541
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Version 0.9d does not work for me - w/Vista (64bit)
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on: August 28, 2007, 03:53:01 am
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Yes Dave, I could agree to everything, but I have a few remarks though :
Yesterday I spent 1.5 hours on a reply to you in your Foobar topic, and when I was near finished I wanted to try something with Foobar which caused my system hanging and I lost my post. Wasted time, and I couldn't find the guts to start all over again. Today I spent a lousy 14 hours on an improperly working xover, and bothered two other people with it during that same time. I had to switch off/on my Fireface to solve the xover problem ...
With this I only want to say that people may for whatever always good reason feel confident with an OS. It won't be me wasting their time by forcing "an" OS. So yes, I hate it when it comes to that anyway. I will solve it, once I stop waisting time on ... computers.
lol ohh I'm so sorry. 1.5 hours dang sorry. Sometimes I think, "ya know I shouldn't post this cause then Peter will probably want to respond and poor guys "running" as fast as he can trying to do the good thing coding on the XXHE player". Sorry about the lost post, I'm sure it would have been a good read; Thanks for spending time plugging away at your player making it the best. Here's my solution to computer problems.... format and start again heheh doh and sorry about the wasted 14 hrs. My neighbor, who is an engineer, always thinks things should work as they should with computers. If he ever has a problem, I always say, "Have you rebooted?" and he always say, "but, I shouldn't have to ... there's no logical reason to reboot" ... then he does reboot and when it works, I always bug him with the reply "see? Magic" hehe
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542
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Version 0.9d does not work for me - w/Vista (64bit)
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on: August 27, 2007, 11:21:39 pm
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My 2 cents. I want people to think about this and remember what a good stand-alone cd player costs. Then think about what they want their now computer front end to be doing. Do you want it to be a part time audio Front End player and serve all your other computer needs too? Or are you willing to build a new dedicated front end computer dedicated to being your transport. If you want the best FE and pay a super lot, maybe get DCS gear and have at it... it's never been in my system, but I've heard it twice in others (and I have heard Oracle gear in mine)... but, I'd be willing to put my dedicated FE (only XXHE loaded basically) (US dollars) $1200. laptop; a $100 dollar version of Vista Home Prem 32bit; $100 for XXHighEnd; $750 for Stello 100 USB-DAC; + monies for external HDDs, up against any and all comers. For me, $100 for Vista 32 bit was a smart upgrade from XP to hear XXHE done as it is. If and when Vista 64 bit XXHE beats out 32 bit another $100 may be spent to go there... still cheap stuff in Audiophool land. I know Peter wants his program to work under all circumstances ... good for him... but, I like knowing I'm setting up things for XXHE to work its best, and getting superb (best out there perhaps?) performance out of my Front End at a pittance of what I've paid for optical cd players in the past. Not trying to come off as too much of a snob. Just want people to think about changing their views of having a single computer doing all of their computer business/home needs and audiophool needs.... ok, maybe that's more than 2 cents worth of thought.
edit: Thought of something I wanted to add to this. As I was getting into and checking out audio gear.. from the late 80s until now... When I started comparing digital front ends it always amazed me how I began to find the transport/cable part of the transport/dac was so much more important than the dac part. I wondered why the mags always focused much more on the dacs than the transports. I think my learning how important/vulnerable getting the digits off the disc as opposed to the digital-audio-coversion, is one of my main reasons I started investigating computers/HDD based transports. I mean, look at the lowly dac I started with (just to get my feet wet) here and I'm claiming it's the best sound I've ever heard in my system. I'm in the position to spend more on a dac, but just don't feel I need to yet until the usb-dac arena matures a bit? idk, just don't feel a need right now; although I'm keeping my eye on empirical audio, the Crimson by Wavlength, and now the twindac++ (especially nice cause of the price; is it I2S based and do others out there feel that is as important as some make it out to be?). If I ever get the time to learn more about how to... there do seem to be some good kits available too... something called the "Monica"... anyways, you can tell I'm not ready to jump dacs yet, but I do feel pretty confident about the transport side now.
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543
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Playback Tweaks and Source related subjects / Firewire from HD to Comp... How long?
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on: August 26, 2007, 11:06:16 am
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Because the Opticis didn't work, I'm trying something else. Next to my music room is a hall space with a closet. I'm putting the HDDs in this closet and drilling a hole through the wall to pass the firewire through to my laptop. I'm using 6 feet of Firewire cable now and want to go up to a minimum of 3 meters to make this work. 4 meters might work better... but I can make 3 meters work. ? is, does the length of my firewire cable coming off the HDDs to the computer make a SQ difference? I wouldn't think so, as long as I don't go too far? I know this for sure, that SQ varies with the USB link from my computer to the usb-dac; so I'm keeping USB cable and length the same as now. But the file from the HDDs loads completely in memory (right?) before playing so, unless the Firewire cable from the HDDs is so long the signal drops data?? which I wouldn't think 4 meters or under would? I shouldn't suffer SQ lose. Do you know?
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544
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / foobar 2000 vs XXHE .09i-1
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on: August 26, 2007, 08:16:56 am
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Just a quick nice tale. I told someone on AA I'd listen to XXHE vs Foobar doing Full File Buffering, (he's using xp and hasn't tried xxhe? should anyway). It took me one song doing an ABC to realize that XXHE at Q1 setting 18 was still my preferred player. I'm not going into a long diatribe, maybe later, but foobar sounds striped down, lacking body & breath in voice, lacking air, forward, bass lacking impact... BobLobLaw. Anyways the real reason I'm posting is: I come out of the room and my daughter in the living room next to my music rooms says, "Didn't you just play that song?" I sigh, and say, "ya, I'm comparing two players again", and she says, without any prompting, "I liked the second time", (foobar was 1 & 3). I said "really... really you could tell which one you like out here?" She said, "ya it just sounded better, like I could hear more of the music". hehe I love my daughter.
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545
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: Sound changed from version f to i
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on: August 26, 2007, 02:41:45 am
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Haha, you guys talk about version a,b,c,d,i without mentioning whether it's about 0.7 or 0.8, 0.9 etc. That's why.
The changed slider takes effect when a new .wav would be loaded. Or when (stop and) play is pressed (or Next, Prev). FYI : A next track is nothing to this respect for a big cue pile. But you know that I guess ...
I want to clarify: When I load one of my whole album WAVs it takes ~15 seconds.... after playing it, if I push stop button, and then push play button, that same WAV starts up immediately. But what you are saying is, after I start up a WAV with Q1 at 15; push stop button; change Q1 slider to 17; push start button... that the new Q1 postition at 17 will play the WAV at that position 17. Ok? thanks Peter. hope you had a good vacation... now get to work lol
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546
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: Sound changed from version f to i
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on: August 26, 2007, 01:20:59 am
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Hit Peter, as you said the sound chenged in version i. At least when compared to version f. The sound of engine 1 has become thicker with Vi but with loss of resolution. It is hard to say wich is to prefer... vf lacks of bottom end and vi seams not so accurate...but I would prefer Vf because the sound is more 3D and finer. Sombody else has made experience with this?
Greetings Adrian
I'm confused? How could this thread have been started in June before i even came out? Anyway, I'm still listening between D and I versions myself. I am not listening as closely as I was between D and H because the differences I hear between D and I do not bother me like they did in D & H. I'm sorry I have't put as much time in comparing D and I as I'd like, I just put on I and play with the Q1 slider, currently the slider is playing around 18.... but I'm all over the place with it (which makes hard comparing,,, I need to be more systematic than I've been). Once I load a song in mem, if I stop that song and change the slider then start the song again, do the changes in slider take hold?...sometimes I get the feeling the changes don't take place until I load a different song.
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548
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Music Storage and convenient playback / Open with...
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on: August 24, 2007, 09:12:25 pm
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Someone was asking at AA and I'm just checking (I don't need this)... When you right click on a wav file and choose "Open With" and then choose the XXhighend.exe; here's what happens for me > it opens up the "XXHighEnd Demo" window (even though I'm undemoed) and then the XXHE player opens, but the wav file isn't loaded and, of course, doesn't start playing. Someone at AA would like this, because they use a program called MP3Toys to manage content. oh wellz, if people want to use all kinds of kizmos over sound quality, I don't know what to say. But is this "open with" feature something that will work later or...
This is definitely not as important as CUE file support! hehehe
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550
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Engine #3.exe stopped working message
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on: August 21, 2007, 09:53:50 pm
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If you rip your cds with eac, you should have no problem and audacity isn't necessary. It looks like not every application create the same wav file, for the same song.
I do use EAC. Always. And indeed we all have different reactions from the XX in all our set-ups around. The program you mention (nice little thing BTW) did not cure my problem. So you are right. It is something else. Gerner Maybe this is a piece of useful information? The tracks (Complete folders) i cannot play with XX, works very well in the MS player, Real Player and Foobar Player. So? Gerner I haven't ran into this problem. Anything the same about the files that don't play? Like diacritical marks, long files names??? I don't know, just guessing; look for what is similar about the tracks. I'm still using single album wav files instead of multi song wav files.... something about them I like ... (hint). I am happy, but will be happier once cue file support is made... but, hmm, I still listen to entire albums.
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551
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: The magic about Qt (0.9i)
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on: August 17, 2007, 08:22:32 pm
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Well, I have to admit. I have not felt the need to do any back and forth between i and d. I've been busy and when I do listen it's been late and I just throw on player i. I believe it's doing the best dance I've heard, but ya, I will try to do some comparing. I stopped going high in numbers with slider, just because I don't want to play with phase "switch" until Peter gets back, but I didn't have problems before when I briefly tried it. I have found myself working the slider around the number 15, +/- 4, but I'll explore around higher/lower as I get a handle on things. System is sounding clear as a bell with body and lots of air filling in the sound stage space... ima happy camper with XXHighEnd 0.9i-1.
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552
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Chatter and forum related stuff / Re: The cost of XX
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on: August 15, 2007, 07:10:13 pm
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When I first jumped into XXHE I thought, man, $100 US is rather steep for something still in beta. I thought that after even hearing the player and buying it. But now, now that I've seen how hard Peter works at this and the time he's committing and the future he's proposing, (and really, after more listening and amazement at the sound quality)... seems cheap now. Best money (and probably the least amt of money) I've spent in audio. Thanks again and again PeterSt, Dave
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554
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Ultimate Audio Playback / XXHighEnd Support / Re: Question About Process Priority
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on: August 15, 2007, 07:01:54 pm
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Why do you set the Player Priority to Below Normal? I did it just for the sake of experiment and because Peter said: "But in either case the priority of the Player could degrade the Audio Engine. So actually the prio of the Player should be as low as possible" (look in the 4th post down on this thread) Ok reread it; thanks for pointing it out again. From PeterSt: "So actually the prio of the Player should be as low as possible (like shutting off other services to gain on quality), until it can't do its job in time (which would be preparing tracks, and even timing things)." For me, since most of my music is still a huge single wav file of the album, "preparing tracks" isn't an issue... I wonder what he means by "timing things"... I'm guessing getting the next track ready on time? Anyway I'm going to try this below normal too or at least go back to normal. Going back and forth with Thread Priority between High and Realtime (very limited time playing with that and no formal subjective testing yet) I think I might prefer High over Realtime..., but I'll take more time checking that out. Thanks, Dave
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555
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Ultimate Audio Playback / Your thoughts about the Sound Quality / Re: The magic about Qt (0.9i)
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on: August 15, 2007, 10:05:39 am
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I'm not having any problems here either. I've been sliding Q all over the place. I was starting to play with phase reverse when I was trying out high Q settings for fun and with some recordings I thought might benefit... but stopped after reading about some kind of loud sound Peter was warning about... I didn't know if it would do damage or what, but I never experienced it. Really only tried phase reversal less than 20 song changes... dunno, but I guess I'll wait on that... cept I really wanted to have it in there and try it. So, you're still using phase reversal Gerner? and no problems?
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