Hi Peter,

Thanks very much for the quick reply. Your suggestion has solved it! Thank you!!

I "squashed" XXhighEnd to the size of a playing card, closed it down then  re-opened it. I then got a message from XXhighEnd telling me something about the splits or boundaries (can't recall exactly) being "reset". I then carefully expanded it once again to full size and now it works perfectly.

I have just tested it in Unattended mode and when it stopped playing, it came back up perfectly too.

So, all is resolved. Thanks again!

PS: I have subsequently tried 125% DPI scaling mode and that works perfectly too - no issues. I honestly think in this day and age, 125% DPI is better than 100% at the true HD resolution offered by monitors these days. Well, at least until you get to a bigger monitor size such as 24 inches or larger - but alas, that size of monitor is simply too big for the desk.

At the very least, at my age, the bigger the letters, the better! 

Hi,

It is a very long time since I have visited here. But that is for a very simple reason. I am happy with the version of XXHighEnd that I have. I have used it daily for years, love it and have no reason to chase up any issues with it - sound quality or otherwise.

But...I have now just run into a problem after three years of use. My old LCD monitor has just died (an 8 year old 19 inch model that was 1600 x 900 resolution). I have replaced it with a 21.5 inch Philips monitor which is now 1980 x 1080 resolution (OK, laugh at my new "tiny" monitor but for me it is cutting edge for a hardware dinosaur like me

Now, whenever I start XXHighEnd, it only appears in the top half of the screen:

https://www.sendspace.com/file/4gbowt

So every single time I start it, I get the above image which needs to be manually maximised.

I do not want to change the version of XXHighEnd I am using - I am happy with the version I have. In any case, as we all know, each version brings with it new tweaks, new settings and you start all over again tweaking. Life is too short for that in my book. It took me a very long time to tweak the old version to perfection, so there is no reason to muck with it. I only write that in case I am told I should upgrade to a newer version.

Anyway, all that said, can this be fixed by changing a setting somewhere please?

Thank you! 

Thanks for the prompt reply Peter. Yes, I know how Core Appointments change the sound and I'm definitely not going to change that setting since I spent a lot of time testing the combinations and this appointment setting is no less critical than the Q settings.

I've actually spent something amounting to 100 hours of listening tests just to come up with those final Q3 and Q4 settings (1 versus 0) settings so it would be incredibly time consuming to try new versions and an enormous effort on my part to try and replicate the almost perfect fidelity of my current version and associated settings.

I am more than happy to stick with what I have and just press the Alt and x buttons when I am done.

Thanks again for what is undoubtedly the most transparent to the source file player on the planet. And by a country mile. I might not visit here often but XXHighEnd gets used on my system on daily basis ever since I installed it three year ago and I never fail to be amazed by it's transparency

Hi,

I've been running the above version for a long while now and am extremely happy with the sound (I have no desire to experiment with further tweaks or versions as I have now gotten playback to point where it essentially transparent to the source - something no other player I have used can even remotely achieve).

Up until a month ago, the settings I was using in the "Q" drop-down panel were as follows:

Q1=0
Q2=1
Q3=0
Q4=0
Q5=0
xQ1=2

Without exception XXHighEnd always came out of unattended mode 100% of the time when the playlist was complete with the above settings.

Over the past month, however, I have been further refining the sound quality of XXHighEnd so that it is truly transparent on my setup. This resulted in a further refinement of my "Q" panel settings as follows:

Q1=0
Q2=1
Q3=1
Q4=1
Q5=0
xQ1=2

Since changing Q3 and Q4 to 1 (from 0), XXHighEnd no longer comes out of unattended mode (ever) unless I manually press "Alt" plus "X". I've tried waiting for several minutes just incase it eventually does come out by itself, but it never does.

As I say, this is a minor issue. It just means that I manually have to bring it out of unattended each time I use XXHighEnd.

Given that will not use any other version, nor will I change any settings, I was just wondering if there is some identifiable reason for this change of behaviour? I mean, obviously it has something to do with Q3 and Q4 in my case, but changing Q3 and Q4 to 1 (from 0) did make a significant difference in making XXHighEnd truly transparent as opposed to merely extremely good.

I am happy to live with this issue, but I'd just like to know if there is some sort of "fix" that does not involve changing settings or changing versions? Probably not, but I thought I would ask anyway.

Thanks

Hi,

Have been running XXHighEnd on my current Windows 7 installation for around 6 months with absolutely no problems whatsoever. Suddenly, since two days ago XXhighEnd no longer comes out of unattended mode automatically. I now have to press "alt" + "x" to bring it back out of unattended mode. Prior to this it always came out of unattended mode by itself.

The thing is that I have changed absolutely nothing whatsoever on my PC (apart from the automatic Windows 7 updates) and I have changed nothing whatsoever in XXhighEnd - the settings are exactly the same as they were when it was installed and there haven't been any hardware changes to the machine either.

I did get some updates from Microsoft for Windows 7 OS at the same time this started happening, but no updates have caused this problem before. I think it just might be a coincidence but I thought I should mention it.

Any idea where to look as to the cause of this or how I might fix it?

Thanks

Recently I upgraded the old power supply on my main PC (which doubles as my digital audio workstation). The old power supply was still working fine (Corsair AX760), but since a power supply in my completely separate gaming rig was starting to die, I decided to move the AX760 into that rig and get a brand new power supply for the main PC.

I decided to try one of these new "digital" power supplies from Corsair. I have always been impressed with Corsair products (a bad run with some SSDs being the exception) and as mentioned, the existing AX760 was still working perfectly.

Corsair's new "digital" supplies - the AX860i and AX1200i have shown through bench testing to have exceptionally clean and precise power delivery. Ripple in particular, is very low and vanishingly low in the top of the line AX1200i.

I had wanted to go all out and buy the AX1200i, but sadly it was going to be a tight fit in the desktop style case, so I had to go with the standard sized AX860i.

I did not really expect much improvement in sound quality, but after giving it a couple of days burn-in, I have to say that I am incredibly impressed by how much difference it has made. The sound is cleaner, more crisp and smoother - not hugely of course but certainly quite enough to be noticeable even with casual listening.

So certainly if you are running a larger ATX style of PC, these new types of power supply would certainly be something to consider.

Yes, well I purposely kept toggling that service on and off on both my netbook and main PC yesterday and the title in the XXHighEnd playlist window dutifully changed between Win NT 32 bit and Win 7 depending on whether the service was on or off, so obviously at least in my case it is clear cut as you say.

Anyway, I have really being enjoying the sound out of this new version - I think it is so close to digital "perfection" it would be very hard to improve from here. Certainly this version of XXhighEnd has now equalled or even by now upsurped the capabilities of my best hardware.

Obviously my dual-core Atom netbook does not sound nearly as good as my Core i7 machines (sounds a bit "motheaten" by comparison), but I am actually getting a new Lenovo Core i3 (3227U CPU) in a couple of weeks. I am hoping to bridge the gap in sound quality between my study workstation and loungeroom system with better transport hardware. Sadly the new Lenovo won't specifically be available for full-time use with XXHighEnd, though I will most certainly activate XXhighEnd on it to compare with the current Atom-powered netbook. I hope to get a slightly cleaner and smoother sound with a blacker background and crisper transients, because that is what I notice is the main difference with the Core i7 machines versus the Atom netbook.

So I will probably have a couple of new activations over the next two or three weeks

Just with some further testing today, all that seems necessary is to have the Windows Management Instrumentation service enabled when the Stop ALL Services option is checked within XXHighEnd. After that, the service can be disabled without any problems, since XXhighEnd won't perform any further validity checks. So all is good.

Hi Peter,

It's OK - I have figured out what the problem is. I have the Windows Management Instrumentation service disabled. Without that service running, it isn't possible for the OS to provide the required information.

As soon as I re-enabled the service, XXhighEnd showed it as Windows 7 again and I was able to select the Stop ALL Services option.

I don't actually run that particular service - ever - on the laptop dedicated to XXhighEnd only, and when I boot my main machine into "music" processing mode, amongst a large number of other registry tweaks, it disables that particular service as well. But I will re-enable it so I can experiment with the new option in XXhighEnd.

Is there a specific reason why you can't get the OS version information from reading the registry rather than relying on the Windows Management Instrumentation service?

I remember I had a similar issue when I was writing an addon program for Microsoft's Flight Simulator - I had to make sure anyone who attempted to install and run it could only do so with Windows Vista and Windows 7. But in that case there was a specific visual basic command that could directly read the OS version into a string, so that made it easy.

New log files attached. I turned the log on, then rebooted, then started XXhighEnd played a file, so it should have logged everything possible.

Here you go. btw, I have not yet activated this version yet since I was wanting to know if this was actually something fixable or not. In the case where it can be fixed, I thought it better to wait and activate the "fixed" version.

Also, does selecting the Stop ALL Services option override the options further down where you can specify that certain services and processes are to remain running? In my case, I have to keep a couple of touchpad related services running, otherwise my touchpad does not work properly after unattended mode. I have these services entered into the relavant part of the XXHighEnd screen so that they remain running whilst in unattended mode.

Hi,

I am just wondering if this possible issue is by design or not? With 0.9z-8-3a, if I select the "Stop ALL Services" option, I receive a message telling me that this can only be applied to Windows 7. I am, however, running Windows 7, but only windows 7 Starter 32 bit (I will probably be getting a new laptop before year end, but for the next little while I will be stuck on Windows 7 Starter).

So I was just wondering is Windows 7 Start not considered to be Windows 7 in terms of this particular option, or is XXHighEnd not recognising Windows 7 Starter correctly?

Thanks

Hi,

Just wondering if anyone has experienced an issue whereby the latest version of XXhighEnd "de-activates" itself after having been successfully activated? I activated it on my main PC yesterday morning and went to use it today - only to find it is no longer activated. This problem seems to be related to the latest version of XXhighEnd, since I never had the older version "de-activate" like this - and it was runnng on precisely the same PC - both in terms of hardware and software configuration (with the only difference being the latest version of XXhighEnd versus the older version).

Incidentally, I am only identifying the "de-activation" because the title bar has gone back to blue after having turned red during the activation process.

It is happening in unattended only. So I will wait for version 7 then.

It seems those particular errors are solved by reducing the length of the flac file names...but there is a new side effect - XXhighEnd is now ignoring the button that stops playback after the current track is finished. So XXHighEnd will play every track in a given folder listed below the current track (as well as the current track of course) and disregards that the stop playback after current track button has been pressed.

In other words, the stop playback after current track button is now useless, as XXHighEnd now completely ignores it.