XXHighEnd

Hi Peter,
Well I have to say the sound quality is awesome. Having been very happy with engine #2 performance for some time the change to enigne#3 and 9y4 was a big surprise in sound quality terms - fantastic. The problem is that the software is not reliable. Frequently when playing an album the software stops at the end of a track with error message "engine#3 did not start in time" or some other error message. Also if I try and change the volume control whilst a track is playing sometimes it works othertimes the player stops and there is an error message- I then have to close XX then open it again and start again. Very frustrating. I have to operate the software very carefully to avoid problems.

Your help would be appreciated
P

P,

Sadly, for some this is so, and at this moment I don't know what it is that some of you bugs you. If I only had this myself, the problem would be solved long gone. And FYI, I myself use the digital volume all the time.

You may recall from the past that things like an album stopping playback just before the end could be copied by me litterally by means of playing the exact same album, but here it didn't happen. At one of the later versions this disappeared for those who were bugged by it, but in the mean time is apeared for others.

Please give it some time; currently I just don't know what is causing it.
Thanks,
Peter

Have you tried setting Priority for PlayerPrio and ThreadPrio to "Nothing"? I read about this here:

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=629.msg4493#msg4493

while playing playing around with an earlier version (demo) version (engine#3) on a slower laptop and getting the "... did not start in time" and other error messages (I think...)

Per

Peter - interestingly though the longer XX is running the more reliable it becomes

P

After reading your original post again, now together with your last post, your problem will be something else;
Generally : not enough horse power, plus I guess you will be using XX in Attended mode, which makes things worse.

Of course the "not enough horse power" may look to you as a stupid reason, but it really is so that certain tasks have to be accomplished before other things can continue, and it is already known that some CPUs don't deal well with different threads and priorities. And laptops ? ... well ...

On the volume change, that all will be different in 0.9y-5 and far more foolproof. Besides, in 0.9y-5 it works way more faster, hence less demanding. You will see.

The fact that you notice (as it seems) that using XX longer seems to make it work more reliable, is just a matter of everything settling down in a (way) under powered PC. I'd say, reboot the laptop and keep on watching the disk light. It may take many tracks and more than 10 minutes before everything has settled down. I mean it (but you can check it for yourself). Of course the OS is guilty here as well.
In the very end you can blame me, but the way all is setup (with the objective of good SQ) just won't go different. Easy example : the Arc Prediciton. Shut that off, and the volume change goes faster. Why ? because it doesn't have to recalculate things. Why in the end me to blame : because it can go faster afterall (see 0.9y-5), but it is often complex.
Well ...

Peter

Careful, I might get really upset  :cry:

I've been using a old Sony laptop (T2300 with 2GB RAM) since I started using XXHE... a while ago now. It's worked perfectly (with XP, Vista and now W7), even with the Weiss AFI1 set on the lowest latency.

What I like about laptops is that they're generally pretty quiet, chuck less RFI around... and oh, you can run them off a battery - no grundge going back into your mains.

Don't knock 'em 'til you've tried 'em...

Mani.

P, did you apply all the tweaks in the "Tweaking Vista Virtually Dead" thread. I did and, with the exception of shutting down indexing, I had to go back and reset them to their respective defaults. After applying all the Tweaks on my laptop XX began to run really slow, after reversing them performance was greatly improved. Probably it was one or two of the tweaks that was at fault but I didn't take the time to test which ones it was, I just changed them all back to the default.

Regarding indexing, that Tweak, IMHO, should be in the release notes of each version. The library tab just doesn't work with Indexing left on.

Peter,
I too get this error sometimes, with cpu always <30%,so it's definitely not a "not enough horsepower".

When i first installed XX I did everything in the "tune vista flat" list and that was just to get it working with engine#2. Since I first made this post I also tried "unattended" and it does work OK in unattended. I guess it must be lack of horse power.

There is no chance that I will use a PC over a laptop it just would not work in my domestic environment.

Also I have a very long USB cable (with active hub to achieve the distance of 15m). One disadvantage is jitter over USB and I have just had an 88.2 Superclock4 installed in my Empirical Pace Car re-clocker (for 88.2k operation) to reduce jitter. The results are really special with XX.

OK OK OK I know that a reclocker should not be necessary with NOS1 firewire etc. but I just do not have that now and I am stuck with USB. But it is really interesting to see just how much difference it makes when you reduce jitter. The sound becomes really sweet losing its hard digital edge. the level of detail mmmmmmmhhhh.

What I am listening to now (88.2 arc prediction) is a very big improvement over straight 44.1 running through the Off Ramp and Pace Car combination.

Keep it up Peter this is the very best music reproduction I have heard anywhere and it is in my room !!!

all the very best

P

Hi Peter - have changed to operating in Unattended mode and much better in fact no problems at all in Unattended.

P

Good !
And thanks for the feedback !

The only problem is that it needs a keyboard (or a WORKING remote) instead of the mouse, and i dont like to listen to music with the keyboard at my side.

No problem here with that ...

You don't refer to your W7 incompatble remote setup, or ? (not that that isn't a sad thing)

yeah, i was ranting about that. but i'll fix it somehow.

Hi,

I had the same problem with Windows 7 Home Premuim (64bit), and changed to Windows 7 Prof (32bit) and since then everything is running smoothly. :)

Greetings

christoffe

So it was some 64 bit driver? Mind to explain better?
I'm not going back to 32bit with 4gb of ram and some software that uses 64bit calculations. I think that Peter finds 32 bit floating point sufficient for all tasks so far