G'day Joaquin,

firstly, welcome to the forum, although I'm sure the circumstances of your first post could have been under better circumstances.

I suspect you have co-incidentally fallen victim to the all too common frailness of USB under WinXP.

Have a look here ( http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/usb-device-not-recognized/ ) for one possible remedy, but rest assured, it is almost certainly a registry error that is causing that USB device to be ignored now.

If the above link doesn't cure your problem, start googling for something like "USB device unknown" , "fixing USB devices" or similar.

Some time ago I experienced a particularly troublesome glitch similar to what you are experiencing, and I bookmarked the solution, but unfortunately I can't find that link for you now. I'm sure you will find the solution with a little googling though.

It is a fact of life that early USB controllers and XP are not as rubost as they are today. Everyone will have a problem USB device at some time. If you are old enough to recall the introduction of USB to the world by Bill Gates himself, you will understand what I mean.

Best of luck at finding the solution.

Cheers,

Russ

Not sure which sub-forum this should go, so plonked it here.

Hey Peter,

would it be possible to have some user adjustable pre-defined "settings" buttons within easy clickable reach on one of the tabs, or even better, squeezed in on the left section somehow?

When swapping from redbook, to hires and also DTS encoded albums, it is necessary to toggle some of the settings/parameters. A little tedious at times as you might have discovered by now.

I'm thinking of perhaps 3 or 4 to cover likely scenarious and to allow the labels to be renamed as the user wishes, although I can imagine there would be a restriction as to how many characters each button would accommodate. Or perhaps label them from the onset as "RB" (redbook), "HR" ( Hi-Res), "DTS", and "USER".

In operation, you would alter the settings/parameters as required to playback the type of files, and then assign that mixture to one of the buttons. Then all it would take is a single click and your environment changes to suit file type.

For example, playing a 24bit hires would need the sampling disabled, or playing a DTS would need the crack detection disabled, etc.

Does this make sense ?

Cheers,

Russ

I took a different approach today on my music selection for testing. Yesterdays sessions were more vocal orientated; midrange and percussive in nature. Today, following Roy's thoughts that the bass was improved, I first put on the XRCD24 mastering of Sheffield Labs "Drum and Track Record". Queueing up the first track and flipping back and forth between Engine#3 and #4 under Windows7, it was becoming apparent there was some slight improvements in the dynamics and control in the lower registers. Moving onto Stanley Clarke's "Lords of the low frequencies" from his "East River Drive" album, helped reinforce this notion.

As I can only use analogue out under Engine#4 with the Juli@ card, it dawned on me that I could now use quad sampling, whereas I was limited to double previously when using the digital out and feeding it to my processor.

Hmmmm ... that made a nice improvement, and I kicked myself for not thinking of trying the analogue approach in the earlier versions.

I'll stick to this combination under Windows7 for a week and then jump back to Vista for a session to see if that influences matters. At this point though, I'm pleased with the incremental increase in overall quality. Not as massive as the improvements that Arc Predictor brought to the table, but very welcome nevertheless.

Thanks again for your efforts Peter 

Cheers,

Russ

G'day,

It's not running in 'demo' mode still is it? If it is, XXHE will simply disappear randomly between 10 and 30 or so minutes after startup.

Cheers,

Russ

Chris and others,

I've updated the listing of autohotkey shortcuts to include the Alt-Z entry for copying tracks to the "Demo" area in the gallery.

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=939.msg7522#msg7522

If you are uncertain whether that list contains the most uptodate shortcuts, you can always open up the XX.ahk file ( found in your XXHE folder ) with notepad ( or wordpad or similar ), and look towards the bottom where new entries will likely appear.

Note: for the Alt-Z to work, you will need to replace the XX.ahk file currently in your active AutoHotKey folder, with the one in the "install" of 0.9y-5-00

Cheers,

Russ

Here ya go Chris. It's possibly missing a couple of the very latest shortcuts. Will amend later today after I've woken.

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=939.msg7522#msg7522

 

Cheers,

Russ

I've been flipping between Engine#3 and Engine#4 all day on my music server here, in both a Vista partition and Windows 7 partition, and I'm having a hard time trying to distinguish any noticeable difference(s). They all sound great --- certainly no backwards step from 0.9y-4 from what I recall from yesterday. !!

I suppose the proof of the pudding, so to speak, is, after living with 0.9y-5 for a few days, to jump back to 0.9y-4 and see if anything screams out at me as being poorer.

Now, in order to get Engine#4 running on my Juli@ card, I need to run analogue out, yet under Engine#3 I can use analogue or SPDIF to my processor, so the data paths aren't exactly the same. Even so, these old ears are still content

Anyone else have thoughts on differences, if any ?

Cheers,

Russ

haha ... yeah ... the reviewer name of the little JB3's was purely coincidental.

It's sooooo nice to have XXHE running in my study again, and I'd forgotten how nice those little JB3's are when fed with a decent signal. It's been a while since I last ran XXHE here in the study, but I'm enjoying what I'm hearing now. Nice articulation of instruments, good soundstage, and pinpoint imaging as you might expect when the monitors are only 950mm from each ear!.

The DTS playback isn't on the same level as in my music room ( understandably ) but it's nice to have access to all my data again via the network.

Still a llittle work needed in fine tuning the settings as I had a couple of stalls with a couple of albums, but other than that, all fine here so far with 0.9y-5-00 under XP.

Will reinstall my Win7 partition on my server later and see what I can break in that .. hehe

Cheers,

Russ

Happy to report I can play ( Under XP  using motherboard onboard sound - Realtek ALC 889A ) anything up to 24bit/192kHz tracks using Engine#4.

Even DTS encoded albums .. woohoo !

I have my study PC hooked up via toslink to a receiver driving a pair of little John Blue JB3 monitors ( http://www.stereomojo.com/JohnBlueJB3Speakerreview/JohnBlueJB3Speakerreview.htm ). The reviewer of the JB3 in that link isn't me.

Cheers,

Russ

Engine#4 ( Under Vista 32 bit ) works with the Juli@ card ( 1.05 drivers ) BUT ONLY using analogue output ( ie. speakers in control panel ).  I have had no success getting anything out with SPDIF.

Still a little flakey though getting the analogue to co-operate. When i first installed it I went straight to Engine#4 and looked at the VU meters in the ESI control interface so see what was happening. I only had a SPDIF lead going from card to receiver at that stage. When I saw the analogue VU jumping away merrily I hooked up a lead from the RCA output jacks of the card to my receiver and all worked fine.

More playing around ...  going to Engine#3 etc ... and then back to Engine#4 resulted in the latter failing to start again. Tried playing with split sizes to no avail, even restarting XXHE didn't help. Rebooted and Engine#4 behaved itself again .. hmmm.

Jury is still out over sound quality differences, and will take a while to come to any conclusion. Plenty of time for that later after I figure out what's needed to get things working reliably.

Cheers for now,

Russ

Well done Peter !

Dropped the split size down from 100MB to 50MB and I was greeted with sound.

That was easy 

This is the first version since 0.9w-7 that seems to work for me under XP. Will come back to this PC later for further play ... time for my main music server now.

Cheers,

Russ

G'day Peter,

Before I head for my music server and install this new version, I thought I would try it on my study PC here first. WinXP using a Gigabyte P35-DS3 motherboard, and I currently use the onboard sound device ( Realtek ALC 889A chipset ) with latest drivers for it.

When I attempt to play a track using Engine#4 I get a message pop up that reads ..

"Failed to write to Pin !!"

When I click on OK, I see the progress bar advance but no sound eminates.

I presume the error message is indicating a problem in building the DirectX graph correctly.

I should also add that I can get Kernel Streaming working OK with FooBar2000 on this PC.

Logs attached.

Although I have Engine#4 selected in settings, I see references to Engine#3 in the logs and processes in task manager show Engine#3 active. I surmise that there is no separate entity called Engine#4 as such, but is incorporated with the Engine#3 structure somehow.

I shall go play on my main music server.

Thanks as always,

Russ

EEeeeeek !!

Standing by to trouble shoot here 

I can imagine the frustration is getting the new version completed, but most advancements in life involve a few backwards steps along the way.

Cheers,

Russ

Ignore what I wrote above about my cure ... I still have the occasional buzz (which sounds like a repeating sequence of data in very quick succession), but it does seem to be related to disc activity taking I/O preference somehow.

Will have to put on my rubber gloves to get into this one more methinks !

The joys of PC 's .. LOL

Cheers,

Russ

Nice find Roy.

I've always found Logitech products to be reliable and they are a very innovative company. All my PC's have Logitech mice and keyboards. My music server uses the spare mouse buttons to start XXHE ( right push on scroll wheel ) and to select the next track via the right 'NEXT' button.

This AIRMOUSE may be just what we've been looking for.

I'll expect a full review in a week after you have bought one 

Cheers,

Russ