Happy to help Peter. I'll provide the evidence and you can take care of the forensics.

Since the last post I've played several albums straight through without missing a beat, so it may well be simply a timing issue from m$oft.

I seem to recall ( but can't be 100% certain ) that most of the time the actual error message window was hidden behind the GUI and that I had to click on the taskbar button to see it. This may imply the error message was generated first before the GUI had been re-initiated.

I'll leave my user.config file intact for the time being also, but I have noticed that since I removed the path entry in  "InitialTrackDirectory" that nothing has been re-inserted back in there. Is that significant and is it likely to cause problems? The entry for "txtSource" is getting updated correctly so it is being written to OK.

Cheers,

Russ

Here are some more screen dumps to look at.

CoverArt_bug_3.jpg
Following on from the previous post I queued up "Oregon\Beyond Words" album and played it in its entirety. At the end of playback when the GUI reappeared the "Show CoverArt" error message reappeared. Before clicking on OK I brought up user.config to check whether that path to the Klaus Schulze album was still there .... it was. Notice the absense of coverart in the right panel.

CoverArt_bug_4.jpg
I clicked on the OK button for previous error message and reset slider to the 119x119 position again. The coverart reappears in rightpanel. I then closed XXHE

CoverArt_bug_5.jpg
Upon starting XXHE a new message appeared. Note that slider has now been positioned by itself to left side and size of coverart in right panel is of appropriate size ( 17x17 pixels ).

I then closed XXHE down, and edited the user.config to remove the reference to the Klaus Schulze path in the "InitialTrackDirectory" setting. ( I simply deleted the whole path but left the actual setting entry intact )

CoverArt_bug_6.jpg
Started up XXHE again with the same album as previous and played just the last track. At completion the first error message came up again. This would suggest the path entry for the Klaus Schulze entry was likely not the cause of these errors. I clicked the OK button on the error message. Before doing anything else I noticed as I moved the cursor over the slider control it indicated a setting of 119 x 119 pixels, even though it was to the extreme left.

CoverArt_bug_7.jpg
As soon as I clicked on the slider control the covertart reappeared in the rightpanel.

I played the last track of the Oregon album one more time and after completion it brought up the error message again.

At this stage I'm thinking of deleting the user.config entry and the other self generated files from within the XXHE folder and start from scratch again, but will wait on your advice if this is what you want doing next.

Cheers for now,

Russ

PS. good morning .. hehe

Thankfully the error re-occurred just now.

I had just completed playing a complete album and went to queue up another album when I saw the message.

Before clicking on the OK button on the error message I opened up the user.config file to check value of "CoverArtPictureSize" and it was still set to "7". I also noticed the "InitialTrackDirectory" was set to a path that I had played slightly earlier. Interestingly enough, it points to a 2 CD set, where again, a single folder.jpg resides one level up from the music files themselves.

I clicked on the OK button and rechecked the user.config and nothing had altered. The modification timestamp confirmed it hadn't been written to either.

I then shutdown XXHE, rechecked the user.config and it now showed the "CoverArtPictureSize" at "1", which co-incides with the left most position as seen in the picture below.

I reset the slider to the 119x119 pixel size and I've queued up and playing another album as I type this. We shall see what happens next I guess.

If you want me to delete the current user.config file at any stage and rebuild from scratch I can Peter, but it may be helpful to have it in its current form for a while as I try and see a pattern emerge of events.

Will keep you posted.

Russ

No visual porn on display here Peter, just the audio type eminating from XXHE itself

I tried to emulate the bug again this morning by playing various pieces and tracks at random and all seemed to be behaving itself. I was just about to give up and go do something else when the message attached below came up, upon starting up XXHE again. I had been playing a few tracks, then closing XXHE down in at attempt to provoke the bug.

Just prior to a restart when that message came up I had selected and played ( to completion ) a single track from a 3 CD set. The individual folders for the 3 CD's do not have their own folder.jpg within them, but have a single folder.jpg residing one level up. This may simply be a co-incidence in the bug hunt but thought it worth mentioning anyway. I can't be sure whether any of the music I played yesterday may have been from multiple CD sets.

My folderart slider is normally set to 136x136 pixels, and the coverart slider is set at 119x119 pixels.

In hindsight I should have looked at the user.config file to see what the values were at the time of the error message appearing. After I re-established the coverart slider to 119x119 pixels I checked the user.config file and as expected the "coverart" value was set at "7" as expected. If that message re-occurs I will check the user.config file before clicking on the "OK" button.

I'm guessing something is resetting the value of the "coverart" within user.config to zero, but that's where I hang up my Dr. Watson hat and leave it to you dear Holmes to find the villain.

I should also add that I always re-establish my setting from scratch. I never copy from previous versions. Each new version resides in a separate folder, and appropriate desktop shortcuts etc. created from them. I haven't been receiving further messages advising to "load previous settings" either. I only used 0.9x-3 yesterday and today.

I'll continue to monitor.

Thanks Peter,

Russ



 

hey there Peter,

the bug hunter from downunder has located a couple of minor pests that need your attention when you have a moment.

Firstly, I have noticed that after playing an album in unattended mode, and the GUI is re-initiated at the end of playback, the second last track always seems to be highlighted in blue, rather than the last track as I would have expected. All tracks play in correct order so there isn't a problem there, but the incorrect highlighting at the end of play may point to an error in your code logic that could cause a problem in other areas.

Secondly, is that the slider control governing the size of the righthand panel clipart keeps getting reset back to 17 x 17 pixels. It's the slider control when in the playlist tab. The one for the folder art in the centre panel is fine. This resetting seems to occur at random from what I've noticed. I may play several albums one after the other, stopping at the end of each to add another playlist entry, and things will be fine. All of a sudden I notice the slider has been reset. I will try and see whether it may in fact occur after a specific number of 'starts' of the GUI but at this stage it appears random. MAybe you need a stronger glue for that slider .. hehe

Everything else about 0.9x-3 appears just great !!

Cheers,

Russ

Hi Peter,

the "white screen" bug happens regardless of the setting of attended/unattended.

I've tried various combinations of settings and I can reproduce the bug simply by deleting the LibraryData.txt file from the working directory.

If I choose the Library tab, and then click on any entry in the lefthand gallery list, the folder art will appear in the middle panel as expected but will immediately be replaced with a whitescreen. Choosing another entry from the left panel will not change the middle panel. It will remain white.

If I close down XXHE and restart everything behaves itself as normal. It is only the initial running of XXHE when LibraryData.txt has not been created yet that this bug is evident.

Should be easy to squash this bug

Cheers,

Russ

I've noticed this minor issue myself for quite a few versions now. Guess it's something Peter will want to look at when the killer bugs have been eradicated. Never occurs again though after the first restart.

Cheers,

Russ

G'day Peter,

Since the invocation of the "back album cover" as part of the desktop wallpaper ( nice feature by the way ), I have noticed a few of my album covers have exceeded the height of the desktop when displayed, resulting in the top and bottom being cut off. I'm assumming this occurs because the covers in question are not conforming to the general practice of having square cover art. This is generally not a problem for normal CD coverart, but music extracted from DVD's or some online outlets, like AIX Records, have their cover art in more of a portrait format.

Could you try and accommodate these non-square covert art pictures by perhaps having an additional parameter we specify which limits the height of the wallpaper that your scaling will not exceed. This would undoubtedly result in the overall width of the wallpaper being reduced in those instances, but it would mean the top and bottom would be visible.

Hope this makes sense.

Cheers,

Russ

FYI ... I run my desktop at 1280 x 800 pixels, and currently have the "Show as Wallpaper Width" set to 626 pixels. This nicely fills the width of my screen with a few pixels spare either side. An example of an album I have issues with is "Acousic Guitar" by "Peppino D'agostino" from AIX Records. The album art I created is 382 x 570 pixels. When scaled currently I don't see any of the top or bottom status fields in the wallpaper.

Peter,

it may be unrelated to Gerard's sliderbar problem, but when I started 0.9x-1 for the first time ( and subsequently 0.9x-1a ), XXHE's GUI window appeared to be outside the normal viewing area of the desktop. Likely co-ordinates were in the negative. If I used the "Maximise" function from with the taskbar entry for it, XXHE would appear and fill the screen as expected. If I then tried the "Restore down" button ( top right hand corner ) it would disappear again.

I had to use the "move" function to bring it onto my desktop, which I should add hasn't changed in definition since its initial build. ( 1280 x 800 pixels )

Once I had the window visible on my desktop everything behaved normally.

Cheers,

Russ

ah .. yes .. now I see it. My understanding of the dutch language is somewhat limited and the wording of the error message failed to register with me.

Happy to report that 0.9x-1a had cured my problem 

Cheers,

Russ

G'day Peter,

I think i've found a bug that seems to have gone unnoticed for quite a few versions now.

When attempting to load a full album encoded in MP3 by double clicking on the album cover art in the centre pane, a warning window titled "Explode Cue File" pops up, with the following text inside ..

"Index and length must refer to a location within the string.
 Parameter name: length"

There is an OK button to press, and when pressed this message reoccurs for what seems to be related to the number of tracks in the album. At the end of pressing the "OK" button however many times it takes, there are NO entries in the Playlist.

I should note that I NEVER use cue files.

If I right-click on the album art and chose the "Load Individual Tracks in Playlist Area" option, I can then populate the Playlist using that method.

This bug is NOT evident in version 0.9w-6, but is in at least 0.9w-7, 0.9w-8, 0.9w-9b and 0.9x-1 ( which I still have installed in separate folders on my PC).

If you can't reproduce this bug yourself I will generate some log files for you.

Cheers, and sorry for the delay in reporting this .. I haven't been listening to many of my MP3 of late!

Russ

G'day Peter,

may I suggest an addition to the onboard volume control which may prevent shattered windows and bleeding ears. Within the settings area, would it be possible to set an explicit, user defined, upperlimit that the volume control cannot exceed, eg. -30dB. What this should then do is prevent the volume slider control from physically rising any further than that value.

Although I don't use the onboard volume control currently ( I use preamp for that ), I may well bypass the preamp in the future.

The thought of having full power going to my speakers because of a slip of a mouse wheel is too scary to contemplate

Cheers,

Russ

G'day folks,

has anyone tried using a Lynx 22 card ( specifically that model and not the One or Two ) with XXHE under Vista?

I'd like to be sure it will operate in Exclusive Audio mode ( I think that's the terminology ) before suggesting it's use for a friend whom I am building a music server for. Earlier in the year I trialled a Lynx2 but I seem to recall ( distant memory now ) that it wouldn't operate in EA mode. It could have been a driver issue with that card though.

Many thanks,

Russ

Thanks for the reminder Peter.

I've been using RealVNC for ages now to control my laptop from my study PC ( and vica versa ) and it never occurred to me to use the laptop to control my music server with it. DOH !

I loaded up the RealVNC Server ( Enterprise version ) on the music server, made the appropriate configurations, and connected to it from my laptop sitting on .. err .. my lap ... while sitting on my recliner. No more neckstrain trying to look at the music servers monitor off to one side in the distance .. excellent !!

Screen updates on the laptop were fine .. essentially real time. As I use scheme 1 for my processors balance any addition CPU loads were handled by the CPU not running Engine#3. There doesn't appear to be any perceivable degradation in SQ.

Next step I guess is to see if one of those little EEEPC's might do the job.

I'm a happy chappy 

Cheers,

Russ

G'day Peter,

I finally found some time to devote to more A/B'ing using your suggestions from above.

I had reverted to 0.9v-7 and have been using it for a week now so I have a pretty good feel as to its SQ. I tried 0.9w-3 with your settings ( split size of 700MB and unticked Start Engine ) and started up some Diana Krall. It still lacks the sparkle of the earlier version to my mind. Particularly noticeable for the cymbals .. they don't sound as metallic. Now, this was using Q1 at -3. When I tried at again at +14 is was even more mellow and laid back, which isn't the way I enjoy my muusic. I like to hear every nuance and detail available.

I also noted that using a split size of 700MB resulted in a track stopping before the end and the next track starting up. When I used 0.9w-3 a week or so ago I used a size of 1024MB and didn't have that issue. I was also using the Start Engine3  during conversion option so perhaps that is the reason.

Hope that has given you a better feel for what we are hearing, and hopefully mimics your findings to a certain extent.

Cheers,

Russ