XXHighEnd

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.

Hehe, it took me a second read to realize that your daughter wasn't even in the room itself ...
But you know, it is really one of the tricks to find out whether things are in good balance : go outside and listen there. Like in the garden with doors open; when thinks sound the same as if you were inside things are really good. When you hear too much bass or treble, things are not good. Never mind high frequencies have more trouble getting around corners.

In general : one should not compare on the sweetspot (only). Many more things are unveiled outside it. Example : the width or how much the sound comes from the speaker or not. Just be in a straight line opposite the e.g. right speaker (normal listening position would be the most extreme). Now listen how much you hear from the left speaker. When things are not good, you'd hear the right speaker only. When things are good, you'd hear both just the same and sound keeps coming from the middle. Of course the right speaker will sound louder because it is closer to you but there still will be a balance. Btw, even with (front)horn speakers this can be done.

Have also done extensive testing of Foobar, MP 11, J River, VLC, Nero Showtime, XXHighEnd etc. and compared them all. Running C2D @ 3.5Ghz, 4GB memory, XP Pro English, .net 2 and 3, DirectX latest, Soundblaster XFi Elite Pro @ Media creation mode @ 44.1Khz. External Lexicon prosessor/DAC.

The umatched best SQ is given by your player the XXHighEnd.

Have registered today and I'm looking forward to using it a lot.

The user interface itself is a little buggy though. Clicking on Setting e.g. doesn't do anything.
Looking forward to more bugfree versions (but please, don't do anything to upset the SQ!!!)

Very pleased so far.

It's not buggy, there are things that are just not implemented yet.  Depending on what version you are running is what features are working.  I'm using version 0.9D.  Minor things (hehe everythings minor to SQ) such as pause, settings, moving seek bar.... aren't implemented in that version.  This player, as wonderful as it sounds, is still in development and in beta.

Jupp, realizing that it's under development but wanted to mention it...running 9j version myself.

Hi Peter,

I was finally able to try XX. Under XP, engine #1 is VERY good! Congratulations! Engine 2 is not for me. It is on a par with other players under ASIO and the others are less cumbersome. I have an EMU 0404 USB which I use for converting to SPDIF into my dcx 2496 xover. It can map to SPDIF only with ASIO. So I can use XX only if I listen through the soundcard analog stage (at night on headphones). I would be still willing to buy it provided I could get the same performance as  engine #1 independently from track size. ASIO would be wonderful...

Keep up the good work.
Giulio 

Hi Guilio,

Thank you, and welcome here !

There's two solutions then, of which one is theory only : keep on using XP and buy an RME soundcard with MME drivers (guaranteed would be a Fireface, about the others I can only assume they work). But this (unofficial MME driver) is unstable ... (won't allow alt-tab and go back to the player).
So there's one official solution left : Vista. And as said more often : what you gain with it is much better sound quality. Really.

Peter