a. At least one of the HiRes files is an HDtracks:  Paul McCartney _Band on the Run_ the uncompressed version.  I believe it is 96KHz.  And it had errors.  Others may be from non-HDtracks, I will have to check.  (Not to stick it in your eye but JRiver  has no problems with any HiRes material of any kind in my collection).

b. 2x upsampling with no method selected (repeat bits).  fx usually on, but last night I tried fx off and the problem still occurs (the only difference is that high res files play at 88 or 96 with fx on, and at 176 or 192 with fx off).  Of the two options listed in my sig, I'm using adaptive right now, with 15ms requested).

--

Correct, generally I do not see this problem in UNattended.  Instead, I have another problem I have reported in the past, better, but not totally fixed; namely, the high res tracks sometimes stop playing short of the actual length, but at least it moves on to the next track.

Correct again, in version 6, I was not having this problem.  Instead, it did not allow format changes at all.  So playback would stop.  I'd start it manually.   That was better.  And as I recall, version 5 allowed format changes with fx on, and that worked mostly okay I think (it was a long time ago) but was not perfect. 

However, this problem of Attended (not unattended) also happens with low res.  However, I think low res plays fine until it first encounters a problem with high res.  After that, both can miscalculate.

Another hint: If I load that same McCartney album all by itself, I believe 99.9% that it will play Attended with no problems.   

Another hint: The track times shown in the mixed playlist is wrong, they are too long to begin with.  So I think the bug is in the pre-calculation of the song length from the start, and perhaps only in mixed playlist mode, maybe even only in long mixed playlists.  Once these are miscalculated, it makes sense that the player would play them the way they are played with long gaps of silence.   (But this does not explain the error messages if left alone.)

Just now I tried letting it run.  Just hit play and never again touch the mouse.  Everything played okay until: 5 songs into the list, a 96KHz 24 bit, 1 minute track.  xxHE erroneously calculated it as a 2 minute song.  Song ended after 1 minute of play.   xxHE Kept playing silence until the end of the erroneously calculated 2 minutes.  Then the track progress indicator stopped at the end and nothing for about 30 seconds more.   Then the following error messages poped up in succession:

Error window 1: Audio device could not be determined

Error window 2: Engine #4 did not start in the expected time

Error window 3: Windows OS error saying xxEngine3 stopped working

Yes, I know that;  I try to avoid doing anything other than music playback.   But even if I want to copy newly ripped CDs to the drive, this problem props up.   I'm leaving the message because I want to know when to reboot.

BTW, sometimes xxHE gets to this state all by itself.  Well, at least I don't do anything other than run xxHE and I'm using Minimize OS.   And it happens.


Not a big pile of nothing, obviously.  xxHE provides the best sound.  In attended mode, it partly works.  But it is just annoying.  Some nights its acceptable.  Some nights it feels like a pile of nothing in attended mode with mixed resolutions and long mixed lists.

A flac album loads in less than 20 sec.   A 44.1/16 AIF loads quickly, like 5 or 10 seconds.  An HD flac might take 20 seconds or more.

But the machine is fairly fast.  xxHE moves along quite nicely, and I have never had problems with clicks (other than the documented ones sometimes at the beginning of a gapped track).

But this is not a question of speed, because I have clicked on NEXT and left it alone for long periods of time with no response (like going to eat dinner and coming back).  STUCK.  It does nothing.

I apologize for not giving a more detailed explanation before.

To recreate the problem, do this:

• Work entirely in Attended Mode
• Clear your playlist.  Make sure fx is turned on etc.
• Go to your Nice Stuff directory.
• Select a good number of albums and make sure you select some with mixed resolutions and sample rates.
• Right click and choose random play.  This should create a long playlist.
• Now play the list and be prepared to realize that something is not working like it should.

At no time should you click on any other track.

If that alone does not recreate the problem, then try this:  Stop playback.  Select a track somewhere in the middle of the long playlist.  Start to play it.  You should soon see a problem.  This simulates restarting the list from where you left off the day before.

No,  I'm not doing that (clicking on another track).

[I said of "at least 2"]

If I do anything that consumes memory outside of xx, from then on, I get a message that 15ms is requested but that only 1ms will be honored (paraphrasing).

What do I have to do to always get 15ms?

[Sometimes I get this message after a while, even without running anything that consumes memory outside of xx.]

In attended mode:   (not UNattended)

The controls don't work.   If I'm playing one song and I hit next, it seems like it tries to go to the next track but most of the time it doesn't.  I can see that "Play" turns yellow, but it does not start playing.  If I then hit play once or sometimes several times, play commences finally.

[This is related to the other problem I posted #1 of 2, and I forgot to mention that these problems seem to be part of a rate change with fx on.]

In attended mode  (not UNattended)

Calculation of song length is OFTEN much longer than actual.

This results in a song ending and then going into silence as I watch the progress slider move to the right for a couple of minutes until it reaches the end. 

This happens with AIF, FLAC, high res, and low res too.   I have very few WAV files.  [Editorial: this problems seem to be related to a rate change with fx on.  Maybe.]

[the next problem I will report on #2 of 2 is tied to recovering from this problem, also attended.]

[Please don't ask why I'm using attended mode.  To make a long story short, it sounds better than 7-4 and gets around UNattended problems that I've not reported yet]

If Peak Extend and/or Arc Prediction is checked, and then 1x is selected on the slider (.9z-6-1c), it's a little bit counterintuitive as to what actually happens (since AP is a form up upsampling).

Can anyone tell me what happens at 1x?

PE forces -3db?

AP still applies?  (the filtering half)

Thanks

Nope.  Like at least one other, I'm moving back to my original settings with SFS=72 (as in my sig at the time of this writing).

I found that I was moving my buffer size to larger and larger sizes to get smoother results.  In other words, I was hearing the eventual distortion that SFS=2 was bringing with Normal mode of KS.

BTW, the driver for my DAC supports buffers as large as 8192, but xxHighEnd only goes as high as 4096.   Can 8192 be added?

I've now moved to buffer=3074, Q1=14, SFS=2, Engine#4:Normal, 4x AP+PE, Unattended, MinimizeOS (will update my sig once I've settled on this experiment, if I do).

Otherwise, does anyone else trying SFS=2 notice a degradation in SQ with use (as memory fragments)?

What happened last night is that I started with pristine, detailed, and musical results with SFS=2 on a known "bad" recording (Wilson Pickett's Midnight Hour CD).  Then I switched over to JRiver to listen to high res DSD.   After an hour I exited JRiver and tried to play with SFS=2 and the same Wilson Pickett song, Mustang Sally, sounded awefully distorted.   HuH???   Yes, it happened.

Maybe SFS=2 SQ depends on how fragmented the memory has become over time.

I forgot to mention that with the settings I posted two posts ago, that playing does not stop after a few songs.  I've queued up over 15 tracks and it played through all of them.  This is with 44.1.   With higher sampling rates and unattended mode, I have trouble sometimes even with the first track.  But HiRes sounds good attended, with the advantages in convenience of attended mode.

So I recommend, if you are having trouble playing more than 4 or 5 songs with SFS=2, try using the Normal mode of Engine#4.

Thanks Peter.

BTW, it's hard to judge PE on vs. PE off because the difference is loudness is not exactly 3db.  It is somewhere in between 2db and 3db in my system and I can never dial it in just right even with an SPL meter.

In .9z-6-1c, clicking PE automatically turns on AP, yes, but then both can be turned off independently.

I also found it somewhere for 5 bucks and I have to say it really sounds great.   Highly recommended.