The mobo port for the HDDs and the card for the FF.

The reviews for that card are not the best ... (just on that page you linked to).

Hi Pedal,

Since I have my SSD lying around for a week (but couldn't find the time to test with it so far) I will test it myself. But, if you followed 0.9u-12 --> Hiccups and Clicks this is to be expected if you have the music files on the SSD. But please hop over to that topic, because here it's really too offtopic I think).

The Core 2 Duo sure is better, but I can't tell whether it helps for this.
When I tested my SSD I will let know what came from it (in that other topic ).

Peter

Tomorrow ? when you wake up it must be day after tomorrow !

But ehh, djeezz, that sure looks serious. If you do it right, you do it right eh !?

I would grab a normal PCI Firewire; that saves you a PCI-e slot (although there are two in that mobo, so for that matter ... estimate your chances on what you'd need the most later).
Furthermore, grab one with a Texas Instruments chipset (since I never heard that you can do wrong on that).

And oh, don't forget to get a video card if you don't have one (and no, don't ask me which, I'm way behind on that).

Indeed I've always been Intel oriented, probably in order to avoid compatibility issues (don't shoot me, but in the past that certainly could be the case). Here's a small Intel list (I didn't check for the actuality) : http://www.sydneyhomecomputers.com/id14.html
Focus on the Core 2 Duo chips (which certainly is different from dual core) and you see that the L2 cache is 4MB from off the E6600 (which I have in the audio PC for over 1.5 years now).

And when you're looking into these things anyway, don't underestimate the importance of the speed of the FSB (Front Side Bus).

Be careful to choose a CPU which fits the socket and FSB speed of the mobo and of course choose the proper memory for all. Ah, you knew that.

Maybe this can help you somehow : Everybody, I think without exception, complained and complains about the sluggyness of Vista opposed to XP; My XP machines here have 3GHz hyperthreading processors, while the E6600 is (2 x) 2.4 GHz. My Vista shows no such thing as sluggyness, and the opposite, what just can't work under the hyperthreading processors (XP), works like a charm with the E6600 (Vista). I'm mainly talking about the Visual Studio environment, which is all but lean, and where it has become impossible to develop XXHighEnd further, because it has become too large to get any responses from the OS during editing.
So, I can only advise this CPU, which I btw use with an Asus P5B-E Plus mobo (AT size, and I think as loaded with options as your choice shows).

Looks all good to me Dave.

The Sandisk story ... I don't know. I see these kind of stories for a year or so, and it merely looks like they (Sandisk) just can't do it ? I wanted to by Sandisk (just for the reputation) but couldn't find a good one.
Btw, don't expect a SSD to be faster than a HDD for bulk operations, they are just not. But, you should gain on access times (3 ms for a half ful HDD vs. 0.1 ms for a full (just doesn't matter how full) SSD. That's why it's good for the OS IMO.

About the 8GB of RAM ... The Shut off Virtual Memory topic fairly shows that more than 2GB for one process can't be used. I can't check it myself, but I sure believe it. This means that XX won't be able to use it, apart from sneaky processes which may start as a separate job in the pre-processing area. But, right now I wouldn't know the what or how nor the why (ok, to quadrupule 60 minute tracks ). And with the upcoming hires stuff, yes.
But if I were you I'd start with 4GB, and see how to deploy that, to start with.

A last remark, but that is very theoretical, is about the CPU and it's second level cache of 2 x 512KB. This doesn't seem much to me, and I'd say 2 x 2MB comes first. And that *does* matter for speed, with the remark of that being rather important at the preprocessing jobs (where some 700MB is processed a couple of times in memory = pure cpu processes).

Peter

This is what I would do : http://www.acceed.com/pdf_catalog/adlink/PCES-8581-13S_Datasheet_4.pdf
Up to 21ft ...

This site is a good reference : http://www.acceed.com/group.phtml?g=44000 and note that interfaces with PCCards (for the laptop) exist as well. You don't need PCI express at all, but then you have to find a normal PCI interface. I came up with this one, because IMHO it is a good brand (AdLink).

So ... to proceed on this one :
Buy a good Firewire interface, stuff it in that box, connect a Fireface400 (or 800 if you like) to that, and coax-up to the DAC with 2.5-3ft.

Thanks so far Scott.
FYI : I have been watching the playback regrading the sequence for some albums, but saw nothing wrong. Playback ends just after the last track, but, ends in an "XXEngine3 stopped working". I also left the PC at that for a night, but the next morning it was still in the same state.

Did this happen with Attended or Unattended Playback ?

But maybe we're on the wrong track with this all because


this tells it is unrelated to the Cue File problem (wrong sequence playing or not), and it seems much better that we first try to find your restart problem. But is there a restart problem ? The stupid thing is, I 100% recognize your message from seeing that in the log (but I don't know which log anymore), and I just *had* to associate it with a "Stopped working" situation, because my system never reboots, and if it would, it would be asking for a password after that (and the sleep state does not incur for that).
So, how sure can you be that this really happens, hence are you abel to prove otherwise that indeed this happens (Logs).

Now we have three problems in one ...

I just bumped into a solution for this. It is solved in the next version.

Thank you very much for your detailed outlay Scott.
Btw, please put your data as mentioned (and more if you think it's applicable) in your signature. This is very easy for me and others, when finding common denominators in problems.

Ok. By now, I myself had this WP error once, and in that sequence somewhere and empty small window showed titled "ChangeWP". Of course I recognize this because I created it myself, but I can't understand what happens when the window is empty. I assume you all have this empty window too ...

Then, when you say "Image of the whole CD" I assume you mean you made a Cue File of it (via EAC), right ?
Well, that this ends with a "Stopped working" is very recognizeable, and somehow I "introduced" that some 4 or 5 months ago. IOW, I still must sort that out, which is not the easiest thing to do because it seems to happen only at playing the complete album. Btw, since the ChangeWP thing it happened only once to me, I never thought of the relation to that, so I will dive into it via that angle. But :
That this will let crash your PC ... ...


This is an interesting one, because I never heard of that, nor did I experience it myself. It could well be though that I never recognized things to be out of sequence, as well as that I always thought the album finished playing, while actually another track is there. Or IOW, it seems logic that when playing is out of sequence (and is skipping a track), things go wrong towards the end because another track is expected.
It wouldn't be so that you know of an album where you can copy this behaviour, hence know in advance what will happen ? If so, please post (or send me) the .cue file involved; maybe I can make something of it.


Ok, but what is ? the out of sequence playing, or the crashes of XXEngine3, or the reboots ?


Never believe in coincidence, and rather prove it isn't ! Another thing is that it might not be the best idea to auto-perform the upgrades offered, because you then never know what causes which. In this case it might be an idea to Google for the KB's concerned (each upgrade will have an MS KB number, which will be listed under your "Software" (or "Programs", whatever it is exactly)) and see whether others have problems with it. You also could go the nuke and pave way, and uninstall those upgrades.

Please let me know anything new on this, and don't hesitate to ask whatever it is you might want to know (without knowing for sure it is even relevant I mean).

Peter

Ah, no hard feelings. Just a little sad. And yes, you have been very unlucky.

I have been thinking ...
You'll remember that back then (the time of your tweeters) Dogber admitted that his drivers didn't do something right (must have been this topic). I don't know whether you still use his driver, but now look at this :

Vista acts strange regarding the change of Exclusive Mode. You can check this yourself a little by unticking those two checkboxes in the Advanced tab of the device properties. ... from here on, the device will be always in use until you perform a reboot. Now :

XMPlay also acts strange regarding Exclusive Mode, and it can play in Shared Mode even if you don't want it (ask for it). E.g. my FireFace can play in Shared Mode only (XMPlay).

Then, XX acts strange regarding Exclusive Mode, because it *cannot* play in Shared Mode (anymore).

These both latter could be enough to let Vista choke at forcing it into a mode it officially can't (but which is wrong, see the checkbox test). If I sneakily add to that a driver which is not 100% following Vista's rules (and again, if you still use Dogber's driver that certainly won't do that for its good cause), we're all asking for trouble. I'd say, read that topic I just referred to, and you'll know what I mean, and how easy it is to blame a player (which would be both XX and XMPlay at that time).

So it is the combination, and no occasional coincidence. In your no-boot case, I bet that the status XMPlay left the whole WASAPI thing in, didn't match what XX makes of it, with Vista in between being wrong in the first place. Again, this is sufficient to not call it a coincidence.
That the system can get into a state of not wanting to boot anymore, is kind of logic to me, although I would never be able to explain it (I just don't know enough about it). I once followed a trojan being active, and how the OS fights against that. You really won't believe what all happens when the OS misses something (senses that it can't do something), and what it is going to install, uninstall, activate, deactivate, in order to recover. Thousands of happenings (and the trojan wins) which can go wrong by themselves, and if then the system dies, it can well be in a state of not being able to reboot.

I really can't think of a reason XX causing this. Never heard of such a thing either !

Below first picture popped up two times over time during XXHighEnd playback. Hmm ... this indicated that it restarted by itself. I mean, I did shut it off (but said "start manually" (should be somewhere in this topic)).

So now I disabled it (2nd picture).
This was 4 days ago, and no anomalies regarding this appeared.


Note that if it is running again on your PC as well, you must explicitly Stop it (see the Stop button). Or reboot.

... but my second email returned after 30 hours ...
Now I sent you a PM in the forum ("My Messages", above).

Careful there, because SPDIF really *can* get too long (grey sound). Your best option would be to have an external FireWire soundcard, but my 10 meters (33 ft) I used at sometime degraded sound as well (less snappy, and again more greyish -> highly dependent on the FireWrire output of the PC as far as I can tell).

What about moving the speakers and all to the toilet ?

The latter is true, and the first as well with me.

I'm sorry that I have disturbed you with this on-sense.