First of all, there are many many things that don't make sense in this audio world. We knew that, and I knew it too before I started this all. But, since I started with XX actually many more things now don't make sense. However, I know how to control/direct them. It's not science ... yet.

The resampling in Vista is a very dangerous thing. The only general advise I have for it : examine the samplerate the DAC is running at (and hope your DAC (or soundcard preceeding it) can do that).
The current version of Vista can only run at 44K1, 48, 96K, and 192K.

Do note that in the properties of the Device, the only thing with effect is in the right most tab in there. If you tell in there that your device can do 44K1, it will. So then feeding it with 48K will imply resampling.

If you tell that it can do 48K (which you would do for movie playback), then feeding it with 44K1 will result in 48K playback.
Nice job they did. Not.

Peter

Hi Leo,

Currently I am not doing that myself as of yet. A few reasons for that :

• The stability for Engine#1 is not okay yet (pressing Next etc.)
• We need to find solutions for the various install problems, i.e. direct answers. I must be able to deal with all of them !
• Ditto for "I don't get sound".
• You all must be able to get rid of the demo version. Currently you can't. Most of the work has been done though.
• I really really like "your" judgements, because I think I can trust them. When hundreds of others come around, I won't know who is who, and I sure wouldn't know by kind of default who uses what equipment. If everybody would say all is great, that's no problem. But when many say it is not so great, it would.
• In general I have to take a very deep breath. To me it is obvious that the least what will happen is that very many people will start downloading the demo; Now from the, say, 200 from Bert's forum, 25% downloaded the player. Probably many just to look, and obviously a great deal to really look into its merits. Now what will happen with a forum with 2000 members ? or 20,000 ?
  So no matter what the reason is for downloading, I can expec that the work coming from it is lineair.

But I expect the upcoming weekend to be ready for it, a bit depending on what you out there come up with.

Thanks Leo,
Peter

Hi Marco, Klaus, and Steve,

I closed this thread for now, because I estimate that I can't cope with (finding back) the different issues in one thread.

Also, I think most of the stuff dealed with is solved. Maybe the XP from Klaus is not.
If you are having issues, please put them all in your own topic (thread).

Peter

I put your post in a separate topic.

Can it be so that you are using the MME drivers ?
I don't think they can work with Engine#2 (which was just made for the signed drivers -> MME are not).

Marco,


Do you mean because of the demo version ?
Or do you mean because of Engine#1 ?

Wacky playback for tracksequence

With Engine#2, until stated otherwise, please do not press Next / Prev, or interrupt playing otherwise (e.g. click another track + Play or Stop + Play). The thing is completely wacky for these matters, and if you do so anyway, all will get messed up during that session.
Please note that the awkwardness of this has a good reason, and that's all the "illegal" I have to apply in order to get the sound right.
Anyway, put all you want to play in the Playlist area, maybe click the track you want to start with (default the first), press Play and stay away.
Note the conveniency of saving the Paylist area content into a Playlist stored on disk (fill in a name and use the Save button), just in case the player might stop before you wanted it (which in the demo version is about always ).

Playtime in demo version

The playing time is 5 minutes + something between 0 and 30 minutes.
If you always have 5 something is wrong or you are very unlucky.

Memory needed

Please keep in mind that the player "officially" needs 2 GB of memory. This is a safe amount, and keeps you away from troubles.
If you do not have this, it can still work, but it is kind of more difficult to understand what is and what is not allowed then. I'll try to sum it up though :

• First of all, this is NOT related to the 64MB thing you often hear about.
• If you have not enough memory (see below), Engine#2 actually cannot cope with that. It will choke, stop, randomly errors. It does *not* use virtual memory.
  Engine#1 though, *will* then use virtual memory, and it will swap the track to disk again, and starts heavily reading from there. This implies degration of sound !
• Engine#2 currently has poor memory management. This implies using more and more memory per played track that comes by, and actually it will be kind of coincidence if all goes right when the memory gets full at the loading of a track (but 4 out of 5 times you'll be okay). BUT :
  When you don't have the 2GB, you kind of ask for problems. For instance, when you have 512MB and the OS uses 300 of it, there's just over 200MB divided by 2 available for your track. That's 100MB on average, and that is some 9 minutes for one track.
• When Doubling is on, the memory useage doubles too, and with the before example your track cannot be larger than 4.5 minutes.
• When the memory is too low, that is, a next track needs to free old memory from the previous track (can happen with Engine#2 only), the larger the currently loading track is, the sooner things go wrong.

You can use TaskManager (rightclick on Taskbar - TaskManager), the Performance tab, to see the currently used memory. Remember, all is about the Physical Memory ("PF useage" at the left). Currently, with Engine#2 and too few memory in general (hence less than 2GB) you'll see it will reach the limit, and stays there, but varies per loaded track.
Using TaskManager will not degrade the sound as far as I can hear.

Do you use the legacy USB driver for that ? "USB Audio Device" ?

If not, is the track smaller than 64MB ?

Doubling is off ?

XP or Vista ?

DAC settings ? (if applicable)

Important

The 0.7d version contained an old check for it being a demo version, together with the new - intended one.
With 0.7d you *will* receive "Demo expired" in due time ...

On special request I uplevelled the playtime with an everage of 6 minutes.

See Model 0.7d for further (release) notes.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience.
Peter

Hi Marco,

Set your Primairy playback device to the one which makes sound (if everything is allright, the same as the one which makes sound with #1).

Peter

Hi there Werner,


First of all, good to know that "something" is working on your MAC. Thanks for the info.
Then, the his/noise you talk about is totally unknown to me. I wonder what that could be. It should be MAC related ... ?


This becomes the most important factor once you don't know what to check for else;
Differences between the versions (or means of connection) of the player sometimes are so small, that you must set yourself to explicitly look for involvement.


First of all, yes, this is kind of wacky, and for 50% this is an environmental thing, depending on the drivers. BUT, if you load a playlist, and then start from the beginning without touching anything, all should be okay. It is my hunch that with you this is not okay; please let me know whether all start to mix up by itself. If so, really something else is going on (the MAC again ?).


I never tried to look for one, but I created one myself (not available for distribution). BUT : don't do this under Vista, because Vista will just resample again.

Please take your time at comparing with Linux. It was and still is interesting and important to really know the difference.
Not to forget : this is still not the definite Vista Engine#3 version. That is to come yet, and sure is way better again.

Thanks,
Peter

Haha, yes, I realized that when I wrote it, but it isn't so. It is merely that just more people would benefit and want the player for that reason. So it is about money, yes.
But then again I can't imagine that e.g. you (after your last explanation) would spend any money on it.

Anyway, far more important (to me anyway) is that even through headphones you can (easily ?) hear the difference.


It's far more easy to just observe it (without headphones ) than explaining it.
The most important is that I apply *no* digital processing whatsoever.

Peter

Hi Steve, very nice to hear.

For me there's a kind of interesting message in your post, and that's about the headphones - as I never use one hence this wasn't any judging means during the development.

So, cleaner and clearer ...

Once you'd know that a lot of the cleanness comes from the elimination of standing waves in the room, one might wonder what happens without a room (or is it a very small room there in that caps ?). Of course all just starts with proper sound why the standing waves disappear, so you should be able to hear that in headphones too.

I just never thought about it, nor did I give it any attention. 
It would mean that even headphone users would benefit ?

Steve, I don't know whether you are a die-hard headphone user, but if so, would you say you could get real satisfaction by the improvement you obtain ?

Note that I operate in the context of wanting to feel the music, want to "hear the room", and besides that always was thinking that listening through headphones was a too easy task to let the music sound ok. 

Peter

OMG, what have I done now !

It seems that I have edited your post Chris ... ... instead of posting a reply. It must be too late for me !!

Am I stupid, or what ? 
I suppose you don't have it anymore ?

 

Hi Adrian,

Glad it worked !
Also, thank you for the info on W2K. So the same as Klaus told I think : apparently it works on Windows2000 as well (if you have only DirectX9.0c installed).
I am curious on the sound which comes from that. When did KMixer start to interfere ? Have to investigate that, and I will come back on it.

Thanks again for the info,
Peter