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Ultimate Audio Playback / Music Storage and convenient playback / Re: How do we organize our music folders ?
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on: August 18, 2010, 04:26:27 pm
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hey Peter,
I use folder structure no. 1
I don't need to put the artists into genre's as I know the style of music each artist I have falls under, and sometimes an artist may have albums that span different genre's and that would just add another layer of complexity trying to figure out where to put them.
When choosing music for listening I tend to focus on the actual artist I want to be "entertained" by, rather than having a "rock" afternoon, or perhaps a "classical" evening.
If you are thinking of having the renaming based upon internal tags, please make that a de-selectable option, as data provided by CDDB and their kind don't always fall into line with how I like things. An example of this is the year field. Quite often it's depicted as year of release, whereas I normally use the year of recording. I also haven't bothered tagging my music for a number of years now since XXHE was released.
I normally append the year of recording to the album name just for reference. I would not want the year data as a prefix as it makes it harder to find a particular album if they are sorted by year order.
Cheers,
Russ
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242
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: 16/44.1 vs. 24/176.4
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on: August 13, 2010, 11:18:59 am
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I've recorded Dave Brubeck's 'Time Out' from vinyl at 16/44.1 and 24/176.4 resolutions. These are separate recordings (i.e. the first was not derived from the second).
G'day Mani, I am unable to play back the 176K stuff currently, but I did take this opportunity to compare your 16/44.1 sample to my Columbia 20 bit redbook remaster from 1997 ( 7464-65122-2 )( CK 65122 ) and the first obvious difference was the diminished microdetail ( eg. air flutter ) in the reed from Desmond's sax. It was quite subdued in the vinyl rip. Although your vinyl rip was a lot cleaner than most needle drops I have listened too, it still had a noise floor well above the redbook copy, and that probably contributed to a little of the sparkle missing from the performance I am used to hearing from the album. I went through an exercise a while back of transferring a number of my old reel to reel tapes to digital and I came to the realisation that whenever an intermediate copy is introduced, it will never be as good as if you used the original master tapes. Your vinyl rip just reinforces that point. IMHO, needle drops are a worthwhile pursuit if you wish to casually listen to a favourite and often rare and unobtainable album in the car or when mobile, but will rarely equal a redbook CD derived from the same original masters. BTW, if you enjoy Take Five as a tune in it's right, and I presume you do, Joe Morello released an album called Morello Standard Time in which he plays a very nice rendition. It's released on the DMP label. Cheers, Russ
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243
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: Testing a few amps
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on: July 30, 2010, 09:15:13 am
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... while he recounted all the occasions where he had demonstrated the superiority of these CD players to his customers over their “terrible-sounding USB DACs”, and where he also made some pretty dodgy statements about digital audio in general ...
Hi Mani, it's reassuring to read that dickheaditis (tm) is not confined to the southern oceans and has proliferated worldwide .. haha. Seems like that company needs to change their name to "The Audio Insulters". Your patience exceeds mine by a long margin, as I would have hung up after a couple of minutes. I enjoyed the read Cheers, Russ
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244
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: Frame Buffer Size?
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on: July 30, 2010, 08:56:38 am
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Hi wushuliu and Every system being used here will have slight variants, so there is no "correct" buffer settings per se. However, as a general feeling, the larger the buffer setting, the "warmer" the sound is perceived. Conversely, as the buffers are lowered, the sound will appear to exhibit quicker transients, which some perceive to be more "accurate". Personal preference will dictate as to what you finally end up with. You will notice from my signature I use very low buffers, and that is attributable to the Juli@ card to a large extent in being able to support those low buffers. It is also a good idea to monitor your CPU usage initially while lowering the buffer size. A very low setting will increase the CPU requirements considerably. If you experience background clicks and glitches, there is every likelihood the CPU is not able to keep up, or, your "schemes" need adjustment. In helping to arrive at your ideal setting, I suggest you only change one parameter at a time, and then spend a day or two, before altering another. It can be very confusing if you change too many items at once ! When you have a spare moment, a signature ( go to your profile ) outlining your source path and XXHE settings will be useful for others to see what you are using. Have fun Russ
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245
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Progress Bar
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on: July 10, 2010, 05:06:17 am
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Peter, The progress bar that was incorporated in the earlier GUI has gone AWOL in the new look. Any chance of getting it back somehow, or using the 5 white "process" squares at the top of the GUI. For example, when creating extensive galleries or physically copying FLAC to WAV's, there is no feedback as to what is happening in the background. Thanks mate, Russ ( in chilly Melbourne ) PS. GO Spain ...
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248
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Hi from Melbourne AUS - Advice for a rookie
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on: June 14, 2010, 02:29:07 pm
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With regard to the hardware side, I am lucky as I recently bought a new desktop computer. It’s an intel E7400 and 4 GB ram (though on XP I can’t use 2GB of that). I run a tv tuner card and the internet through it onto the big screen in the living room, but I can disable all that when running XXHE.
Do as I do Dave .... create several partitions on your system drive, and set up multiple boot environments. Russ
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250
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your questions about the PC -> DAC route / Re: Hi from Melbourne AUS - Advice for a rookie
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on: June 14, 2010, 02:17:17 pm
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Hello from Australia!
If the person who introduced me to this site reads this, could you let me know who you are so I can thank you!
G'day Dave, you're welcome, and happy to be of service There's hours of reading here that you will no doubt have discovered by now. It's also a good time to have discovered XXHE as it nears it's milestone 1.0 version, although you have missed out on all the fun since it's inception 3 years ago. If you have any questions just blaze away. Cheers neighbour, Russ
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251
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: 0,9z-1 clock/resolution operations in future version
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on: June 10, 2010, 02:23:33 am
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Most users want to upsample or not. When they want, they want upsample to DAC's maximum resolution. Always.
Not necessarily Jarek. In my case my Juli@ and pre/processor will handle 24/192, however, because I use the parametric equilizer function of the latter to tame some minor room mode anomolies, I am restricted to LESS THAN 176.4 if I want to use that equilizer function. (There's a technical upper limit to what the pre/pro can have as input while still providing equilizer function). Upshot of all this is that I use DOUBLE upsampling for redbook stuff rather than a QUAD, which if used would disable the equilizer in the pre/pro. For this very reason I like Roy's idea of have an option to DOWNSAMPLE also. This would permit me to play 24/192 (and higher) material natively without first having to convert to 24/96 externally (eg. dBPowerAmp ). Cheers, Russ
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253
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: XX won't start with a 7 seconds track
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on: June 07, 2010, 03:37:06 am
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hey there Pierre,
thought I would just give this a bump as I noticed it was still an issue in latest version ( zb ).
I queued up Isao Suzuki's "BlowUp 2" album and it has a 9 second intro track which kills Engine#3(4) each time at play commencement.
Strangely though, if I reorder the tracks so they are played second, first, third etc, then that short track one plays OK.
merci beaucoup,
Russ
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