Ah!  Thanks!  What a great turnaround time.  I'll try it tonight.

Under Vista and 09z-8a, or 8e, this problem has not been fixed.

Disappointing.

Yes, exiting Engine3.exe solves the problem for the rest of the night.  Therefore, it seems like this should be easily fixable.

Hi Peter

Disallow XTweaks for Vista is fine.  Just give me something that works!

_{(asap please)}

Under Vista and 09z-8a, or 8e, I'm having a similar problem, but it is different.

First, I am activated  because I can change processor scheme.

When I attempt to minimizeOS, after the restore, I get this error:
  "Couldn't read M-Value 02 : PC : 2"

Then I get an error that starts with:
  "Something went wrong with preserving ..."
 
...and then stays in Normal OS mode
=====

The above may have something to do with whenever I enter the setup screen (S) I get these two errors, one right after the next:
"Error 02 reading Value : TI : 2"
and
"Error 02 reading Value : ID : 2"

What's happening?

Possibly, but also doubtful.  First of all, this is unattended;  the other was Attended.  Second, this is happening with just within one CD album.  So I don't see how they are related.

xxHE has A-B feature which can be used in unattended mode which lets you listen to tracks from point A to point B, say 1:00 - 2:00, and then loop back.  If several tracks are selected, then it will play from 1:00 to 2:00, and then move to the next track, playing the next track between 1:00 and 2:00.

Well, I'm NOT using the A-B feature!!!   Yet, 0.9z-7-4 is sometimes behaving exactly as I have described above.

Actually, I once noticed this behaviour and when I looked A-B was indeed checked (both A and B were red).  So I unchecked them.  But I continue to see this problem and when I check, I can see that A-B are not checked.

At first, this was only happening with HD material.   But now I've confirmed that it is happening with regular old CD 44.1/16 material.   Happens all of the time now, ...hence this report.

Please help.

Hi Scroobius - I do exactly the same thing as above, all of it.  And on my system, PE *Off* gives it a tube-clarity type of sound.  It turn PE off when I want to hear that sound.

But look at this, one night I installed new speaker cables and my whole system went brighter.  That night, PE *On* with ArcP at 2x sounded best, otherwise it was too edgy.   So things change depending on system components.   Everyone here already knows this, hence all the different settings you see.

Yes, I'm with you and yes, I see.

- Something is missing in the analysis because although it is true that sometimes it is only about 10%, most of the time it is closer to 100%, meaning 2x.  So if a song is calculated to be 2 min, that song actually ends at about one minute.

- I had previously stated that reducing SFS to 8, 20, or 30 makes a big improvement.  Well, now I realize that this is only true if I first play something in UNattended mode and then later attempt attended mode.   If I boot the machine and from the start I start a long playlist, it will fully exhibit the problem from the start, even with SFS=25.

- Since I can't get straight contiguous to work at SFS sizes greater than about 2, I use mixed contiguous.  So why not a temporary solution with a checkbox to always initialize the engine so that it can't happen?

That's correct.  It doesn't help much.  Helps sometimes, but even then, I have to repeatedly hit Play to get it to start (even though the red Play LED light indicates that it is attempting to play from the first manual click).  Other times, exiting Engine3 and xxHE and restarting is the only way to proceed.

I'd like to cast my vote on PE in the *OFF* state.   (So I'm not talking about PE=on at all)

I much prefer the sound of PE *OFF* as implemented in 0.9z-7-4

which I think means that data is multiplied  by 1.001 to overcome a compiler  bug.

Here it is night and day.

I heard that the Microsoft guy that was responsible for the Start button got fired.  He was wrong.  I think MS 8 will soon have the start button.

A few new hints for this problem"

1) What do you suppose unchecking Allow Format Change did to this song length calculation problem?

Answer:  Very few length miscalculations.   But I still have to manually deal with all of the other problems (errors messages, Next does not work,  clicking on Play does not work usually,  sometimes clicking Play two or three times starts to play finally, and sometimes nothing short of killing engine #3 and exiting xx and restarting allows me to continue.   But few length miscalculations.

2) What do you suppose dropping SFS from 60 down to 8, 20, or 30 did?

Answer: It often works, not always.  This means, even checking Allow Format Change sort of works, not fully.  In a short amount of time, a 44.1/16 flac file had the wrong length and I let it play through the silence until the end (about 1min) and it kept playing.  This is no solution because the sound is not nearly as good at these lower SFS levels and clicking happens every now and then, which never happened before in xx for me.

Thanks Peter

[BTW, I vote for the behavior or PE *OFF* as implemented in 0.9z-7-4]

Disabling Allow Format Change had mixed results last night.  In the repeated failure, almost the same things happened: Got the cannot allocate audio device message, and then afterwards trying to start the next track manually met with the same non-playback, even after hitting the Play button several times.   Hitting stop and Play repeatedly got it going again.

So not much help.   But I do think that one high res track played correctly, and with the correct time. t think of that.

[note: my sig has been updated]

• In case I want to go back, what a better place to store a history of settings than right here?
• These are really intended for me and for anyone with the subject DAC.
• Hopefully, I can update this post over time.
• Entries are newest first, oldest last

With v2.01 and upgraded Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 DSDse
=================================
July 2015   *=appear to be critical:
XXHighEnd PC (i7 3930K) Hyperthreading On (12 cores) underclocked to *2.5GHz*, 16GB, Windows 7 Ultimate64 SP1 on 2.5” SATA2 spinning disk, XX on 2.5” OS disk, music on 3.5” SATA3 7200 RPM.  Motherboard BIOS settings: BCLK = 100 MHz / Intel Speed Step = OFF / Max Clock Ratio = 25 / Allow OS to change ratio = OFF. 
XXHighEnd 2.01 Adaptive / Q1/3/4/5 = 6/1/1/1 / Q1x = 1 / Dev.Buffer = 4096 / ClockRes = 1ms / Straight Contiguous / SFS = *60* (max 150) / Playerprio = Low (or below normal) / ThreadPrio = High / Core3-5 / *No Playback Drive* / *No RAMDISK* (the built-in one, have not tried IMdisk) / UnAttended / most services Off, WASAPI on  / Minimize OS / XTweaks set to v2.01 Defaults / *8x 384 Custom Filters* (High 23380 Hz)
DAC: 384KHz Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 DSDse set to default PCM Rolloff=FAST (the SLOW setting does not sufficiently filter out the noise shaping of the DAC), and no preamp

With ver. 1.186i beta and newly upgraded DAC2 DSDse
===========================================
September 2014 (1.186i)   *=appear to be critical   from memory:
XXHighEnd PC (i7 3930K) Hyperthreading On (12 cores) underclocked to *2.5GHz*, 16GB, Windows 7 Ultimate64 SP1 on 2.5” SATA2 spinning disk, XX on 2.5” OS disk, music on 3.5” SATA3 7200 RPM.  Motherboard BIOS settings: BCLK = 100 MHz / Intel Speed Step = OFF / Max Clock Ratio = 25 / Allow OS to change ratio = OFF. 
XXHighEnd *WASAPI* / Q1/2/3/4/5 = 2/-/3/0/0 / Q1x = 1 / Dev.Buffer = 4096 / ClockRes = 1ms / Straight Contiguous / SFS = *60* (max 120) / Playerprio = Low (or below normal) / ThreadPrio = High / Core3-5 / *No Playback Drive* / *No RAMDISK* (the built-in one, have not tried  IMdisk) / UnAttended / most services Off, WASAPI on  / Minimize OS / XTweaks None / *8x 176 Custom Filter* Upsampling w/FX=On
DAC: 384KHz Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 DSDse (set to PCM Rolloff=SLOW:  theoretically closer to Phasure DAC phenomenon), and no preamp

As a note to the above:  The big picture to the September 2014 settings is that WASAPI was selected over Adaptive mode KS.  I attribute the better sound to the DSDse's newest driver (1.5.36?) which adds a whole new level of sophistication to the sound.  [Update: starting with July 2015 settings, I'm back to Adaptive mode.  But I will continue to test WASAPI every once in a while.]

*****************Above this line deals with the upgraded DAC2 DSDse *****************
********************** Below this line dealt with the original DAC2 ****************

With .9z-9b (also)
=============================================
March 2014 (0.9z-9b)        *=appear to be critical
XXHighEnd PC (i7 3930K) Hyperthreading On (12 cores) underclocked to *2.5GHz*, 16GB, Windows 7 Ultimate64 SP1 on 2.5” SATA2 spinning disk, XX on 2.5” OS disk, music on 3.5” SATA3 7200 RPM.  Motherboard BIOS settings: BCLK = 90 MHz / Intel Speed Step = OFF / Max Clock Ratio = 25 / Allow OS to change ratio = OFF.  XXHighEnd Engine#4 Adaptive Mode / Q1/2/3/4/5 = 1/0/0/0/0 / Q1x = 1 / Dev.Buffer = 2048 / ClockRes = *1.25ms* / Straight Contiguous / SFS = *60* (max 120) / PE Off / Phase Alignment Off / Playerprio = Low / ThreadPrio = Real Time / Scheme = 3 / *No Playback Drive* / *No RAMDISK* (built-in, not IMdisk) / UnAttended / ALL Services Off / Minimize OS / XTweaks Ultimate, "Time Performance Index" set to "Not the best" / *2x AI* Upsampling (for 44.1/16 bit) / No Upsampling for HiRes material (hassle) w/FX=On
DAC: Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 (set to default PCM Rolloff), and no preamp

Notes on above:  It took a long time and careful testing to arrive at these settings.  Forcing Q1 too high, or using xQ1 results in too many blue screens.  Everything becomes reliable again by using lower values of Q1.  15 and under work well with Buffer size set to 2K.  I will get back to *No Paging File* after sustained reliability.  The problem with *No paging file* is that the blue screen goes away too quickly and the OS forces a paging file to be able to stop it for debugging. (which was a problem with W4Sdrv.sys).

With .9z-9b
=============================================
June 2013 (0.9z-9b)        *=appear to be critical
XXHighEnd PC (i7 3930K) Hyperthreading On (12 cores) underclocked to *2.5GHz*, 16GB, Windows 7 Ultimate64 SP1 on 2.5” SATA2 spinning disk, *No Paging File*, XX on 2.5” OS disk, music on 3.5” SATA3 7200 RPM, no galleries / Engine#4 Adaptive Mode / Q1/2/3/4/5 = 30/0/0/0/0 / Q1x = 1 / Dev.Buffer = 2048 / ClockRes = 15ms / Straight Contiguous / SFS = *420* (max 420) / *Peak Extension On* (even after 0.9z-9b) / Phase Alignment Off / Playerprio = Low / ThreadPrio = Real Time / Scheme = 3 / Playback Drive on different 3.5” SATA3 7200 RPM  / UnAttended / *ALL Services Off* / Minimize OS / XTweaks *Ultimate*, *"Time Performance Index" set to "Not the best"* / *4x* Arc Prediction Upsampling (but really need to mix modes based on source material and can’t)
DAC: Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 (set to default PCM Rolloff), and no preamp

With .9z-7
=============================================
OS/PC: Vista 32 Ultimate SP2, 4GB RAM, Pentium Dual E2160 1.8GHz
xxHighEnd: 0.9z-7-4, SFS=60 Mixed Contiguous, 2x Upsample w/no arc prediction (for this particular DAC), Scheme 3 PlayerPrio=Low ThreadPrio=RealTime, Clock Resolution 15ms, Unattended and Attended, Stop all Services, Buffer 2048
Back, deep, relaxed soundstage: Engine#4, Adaptive, Q=20,0,0,0,0 ... Forward, shallow, in-face soundstage:  Engine#4, Normal, Q=14,0,0,0,0
DAC: Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 (set to default PCM Rolloff), and no preamp


With .9z-5 and .9z-6
=============================================
OS/PC: Vista 32 Ultimate SP2, 4GB RAM, Pentium Dual E2160 1.8GHz
xxHighEnd: 0.9z-6-1c, SFS=72 or 141 Mixed Contiguous, 2x Upsample w/no arc prediction (for this particular DAC), Scheme 3 PlayerPrio=Low ThreadPrio=RealTime, Clock Resolution 1ms, Unattended Stop Desktop and Remaining Services, Keep Lan Services, Buffer 1024
Forward, shallow, in-face soundstage:  Engine#4, Normal, Q=14,0,0,0,0  ...  Back, deep, relaxed soundstage: Engine#4, Adaptive, Q=30,0,0,0,0
DAC: Wyred 4 Sound DAC2 (set to default PCM Rolloff), and no preamp

Actually, I didn't think of that.  I'll try it.   Grumble grumbe...  for now.