Aha,

So the appearence of the desktop when Alt-S is pressed can be set in the settings area.
That might explain the different behaviour from my XP setup!

I will experiment tonight if I all understand now.

Thanks for the clarification, this unattended/hotkey stuff it is somewhat counter intuitive, but it makes perfect sense.

regards, Coen

Ok, I understand now that the Autohotkeys are about pressing XX buttons in Unattended mode.

I have trouble imaginating use for a hotkey that toggles the attended/unattended swith from a Unattended mode perspective. I think I got confused by the naming.

So nothing wrong with Alt-T and Alt-X. They are behaving exactly like pressing the toggle button and Alt-X in Attended mode. My misunderstanding.

So now how do I switch from Unattended to Attended mode???? Selecting 'Kill existing XX instance and start new one'?

If I understand correctly Alt-S should only stop the music and XX stays where it is, like pressing the stop button in Attended mode. Pressing Alt-p would restart the music.
Am I overlooking something here?
Unfortunately XX quits alltogether after pressing Alt-S in Unattended mode (have not tried this in Attended, should be the same, right?).

regards, Coen

Well Peter,

Of course I was playing unattended pressing alt-P (play) after reboot. I never use Hotkey in Attended mode, so my comments about the keys are only for Unattended.

Alt-T: Toggle between Attended/unattended. Does nothing.

Alt-S: Stops play allright, but then the normal windows screen reappears w/o XX. (like XX has been quit)

Alt-X: A pop up asks if I want to kill the current XX session or start a second one.

This is all in unattended mode!! Not like you discribe below.

Maybe the hotkeys have been updated?

regards, Coen

Just did some intensive listening.

Well, the big difference between WAV and FLAC is gone after the recepy above. I stil have the impression that the wav sounds ever so slightly more relaxed, dynamical, natural and open. Not a big diffenrence that might as well stem from a learning effect (the more you listen to a peice, the more you hear). I am to tired now to investigate this further and am going to sit down and relax!

Oh, two things about unattended hotkey operation:
1) alt-T does not work xx keeps on playing. 
2) alt-S does bring the screen back, but without xx

And alt-X attempts to start a new instance of xx, this might be intentional. Previously I used alt-X to toggle to attend.

Regards, Coen

P.s. Do you have to do this recepy every time you start a new playlist?

Ok,

As I understand now:
I reboot with the PC on/off button in unattended when xx is settled. When Win7 has come up again, I start AutoHotKey an press alt-P to start xx and play the files in unattended mode.

I will make a short playlist with some flacs and wavs of the same music and report my findings on this thread.

Regards, Coen

Ok,

I will try this tonight and report on the results.

Why do you say 'let it all rest and reboot now'? Am I supposed to start from a normal OS state?

Regards, Coen

Yesterday I was playing some FLACed 24/96 material (Eva Cassidy) and I didn't like the sound one bit. In an attempt to make it more listenable I got a hunch to play the files as WAV, bypassing any conversion done by xx. 

I unFLACed the files with foobar, put them in a folder next to the original, played them and was amazed with the quite audible difference with the FLAC version. They sounded less bright and dynamic, with more emphasis on the lower mids. Still not a satisfacory sound, but obviously different. Maybe the source is cr*p or I need different xx settings to make this wav work.

I was under the impression that flac and wav sound alike in the latest versions of xx, but found otherwise.

Any ideas what is the case?

Regards, Coen

P.s. A allready experimented with AP and tried playing on and off converting to the XX disk (the 'ramdisk' feature)

Same volumecontrol problem here.

Now with minimised OS on vanilla, the bar stays green. Before it would sometimes change volume suddenly after 20-30 seconds. Sometimes...

I also have the habit to stop play when i intend to change the volume.

Furthermore i have issues with unattended, which I don't use since I prefer to have the buttons directly under the mouse. Sq wise I did not find a significant improvement over attended since 09z5. Imho not worth the inconvenience.

Regards, Coen

Ooops,

I just noticed the peak extend thread  ...

I also noticed that it takes a little searching to find the sweet spot and I also took acoustical instuments as a reference.

Dispite having no NOS1, I much prefer the sound of Arc Prediction (4X on 44.1 material) over the DSP filtering on 09-z52 and 09-z6. This is not a subtle difference; with AP the instruments regain their natural timbre, wholeness and dynamics. Ordinary soundcard filtering is a joke, typical digital leanness with associated HF 'detail'. Reverting back is no option, not even with XX in control.

Key for exellent sound on my system is to NOT enable the Peak Extend feature when using AP. Even when level matched it is clear that the peak extend introduces a rougher, dryer and less relaxing sound.

I've not yet turned all the relevant wheels on XX so maybe there is even more to be yielded form 09v6.

Allready a happy user of v6,

regards, Coen

Yup I switched off the wasapi support. That shoud fix that one.
I figured the devices are sorted by order and not by name.

Buffersize. This one is tricky. I noticed that some days the soundcard driver accepts a lower buffer than other days. I usually default at 2048, sometimes i have to go up to 4096 (was in both special and adaptivemode). There is no higher setting left if this doesn't fix it..

Does some Q setting influence the use ofthe buffer? Is there more of an issue with higher or lower Q1 setting?

Thans, Coen

I downloaded free 7zip

(portable for on the usb stick I use to transfer XX to the music PC)

Works like magic on .rar files!

regards, Coen

Oh,

Just a message 'Audiodevice could not be determined' popped up when I tried to resume playback.

On a second attempt the music started no problem.

maybe the soundcard driver gets unstable in minimised OS???

regards, Coen

The first one:
Today playback in minimised OS sometimes stops with a Fail: 'Communication Error with Endpoint Device' message. After that the music continues 'broken' or not at all.

The other one:
When switching from normal OS to minimised OS and back there is a message about the sounddevice not being in the list and it is therefore defaulted to another device.

My Cantatis driver has normally a SPIF and a KS device in the list. To run engine #4, I allways select the KS one. It seems that the SPDIF device is no longer in the list of the minimised OS setup. When switching to minimised OS accepting the message allways leads to the right device. Returning back however it defaults on the SPDIF one.

Maybe the first errormessage (communication error with endpoint device)  is related to the second...

regards, Coen

As long as it keeps on working I'm fine with it.

thanks,
Coen