Now I'm puzzled.  I thought Adaptive Mode was really just a way to help people who were having trouble getting the buffer size and Q1 setting dialed in on Special Mode... that if Special Mode and Adaptive Mode were run with the same buffer size and number of samples they would sound the same.  Am I missing something?

Okay, Peter.  In the meantime, I'll sit back and listen to some music.

I had to show "At Attended" too.  Now I 'm getting the same cpu-usage in subsequent songs as I do in song-one. Are the 2-second intervals between 0% and 16% what I should expect?  Should I use a bigger buffer to bring cpu-usage down? I am seeing 0-10 buffer errors per minute, but I rarely hear any ticks or pops.  If I make the buffer larger I start to lose some of the sonic magic. 

By the way, thanks very much for your terrific service!!!

Unfortunately, turning on "Show as Wallpaper" hasn't solved the problem.  I'm seeing the exact same behavior.

I'm running in Attended mode.  Here are the logs from my last run where I played two and a half songs.  The CPU-usage on the first song fluctuated in 2-second intervals between 0 and 14%, and on the second and third song between 1 and 50%.  My buffer size is set to 64 with Q1=1 and using QAP.

“Copy to XX drive” doesn’t seem to make a difference.

The biggest CPU-user in Resource Monitor during tracks 2-n is XXEngine3 by a wide margin.   Second is usually System Interrupts. 

I just tried .9-y6 in special mode and the CPU behavior was as I remember it: with a buffer size of 32, the CPU was pretty consistently between 9-11% regardless of track number.   Back to .9-y7 and the same yo-yo usage.  This sort of disproves my premise that it could be related to installing 32-bit Windows 7.  Do you think, however, that it’s worth re-installing 64-bit?

Yes, I've tried changing split size and priorities and neither changed this utilization behavior any more than what you'd expect they would.

I just finished the test of re-installing XXHE .9-y7, and I'm getting the same strange behavior.  Next I'll try .9-y6.

The behavior I am seeing in special mode is different from what you’ve experienced.  The CPU-utilization graph on the task manager is so consistently odd that it looks like a sewing machine stitch: 1%-12%-1%-13%-1%-12% at 2 second intervals through the entire first song and then the same thing for the second through nth song only the swings are 2%-50%-2%-53%. The music is fine.

Yesterday I tried changing the buffer sizes but the problem was still there, albeit at overall lower CPU-utilization levels with larger buffer sizes.   I checked with Earflappin offline since I know he has roughly the same set-up, and his system is working normally.  He suggested I do a fresh install of XXHE , which I will try later today.

One other thing I will have to try, however painful, is to reinstall 64-bit Windows 7.  I recently installed 32-bit on top of 64-bit in the hope remote desktop (from my macbook) would be more stable.  Of course it didn’t help, and I never noticed this odd CPU behavior with the virgin 64-bit OS. Of course, I never ran .9-y7 either.  And now Peter is threatening a 64-bit version of XXHE, so I guess I'll want to re-install 64-bit anyway.   

Reducing the file split size doesn't change the behavior. 

I experimented by trying "special" mode instead of "adaptive", and I get the same behavior where the CPU is much lower on the first track than on subsequent ones. The band of fluctuations in cpu-utilization is tighter: 12-15% for song 1 and then 50-54% for song 2-N, but the difference between the first and subsequent tracks is even more dramatic. 

Is this okay, Peter?  The X3PB log in adaptive mode typically isn't typically showing any errors.

By the way, the same thing happens without upsampling, but the range of fluctuations is lower: 1-4% for the first song, and 3-14% for subsequent songs.

I’m seeing some pretty weird CPU usage.  I have my device buffer size set to 64 and the buffer size on my Lynx card is also set to 64.  My CPU appointment scheme is #3.  File split size is 200MB.  I’m playing QAP with Engine 4 in Adaptive Mode. 

Here’s the weird behavior:  On the first track of an album, the right CPU usage fluctuates in approximately 2-second intervals between 1% and 12%.  On the second and subsequent tracks of the same album, the CPU fluctuates in 2-second intervals between 2% and 50%.  If I hit the NT (next track) button, the CPU-usage resets to 1-12% fluctuations, and on subsequent tracks back to 2-50% fluctuations.

Any thoughts?  Does it matter?

If I recall correctly, XXHE converts to wav before playing so intellectually I think they should sound the same, but I swear wav file sound better, with better imaging in particular.  I was A/B’ing with a fairly golden-eared friend the other day and he agreed.  It’s relatively subtle, but if I had more disc space I’d convert all my flac files to wav.  Am I nuts?

Oh God… I’m sorry I asked!  Actually I think I get it, at least except for the case of HDCD material.  I thought HDCD DACs knew to do some extra processing when presented with data they recognized as being HDCD-encoded.  If the HDCD light on my DAC isn’t on, then the DAC must not know it’s supposed to do the extra processing.  Right?  Are you saying that in the case of HDCD material, you do the extra HDCD processing within XXHE when you see that the volume has been attenuated?

I use the HDCD light on my Berkeley Audio DAC to determine bit perfect data.  When I lower XXHE’s volume control the HDCD light goes out.  This conflicts with my understanding that XXHE’s volume control doesn’t damage the sound.  Can someone enlighten me?   

Earflappin,

Which Q1 value of 16 do you mean?  The tool tips value or the old one?  When I set the old value of Q1 to 16 (tool tip value of Q1 = 35), my CPU-utilization is 7-9%.  When I set the tool tips value of Q1 to 16 (old Q1 value = 5), my CPU utilization is 19-21%.   



Thanks,
Dan