Yes, I have the Pro version.

The subject already reminded me of the allowed usage, which would be not using it for mid/high. So only the replacement of the Hypex would be allowed, hence for Bass only.

A schematic would be useless. Even telling in advance / in theory what to do is quite impossible. Taking out the Hypex would lead to something but it still would be a tedious job.

Something else is that I did not sort out the possibilities of the RME and if it can't bear 10 or so PEQs then it will be useless.
Also, for Bass only, MiniDSP would be sufficient IMO.

Hi Ramesh - good question.

Let me first say that relatively infinite design went into them, just because mechanical upgrade is, well, expensive. It's no NOS1 everybody shipped 5 or so times (and we back to you). Thus, we took measures in advance of desire for upgrade.

Sounds like BS, right ?
Yea, but I was there myself for - how long ? first one year for the Orphean filtering, next I think two years for the system as a whole, with as intermittent the Orelino (which Paul has).
Anyway, you can see it on the (crazy) possibilities of the electronics (mainly the input possibilities which you happily use yourself).

But

One of the more squeezing features is the DSP (including its unreliability as we know by now for already a long time). So what certainly is possible is replace the internal DSP with MiniDSP (there may be more). So that's 192KHz ADC rate - maybe more exists by now ? Or, some crazy thing I think of writing this ... what about the RME DAC /ADC (768 !) whith PEQ's via an app ?
One thing : this now has to be external. And would you care ?
I would not.

Again but :

But do I need it ? let's say that what one does not know, one does not need (this is a but of Dutch). So I myself never went that path.
It would require the experience with replacing a broken Hypex DSP in order to relatively easy figure out how to connect a new DSP, which always be external (just because it won't fit inside).
And then you'd have a plethora of new SQ options. Including DSP-control the mid and high.

This post (or yours) would be a first step out of many more and possibly also many $ more. But take it from me that really good options exist to replace all that resistors, coils and capacitors plus wires, with digital means. And this counts 100% positive when the ADC could be 786 - btw, I have one (RME ADI-2) which I only unboxed 2 months ago, after having it 2-3 years already. But mind you, that PEQ etc. app is only also 2 months new.

Regards and thanks you for the subject,
Peter

Arjan,

If I were you I would rather ask more instead of doing irreversible things.

The fact (?) that the OS may still be minimized, only implies that most probably you're also in "RAM" mode and that you possibly forgot that booting from RAM takes 2 minutes or so. It also means that the disk/ssd must be in the drive, or else nothing will happen.

So just ask - step by step - and tell what you see.

Kind regards,
Peter

Hey Arjan !

To be honest, that doesn't sound too good ...
Died of long time no use is a possibility, then thinking of capacitors dried up or something. I never heard of the situation and it would be disappointing if that really is the case (for something designed to be On 24/7) and further thinking that 3 years would be way short for such a thing.

The best what could have happened in this case is that it is our own PSU which died on you, because that is replaceable. With that I must assume we still have the parts for it (we don't have ready PSU's of that type in stock and the newer ones for the Mach III don't fit).

Can't it be that it has been connected to power all the time (or some of the time) you not using it, and that thunder strike may have caused a few things ?

Best regards,
Peter

Haha. The far more easy answer is that you both use XXHE "wrongly".
In general, there are numerous ways to load tracks into the Playlist Area (numerous : could be a dozen), and copying tracks at the Windows level into a folder, is not among those. I think I have no clue what suddenly brings you both in thinkin it can work like that.
It cant'.

Nik, you conclusion that coverart is not read from the file, is correct. Mind you, for WAV this even officially can't be - or at least 15 years ago that could not be.

Anyway, one of the dozen examples : drag a track onto the PlayList area from Explorer.

N.b.: Working with (small) Galleries would be the official way to play what Tore plays. These become 'meta data" folders. Exists from day one ...

:-)

What is a "Playlist" in this realm ?
The only phenomenon Playlist as such is one from Tidal. And Tidal stopped working for XXHE to begin with.
Playlist Area is something else, but there is no difference between one album or two or 20 with a couple of tracks of each.

And so I guess it requires some elaboration ?
Nothing stopped working over here.


That is because only 14393.0 is supported, and some older of course.

To avoid misunderstanding : creating those interconnects (make new connectors on to them) is a matter of not fitting. SQ will be fine anyway. In the post of that link you see me talking about 0.5mm and such. It is about that. And without the tools, it is guessing until you have it right. The proper tool costs 400-600 or so.

Hi Ramesh,

1. Buy new Neutrik connectors in a suffcient amount so you can practice;
2. Practice on a piece of cable you won't be using;
3. Be prepared to spend 4-8 hours before you can make a decent connection.
4. Be prepared for eventual failure.

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3026.msg32839#msg32839

The Original Blaxius (thus in green form) has been the only cable I made myself for the mechanical part of that job (outside of soldering), mainly because it seemed inefficient to teach my partner in crime over here how to do it. In the end - with the sleeved cable - that happened after all and I recall that even this "teaching" took quite some hours.

Summarized : I don't think I can advise to do it. And you won't even know in advance how many connectors to buy ($10+ per piece) because you won't know how many will fail. The picture in the link I just gave is telling though - just count the pieces of cable for an approximation.

Best regards,
Peter

Dear Ramesh,

What a nice warm message.
With the Nasdaq some 600 points away from an all time high, I sincerely hope that all goes prosperously for you and your organization. I mean, from what I recall it weren't the best of times when you jumped onboard.
It would really be nice if we can meet some day and 2024 looks to be a good year for that.

Dear all,

Like I told the other day, audio forums seem to have had their best days; a world wide phenomenon. This, while I don't recognize that people lost their interest in the hobby - not at all. What does happen though with this quietness, is that I myself lose some of my eagerness to improve on SQ for you people out there. I guess that problem springs a bit from it all still being a hobby of sharing, never mind we charge $ for what we do. Combine this with the sheer fact that I myself would not know why improvement is necessary and ... it becomes quiet from my side just the same.

The other day over here we contemplated whether we maybe should dive into power cords; it seems the only matter we did not exploit yet. This, while in a far past I too was using 1 inch thick power cables because I was sure that it helped. And Yes, it even was the only means of "cabling" I believed in. All the other cable types were shoe laces. And look what happened. So now it is the other way around - only the power cables I don't believe in. But is it justified ? Maybe someone can delve some nice theories about how power cables would work for the better. The "problem" here really is that it will be quite hard to test; to me it feels like that we first need to make power cords for all involved devices, before we can judge what they accomplish.

In any event I want to thank everybody for another year of sharing this great hobby. Looking ahead I wish everyone happiness and foremost a good health !

Peter

Hey Richard !
If you got married ... then I hope you didn't need to sell your boat. ;-)

There is a (slow) work in progress regarding Tidal. But as how it is now, it is not really possible to integrate it with XXHighEnd. But see the post from Rudolf above; that brings something at least.

Kind regards,
Peter

I think there is interpretation involved as well.

As I have a kind of proved (kind of !) that all can be done on ad-hoc basis by Tidal, they could execute the MQA "folding" just the same. But now it all depends on the Tidal "download app" which a. downloads and b. interprets what to do with it (example : MQA).

My own conclusions so far in this topic could be wrong just the same. We must really throw some IQ/reasoning at it.

Hey George, thank you !

For others : what you see below I still had on-screen, so yes, indeed that.

... But I may miss the point of what you are trying to bring across ...

In any event the files as how they will be on your HDD do not contain the data to "be" HiRes. Look at the files sizes in my previous post. The top part of the two lists is close to twice the size of the bottom part; the bottom part is just 16/44.1 (the top part 24/48).
For more reference below a screenshot of a "local" genuine album in FLAC with slightly worse FLAC compression.

So, despite of what you wanted to bring across, I see that the Tidal app upsamples just as the MQA prescription has been (thus not only for Roon and Hardware, but also for the Tidal app itself).

We are all hoaxed, and it is my estimate that some pay extra for that as well (my subscription still costs 19,99 for "Hires").

Super thanks !
Peter

Something is seriously wrong, and possibly Tidal doesn't know that themselves.

First a conclusion of what's below, because I don't think I knew this : it should be so that the Tidal MQA presentation always was done on the fly. Read : during the playback (download if you will) the album is processed and turned into MQA. This should be derived from the "fact" that the Album ID stayed the same (see below) while today no 24 bit file comes from it. You will believe me when I say that the bottom version was denoted Max.

It may be less easy to grasp that the original MQA album was 24/96, but see below to proved that (2nd picture).

So one hour or so further and I have not been able to find even one album that would be Hires, so what remains is the proof that the Tidal app plays them as Hires. So let's see how we do that ...
Well, no clue. I guess this starts with not being able to play anyway because of (a Tidal message) "There's a network issue - unable to play".
Oh well.

An intermittent other conclusion seems to be that with the one album showing Max and the other showing nothing (= "Lossless") both are always 16/44.1 for those cases I examined and this includes existing ones on my HDD which are 24/48 at the file level. I have no clue / hint about whether these albums now are album-originals (CD's) or that now all flaws over at Tidal's and that Album ID's have been mixed up or what not.

If someone is able to verify the playback rate of the Stevie Wonder album (see in the first picture below) by Tidal app means, please don't hesitate. This should not be done by something like Roon, because that will upsample by default, once it detects MQA (and that tag sure is still in there - it now implies the Max tag).

I suppose it is very well possible that all is now tweaked such, that all prior MQA playback now thinks it is Hires. Why ? well, because
a. It was MQA's prescription for a few years already that upsampling should be done 2x by standard (I just did not comply to that with XXHighEnd);
b. I heard that MQA lights still lit, but that the blue/green led comes not on any more.

Ad b.: This would testify that officially MQA was shut off, but that we are fooled as much as we already were. Just by full automation. You can't see it on anything. Yea, with XXHighEnd ...
Or download the files and throw some knowledge at it (look at the file size - play through Foobar and *know* that it s*cks to begin with or else you'd be sure to do something wrong (while you are doing it right).

Pfff

Hey Colin,

Great thanks - I can work with that.
But bad news - as expected ...
It is 16/44.1 or IOW, the stupid MQA stuff (not even the "good" stuff, because 16 bits).

Internally it is denoted "HiRes" opposed to "Lossless" (smart move) and it readily explains why I deemed many albums flawed-sounding - this will sound bad as well (because molested Hires and nothing is done to it by XXHighEnd now (MQA decoding is disengaged per new download means).

Of course this depends on your info, although I can of course check that myself too. Wait ...
Hmm ... that says Master, so where did you find Max ? I verified the ID :
https://tidal.com/browse/album/4157739
hahahahahaha, bunch of stupid ***sholes. Look below;

So my Tidal player proposed an update and after that voilá, the Master denotation changed to Max.

As a bonus, the last picture shows nothing next to the albums while prior to the update more than half showed "Master" next to them.

So as expected, Tidal is fooling us all and I guess it won't be so that they saw that I can see through all (XXHighEnd can), and thus they banned XXHighEnd as a software player from Tidal. I do like to think this though.

Question is : how do all formal Tidal players work with this ? have they all been banned ?
How does the existing MQA hardware go about this ? The album is exactly the same as it was (you could do a compare, Colin) so that hardware (but also software players) will happily show it is still MQA.

In the end it is not the best example, because we should have a 24 bit one. But now I know how this works, I can inject those myself a. to the new environment and b. to the Tidal app.

More in a next post.

Hi Colin and everyone,

A bit late with responding ...

I made good progress yesterday. The general consensus is that I was finally able to create an environment that allows comparison (meaning : all in good shape from within XXHighEnd). This now also allows to observe what "Max" does or does not.

Having said that, I don't even know yet how to recognize "Max" as such. This could be the most simple "look at the Sampling Rate, Peter !". Sure, but I like to have the examples first. When I have a couple - or know how to find them via the Tidal app - I can run the Spectrograph as usual (from within XXHighEnd). So if you have suspects, don't hesitate to post them here !
I think I told about it elsewhere, but if we have a new way of knowing how to observe certain data, it will be a matter of laying out the workflow as how I go about it myself at this moment. This means (for short cuts) that XXHighEnd can not search and integrally create the Library Area with Tidal albums as how we were used to, but they still will be there and, for example, show the latest (New) albums ready to play. Below an example of my New library (most people won't even know about the New feature as per last 2.11 super vague Release Notes), which just shows over my good old 2.11 Audio PC (Mach III in my case) without any bit of upgrade - put there yesterday. So the workflow is about how to create that in such a way that it is downwards compatible with all we have. And regardless of Max (which may or should work just the same), I have that now.

And for the best fun again : You can see it never stops and how I never get around with a new version, because now I finally have this going, it is Max which tempts again or a next new step first. I am also quite definite about something else (or actually not) : this Cloud stuff does not work out at all because a developer like me will always be behind the facts and things just stop working underway. I think elsewhere (in the realm of Tidal) I talked about how I killed the Amazon integration because of the very same, but already more than 10 years ago ... today this still happens. Tidal changes things, MQA comes about, MQA disappears, Tidal changes prior to that, and now Tidal changes again (with the Max thing, FWIW at this moment). The ERP environment (my main job) bugs me the very same. If the main tools are not "on premise" as how it is called, then it is up to the Gods how your company will survive the next month with the grilles (?) of the vendor(s) involved. I have *that* still all on premise, but it means that there can't be progress or else I have to do all myself within that shielded environment. Tidal is very similar, while they even cut me (XXHighEnd) off (say because I kept on going my own way, including not doing what MQA prescribed). In the end I will lose that - in the end all the customers will lose. But still not yet ... 

Peter