XXHighEnd

Ultimate Audio Playback => XXHighEnd Support => Topic started by: boleary on July 04, 2010, 12:22:27 pm



Title: With a track playing, don't shut down too fast....
Post by: boleary on July 04, 2010, 12:22:27 pm
Yesterday I was in a hurry to leave the house and as a track was ending hit alt/x to bring up the gui, once it was up and the music was still fading, I hit the stop button. This sequence resulted in an explosion of static. I am glad my finger was on the power switch of the amp when it happened.

On football, CONGRATULATIONS. Hope next round goes well too!



Title: Re: With a track playing, don't shut down too fast....
Post by: PeterSt on July 04, 2010, 04:55:21 pm

After some thinkering about this ... It may look like an excuse, but since I can't think of anything else, I sure *can* imagine the relation to whatever it is what's always bugging you.
Stopping tells the sound engine to stop its activities; it will close down the sound device and next aborts itself (XXEngine3.exe).
Notice that this closing down of the device doesn't seem to work properly at your side (derived from your problems with switching sample rates). Also notice that I don't say I am not to blame for that, but at least I can't find the cause. Now :
What may have happened is that your last buffer was playing (in the soundcard(USB)/DAC combination), while from the program's point of view all was done already. Next you hit Stop, and the process of stopping the device would have come into action normally. Not in this case, because there was no action already. In the mean time there's a kind of unexpected situation because you will be killing XXEngine3.exe anyway, and know I don't know what exactly will have happened, but I assume something like "and the device was not shut down explicitly". Next, your device could have become a loose running train, and it starts to repeat the last data in the buffer (cyclicly), BUT it doesn't match the "block length". Thus, if your buffer is e.g. 80 bytes while playing a 24 bit file (= 6 bytes per sample), and the next round the byte order will be wrong, and static is the result.

IIRC, one of the last things I said about your general problem was about a (too) large buffer. This would fit that thinking. Thus, supposed that buffer would be 2 seconds or even more, it will imply that the program thinks all is finished, while actually for 2 seconds more there is sound (and activitiy in the soundcard/DAC). In fact, the latency will be 2 seconds because of this. This counts for everything, except for sweeping out the program (Engine3.exe). That will happen right away when it thinks all is finished.

You may try to copy this at will, in order to see how big the coincidence was that you implied killing the program just at the wrong time. But, do it with a similar (for format) file as when this happened, with the same Upsampliong etc.; when it is fairly easy to copy this, I may be able to adjust something, and you can next test whether it helped. I mean, nobody wants this, not even you because of some factor we don't understand. IOW I sure want to try to solve this.
Just drag the time cursor towards 10 secs before the end of the trag (or whatever you are comfortable with), and let that be the last track in the Playlist Area. Unattended. Right after you hear sound you can bring up XX again, and click Stop whenever you think it may happen again. And set your analogue (!!) volume low enough of course.

Peter


Title: Re: With a track playing, don't shut down too fast....
Post by: boleary on July 05, 2010, 01:40:52 pm
Hi Peter. I've spent an hour trying to replicate this and no luck. Unfortunately I don't remember the exact file that was playing, but I have tried both 16/44 and 24/96 material. With each attempt I selected two tracks (same sample rate) with the last 10-20 seconds of the first track played first. I use XX daily and have never had a glitch like that before. I guess one can't know if it was a problem with the track or a hicup with the program or a general hicup with my particular system........very frustrating given the likelihood, but not certainty, it is a problem with my setup.......

Wish I had better news. :(



Title: Re: With a track playing, don't shut down too fast....
Post by: PeterSt on July 06, 2010, 05:06:14 am
Ok, I will focus myself on that area, because I rather twist it around : if you can't copy that while you had it once, it can happen to anyone. And as we all know one heart attack could be one too many. Better safe than sorry.

Thank you for your time. :)
Peter