>Note though that this won't help me a bit for those who have FLACed everything. It also doesn't help when you denote "Copy to XX-Drive" which for sure you will do once you have an SS disk.

I _had_ everything FLACed. And, yes, I _do_ have an SS disk.
And what I got was XX creating 100+ of UnicodeTrackxxx.WAV files which used all capacity on SS disk.... (and without 'Copy to XX-drive' being checked) 

That is the whole reason why I am trying to give you suggestions on how to avoid this and minimize disk usage (SS disks are still fairly low in capacity - mine is 64G and it's not used solely for XX...)

But nevermind, seems we just don't understand each other: you have an idea of how XX should be used which to me is way too complicated but that's ok. What I was looking for is ability to have XX always play randomly from my complete collection with minimum fuss (and minimum disk usage) - just like 'Play random' in Foobar or Shuffle in iTunes. Nothing more, nothing less. But if you think such feature is not useful then I guess I'll just have to leave it at that...

About Galleries:

You were wondering why I got so frustrated with XX - It was mainly because of the whole Library thing: it simply did not work. XX would seemingly randomly completely freeze - very, very frustrating....
Anyway, I spent some time debugging and was able to find the cause: it seems XX is a bit too sensitive to cover art files. It so happens that tool for getting artwork from internet which I used some time ago would put an 'empty' jpeg file if it could not find the real artwork. It's not really empty (see attachment) and I can open it OK if I click on it (so it appears to be a perfectly legitimate jpeg) but for some reason this small jpeg causes XX to completely freeze and killing it from task manager is the only option....

Anyway, after getting rid of this jpeg I thought lets' try this Gallery thing: I created a test gallery with just 3 albums. This went ok although I find the procedure slightly involved for the average user but never mind (first open Library tab, click & select 3 albums, select 'add to gallery', go back to Settings, change Music Root to newly defined gallery folder, go back to Library tab). However, when I click 'R' button, as you suggested, nothing happens... And if I click on root Gallery folder I don't get cover arts from subfolders? (see attachment) This seems to be different from 'normal' music folders where I _do_ get all cover art as expected...

So I guess I am doing something wrong as I can't Galleries to work and I guess you can explain what it is I am doing wrong.

However, I can't help noticing that if I use e.g. Foobar or even iTunes all I have to do is drag & drop the files from Windows Explorer and I have a playlist which I can either randomize manually or just click on 'random play' and let Foobar/iTunes randomize on-the-fly - the fact that I have to do so much clicking around and figuring stuff out is IMHO a serious usability disadvantage of XX which is really a shame as I really would like to be able to use only XX as it sounds waaay better....

So, what I do right now is using Foobar to quickly create a playlist, randomize it and then drag & drop it onto XX playlist window - this does work but for one small annoyance: it seems the order gets messed up - this is most likely a problem with Foobar as I get same behavior if same playlist is dropped on iTunes so it has nothing to do with XX but question remains: is it possible to have 'random play' in XX and, if not, I, for one, would like to cast a vote for it....   



   

Hi Peter,

I was travelling and did not have time to respond - I'll try to address your points in next couple messages.

About the Unicode thing:

>This problem turns into a real problem when you'd see that file names are identifiers, and when passed over a data file, the other side (the other program) needs to know that interpretenation again, and it doesn't exist. Oh, it does, but not by means of ONE means. So, pass a track name via a file, and the other program can't find it..........If you succeed I will be the most happy to implement that means. Ok ?

If I understand you correctly you're saying that because you put filenames in .dat files this is the reason for requiring old 8.3 filenames? (because if you used normal filenames you run into Unicode issues?)

And do I understand correctly that was also the reason why you have to copy a perfectly valid WAV file to XX folder and name it UnicodeTrackxxx.etc? (because if there is no 8.3 filename other process potentially can't find it?)
 
If so, have you looked at symbolic links in Vista?
I am not a programmer (though I used to do that long time ago so i have some idea how things work) but it seems they would allow you to create a small shortcut which you can name anything you want (= 8.3 compatible) and so you would not need to copy large WAV files around?

Alternatively, perhaps an even better way would be to use inter-process communication between GUI & Engine process? Then neither WAV copying nor dat files would be needed anyway as GUI process could track data from *.dat files in memory and either send messages to Engine or reply when asked (whatever works best for less CPU use and better sound)?

You mentioned that tracking *.dat files in memory would take too much resources - it seems they are always around 350 bytes per file which even for 10,000 tracks would result in only 3.5MB RAM which, if I look at task manager, is, at this moment in time, less then 1% of RAM XX uses. As those apparently need to be updated if user changes volume it would seem to be much faster doing it in memory than updating 10,000 files on disk. This is an exaggerated example, of course, but the principles should still apply in general case and would make XX more responsive and far less I/O hungry which, if I understand correctly is always an enemy of SQ right? 

BTW I have personally went the all-WAV way as I find it causes XX to behave best (=minimal I/O) so I'm not so much affected by this but  'regular' FLAC,mp3 users might benefit?.... 


 

Yes - it works now.

I get same symptoms as JohanZ - no sound, progress indicator stays put and after a while an error message saying Engine#3 did not start within expected time. Version is 09-x6b (same happened with x6a).

Previous version (09-x5b) works.

Thanks for extensive explanations - no offense, but it  seems to me that some not too great design decisions have been made early on and now it’s impossible to reverse them, short of re-writing the whole thing

I’m not sure I buy the whole Unicode story: why in the world do I care what is filename like if it is a perfectly valid WAV? I just wanna listen to it for Christ’s sakes…
And how come no other player has these problems? Is that really then a Unicode problem or, rather, an XX problem that ought to be fixed?

Anyway, I am getting a bit frustrated with XX: everybody in the world understands the concept of playlists, yet, you seem to suggest that XX playlists are different and should not be used at all or only for really small amount of files – Instead, you say to use ‘galleries’ which I totally don’t dig why (again past design decisions, i guess) but OK, if that solves my problem I’m all for it.

So, how do I create a playlist/gallery thingy that contains all music so I can just click Play and have XX randomly pick a track?
Is that possible at all with XX without 1000’s of file copies or somesuch?

Sorry for sounding a bit agitated (I am): I understand you are trying to be helpful and it’s appreciated – it’s just that many seemingly simple things seem to be so difficult or non-intuitive to do with XX: like this task – it is something that any cr*ppy player can do easily – XX sounds better then all but I am increasingly getting the impression that it was meant to be used only as we did in analog/cd days: look in the box, pick the record/cd, put it on/in, wait till it starts, sit & listen, when finished repeat procedure…..

Hopefully you can point me where I err and if I can use XX like it’s 21st century….

>Do you have "copy to XX-drive by standard" checked?

No.
I guess if i did it would be even worse i.e. XX copying 1000 big WAV files as opposed to 1000 small (~300 bytes) dat files...right?

>600 or 700 gigs

that's going to take a while...

before you start copying everything, and perhaps to help others who might need this, you can check if registry setting is being applied with 'dir /X': that should show both 'normal' and 8.3 filename (if it exists) in dos prompt...

>how are youre listing experiences with xxhe josef ??

to be honest I was extremely skeptical of XX: I was used to 'old' foobar over ASIO and did not know about XX at all until I noticed that I am not able to listen to music anymore - it just wasn't fun..... In fact, I had to resort to DSP trickery to make it listenable...

only after I run into horrible problems with 'old' foobar (finding out that some things even made it 'not bit-perfect') did I find out that many people are not that happy with ASIO in general (Peter being extremely vocal on the subject ) and did I learn about WASAPI so i decided to finally give 'new' foobar a try...

unfortunately, it just did not work very good in my setup: I had to increase all buffers to maximum and still I would get pops/clicks randomly... then I again bumped into this vocal guy Peter who on some forum provided an explanation (or at least a very plausible theory for this: 'shared' vs 'exclusive') so I decided to try his XX which, quite frankly, looked pretty clunky compared to other audio players (no offense Peter) but, hey, in the end it's only important how it sounds.... which, btw, was another thing I had to get over, as, in theory, a software player should not have a big influence on sound quality: after all, 'bits are bits'....(yeah, right)

well, I'm glad I did try it and I promptly bought it: it truly is a class above any other player out there... (and I did try a lot of them...)

I am still in the mode of re-defining my reference points and did not have time to try playing with Q1 and other settings at all (just running 'unattended') so I will stop here but suffice to say that XX achieved the most important thing: music is again fun and it makes you want to listen more & more & more and then, some more.....

Peter,

If I drag/drop lots of WAV files into playlist window (say, 1000) and if 'unattended' is ON, then when I click Play it seems that XX is creating a small dat file for _every_ WAV file.
I also have 'start Engine #3 while conversion is in progress' (or whatever that option is called) turned on so music starts relatively quickly - so far so good.

However, creation of those 1000 dat files takes a long time (tens of minutes) and I'm pretty sure it impacts SQ (random pops/clicks) as it has to do lots of disk reading & writing...

Now, I have no clue why XX needs all those small pesky dat files but I assume you have a good reason for it so np:  I _could_ live with that provided it's done only once but it seems that even if I 'save' playlist and then exit XX it will delete all dat files and the re-create them next time I play that same list? (or am I doing something wrong and there is a setting to turn this off?)

Wouldn't it be better if XX created a single dat file for whole playlist? (less disk activity)

Wouldn't it also be better if dat files would respect XX setting for 'Data folder' instead of being created in same folder where XX exe is? 

And wouldn't it be better if dat files would not have to be created every time but rather saved together with playlist?

I realize this only applies to WAV files as other types need converting but since XX only wants WAV in the end anyway, then at least I am OK with creating a separate folder where all music has already been converted from FLAC etc to WAV - it sure is extra work and it would be nice if XX would respect that and start playing with minimum of fuss

>do i have to copy all files to different folder

that's what i did, yes - this will make sure NTFS creates 8.3 names...
simply 'touching' the file to update date/time or 'moving' it apparently does not work...

I can confirm that method to disable 8.3 filenames also works to re-enable them.

Of course, after rebooting for NTFS to re-initialize itself, it will work only for files created from then on - so I had to copy all music files...
But hey, important thing is that now the problem is solved: all error messages are gone and cover art can be 'wallpapered' as well - tnx Peter for trying to help and to audiodidakt for the hint!

 

>does this have anything to do with a "well known" vista tweak

yes, must be it - I _do_ have those useless shortfilenames disabled - thanks for hint audiodidakt!

I've had those disabled for last 2+ years and never run into a piece of software that still requires them - Looks like I'll have to re-enable it only for XX

I'll see if method described on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/Q121007 works to undo the change....

But Peter, really, why is XX using those? Days of 16-bit applications are long gone and XX is 32-bit isn't it?

New ChangeWP.exe did not work.
Also, as you suggested I created a completely new folder and it didn't help either.

However, I was able to temporarily get rid of problem by de-selecting 'show cover art' in Settings: Apparently this would get XX confused when there is no cover art in folder with music files?

>Can you try it ?

Sure - unfortunately same thing happens

>Do you have Dot-Net 2.0 installed ?

Don't think so - Vista comes with 3.0 and I believe my machine has been upgraded to 3.5 SP1: could that be the issue?
Can you download .Net 3.5 SP1 and see if you get the same?