Superdac,
One thing to keep in mind is that in recent earlier versions of XXHE there were no pops/clicks/crack sounds.  So things have worked fine.  Peter changes things for sound quality, and these latest versions have an appeal that xxhe people are pursuing, but this "higher" audio performance is causing some "hiccups" some related some not... that's for Peter to figure out and us soldiers to help with hehe. But I'm  sure Peter will bang his head against the computer long enough to spill blood and get things fixed in a way that's good for SQ... we're in beta.  I think, if anyone has figured out/has a handle on Vista audio, it's Peter... sometimes I truely think he knows more than the individuals at MS.

Anyway, as stated, earlier versions of xxhe which you can dl, have not shown "hiccups" in Vista, and to my ears have already beaten Foobar....to a pulp.

hehe... this is what I keep thinking... that we should all try to figure out the best front end, setting,... for XXHighEnd.  Let's all move toward the same page.  Then we'll be talking apples and apples; not apples and oranges.  I want to trip like StPeter does. hehe

I took my laptop/HDD/DAC over to a friend's house about a week ago and, of course (hehe), he very much liked what he heard.  He's only dabbled in ripping files and mainly just for his ipod.

Anyway, the reason for this thread is...
I've always had to lift the ground on the laptop (hey it hasn't fried yet, crossed fingers) or I get all the HDD/laptop noise coming through the speakers... this is even with the laptop plugged into a different circuit on going to the main box!! (stereo on an overbuilt subpanel from the main) or even it I plug it into circuits on the subpanel itself.  If I lift the ground on the pc... absolute silence from the pc... has worked for me.
Over at my friend's house he has one of these:
PS Audio Premier Power Plant
http://www.psaudio.com/products/premier_power_plant.asp
If I just plugged the laptop into an outlet grounded in his listening room, the pc noise came through.  If I plugged the grounded pc into the Premier ... silence.  I decided to keep an eye out for a used one, and I just found one for $1250. (ouch, but better than the new 2200. asking price).  Wish me luck, but thought I'd bring it up for anyone fighting pc noise bleeding into the system.

How I play it:
Q1 = 14
can't double/can't over
16/44.1 wav files
Well it's taking me forever to get a grasp of my systems' new sound as a bevy of changes have taken place, (biggest being home electrical changes, and new amp and tube swapping).  But things are shaping up and when playing the audiophool game of back and forth between u8 and u12 I've come to like the sound of u8 more.  u8, for me, has a larger, more 3d, cohesive, natural soundstage.  u12, while sounding less 3d, sounds uneven... sometimes the mids(female vocal area) jump out of place and sound over the top ... not a natural dynamics.

But, for a large portion of my wav files, I keep running into "cracks" that start to play along side the music.  With u12 I still have wavs that pop up the "crack detect" warning, but if I don't get that warning then the WAV will play fine.

Could it be that I just need to build a new computer sometime?  Handle these new XXHE versions better?

Ah ya, I think you're spot on most of the time.  My vote is for you to keep your ears in here for all our sake.

From Peter's release notes 09-u9 "It looks like a similar problem as "XXEngine3 stopped working", which has not been reported, but for sure occurs with you out there (it does here)."

I get this sometimes..I think only at teh end of an album... and then xxhe player doesn't pop up (unattended) like normal at the end of an album.

... so far at least
have played 5 wav/cue files to see if they either crackle, stall at second song, and/or throw up a crack detect warning.  So far none of the albums that exhibited these anomalies are showing them using 09-u10.  I have not listened for SQ... which has been hard for me to do with changes going on here...
...new amp, nonlinear/distorted input tubes, bad seated 125 amp breaker to music room sub-panel (ugh probably what took out my CAT amps) replaced, windows/sp1 reinstalled... I'll try to sit and listen...

09-U7 & 09-U8 16/44.1 no nothing prios set to normal for testing q1 = 14
Keep finding WAV/CUE files in my collection that either crackle after the 2nd song or pop up Crack Detection error.  If I bypass Crack Detection the wav/cue has crackles in it, (like what I hear in Cornershop album).  I started to write down a list of albums as I come across them so I'll remember.. but hard to listen to music when I'm waiting for crackles to happen.

I thought ok, I'll rip a couple of these having trouble to Song Wav files and use No cue file.  They still play back with crackles.  I'm not sure I've mentioned this?  So small individual song wav files with no cue files around are exibiting poor crackling sound.

I loaded up 09-T5 and these same albums (wav/cue or song wavs) sounded wonderful again.

I've only listened today to 09-U8 and before the album starts to crackle they sound great.  But 09-T5 makes me more relaxed at the moment.hehe  anyway!  So am I the only one having trouble?  This seems to be outside cue, big files, or anything... This happens on old rips or new rips.
Maybe my ittlebitty waptop is too small?

edit
Another weird thing I ran into, a few times (like once/twice a listening session) 09-u7/8 would ... like... the musicians would false start but immediately start up again from hiccup, this was usually at the beginning of a song. no distortion, kinda seemless.  If you're listening to rock it might seem in place

Stupid is as stupid does... andz i's done a lot of stupid...

hehe
carry on

Hey Andy!
Thanks, I've known about medival for awhile now and started using it... then stopped once Peter supported cue files.  It seemed to work well... but I wasn't confident in it enough to drop my whole wav/cue files, and I didn't want to double my inventory of music.... but I have medival Cue Splitter at the ready in case that's the way to go.  Have you ever done an abx of it?

Well, I guess I'm learning something new everyday... I had no idea it was limited to 3??? That seems low, I thought people were buying systems now aday with 4 gigs in em? and thought surely windows would handle more.

hmm sucks for me and my huge single album files... back to thinking about splitting them into single wav files again? bleh....


HEY PETER!!!! how about adding something into XXHE that splits my album wav/cue file into single songs with info taken from the cue and displayed in XXHE?  then they can be preprocessed... (or how about i just give up and start ripping my cds into song files...what do you think).

Well just thinking in terms of new amounts of ram that could be viable in the future.  How much ram would you like to see available to fully do the XXHighEnd thing in the future?...32/384 anyone?... or, (god he's going to bring it up again...) enough to handle a few wav/cue albumS for changing the rate any way you feel fit in XXHE? (although I wonder if I would just end up NOS in the end any way?)

Soo
now that we have Solid State Drives, take a 32 Gig SSD and use it as ram?  I'm just saying, shoot for what's best for the wav files.  If that takes lots of mem to achieve then tech will catch up (with our wallets) soon enough.  I know I'm waiting.

Waiting's good for me!  I'm glad it's just a matter of time; I'm sure I've just scratched the surface of albums that will be affected by this.

I don't know about worry,,, but do you think these albums I'm finding not playing on 9u-7, (but playing normally on lower versions), will be able to play on the newer versions of XXHE coming up?  I've already tried ripping a couple in various different ways and they still don't work 9u-7, so I guess that's not it. 

Ah, thanks, I feel the love. hehe
I sure would like to be able to use the volume of XXHE someday.  Envisioning my next XXHE computer/dac frontend is always on my mind.  I kinda have funds for it right now... but not going to jump big until ???? always the question.  Thanks for going through the questions above.