Johan, please tell me you are using Vista/SP1 ...

Gerard, thanks for sending me the track.
Well, it quite unbelieveable (to me ) but here too it errors. I renamed the track and all to no avail.

Anyway, what can be copied, can be solved. So I will.

Hey Gerard,

Can you please tell by what means you (try to) get the tracks into the Playlist Area ?

1. Drag from Explorer (or drag from something else) ?
2. Click (hence select) one album in the Library Area and press Load ?
3. Select several albums in the Library Area and press Load ?
4. Select one or several (selected) tracks in the Library Area and press Load ?
5. Rightclick on selected items in the Library Area and choose Load Tracks ?
6. By means of the Open button ?
7. By means of loading a saved Playlist ?
8. Other ? (with description please)

Also
- How many tracks approximately should be loaded by the one action you perform ?
- How many tracks approximately are in the Playlist Area already before you start the action of loading ?
- I assume there isn't some kind of Cue info in the folder where the tracks reside ?
- Assuming you can copy this behaviour, what is the exact (please copy paste from Explorer) track name of the first track where the errors start ?

Sorry for all the questions, but without the answers I don't have a clue. Never saw it, never heard of it, and I can't imagine it is data (content of the track) dependent.

Peter

Just done exactly that, and works out ok.

Can you tell please, of what type (like WAV. FLAC) is the first album, and what type is the second ?


To be sure, this is what I did :

Load a first album (this is a FLAC). UnAttended is ticked.
Play.
Wait until the seond track is playing.
Bring up XX, press Stop and Clear.
Load a second album (this is a WAV) (first track is selected automatically).
Press Play.
(in the mean time, currently the 4th track is playing of that second album).

The title bar of your XXHighEnd shows 0.9u-16, right ?

... No. I can't copy that behaviour (anymore).

But wait a minute ... I'm testing some things ...

Well, with my own most fuzzy description anything is possible.

But what I meant :

Load 3 tracks in the Playlist Area, start playing the first track (UnAttended)
Bring up XX again, clear the Playlist, load 2 other tracks. Start playing the first track (UnAttended).
Now the third track of the old Playlist will play after the first two are finished ?

This is what you mean ?

This is what has been solved, and it is hard to imagine that problem still being there ...
Do you have Delete rights on your XX folder ?

Hi Pieter,


Take as the example the video "card" which is (to me) suspectible. Nothing you can do ...
Also, besides the "being packed with" most often the OS is adjusted to suit the manufacturers needs, and a more lean OS wouldn't even install.
And besides these more obvious stuff, I didn't start to mention the problems you will run into when you need many TB's of disks ...

With desktops too, you must be very careful. They too often come with dedicated stuff you can't get rid of. On this matter, I always used Compaq, and since it doesn't exist anymore, HP.


This is difficult to say;
On one hand XXHighEnd is the most lean of them all (read : uses the least resources of them all, and similar can only be reached by Linux based programs), so when it comes down to cpu useage you can expect the least problems. But as the topic 0.9u-12 --> Hiccups and Clicks shows, problems need not to be about cpu useage. It is merely about interrupts out of your control.
On an another hand, XX works very differently from the others (no Direct Sound, no Kernel Streaming, no ASIO) which make things difficult to compare.
One thing I know : when I play audio, there is nothing *I* can do to interrupt that even the slightest. But then again, the topic I referred to shows that I too can encounter hiccups which by themselves can be explained, but should not be there anyway.
Lastly on this matter, please note that effectively nobody has the real problems you described, with ChrisV as the exception, although right now I think he too found a setting that prohibits the "glicthes". I don't think this can be said from a Foobar setup (not sure though).


With this I meant :
a. performing = doing things by itself (and I did not mean this in the context of lousy performance);
b. that 99% of people (mathematically 99,95 or so) do not have problems with XX.

Ad b.
This has the context of most of the people being able to, say, overdrive for better SQ (this is about being able to run with Q1 at -2), bu many not being able to do that. Since the lower Q1 gives better sound generally (but not necessarily), here too I emphasize on the system being capable of that (which is unrelated to glitchless playback or red bars by itself).
If you'd follow the topics about people suddenly not being able anymore to use the lower Q1 settings, you'd see that this is actually my fault, although I'm not aware of the changes. This implies that changes influence microscopically *and* how much all is driven to the limit (in order to reach the best SQ).


Btw, when the nVidia indeed may cause problems, try to find the (by now 3 years old) 81.98 display driver version. For sure that won't allow current technical capabilities (like h.264 or HDMI output), but this one is proven to let VIDEO work flawlessly. And since video is controlled by audio ...
If that version won't work under Vista ... bad luck.

When you use USB toward the audio device (DAC) neither the Realtec or the nVidia will be used. But it's not about that. It is about that those things may generate (or need) interrupts. They just influence. And for sure *that* may cause anomalies when the priorities for that are set wrongly (by the driver !). This is about the ("PCI Latency") tool that works under XP nut not under Vista, allowing you to change those priorities (or better : the length a PCI devices may occupy the system(s bus). Maybe by now such a tool exists for Vista ? I didn't look for many months.

Peter



 

Just a small update :

Currently I am 100% satisfied with a very pronounced bass as how I think it should be perceived. The tweak ? better impedance matching between the DAC and the power amps.

... and I keep on saying this : there is hardly something existing that is more important than the better impedance match;
So far, I could solve all real anomalies (hence real "bad" SQ) by means of diving into impedance problems.

Mind you, "problems" is big wording in this case. But I just got annoyed of not perceiving that GREAT completely separate bass as how I perceived it from the live performance, and I actually thought it was not possible without a (stupid) separate (additional) bass driver and amp. But it just is.

Hi Per Aage,

Are you still with us ? If so, I will in due time come up with a debug version for you. Not that I currently know how to approach it ...


Do you have these for me ?

Peter

Dear Pieter,

In case someone else is not going to say it, I will do it :

wow Wow WOW !

If you don't mind ... reading your posts is very intreguing to me and IMHO in better english than anyone I know.
For me it could even have been three times as long, and I would have read it al through in one go. It must have taken you a day at least to put this all into these clear wordings. Hats off, really !!

Personally I can't add much to it, except for : never use a laptop. These girls have been fed too dedicatedly with their own software, and most probably you can't get rid of the anomalies ever (they just "need" them).
But if you ever want to try something again, my horses would be set on the nVidia (card ??). Most probably you can't disable it (hence replace it with a more lean card), so that would be a dead end anyway.


I can only congratulate with your persistency, you apparently being someone without the actual knowlegde, and if I may say so, of a somewhat older age as well (ok, you could have been working at Shell and abroad all the time, giving you "tropical years" or IOW half of your working life is enough to receive retired status ).

If - as in your case - time is NOT money, well, I guess one could spend the time in getting such an awful machine to do what you want, or better : what one should expect from it. But otherwise ...
Either way, thank you very much for a great contribution some of us are hunting for. In this context, please do not make the mistake that when your dropouts have vanished you should be satisfied; it has by now been proven sufficiently enough that the less the OS is performing, the better the SQ becomes. I know, this is easily said from someone who indeed can do what he wants with the PC, without the sound being interrupted (which I think is the case with 99% of people), but I only want to indicate never to be satisfied with just no clicks and all being there. This, of course, starts counting in when you indeed use XX for playback, and have experienced the benefits of PC playback with respect to SQ.
I know, this doesn't sound much respectful according to all your hard work. On the other hand, this remark is in the context of my own Vista PC showing yellow bars only (where they sure should show green), and your posts just tempt me even more to make them green.

Lastly for now, please give ChrisV the credits for the Latency Checker. It is he who brought it up, and it is he who has the problems you experience(d) as the only one I know of. I just passed the word.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them and never underestimate your own knowlegde;
I can only hope to have the answers, or that others have them for that matter.

Peter

0.9u-15 introduced some bugs which have been solved as per this version (all Engine#3) :

• A before Playlist being longer than the current one, now doesn't start playing the remainder of tracks from that curent one (e.g. track 13 of a before Playlist started playing after all 12 tracks from the current one had been played).
  
  
• Pressing Next (or Prev at Attended Playback) continued at the timer cursor porsition of a track playing before Next (Prev) was pressed.
  
  
• Ditto when the Playlist was cleared (Clear button) and Play was pressed for the first track to play.
  On this topic as well as the previous one, probably variations can be found not working as logically as you want.
  
  
• The Invert Checkbox was grayed out, and Invert could not be used.
  
  
• As it appeared, another variation of (non standard) WAV headers can exists, as exhibited by the Nin website (http://theslip.nin.com/, 96/24). They too, now play.
  
  

I just copied your current settings for myself, in case you will change them.

Thanks a bunch for your extensive outlay.

I must say ... I see similarities with what Edward experiences (0.9u-12 --> Hiccups and Clicks) regarding his mentioned "long playlists". Maybe he means it differently ...

So far I always ignored the "long playlist" issue, because I couldn't make any sense out of it, but you seem to be kind of persistent in that it is related to that. And, in the end of course it is ...

It is, because the playlist has to be read from - and written to disk. This is done by a Windows feature which may cause unwanted overhead. Besides that, indeed (!) it is so that 0.9u-15 adds I/O that 0.9u-14 did not have (the caching of the (conversion) data).

All 'n all you will be 100% right.
I now think that Visa can't cope with the deletion/creation of files very well (with a playlist of, say, 200 entries, 200 files will be deleted-created respectively).

Question (for Edward as well if he reads this) : What would you consider a long playlist ?



I will do that.
And I am sorry that it works like this at this moment. I just never notice it because I always dump a new compiled version into the current folder (could be a 1000 times a day).


I have a tip for you too :
Swap the Sunday morning mix with the Bass torture mix. It could save you some spoiled beer.
But buy some extra eggs.

[about the first alinea : this came from 09u-15 Long Error msg on startup, Vista. Then I split the post to this new topic]

Pedal, do during that occasion any messages from Vista pop up ? like "Host service has been shut down" or similar ?
If not, I do not recognize this. Otherwise, sure yes (and be sure to click away the message then; best is to restart playback).

And if not, could you try to describe better what you mean ?

1. A glitch would be a small repeat of the same sound (samples);
2. Crackling would be very brief soft ticks, a bit similar to vinyl;
3. Cracks would be bursts of obviously wrong data;
4. A hickup would be a small period of no sound.
5. Other ?

You seem to describe 2, but IMO that hardly can be incurred by other (Vista) activities ...

Peter