Pieter and all,

Thank you very much for your input !

Of course a (bass) guitar amp is a different beast. It even takes some investigation how to play with such an amp "cleanly", hence without any distortion applied. Ok, I got there, and then thought, oh, let's forget it. It can't be the way ...

Besides that, my (15") woofers already have a very low mass, and the only thing I could imagine is that my gainclone dedicated bass amps don't have the juice to drive them. But actually, no ... that should not be true either ...


With the various versions of XX it is not so easy tp keep track of all the (resulting) parameters that changed, and what you applied a previous time in order to attack the outcome concerned;
Today I thought about the less bass I applied a while ago (in the XOver) just because some XX version required that, and I just tuned it up again. Yep, I added some energy.
I was much satisfied tonight already, but I even will add more.


The open door thing I recognize, but as many of you will know, I am (XX is) into filling the room with much more bass than any unprepared room can have. And, following the Release Notes on XX and the comments on the versions concerned, you can see that this was going towards "less good" as I intend or am proud of for in fact the 0.9u versions. Not so anymore, which is most probably since 0.9u-13. The ability to feed the room with a rather infinit amount of bass just is back ...

For your interest, I am playing with subwoofers and all, and at 7 meters (approx. 21') distance, the SPL is 80dB on the low end (and for easy listening tracks), which btw does not say @1m this is 42dB or so more (this is because of the directional sound of horn speakers and possibly the circle shape of the "corners" behind the speakers). But anyway you can think of the room really being full of sound.

To put some context to this topic for those who don't know : what I am after is the 100% copy of the live (or studio) performance. So, getting the disturbances out of the way is long (well, a year or so) behind me, and from that point on it is only about reaching reality better. I think, generally spoken the cymbals have been the most difficult, and reaching their SPL as perceived from a live performance was achieved by uplevelling the highs with 16 dB (starting at 5K, lineairly up from there on). Does this incur for hearing distortion in the high frequencies ? no, just not ! In the contrary, things became too smooth of it, which was the very reason to create 0.9u (make things more metal). What it actually did was filling up "holes" in the lower frequency regions, taking away distortions ! As a matter of fact, I am using this for such a long time now, that it's my advise really to try this out.

Last Friday at the theatre I was telling my wife that we really could use much more bass to achieve reality. This appeared to be very much truth today, but only because it has tuned out. And as you will know, when standing waves take part of you(r room), you are lost for good bass. With the early 0.9u versions of XX this was just so. It disturbed me, and I complained about it. Today it is back. Just tune it up.
I must say though, that together with it, the more plastic like highs are back a bit. Too smooth.
Digital being too smooth ? oh yes.

But I'll find something for that again.
It could even be an XX-existing setting. Too many already ...

But for now, I'm more keen on even more profound TOUT bass. I mean, few people will be about in your face smashing cymbals anyway. Smooth is more nice. But that bass, I ensure you, that will really make your day. It can be done without room treatment and without (PEQ) equalizing.
The bass is the leader of the band, but how often do you perceive it like that ? ... that's what I mean ...

Thanks,
Peter

It is strongly advised to not use your system without a preamp (or the pre-amp at max volume for that matter) if you or your speakers won't be able to handle a situation that e.g. the file contains wrongly formatted data or otherwise - because of which cracks may emerge with an energy beyond imagination.

The following changes have been applied (Engine#3 unless otherwise noted) :

• Upsampling (Double and Quad) now allows for an Anti Alias filter, which is applied when the new AA checkbox is ticked.
  
  You can try this when the lack of the AA filter bothers you, from theory or practice.
  Keep in mind though that the preprocessing needed for this takes some 30 seconds for 5 minutes of playback, which implies that with Attended playback it cannot be used when gapless is required. Also, with Unattened it takes just that time to prepare the tracks for playing.
  Note that just Double or Quad doesn't allow the AA filter to be applied. Only Upsampling does that.
  Theoretically this applies to all Engines, but only Engine#3 has been tested.
  
  The AA filter obviously does not lead to bit perfect playback (as Upsampling already would not).
  
  
• The Anti Alias filter actually was born within XXHighEnd to support for DXD (352800) downsampling to 176400, which was introduced by 0.9u-12, including lots of noise because just the lack of the AA filter.
  Keep in mind that DXD 352800 playback needs the Mem checkbox to be ticked.
  Together with this subsequent playback of DXD files downsampled to 176400 now works (previous versions let error XXEngine3 at the end of the track).
  Native 352800 files (for the rare who have a DAC to play that back) will still error at the end when more tracks are asked for playback.
  Note regarding the title and downsampling : Only downsampling from 352800 to 176400 is supported. This does not require to tick the AA checkbox, and goes by automation; But might you have a DAC that supports 352800, downsampling is not applied.
  
  
• With special thanks to Gerard, during the load of a next track the Q1 setting is set to 14. After that next track commences playing it is reset to you original setting.
  Tests show that this helps eliminating the hiccups as have been reported since more preprocessing is applied (hence with the Mem checkbox not ticked), but with again larger files to be loaded because of the applied AA filter as mentioned above, it still can happen. Please report if this is so at one occasion per album at least. It should be rare and merely one occasion per day.
  
  
• A bug has been found on 176400/24 playback with a 16 bit DAC. This has been solved, but note this has not been tested.
  
  
• At the preprocessing needed for FLAC and MP3, the time position cursor commenced before meant preprocessing was finished. This has been solved now. Theoretically this invloves Engine#1 just the same, but nothing has been changed here.
  
  
• The choice for the Engine has been moved to the Settings Area in order to create some space in the left pane.
  
  
• A bug has been found for the Q1 settings of -2 and -3;
  -2 appeared to be set equal to -1;
  -3 appeared to be set equal to -4.
  Now both have their own values indeed.
  
  

Additional notes on the AA filter application :

Since this is preprocessed out of XXEngine3, no additional (hence anomalies) on SQ are to be expected from withing XXEngine3 itself. But :
It appears that applying the AA filter, incurs for heavy I/O for over 10 seconds just *after* the track has been preprocessed and is already playing. Theoretically, during this time, SQ may be influenced because of this.
The additional I/O you see is outside of the control of XX, and seems to be the flushing of the paging file (swap file), related to the heavy I/O needed to apply the AA filter, as occurred before even a first tone from playback was heard (we're talking UnAttended here).

Furthermore, it certainly seems worth while investigating the SQ of Upsampling by this means (the AA filter) and overall it may be better than normal playback. It certainly does not seem annoying, unveils more from the tracks (mainly in the voice area ?), and only at rare occasions high frequency anomalies emerge.
Please let know what you think ...

Lastly, this is the time to check the 2 channel DXD 352800/24 files from http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html but keep in mind that you will only be able to play them by means of 176400/24 downsampling (if all is right 176400/16 for those with a DAC at that rate but 16 bits only will work too). Unless you have that 352800 DAC of course, then it plays 1:1. In either case, do not forget to tick the Mem checkbox.

Edit : It has been reported that those running with a Q1 higher than 14 have problems at track boundaries (XXEngine3 stopped working).
Edit 2 : This has been solved in 0.9u-14a.

I went to a concert of Gare du Nord last Friday, and sat back (front row) once again to perceive the differences with live music versus playback in the listening room.
Btw, for those who auditioned them, what a strange bunch of dutch/belgian those are ... e.g. their mixing console looks from 40 years ago, as well as their equipment, including a vintage Rhodes electric piano and an old M-Audio keyboard fed by a brick adapter. I found no speakers radiating towards the audience, but everything was amplified. It's my guess we were listening to their own monitor speakers, possibly helped by the milk box bose speakers from the theatre (Holland-Kampen) itself.
For their live performance, well, I can't help it, but to me they are a bunch of zombies of barstools. No way they get in touch with the audience, probably incurred by (leader) Barend who IMHO better stay behind the scenes in order not to be so dictatorial and let the other band players more free. Very strange to witness this from otherwise very good music as I know it from their albums.
Also, the drumkit used, with one base drum, one snare, one small power tom and one jazz tom was apparently too few, because it was necessary to support the drummer with drumhits coming from whatever invisible device. Quite disturbing.

But then there was the bass guitar. Apart from my idea that the bass guitarist together with the trumpet player were best of the band, it occurred so much to me that the bass in my listening room s*cks;
Throughout all songs playedhe used two bass guitars (a 5 and a 4 string), and in each occasion - and at any note coming from those guitars (I mean also the high key notes) - I could clearly hear the individual vibes. Added to that the bass was played very profound, IOW with a volume way louder than I perceive it in the listening room. Mind you, not disturbing at all, just more loud, and clearly to me, free of resonance or fumbling (and of course the large space of the theatre contributed to that).

Yesterday I ran the same tracks from the albums I have of them, and there the bass is just "dark sound". Just bassy. No recognition from the instrument, no individual vibes as clear as I heard it on stage.
How can that be ?

Of course, the guy played with his own amplifier and speaker (wherever that resided), but it came to me that it was the speaker doing this. Must be very loose, or with a lightweight diaphragm, I don't know ...
But now there's this :

A few months ago I bought a bass guitar myself, and despite all the (PA) amps and speakers I own, I was advised to buy a dedicated bass guitar amp/speaker. "The energy a bass guitar produces is way beyond everyting else, but if you don't have the proper means for playback you won't even be able to surpass the drum kit" I was told.
And of course, we all know that the energy our bass speakers need is way more than the mid/high, and this kind of comes down to the same. But doesn't it get enough ? don't I hear those vibes because it gets fumbled because of bad acoustics ? do my speakers need better decoupling from the floor ?

NO. Why ? easy, because my own bass guitar with it's dedicated amp DOES produce those vibes. I didn't try it in the listening room, but I'm fairly sure it does. Indeed that (15") speaker has something like being very loose. But it's a PA thing !

On this matter I want to refer to another oddity that always has been occurring to me;
You might not believe it, but for me a good performing system could always be measured by perceiving synthesizers the best. Hmm ... but that's pure electronic "music" ! How come ?
Well, I can't tell about others, but I just own a couple of synthesizers, and it is obvious that I compare with those. Those too obviously play through their own amplification (hence not through my normal audio equipment) and those too play through their PA speakers. Are my "audiophile" speakers too refined, or what ?

We can hardly state that the normal audio equipment have to pass all the music information through one set of amps and speakers, knowing that those synthesizers (and keyboards for that matter) own all the variations of instruments (including drums), thus again all is mixed into one stream of piled music data. So it cannot be that.

Is my DAC worse than the DACs in a keyboard then ? hmm ... I hope not and can't imagine that.

It seems logical that it can be the source (the (ripped) CD and playback of it). And, of course, as we know that *does* matter.
But this is something different. This is about energy.


I am going to do a strange thing; I am going to drag down that bass guitar amplifier and speaker and connect it to the stereo.
Beware if it helps !

Ah, so good that you mention this ! That needle in the haystack would not have been found otherwise ...
Also, this gives better peace (so far) ... that memory-thing only could hardly have done this ...


I once more wish to emphasize how important it is that you guys are there. There is NO WAY to do this alone.
Special ...

For the 24 bit versions, no, I don't think so. But many report like this (compare the Fireface, which does it right).

If it's not a 192000/24 card then more is the matter (compare the Fireface, which does it WRONG above 192000 ).

Moving to a sound studio he ?

Yes, I was looking into this excessively yesterday (because of wanting to tweak the appointment of the loading thread), and from theory (hence looking at the cpu graph, without sound) it is clear to me that Scheme-2 behaves how we want it. That is, the loading goes to core 1 BUT the playback can't be decided for (with Scheme-2 playback goes preferrably to core 2 but may go to core 1 when the OS likes that.

Scheme-1 is a different beast; this tells the audio to play in core 2, and all of the other stuff to be in core 1. But, the downside is that the loading goes to core 2 as well (it inherits from the playing thread). Also, knowing that Edward has (had) the problems with Scheme-1, from this we should derive that it is the loading itself. When you, Gerard, find that Scheme-1 helps making it better, the conclusion must be that it is stuff from the OS itself that interferes with all, and that it actually is a problem with switching between cores (the output towards the general bus or whatever) or something in that area I can't comprehend so far.
Scheme-3 indeed is the worse from normal theory, and Scheme-4 is the worse when switching between cores to the matter of dedicating threads doesn't work properly. On the last, keep in mind that each time a thread switches from core, the in-cpu cache memory has to be copied which is consuming by itself.

These matters are rather complex, and FYI many pro audio people see a degradation of sound (like glitches) with Quad core processors (or at least an unexpected lower throughput opposed to dual cores).
I think one can get a degree in getting this right.

Well Dave, not to keep you from your sleep because of perceived brain damage and all, when I wrote the before I was still at home, and I just couldn't wait. So I already listened.

Ok, the family came down wondering whatever was going on because I never play music that early.

I can only say : I can't comprehend;

I took that crazy ticking Cornershop thing (and now I'm stuck with that 2nd track in my head the whole day), of which I knew that the vinly ticking goes along with the beat.


Ah, you just admitted that.
Psychologically we are influenced by the third track, that indeed mimics the vinyl (or whatever it is that it tries to mimic) and which is VERY similar to the other ticking. Only more exaggerated.
Btw, I didn't run from 4 and further, but I would swear there are more of these exaggerating tracks. In fact they all ticked so where is the border of reality.

To make a long story short, the ticking has gone (not in the beginning and other pieces of the third track), and I really don't know what to make of it.
The first thing I should do now, is comparing both player situations for being as bit perfect. Of course I know they both should be as can be, but I want to be sure.
Assuming both are the same, we have the most wild example at our hands on how software can differ to SQ. I mean, man, this isn't normal !!

Please do not forget what I said before about this, which I won't draw back : the transients just *are* in the data, they look completely abnormal to me, I was told that can be so, and from there on we heard them. This was the sequence, so this was the placebo ? Oh no ...

Until I can prove otherwise (and I will be hard working on this the upcoming days) those transients can be squeezed out of the data (before 0.9u-13 latest versions), or they are just skipped (u.9u-13).
It is clear to me - by means of a couple of bold statements from a few who listened 5 minutes and posted that things had changed for the better - that this influences the complete picture. Even I can hear it hehe. But now hear this :

If this really isn't incurred by software error (the being bit perfect of both versions must prove that), then we now have a tool that can tune in between following transients which really shouldn't be followed (before 0,9u-13 versions), and which does that a kind of other way around : rounding those to a pleasureable listen (0.9u-13). The tool is a real tool only when it is under my control (which it is NOT at this moment), but we have the reference.

Apart from the blahblah, I would like to say that for me this morning was a moment to share with some other audiophool (preferrably "you"), because it actually brings up the desire to lit a few cuban cigars (never mind you smoke or not), have some brandy, and infinitly talk about how on earth this is possible. Never mind it's early in the morning, I can pretend it's late at night.
I really really don't know, despite my own outlay earlier towards the opposite, how these ticks can happen to emerge. Remember, this was theory (for me), but now it is practice. Strangely enough now I don't dare to state so firmly what I stated before about this. A kind of scared to be wrong somewhere ...

I've been working the whole evening on the Appointment stuff for the loading thread, and eventually got it running. That is ...
I had been looking for two hours into an error that shouldn't be, prepared for bed, but got back. It suddenly jumped on me that the error could be caused by a thread not being allowed to have different Appointment (ok, Affinity) than its starting thread. Since I was working with Scheme-3, which appoints the audio to core 2, the threads coming from there couldn't go to core 1. It just errors.

Now I don't know of any logical plan to fix this. Yeah, maybe some technical complicated structure which uses a special scheduling thread (no Affinity), that synchronizing the playback and the load threads (each now can have their own Affinity).

Man, I must rize the price to 73 euro. Hahaha.

This sounds truly unbelieveable, but I guess I have to ... Actually can't wait to get home and find out that Cornershop album isn't full of vinyl ticks anymore while I changed NOTHING to the code but different memory management.

The settings in XX are about "logical" maximum rates. And since I don't think a DAC will exist that has a maximum of 88.2 (because then it will do 96 as well), 88.2 is not there. Same for 176400.
On that matter I think that any DAC that can do 44.1 will do 48 as well, although I am not sure about that.

352800 is a different one, because this is a kind of official standard, and DACs may be produced to that standard. Theoretically 384000 could exist as a double of 192000, but I don't think it does and will.

Note that the DAC Is settings are used for "self protection", and sometimes to make decisions on how to behave (like playing 352800 on a 192000 DAC will downsample).

When you can only choose 96 with soundcard settings of 88.2 - and play 88.2 - this really does nothing. All behaves as if you chose 88.2.

I hope it is clear a bit ...

A few days now playing with 0.9u-13, makes me think this :

Bass has got it's individual vibes, possibly more than ever before. The latter may not be true, because I recognize it (but it sure must have been a longer time ago).

The buzzing (and I mean fly-like) which may emerge in air, is more there than ever before, it seems. May you have it, try Les Nuits from The Nits. It's all over.

Somehow it very much occurs that drums (I mean toms, but also bongos) got a "dry" reality which I never heard before; At listening to Dead can Dance a whole day long at Mondays I thought it was special to that album (and certainly some tracks), but I recognize this in much more now. It gives the feeling of not all drummers smashing anymore, but just dropping their sticks onto the veil.

Another occurring thing is that the forward sound (which IMO was taken away a little in the latest versions) is as profound as it started with 0.9u-0. Somehow this gives me a feeling that it can't combine with those beautiful drums. But it does ... The explanation to this is more depth ??

Anything else ? well, if anything else must be menstioned, it is my feeling that Double sounds more refined than Normal (mind you, not Upsample). This comes to a kind of surprise to me, but otoh I hardly listened to Double for many months (and now I have to in order to solve that hiccup problem ).


*That* the sound has changed is what I kind of was afraid for because of the rework on the memory management, and using less memory anyway. How this exactly influences I am not sure, but apparently it does, looking at 0.9u-0 and the (e.g.) forwardness getting less and less (while more and more memory was used towards the newer versions!), while now all is back, and the memory useage is back to much less. Coincidence ? probably not. Voodoo ? as usual.

Hmm ... if this is really so, you get the Nerd Award of the year, ok ?

In the mean time, I think I can adjust the Q1 temporarily then, which would only be during the load of the track (which typically is less than one second).

Thinking of this really being so, it would even make sense to me. But then there's another solution, and this is in fact the solution to something I pointed out some longer ago (over half a year) :
(actually, here it is : XXHighEnd Model 0.9m (Implements Processor Core Appointment))

So, at that time I wasn't able to appoint that -by now (!!) heavily cpu using thread- to the other core. Maybe with the increased knowledge () now I can ? Anyway, this now just *should* happen. Why ?

That half a year ago, the only thing what happened in that other thread was reading the file from disk. This is not able to use 100% cpu because of the I/O involved. Today, the cpu (better : that one core) will be used for 100% and that might take up to near a second. This is officially way too long to keep on filling a buffer each 1 millisecond, and as I indicated earlier : it looks like time slicing doesn't work properly anymore. Now I say : how can that ever be done properly with a cpu (core) being in use for 100% (and tasks between that core *have* to be divided) ?

As a sidenote I refer to what I said earlier about the copying from RAM disk (as Edward does it), which only makes this worse (the situation stays longer) ...

Gerard, 

Hi Pieter,

Thank you very much for your extended and nice reply. Indeed as others said, the hiccups (a 1 second silence) is special to the latest versions of XXHighEnd, and in the end just caused by me. You could also say : caused by my little knowledge on how the OS deals with certain (memory) situations. Whether that by itself is buggy by the OS or not is not important. Bugs are to work around (or solved when they're in your own hands).

For you I only can say that your glitches and all will be caused by your system, which doesn't say they can be solved or solved easily. All the people in here prove that audio can be completely glitch free, unless it is the player itself doing it to you, of course.
Some systems are setup in a way that they are prone to glitches (hi Chris), and some others are prone to crackling (Gerard built such a system ).

Glitches most often will come from interrupts which shouldn't be there (think of a wireless keyboard), and crackles are there because the OS draws away the needed cpu cycles from the audio driver (not the player software). Crackles therefore can be influenced by priority settings, and glitches will go away with a balanced interrupt scheme. The latter often is very hard to do, and may be incurred by a device itself. Remove (replace) the device may be the only solution.
When you indeed have glitches, what is used in here : Check to see if your computer can cause drop-outs will most probably show it.

Btw, I would not be surprised if you don't perceive glitches from XX (while getting them from Foobar) because XX works very differently from the others.

Peter

Might you feel like trying something ... put your XXEngine3.exe aside and stuff the below in your XX folder.
I changed something which is more official according the books. I ran 1.5 album over it without problems, which - as we know - doesn't say much.

I had two times a hiccup myself now on a first album (just Double).

So Edward, please don't bother. I will report more if I can find a pattern.