to: No Appoint.

I have to assume that it was set to that value by default because I did not touch any of that earlier   .

Hans

Hi Peter,

I tested your options and selecting core 1-2 solves the problem. It now starts very quick (within 2 seconds even for tracks with diacritical symbols).

I close that closes this problem. I will open a separate thread for the cover art.

Hans

Hi Peter,

What I mean with the example directory for ZZ Top is that there is a space in the name of the directory between ZZ and Top. But as far as I understood descriptions on the forum that should not be an issue but I mention it to be complete.

Coverart: I have coverart as a seperate file in the album directory and it is always called cover.jpg. I try to avoid having them as tags in the music file. My ideal set-up would be to work with a cue sheet and clean wav files but that is a separate project for a later time (any tips how to do that efficiently given that I have a very large collection of flac files now are appreciated but at a very low priority now).

Filesizes that I have tested so far vary between 33.6Mb (16bit 44.1kHz) up to around 190Mb (24bit, 192kHz). The issue is the same for all of them. Funnily enough the loading time is approximately the same for the 33.6Mb file as it is for the 190Mb file

The coverart does come up ok in xxHighEnd but I will say that xxHighEnd does something to it, i.e. tries to make it smaller or less resolution or whatever. In one of the cases, a picture that when viewed in a seperate viewer has the size of a normal CD is shown in xxHE as a very small picture. It does that to only that album, in other cases it just deteriorates the quality of the picture for some reason (read something about that on the forum but didn't feel that that would apply here) but not the size. As a note: I do take care to not use huge files coverart. All files are smaller than 100Kb.


I will check this when I get home tonight. I would say though that it might say one million covers, but in actual fact there are no more than 20 covers in the test library that I use now.

Hans

Hi Peter,

Yes it is a Mac running win7 now.

I will do the tests you suggest when I get home from work tonight.

Hans

Hi Peter,

I checked. No diacriticals in the test track (there are some of these on other test tracks, but not this one). Same result.

There are however spaces used in pathnames, so an artist name like for example ZZ top means that all albums from these guys will be in that dierectory as new directories (one for each album). Each of these directory names as well as the track names will contain spaces. I don't know if that is important but I thought I should mention it.

Hans

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the response. Much appreciated!

To answer the questions as methodological as possible:

• I am indeed referring to attended playback. I have tried unattended playback as well, there the result is the same. Once it plays it keeps on playing track after track without further delays. This holds for attended as well as unattended playback.
• I have mad a small example library to xxHighEnd and this library contains some albums as FLAC and some as WAV. No other filetypes.
• Number of tracks when I try unattended is 10-20 depending on what I try but no more. However, as said, the problem is the same whether in attended or unattended mode. The funny thing is that when in unattended mode it takes a long time for the first track to load but once that is done the other tracks of the album load very quickly. Playback in attended mode sort of shows the same behavior: first track takes long, next track is there immediately, but if you stop before the next track and then start playback on the next track then, again, it behaves as described, i.e. taking a long time to load.
• In terms of the specs of my pc: I know it is not up to par, but this is intended to be a first trial setup before I move on to creating a proper setup.
  Here goes:
  
  • Processor: Intel Xeon 5150@2.66GHz
  • Installed Ram: 4Gb
  • System Type: 32-bit
  Even though this is not the best set-up I guess it should be possible to start play back without too much delay.
  
• SFS = 4.00Mb, Mx = 150.00
• Copy to XX-drive by standard: off

Once everything plays I am a happy camper. I know that SQ can be a lot better but I think that it is already an improvement over other players. There is definitely no other issues once the playback has started. After that it works fine in attended as well as in unattended mode, definitely no stuttering.

Hans

Hi,

I am new at this forum, so if I ask a question that has been answered already then I overlooked the answer. My apologies in advance if that is the case, I tried to avoid it.

I experience a very long time in start of the playback of any track once I hit the play button. The delay is anywhere between 3 and 4 minutes and I understand from other topics on this forum that it should be a lot faster.

I have my music collection organized as it should be according to the discussion and it is on a NAS that is coupled as a drive. I experience this problem whether I play 44.1kHz, 96kHz or 192kHz tracks. They all lead to the same long delay in start-up after pressing play.

What I have tried:
- Change my music root from the NAS to an SSD that is internal in the computer that I currently use.
- Play with some settings like switching off HDCD coding.

These type of changes lead to the same delay, no change. This leads me to believe that it is not the fact that the music is on a NAS, but something else but I cannot figure out what.

Any help is appreciated.

Hans