Hi All

to recap my setup here, I have a Juli@ card ( 48 samples buffer ) feeding via coax into my Sony pre-processor ( TA-E9000ES ). The Sony pre-pro is essentially digital throughout and as such I would imagine it benefits well from a higher sample rate than standard 16/44.1K.

My initial listening to ver 'U' was with Vol at 0dB and no change to the 'DAC' setting of 16/44.1k. Something had definately changed for the better in my perception though compared to ver 'T', but I'm not naive enough to think that it wasn't a placebo effect in anticipation of the new version. One's listening perception's change from day to day and your mood so it was pleasing to discover that the next days listening still brought forth the improvement I had initially discovered.

Further experiments today had me playing with the Volume control on XXHE in conjunction with the Volume control on the Sony. I normally have the Sony set at -30dB readout, and that gives me an inroom volume of about 80 to 85dB peaks. I dropped the XXHE vol to -30dB and maximised the Sony vol to 0dB. Overall volume in room was still the same but there was now a slight background 'hiss'. Juggling the two controls, I have settled on -12dB on XXHE and -18dB on the Sony. This combination is very pleasing ! I should also add that I have set the 'DAC' setting to 24/96K ( which is what the Sony is capable of handling ) even though the Juli@ will output 24/192. I also found that dropping Q1 down to -2 helped tighten up the soundstage a tad.

So, for those without external DAC's, you can still experiment with the setting of each volume control, and may well find benefit's in that route.

Happy listening folks

Russ

I downloaded the 175MByte 24/96 FLAC version overnight to trial ( http://www.lindberg.no/hires/2L38SACD_tr1_stereo_96_flac.zip )

I expanded it back to WAV using dbPowerAmp and it played fine in XXHE. My Juli@ driver panel indicated it was locked at 96000 and my receiver ( Sony TA-E9000ES ) was showing 24bit @ 96KHz so I reckon all it well.

The exquisite music was the give-away though that it was working as intended

This hi-def content is certainly alluring!

Cheers all,

Russ

WOW !

one small step for Peter .. one giant leap in listening pleasure

Well .. perhaps not a small step for Peter as I'm sure he spent many a late night getting this latest version together.

I was open minded about the leadup discussions to version 'U', but kept thinking to myself, "things sound very nice now .. how much more improvement can be obtained from the standard red-book format". Well the answer, upon first firing up version 'U', is .... LOTS

Having just spent 4 memorable hours engulfed in a world of new musical experiences I can confidently report this latest version is a significant and easily discernible improvement over all earlier ones.

There is a new level of precision in the sound that becomes very enticing, and I found myself listening more and more to the subtle skills of the drummers or percussionists on the tracks I rediscovered. It is hard to convey in words what I am now hearing without resorting to often used cliches, but if you imagine someone removing a blanket from over your speakers you will get an idea of what I am talking about.

I still need to experiment with different Q1 setting as it currently resides at its default position ( 14 I presume ). I have the Volume slider sitting at 0dB and I haven't changed the buffers on my sound card driver. I can now playback my DTS multichannel albums encoded at 48KHz also which I couldn't do before.

A most momorable day today, and a big thanks once again to Peter   for his ongoing pursuit of playback nirvana.

Cheers all,

Russ

G'day hires, 


and thanks for the link

I downloaded the Surround 5.1 DTS 24 BIT / 44.1 kHz file ( 87 MB ) and it played back perfectly using XXHE. I have quite a number of surround DTS albums already which XXHE handles seamlessly so it was no surprise that the sample worked as intended. I haven't tried the bulkier files yet though but may do so towards the end of the month if I have some bandwidth spare. ( Yeah I know ... its a pain the way aussie ISP's don't have reasonably priced plans that are truly unlimited, but that's predominantly due to the dominance of our largest telco over here .. grrrr )


Did anyone pickup on the statement in that article "We're only working with Windows XP, because Windows Vista is currently a disaster for audio," says Martin. "Vista tries to control and play files its way, which is not what we want."

They obviously haven't heard of XXHE then.

I'm a little dubious whether distributing those large files across the net is a viable plan, certainly not to regions such as OZ where we have such restrictive bandwidth plans. At around 3.6 GByte for 60 minutes playtime ( WAV @ 24-bit/176.4kHz ) they had also better have some really fast servers to spit the data out. To get that 3.6 GB in 2 hours ( their suggestion ) would need a sustained download speed of around 500 KByte/sec, and that's pretty darn quick compared to most other sites out there. I'll settle for a disc to arrive via post methinks.

Cheers all,

Russ

Hi Peter ...

I think I've discovered a likely bug in ChangeWP.exe that manifests itself when accessing music across a network that has a space in the sharename for the drive you are reading from.

In my environment here, if I start XXHE on my HTPC and attempt to access folders on my main workhorse PC that has , for example, a share name of 'Data_4 (H)' or even 'Data 4_(H)' , then as soon as ChangeWP is envoked it will crash ( but Engine3 will continue on happily playing music in its unattended mode). If the share name is altered to something like 'H' or '(H)' or 'Data_4' or 'Data_4_(H)' then ChangeWp behaves itself and displays the folder art as the backdrop as intended.

Note that my main workhorse PC is running XP Pro.

It's easy enough for me to change all my sharenames on my workhorse PC to get around the current quirk but this bug might trip another user in the future who uses similar naming conventions for his sharenames.

Happy bug squashing 

Cheers,

Russ

G'day folks

have any of you had success in using the LynxTwo soundcard successfully with XXHE such that the system mixer can be bypassed ie. when you slide the volume control up and down it has no effect on the overall volume?

I was recently asked to rebuild the operating system in a HTPC so the owner could trial XXHE ( I had been extolling its virtues for a while  ) and the soundcard already in that PC is the LynxTWo, chosen specifically for its quality recording capabilities. The owner has a large record collection and wishes to archive them digitally.

Now, I can bypass the mixer sucessfully in my own HTPC, using an ESI Juli@ card, and all is fine, as was the case when I was using the M-Audio Audiophile USB previously. I'm sure you all are able to do likewise. I'm beginning to think it may be a driver restriction of the LynxTwo card, or perhaps ( hopefully ) my inexperience with that card and it's unique driver configuration panel.

Any insight would be useful.

The owner has an external DAC at his disposal and could be driven by the SPDIF output of the LynxTwo but I wasn't able to test that before returning the PC.

Sometimes life wasn't meant to be easy .. LOL

Cheers all,

Russ

A second 'Yep' from me too.

Cheers,

Russ

Hi Chris,

I was thinking along similar lines in the last few days while trying to get my head around the changes introduced in 0.9S-1 ( and -2 today) .

There is no doubt in my mind that 0.9S has a level of involvement and clarity not there in the earlier versions but I can't pinpoint as to which of the many options/variables is the cause per se, or whether Peter has simply discovered ( yet again ) a method of removing another veil from the system influences.

Initially I had thought that some equalization was being applied to bring out the upper frequencies, but I'm not sure that is the case now. Whatever is happening, there is a noticeable improvement in upper frequency rendition which I find pleasing.

In some ways I think XXHE parallels the development curve of Zoomplayer ( the media playback application ). Both start out as a tinkerer's paradise and feedback given by the initial users help develop the product to the stage where a sound ( no pun intended ) functional installation of the program can be achieved which will cover the majority of the user base needs. The small minority of inveterate tinkerer's will still have options available to them but hidden from general use.

There are a couple of items I would like adding to the next version if possible. The first is a simple one, that being the specific version number after the XXHighEND letters at the top left of the playing window. This will make is easier to remember which one you are playing if you have more than one version open as you flip between them while doing comparisons. The second might be a little trickier, and may not be possible at all, and that is an indicator of some type that shows the buffer state of the sound card driver. This indicator should assist in determining the ideal combination of the Q1 slider and the number of samples chosen in the sound card driver. They appear to be interactive and if incorrectly matched manifests itself as glitches or crackles being heard.

Cheers 

Russ

I also discovered this little bug ( which wasn't apparent in 0.9s-1 ). I found that the NEXT function works if STOP is used just prior to pressing the NEXT button though.

Cheers,

Russ

I'll look on the bright side then ... I can enjoy it tomorrow during the day while the rest of the world needs to sleep, although I'm sure there will be a few here having a late night tonight 

The temperature forecast for tomorrow here is a top of 37 degrees centigrade so it's a good excuse to stay inside and enjoy your new creation.

Cheers all,

Russ

This sounds most intriguing Peter

And, because the weekend starts here about 9 to 10 hours before you guys in Europe, I'll be able to open and play with the present earlier 

Cheers all,

Russ

G'day Johan 

I'm not fully understanding what you are saying here. If you are implying that you had 'memory errors' when you disabled virtual memory and that all was fine after you re-enabled it, that would only indicate that you had insufficient physical RAM memory available for your systems needs. If these 'memory errors' were caused by a physical defect in the RAM chips themselves then these errors would be evident regardless of whether virtual memory was enabled or not.

For my part, I haven't experienced a single glitch or stutter since disabling virtual memory several days ago. I am now confident I have solved that issue 

Cheers

Russ

Good news indeed Chris !

Half a dozen or more albums have played here since my last post and all is still fine, so my smile is broadening

If all is well in a day or so I will try dropping my sound cards latency down from its current 384 samples and see what effect that brings. Each card probably has it's own sweetspot and you may have found yours.

Cheers and happy listening,

Russ

G'day Chris

I think the disabling of Virtual RAM was the tweak that fixed it, but the other's won't do any harm.

Go to the Control Panel and select the System icon. From there, choose the 'Advanced System Settings' from left hand side, and that should pop up a window with a number of tabs along the top. You should be open to the 'Advanced' tab already, so then click on 'settings' in the performance section. In the next window that pops up, makes sure you are at the 'visual effects' tab and then selct the option to 'adjust for best performance'. When you click on 'apply' everything will become very plain looking. While still in that window, choose the 'advanced' tab, and you will see the section labelled 'virtual memory' Click on the 'change' button. Remove the tick from 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' so you can then select the 'no paging file' option. Click the 'set' button'

Back to the 'system properties' window, choose the 'remote' tab and untick the option for 'remote assistance'. You can then close down the 'system properties' window.

Back to control Panel, choose the 'sound' icon, and then the 'sounds' tab. Under the 'sound scheme' dropdown selector, choose the 'no sounds' option. You can leave the 'play windows startup sound' ticked.

That should do it. Restart the PC and see if it's helped.

hooroo ...

Russ

G'day folks

I'm tending to agree with Peter on this one .... version 0.9Q has lost a little precision compared to 0.9pd. This conclusion follows a day of solid listening to this latest version

As an example, for those who have Diana Krall's Love Scenes album, have a listen to the finger snaps at the start of "My Love Is" track. With 0.9pd there is a realism of someone in front of you clicking their fingers and you can visualise the middle finger hitting the base of the thumb. Try it yourself and hear how it sounds in real life. It should sound like a sudden 'snap'. With 0.9Q this precision is dulled a little. Not a huge amount, but enough to be noticeable for me. The soundstage of Diana and her backing artists also looses a little in precise location IMHO also.

To keep the comparison equal between versions I used the same settings for each, namely Q1 at 0 ( zero ) with invert ticked.

The journey continues ...

Cheers all

Russ