Another hint:  The last two nights there were no problems.  What do the two night sessions have in common?  Answer: the xxPC was on all day playing Christmas music.

Hi Peter

Thanks.

And status:  last night's session had zero problems.  No changes whatsoever from the night before, which after about two hours I used that to start playing with different filters.  Still no problems as I said.  I'll try to run as I'm running until problems show up again, and then make changes at that point, well at least that's the plan if I can stick to it.



Always a fresh selection.   I agree that previous selections are not totally reliable.  



Hey Peter you are right, I don't use Tablet control.  I'm under the presumption that I need a network to use a tablet for control.  No?   Remember, on purpose, I try to avoid the LAN or the Wifi  to quiet the system and avoid Windows OS updates and virus scans, mostly the OS related issues.  It is a true joy to not hassle with PC stuff; it just works like a toaster oven.

a. and b. above are very pragmatic.  Although it is hard to believe that all of your active users have gone to tablets for control.

Thanks,

Charlie

[Edit: Also, I have no means of running a LAN cable to my xxPC without creating a trip hazard via a very long LAN cable.]

Hi Peter

Yes,  already, "Always clear Proxy before Playback" is selected / enabled.

BTW, status for yesterday:  Clicked "Stop WASAPI" in settings and I had only half of my problem.  Second half is gone, this one: "This shouldn't happen. Please just restart xxHE"

The first half of my problem is still with me:  Three times in 4 hours playback stopped on the first song.  The first time it stoped while the track was playing, but toward the end.  That is a first.  The two other times were as before, namely after the first track plays, xxHE stops and comes back.

In all cases I noticed what we suspect, playback started too quickly, almost in 2 seconds.  In all cases, when xx came back, all tracks were selected as if they had not played.  (Because when one plays normally, that track comes back unselected and the unplayed tracks come selected.

Thanks,

Charlie

Thanks Peter.   I'll get on these to get to the bottom of it all.



Absolutely nothing was changed from the previous session in terms of settings.  I've been very careful about changes.  No changes.  The only difference is that it was another day and a new boot.  That's all.  I didn't even change "copy to XX drive by standard" until after the problem arrived.
       One thing I can say is that I encountered several "this error should not happen, just restart xx" message before the "stop problem" first resurfaced (in case that matters).  And the stop problem.



Thanks.  That helps.



Yes I remember all of that.  Well,  I missed it in the sense that my windows sounds were enabled.



Before I do this I had better check: This implies that I have to reboot into normal OS and manually disable all sound devices that I see INCLUDING MY DAC.  Then reboot into minOS and proceed.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply disable WASAPI from within xxHE in settings?   Or does this not sufficiently accomplish what you want?



Most of my collection is .AIF, from ripped CDs.  Is AIF treated like wave?   (Maybe the problem surfaces when I eventually play a .WAV track)



Of course, yes, I will disable WASAPI in one form or another and lose DSD for a while.   No problem.

Also,  I'll play close attention to when playback starts quicker than expected, and the file type as I select it.

Thanks again Peter.

Much appreciated.

Charlie

Hi Peter

Sorry to report that it's not over.  Still have problems.  Tonight I twice ran into the original problem discussed above where playback stops after the first track plays.  And Six times in four hours I received the "This should not happen just restart xxHighend" message.

This time I noticed something new.   At least one of the two times where playback stoped after the first track,  I had selected about seven tracks in a row using Shift-click starting at about track 3 or 4.  But playback started almost instantly --AS IF ONLY ONE TRACK WAS SELECTED.   Normally it takes a little bit of time for 7 tracks to load.  So it could be, and it appears, that the error is that only 1 track was loaded for playback from the beginning, and not that playback suddenly stops after 7 tracks are loaded and prepared and the first track finishes.
       In this instance,  when xxHE came back,  all seven tracks were selected (in white highlight).  That's odd, and different from the usual behaviour.  Usual behaviour that if one track plays of out 7,  then only 6 tracks are highlighted then xxHE comes back.

After the first error I set "Copy to XX drive by default."  Then I got the 2nd error one or two hours later.  So this setting by itself didnot solve the problem

Thanks,

Charlie

P.S. 2.09 is still sounding great with ArcP

Hi Peter

Thanks and some good news!  

First and most important: last night I heard the best sound I've ever heard from my system.  And this was obvious within 10 or 15 seconds of my first playback.  Part of this is that I'm using an ISO REGEN which made a big difference even before these latest changes.  But the sound was staggeringly good.  To help describe how big of a difference,  this was with ArcP which I happened to have set from the night before.  ArcP in my system has always sounded dry, on a scale of DRY<->LUSH, too dry as if too much was missing in the highs.  Well not last night.  Last night ArcP sounded right.  Probably in the mid scale between dry<->lush.

I suspect it was because I set Windows sounds to off, as you showed me.  The only other things I did at first was set to KS, and 111.  That is aside from booting probably 10 times the day before and going into BIOS several times, and back out;  who knows if I affected something by doing all of that to the system.  


Although there was great sound at first, there was a strange problem which I solved by setting to Core 3-5.  In case it gives further clues, the problem was that playback in Unattended didn't get to the cover art until after the last track played.  Instead of the cover art, I saw only the Windows desktop image.  After the last track, cover art displayed for a few seconds until xx came back.
     Core 3-5 changed the sound for the worse so I had to go to a few other changes to get close, Straight Continuous and Q1=6,  in addition to 111.  
     I then spent the rest of the night listening to ArcP with these settings;  three hours.  Wonderful!

The problem of stopped playback after the first or any other track never happened.  BIG WIN.  AMAZING to me.  Again this is with ArcP, which has always been more reliable than the Custom filters.  Next I will try the Custom Filters and hopefully the joy continues.

That's the good/great news.  
And now the bad     Twice I received the "This should not happen please restart xxHE" error.  How can I disable this?

And now to address your specific comments / questions,  the quoted text is yours:



I went looking for your Win7 settings on the forum and I cannot find them.  Can you post your latest Win7 settings or send me a .XXSI file?



Over years I've spent many nights reading this / these forums and somehow I missed it.  
So all these years I didn't have exclusive access to the audio device?

Actually, it seems like choosing the "no sounds" profile does nothing more than disassociate .wav files with system events, as opposed to disabling sound interrupts or bypassing code; unless built in / under the covers it does something to reconfigure the OS.  
      Alternatively, would it be more effective to chose the default sound device to be the motherboard audio device.  Then it is just bits going to another DAC.  Maybe not.  Just a thought.



Isn't my problem direct evidence that this can and does happen when I use KS?  Doesn't exclusive KS access mean that if xx is playing then Windows cannot grab the device until xx releases it?



I can't listen to my DSD collection if I disable WASAPI within xxHE.  I listen to DSD with HQPlayer, ASIO, which doesn't work if xxHE disables WASAPI.  So I leave it enabled to avoid rebooting just to listen to a few DSD tracks.
     

And from your latest post:


I suppose this could be moot if my success continues.  But I will keep a note of it.  Actually,  this shouldn't have an effect because my playback drive is powered down permanently / and possibly the SATA cable unplugged,  so xxHE probably already sends the data to the C drive.  The only other drive is where the music is stored, but I don't think xxHE uses this drive other than to pull the tracks and gallery stuff.   Let me know otherwise.

Thanks    You've been a great help.

Charlie

Thanks Peter.  

You've given me much to try.   I will try each one.

Maybe I'll try one by one, hoping to discover better sound at the same time.  For sure I'll start with turning off system sounds and then 1,1,1 and see since that is easy.  Playback drive will be harder because I have to remember how to do it and, I may have disconnected that drive internally since I preferred the sound without playback drive.   I'd be tempted to try RAMdisk first since I know I didn't like the playback drive sound.   But since there could be complications, I'll skip RAMdisk and try Playback Drive first.  I think I took good notes on how.

Looking forward to the best XX experience yet.

Thanks,

Charlie

No.  Never during playback.  Sorry.  
When I do change the filter, I either stop or pause in between.  
And before now I had always killed engine3 between filters but that never made a difference.  
 


No antivirus is even installed on this machine.  No network either, just for this reason.  





This is a Motherboard BIOS setting.  It was already set to ENABLED.  I don't know how that happened.  But okay, it's on.



In 2.09 I didn't change anything on purpose.  I took the default.  xxHE defaults to the Wyred-provided driver "Digital Output (Wyred 4 Sound USB...)".  I believe this is Engine#3, which is WASAPI, yes.

"Digital Output (Wyred 4 Sound USB...)" is the same setting xx went with in previous versions when I tried to set to KS and xx would switch to "Digital Output..." via a bug without informing me (other than clock resolution warnings but I digress).

ERRATA:  I also tried 2.07, not just 2.01 and 2.09.  Same problems.

I will switch to KS now, of course.  But I'm confident that won't help because 2.01 and 2.07 had these same problems and I used KS exclusively in 2.01 and 2.07.  






2.09.  I checked to make sure I wasn't making a mistake here.  2.09
And it was never really solved for me.  With 2.01, for a while things seemed like they were working and I remember posting that 2.01 was the first truly reliable version for me.  But I was wrong about that but never reposted until now.



Zero maintenance.  I'm not on the LAN.  There are no updates, no antivirus.  I've disabled updates.



I'm not using RAMDisk.  Sorry.



{Further RAMDisk comments deleted since I'm not using it.}



It's not the first sound that Windows makes: Windows makes a first sound while booting, but before user log in.  This first sound is the famous "TA TA TA TAAAAAAA" that we all know.  Not that one.  The one I'm talking about is the first sound that Windows makes after a user logs in, which for me is just pressing Enter since I have no password.  This second sound is just a "TAAAAA."  It is playing through my DAC to the speakers.  It is like a single tone.  No "song."  It is like the sound of trumpets.  I checked just now and it is the user log-in sound, which is the same as the "Windows theme change" sound.





As I boot and before I run xxHE, Yes,  it is normal.  Why not?  Windows sees the DAC via the driver and plays the tone marked for user log in.  So that is normal.
What is not normal is that tone playing when xxHE is running and coming out of Unattended.



Well,  this could very well be THE problem.  Why does Windows want to play the "User Log In" sound?  Maybe because xxHE is changing the theme?  (Windows uses the same sound for theme changes as for user log ins.

How do I disable windows sounds?  Just go into Control Panel and turn off windows sounds?  
Or is this something I must do within xxHE?

I couldn't figure it out.



Wow.  None of it?   That is bizarre.
For sure I'm using 2.09.



It is set for 20 minutes.

Maybe unrelated, but I sometimes get a "Data did not arrive in time" message wherein playback stops,  but that one happens maybe only once per night.  Alt-P solves that one, so no problem and that's why I didn't report it here.



Confirmed.



Yes, Win7 Ultimate.  My underclocking is only ~30%, meaning it is running at ~70% of full speed.  That shouldn't be anything severe, just plenty of guard band.  Should I change this?  To full speed?   Your underclocking is much more severe as I recall.



OK thanks.  I'll try that for now.



Maybe you should boot every once in a while  

Many thanks,  and thanks again.

Charlie

Hi Peter

I've mentioned playback errors and erratic behavior before but have not specifically posted until now.  I've also mentioned that I like AI, but please ignore that for now as with this report I am only using Custom or ArcP filters.
 
Before I begin the list let me first say that to minimize the potential for user error,  2.09 has all of the default settings unchanged.  So this means, Q=14,0,0,0,   clock is 1ms,  processor arrangement is set to nothing,  no KS just whatever xxHE chooses for the driver which what is provided by Wyred.  You know the defaults better I.  
Exceptions:
     I told in settings that my DAC only goes to 384.  I believe nothing else was changed in Settings.
     In playback, I change from the default Custom filter to other custom filters to try them, or ArcP,  but this doesn't seem to make any difference.

I run under Minimized OS.  
When I run Attended, problems are few;  some but few,  I'd say that overall Attended is acceptable.
Therefore the behaviors I experience below are related much more to Unattended playback.

Specifically with 2.01 and now 2.09 I see the unexpected behavior I enumerate below.  (Please ignore the settings in my sig at the time of this writing.)

• Almost every time I start a new session from boot, if I select a set of tracks using my mouse pointer via click, or shift click, or mostly Ctrl-click, instead of playing all of the tracks I selected, xx goes into Unattended mode and plays the first track and after it is finished with the first track it stops playback, exits and comes back.  I didn't hit Alt-x but sort of behaves as if I did.  Maybe more precisely, it behaves more like I selected only one track.   An odd thing that happens on this first playback is that, when the OS comes back, it plays the Windows sound clip that normally plays late in a new boot cycle well after the Windows welcome sound clip.  It is a long beep, a single beep.  This long beep only happens on the first playback.  This happens so consistently that I almost want to say that it happens 100% of the time.
• Similar to the above, except on subsequent playback instances and with no OS beep, xxHE will just stop playing after the first selected track, or stop playing after another track I selected that is not the first track but is sooner than the last track I selected.  Similarly, it stops, exits, and returns to the OS with the UI.  When it comes back,  all of the tracks are selected.  So it knows about them, it just doesn't play them.   Sometimes less than all of the tracks show as being selected, with the played ones unselected and the unplayed ones selected.
• If during Unattended playback I hit Alt-x, I often,  more the 50% of the time, get the dreaded "This error should not happen.  Please just restart xxHighEnd."  This one is a pain because by the time I click okay, and slowly move my mouse pointer to close xx, it pops back up again ... not allowing me to close it.  Rinse, Repeat.
• If I hit Alt-E to pause,  when I come back two or five minutes later and hit Alt-P, xxHE skips to the next song.  It doesn't continue playback from where I hit Alt-E.
• If I hit Alt-E to pause, and am gone for too long,  like 10 or 15 minutes, when I come back there is no xx as before.  Instead there is an the OS background image but no icons.  If I then hit Alt-p either nothing happens or playback starts from the first track selected and not from the track that was playing when I hit Alt-E.  This is frustrating because I could be 12 tracks into a classical CD and I have no idea were I was when it starts over from track 1.
• Sometimes when I select individual tracks, say four, it won't stop at the last one and just keeps on playing unselected tracks that are after my last selected track.
• Sometimes, after misbehavior, when I hit Alt-P, nothing happens.  I have to kill the Engine and try again, at which point it starts playback.

All of the above points are being experienced with 2.09.  2.01 was similar.

In case it matters, I set my volume to -6 db as recommended for Custom Filters.

As frustrating as these things can be, somehow, xxHE is still my favorite player.  I must be crazy!

Charlie

Hi Peter

I've applied this over 2.09 with no problems.  Is it okay to apply it over 2.01?

Charlie

Hi Peter,

No I wasn't using AI last night at all. 
Further answers below:



Much less for 2.07.  I tried leaving defaults as much as possible.  For example, I left Q1 at 14/1.  I didn't touch SFS.  But I did set "start playback".


No.  That is possible.  But it doesn't happen with HQplayer, which I use more frequently than xx now, due to the reliability issues.  Also, JRiver is flawless as well. 


I think my SFS is like 150 or 120.  Whatever the default is.


Yes I do that.  I use Kill as my stop button once xx starts acting up.  In fact, I was going to ask for a setting "stop button unloads xxEngine3.exe".  Possible? 
Otherwise it is a pain because the kill button is so far away and I use a logitech keyboard with a trackpad; quite painstaking to move long distances and back.

If others are not experiencing problems on a nightly basis then it must be something I'm doing or some settings combination.  It could be my PC.  But I doubt it.  It is an xxHighEnd PC spec PC.  Plus, I'm only getting back to xx now.  I've been using mostly HQPlayer for months without a single problem. 

So it is probably how I use xx in combination with my settings.  Or it could also be how xx interacts with my Wyred 4 Sound DAC in KS mode.  I wonder if going away from KS will restore reliability.   Hmmm,  for HQplayer I use ASIO I think.

I'm part of the problem because I've not asked for help.  Very little time these days.  Deep down,  xx is my favorite player.  I'd love to get back to it fully.  Today I installed 2.09.   


All clean now!

Thanks Peter,

Charlie

Hi Peter

I had this problem last night, for the first time in years.  Here's the rundown:

• -2.07
• -Minimized OS
• -Unattended
• -Ignore my sig settings.  I've been running 2.0x close to default settings to attempt better xxHE's reliability (which I'm sorry to report has not been good at all, sorry I've just not had the time to report on it)
• -My normal way of playing is also to select several individual tracks and hit play, via click and ctrl-click or shift-click using a mouse.  This could be important.  And so I was doing this prior to this noise burst incident.
• -I've been running with the start-playing-immediately setting because I've been using the AI filter a lot lately, and this setting is the only workable way of using AI. (AI is often best with an OS DAC.  This contradicts what I've written in the past, sorry, as of this date.  Oh,  and for this reason please keep supporting AI)
• -Loaded a CD of classical music with about 15 tracks (Phillips Sleeping Beauty and full Nutcraker Suite if you have it, CD#2)
• -I selected a single track part way into the CD, hit play.  xx then selected all of the remaining tracks and started playing
• -About three tracks in, in the middle of a track or closer to the end but not the end, super loud burst of noise, louder than playback volume
• -I soiled my pants
• -Luckily I had the remote in my hand and quickly hit mute
• -I then watched xx to see what it did:  It stopped playback all on its own, and came back to attended by itself. 
• -I then rebooted computer, DAC, and unplugged/replugged USB cable on both ends several times and restarted everything else again with no problems.

Oddly, prior to the above incident last night, xx had been running without any problems.  Sadly, this is not the norm.  I normally get all kinds of unreliable behavior, for example, stopping playback after the first track in unattended, hitting play won't start playback (mouse),  the dreaded "This error should not happen please restart xxHighEnd,"  which keeps popping up as I try to shut xx down and interferes even with shutting it down because it closes the UI, etc.  But not last night.  Instead, I got the noise burst.

This is a late reply but may help someone.

I did try with many different lengths, including same exact cable brand and type.   I tried lengths from 18 inches (~ 1/2 meter), to 12 feet (10% less than 4 meters);  including at least 0.7 M, 1M, 6 feet, 2M, 10 feet, and 12 feet.  (I'm missing some as this is from memory.)

By far the worst sounding one was the shortest, 18 inches.  This was a well regarded Belden.

The best sounding was the 2M length.   This was the Supra, and interestingly, it was better than the 0.7 M version of the same cable.

Also interestingly,  the 10 and 12 foot were no-name cheap cables and were quite good, maybe better than the well regarded Pangea which was 6 feet.

Hi Peter

If I understood correctly,  both Show (alt-w) and Demo (alt-z) deal with tracks, not whole albums.  True?

If true, then I can use either.  I still have no Gallery set for Show.   Up until now I've only used NiceStuff and Demo.   Unfortunately, I've been using Demo for tracks that are so-called "bad" recordings,  for example where there is obviously mic distortion etc.   I use these tracks to see how different settings affect "bad" recordings.

So probably the best thing I can do is starting using Show, and load the individual tracks of Nice Stuff and save them to Show;  then remove them from Nice Stuff all within xxHE.

-OR- One possible interpretation of what you wrote above, namely this...


... is that I can use the field for Show to point to the c:\xxHighEnd\Nice Stuff gallery ...  which would allow me to do what I want without moving anything just by using alt-w and by working from the Show gallery which on the disk is actually the Nice Stuff gallery's location.   (Not sure about this at all.)

Yes?  No?

Thanks