How bout keeping it the same as what foobar does ... eventually we'll win these fools over with better SQ, but let's make it easy to transition.

but do take your hard drive off of the usb.  Not good to run both dac and HDDs off the usb.  Listen, I got pretty good results using USB... but cable (I found no name 1m clear plastic silver-braid type that beat everything generic I threw at it, including belkin gold, did not try the really expensive ones... so gl), does make a difference AND you need to find the best sounding USB port on your machine you can find... trial/error, then shut off all the other USBs you can.

Also, everyone!!!!
I get more and more convinced that a single WAV file & CUE file is the best way to go,,, then you don't have to worry about gapless.  You CANNOT have your cake and eat it too.... meaning, you can't load different tracks from different albums and have it play the best presentation possible ... especially because the volume is going to change from track to track and there is no way to "level" the volume and get good playback. This is the only reason I can see for ripping a CD as individual tracks and not as a single wav file... am I missing something, cause I think you all might be?(little "drunk" sorry for the dramatics)

If you build my machine,,, well, I'm very very happy right now, course hehehe I'm "drunk"

How about creating a partician for Vista on the dual core laptop?  I don't know for sure... but your celeron machine sounds like it has some issues (which could be anything from power supply to hardware drivers to ???).  My former front end was a single core laptop that came with XP... I bought and loaded Vista and played XXHE on that for a long while. (new dual core machine for me is much better).  Just sounds like you're having to work too hard to make things work ... time is money?

Fun fun pictures.  I love the lampshades on the speakers pic!!! hehe we do work hard at this stuff and we don't care what our friends think!  The white BD speakers are awesome; someday, if I ever get my ass outta the listening room and travel, ima invite myself over hehe.

Fidelio I love the way you captured the Pink Floyd in your piano black speakers; they look nice.

I'm sorry.  I think I have it now.

http://gallery.audioasylum.com/cgi/view.mpl?UserImages=6645

I had linked a page you that was private for me when logged in.  Does it work now?  And again, the pictures are really poor quality.  It's always been a bad point&shoot, but my daughter admits to dropping it too hehe.

Can you not follow the link above?  I thought you only had to be a contributer to up your pics... but that anyone can view them? no?

I just uploaded some pictures of my system over at Audio Asylum.  My camera really sucks; the pictures came out really dark.  You can kinda see what's going on.  I may try again later to get better pics, but at least it shows what I'm doing now.  Toward the bottom of the pics you can see some old pictures I took that show off the speakers better.

http://gallery.audioasylum.com/cgi/view.mpl?UserImages=6645

There were several reasons I finally broke away from usb with my Stello, not least of which when I found differences between the 5 usb ports I had available.  In my latest pc build I have all usb shut off at the bios end.  Can't say I've done back and forth comparisons on the new pc, but now I have 96/24 capability through spdif into the Stello, and I'm betting part of the great reason my front end is so superior to before is because of not using usb.  Reading your posts gave me some nudges too.

That all said, Wavelength audio and Empirical audio would say they're doing it like no one else (they can now do 96/24 through usb.... still);
I don't think even they can get away from the fact that different usb cables and different usb ports present better/worse.

I'm about to duplicate for a friend what I've got going on for myself.  At the moment I use Western Digital Mybook Premium Edition IIs (2TB a piece; usually about $400. each) daisy chained through firewire 400. I don't care too much about speed of pulling my WAV/CUE file off the HDD, because of using XXHighEnd and it loads the entire album into RAM before it starts to play it...I don't like to have other programs running when listening to music and I don't like having wireless stuff going, so,..(ok, ya I think it can interfer with the presentation).
My question about NAS
Does it show up like regular HDDs in Explorer, or do I have to have another program running along with XXHE to access the HDDs on the lan.... I do all my back up manually and keep backup HDDs offsite... so I only need to run raid 0. so, how do I pull the files off the HDD with a nas? Can I see them with Explorer going to network places probably? noob ?
I'm happy with my firewire HDDs, but if NAS is the better way, then I want to do right by my friend.

Just to emphasize.

I would drop XXHE in a flash if I thought Peter was putting convenience over Sound Quality... which is the best musical presentation for me.  If XXHE does nothing but be the best CD player I have ever heard, then I'm happy. 

If you are adding different songs from different albums, well, for me that just doesn't work.  You'll always have different volume levels between songs then, so if you try to play different songs from different albums, you'll either be up and down with the volume for each song change or, most music programs are going to offer some type of leveling (replaygain for foobar) that destroys the music for me (won't be bit perfect, won't be phasure, will make the music flat).  XXHE only allows 6db changes of volume for a reason, it keeps it bit perfect and doesn't destroy the integrity of the music.  It would be nice to have finer degree of change, but it destroys the bit perfect that makes XXHE phasure.  I just put on a whole album and listen, like we did in days gone by with cdplayers.  If I want a jukebox, there are plenty of programs out there for that.  But changing the volume any other way then how Peter does it is going to destroy the best playback and presentation of the music.

I think there are a lot of people who want their music played back at the highest level of fidelity; convenience be damned.  Witness everyone excited about cplay for XP (a much stripped down player); all these people need to load up vista and give XXHE a try too and get away from asio (which cplay must use).  What Peter also did with Unattended mode is genius... get rid of the player altogether when playing music, because everything you do to a computer, everything you have running, every extra program, extra hardware...... it all seems to make a difference.  That's how he's been able to add features, but keep the SQ topmost.  Throw your hands up and give up, or be happy with a jukebox...or have both if you want; XXHE and a different player for jukebox play, (I just have XXHighEnd loaded up; I can't see how having another player loaded but not running could influence,,, but hey, I've not been able to figure out a lot of the whys things could influence; therefore I keep it simple).  Lots of flavors out there, but XXHE is the most musically involving for me and faithful to the original recording.... that's what I'm looking for.

I would imagine this might even be harder than building the player itself... hehe, gl  I'm here to help, it's the least I can do for the pleasure you've brought me through XXHE.

What a nice feature!!
I recently bought "Kinks, The - Soap Opera" from http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=9624albums and downloaded the 96/24 flac they offer.  For the jpg they only offered a 185*185 cover :/ , (along with some nice pictures/all album info... in pdf format ... anyone know how I can pull a pdf image and make a jpg off it? ... is this not allowed?...anyway); so I thought, "What a nice time to try Peters' "Get Data form the Internet" and it found lots and I saved two 500*500 .jpg yea.

Some thoughts.

Would there be a way to limit the search to say 500*500 .jpg and above? of course being able to switch back to an all image search if nothing of quality is found.
&
Could we add some other sites in the search?
http://www.discogs.com/
Discogs usually has some very nice album pics (better quality, resolution and color than amazon, and usually someone has upped back covers and inside photos)  This is where I went before I bought a scanner.

http://www.walmart.com/
although I detest their business practices, they seem to usually have better 500*500 quality than amazon or sometimes have things that amazon doesn't, (anyone else notice that amazons mp3 500*500 photos are only ok, grainy and color blasted, they do in a pinch, but usually I'm looking for customer added stuff)

anyway, nice convenient feature Peter.

Dunno if it's the same thing, but I do play a balancing act between the Pass Labs xover volumes and XXHE volume.  I keep trying different "ratios", but the one thing I've found to be true is that using both the XXHE volume and the xover volume together is better than trying to have all one or all the other by itself.  Right now the xover bass/highs are set at 3 oclock/1 oclock, and XXHE is set at -12db ...

I think you'll have a hard time finding answers to this question.  Unless you can find someone who, on the same computer, has a 32 bit and a 64 bit partition.... I dunno.  I chose 64 bit Vista, but XXHE is running at 32 bit,,,, but? I think there are questions out there, right Peter, as to what might be happening?  Anyhow, I don't want to load anymore than I have to on the computer, because things that shouldn't make a difference .... seem to anyway in computerland.... so I'm not loading a second 32 bit OS on here.  I guess I went with 64 bit in hopes that someday Peter will find a way to use all the extra ram I bought and am wasting heheh.  But bottom line for you and me.....

I have no idea if one of the reasons my system sounds so crazy good now is because of 64 bit vista, or if I had loaded up the 32 bit OS instead, that I'd be in complete nirvana incapable of leaving my music room...  The scientist in me says no way could it make a difference, the mystic in me just chuckles.

Heya Peter,

Are you still using 1 meter of FW cable to the Fireface800?

I just ordered 1m of 9pin to 9 pin from this nice looking cable
http://www.unibrain.com/products/p1394/cables_b.htm
Have you ever seen if there is a difference between the 400 connection or the 800?  Out of curiosity, which are you using?