Download is at the very bottom.
Notice : In this version the small vinyl like ticks in between tracks (only for tracks with gaps in between them) exist.
Might you be confident in making a backup from the Registry easily and/or fast, maybe do so (a Restore Point which you will be able to really use when necessary). If all is right this is not necessary, but better be safe than sorry.
Notice : 0.9z-6 will automatically degrade your OS to near to numb, while you will still be able to fairly normally use it (even during playback). A lot (a LOT) off work has been put into it, so the already superb XXHighEnd SQ has been improved like maybe never before. Still, at this moment it is rather unclear what the real impact will be, thinking about the various systems out there. To this regard the "tweaking" has been setup so, that whatever you tweaked yourself in advance of XXHighEnd will be utilized and consistently be restored to your likings and when you want. It is this what makes it a rather complex happening from the development point of view, and it is a bit of awaitening what we will run into.
A special
WARNING goes out to 32 bit OS users; At this moment all has NOT been tested for the 32 bit OS. And, as things are really different in there : better don't use this at this time (and otherwise have that backup ready !).
Use at your own risk !(which is about the Minimize OS button; see more below)
As we know the best sonic qualities are achieved by means of the so called Unattended Playback, that meaning that there will be no GUI left to interfere. In the mean time all what is not necessary is shutdown from the Operating System, and playback is on its own. Still, all control is there by means of keyboard shortcuts (like Next Track, Change Volume), and while some "stealth" players intend to start off like this to your not-so-inconveniency, XXHighEnd allows you to bring up the GUI whenever you want for even more control (like selecting new albums etc.), that by itself only temporarily interfering the sonic performance.
No change regarding this in 0.9z-6.
What's all new -and anounced quite a while back- is that now the OS is dynamically tweaked to-completely-death, referring to the ever back topic where all may have started. To some small extend that was. However, the "dynamically" in this case means that the OS is reconfigured on the spot, and that now a reboot will cause this reconfiguration to be permanent.
Let the difference be clear : What happened before (and what other so called stealth players do with cMP as the exception), is nothing much different from what XXHighEnd always did; kill all what can be killed and next commence playback ("Waiting for Services to stop"). This is nice, but far from optimal. "Nice" for it really helping, but without a clue of all what was running and keeps on running. This is actually so bad that now even a totally incapable laptop will become a "real machine".
Notice : Despite what just has been said, at this moment (0.9-z6) is *not* suitable for those laptops yet. Or at least not in general. Do-not-try-it !
As told, you can just keep on using the PC during playback, and although maybe not optimal for SQ, you will see the gain in overall speed of everything once the OS has been set to be quite dead. You'll love already that part.
Might you become fedup with the speed, there's a single button in XXHighEnd which will revert all to normal, and which only takes that reboot (automatically performed). In the next 30 seconds you will be back to what Gates aver imagined.
And oh, when you like that better anyway, don't use this button, and all will be as usual and known from XXHighEnd. But remember, far from optimal.
This button is under the right pane and is called "Minimize OS" (shown in the active state below).
Let it also be known that all kind of mixed modes are possible, like using XXHighEnd in normal Attended Fashion (which really shouldn't be called "normal" as such), while in the mean time the OS is still that dead body.
This is not for XP, and most probably this can not be checked for properly ! (prevent you from attempting it)It is the advice to use 0.9z-6 with Windows 7 without Service Pack 1 (RTM or RC). Also see
The W7 black hole for a workout as off now, and undoubtedly later additions.
So what's new ?
- AutoHotkey is now started automatically
a. When XXHighEnd is brought up;
b. When Unattended Playback is initiated.
Important : This now means that AutoHotkey.exe as well as its configuration file XX.ahk are read from the current XX folder (where XXHighEnd is installed in / copied to). This is different from before, when you could create your own folder for it and in there maintain your own XX.ahk configuration (which hotkey does what). Now, when a new version of XXHighEnd is downloaded, this will initially contain the XX.ahk as uploaded to this download area, and you must thus overwrite XX.ahk with the version you changed (assumed you did that).
On this matter alone, never install XXHighEnd to a folder you used before, or you will loose your changes in your XX.ahk. Of course it is good fashion to store each XXHighEnd version in its own dedicated folder anyway.
- There's some 8 or so new settings in the Settings Area in the Services and OSD Section;
At the right side there's "Persistent" settings next to most of them, and when ticked they will remain persistent at the next reboot. Actually it is this what we were talking about in the above.
Note : At this moment these settings do nothing, or better put : all behaves as "persistent".
This is for licensed versions only.
- There is now a separate "Stop" button for the WASAPI services;
If you don't intend to use Engine#3, activate this one.
Don't be bothered by Windows telling you no Sound Device is there, because for Kernel Streaming (Engine #4) all just will keep on working. One point of attention :
When after a reboot the services concerned will be eliminated, a first startup of XXHighEnd will tell you that the Sound Device has been changed. This is true for the reason that the list of Sound Devices has changed. In any event, check whether the selected Sound Device is the right one (shown in messages).
This is for licensed versions only.
- There is a "Monitor Off at Unattended" button which -when activated- will deactivate the video card and monitor.
Still you remain in all control, and during (Unattended of course) playback you can still change the volume etc. by keyboard commands. You will notice that the monitor has been switched on very briefly, but only because of the "no signal" showing on the screen again.
At all times you can just touch a key to reactivate the monitor.
When playback is finished, the monitor will be put on automatically.
When you bring up XXHighEnd during playback for any reason, the monitor will be on again, and if you quit XXHighEnd it will be automatically shut off (playback never stopped).
- From now on the SFS (Straight Contiguous) can be as large as your system can bear, as XXEngine3 will keep on running and allocating the memory as long as you like. For 64 bit systems and 8GB of memory, an SFS of 430 is possible forever. Larger will go just the same, but at using the PC for other tasks you may run into memory problems of various sorts.
So yes, tomorrow or next week it will still work. No reboots needed anymore ever.
- The ever being there "Off" button under the right panel (see above picture in the down-right corner) now at last received its function : remove the Audio Engine from memory. So yes, this is the time the memory will be freed, and this is the time a next playback (without reboot) may not work anymore. But you will notice it still can bear a lot before that's needed.
- Even after the OS is Minimized, there's still the usual "Stop Services" applied when playback starts (Unsttendedly). This time though it will take less than a second or more less because actually there's nothing running already. However, *if* something is there unnecessary it will be killed afterall (and as usual it will be started when needed, automatically).
- Maybe good to mention : this all is not particular for NOS1 users as everybody will benefit from it. However, it appeared to be necessary for the NOS1-USB because otherwise everything ("not right") will be audible. It is this what is referred to in the NOS1-USB topic as "it doens't matter anymore once some precautions are taken care of" and it really is (or should be) so that now no XXHighEnd dials will influence Sound Quality. This is no guarantee though, because it has only be tested with the NOS1-USB.
(addendum : it has been reported by beta testers that influence is still there)
- The text to the right of the "OS Minimize" button (meaning that text itself) can be rightclicked upon. This changes the current state of the button, might things have run inconsistent. Normally it is not needed to change the state of the button, so this is an emergency procedure.
In any event notice that using the button will perform the action implied by its state. Thus, when it is active (red), normal left-click will imply a reset to Normal State, no matter the state the OS is in. And the other way around.
- Watch out :
When the OS is Minimized, there will be NO disk-access to the OS disk by the Operating System. However, this does not imply you won't be doing that yourself by means of XXHighEnd which may have stored its files to play there (see Settings Area);
Now, while before you could have set the OS' Energy Settings so that the disks should spin down after e.g. two minutes of being inactive, while it stayed alive anyway because of OS access - now this latter won't happen anymore. This means that a larger SFS (Split File Size), which takes a longer time to read the data from the disk because it is more, now becomes problematic because
a. the disk will have spun down for sure with the larger SFS (say, allowing playback for several minutes while the disk can be set to spin down after 1 minute);
b. it thus has to spin up first before the next file portion can be read, which portion is larg(er) because of the large SFS.
All may imply that suddenly you encounter silence gaps which weren't there before. Solutions ?
1. Speed up your system somehow (which really will be fast already, but still);
2. Lower the SFS (mainly to keep the disk alive);
3. Set the spin down time higher.
Neither is a good option of course (ok, #1 is), and the only thing we can tell is that an SFS of 450 still works easily overhere (spin down time at 1 minute).
- Further anomalies with the Time Cursor at Attended Playback have been solved.
Important : Regarding the previous subject, with Attended Playback it will even me more noticeable that a too large SFS (against the speed of your system) may hold up playback in between tracks.
- Watch out : In this particular version it will be *necessary* to have Peak Extension enabled (active). If not, there will be sound degradation as the result, that by itself caused by a bug.
- There's a new means of showing the running time on the OSD (for Unattended). This is an unfinished project;
Sometimes anomalies occur (at e.g. the length of the Time Bar). Besides that, it still seems to influence SQ.
Also notice that the old means (a digital counter) is out at this moment; later it probably will come back by means of a Setting.
- In certain -by ityself errorneous- situations it can happen that an "End of track" message appears. Clicking that away generally would repeat the track - which is quite useless. But, more importantly, a situation has been reported where static occurred after clicking away the message. For this reason playback will not continue after clicking away the message.
- Finally the AI filtering works (again ? yes, again);
Because of a stupid typo in the program - thinking that it would work as it does now, it still never did. A bit hard to mimic when trying it in the wrong fashion, but generally playback would stop after one minute.
What has been said about this earlier (around one year back) : this won't play gapless during Attended Playback (the GUI being there). At Unattended it is. This can be solved (in a later version).
- Windows Media Player rips did not work anymore because of wrong file header data (from of 0.9z-5). This has been solved.
- Tracks can now be over one hour long.
- Native High Resolution files did not play in all circumstances. If all is right now they do.
- When more tracks in the Playlist Area were there than the amount of processor cores available in the system, errors would occur about mot being able to find tracks. This is solved.
- Q1 = 30 is a special value now. It should only be used by Phasure NOS1-USB DAC users, and only for Engine#4 Adaptive Mode.
- Support for the NOS1-USB "384" has been added. Both users of the original NOS1 and those of the new NOS1-USB can use the same "Is Phasure NOS1 384" button.
Notice that the 768 button should not be used in either situation (yet).
Switch Off UAC (User Account Control) before any first attempt of starting XXHighEnd.exe ! For W7 this means : set the slider in there to the lowest position. And don't forget to reboot after setting it Off.
If you are new, follow the little guide which will appear on the screen right after the first startup of XXHighEnd.exe, and perform the steps shown in there. These steps will be at least about the red coloured fields in the Settings Area.
If you don't want to end up reinstalling your OS, read this first : Minimize OS - How to start with that. Do it !
