XXHighEnd

Hi Peter,

I believe this is the right place to post the captioned subject since it, in a way, is related to NOS1 USB. No other DACs that I know of can take the pre-upsampling digital data up to 705.6 kHz except NOS1 USB. However, the problem is not all about NOS1 USB.  But rather it is about playing back 176.4 kHz native materials using 0.9z-6 and 0.9z-6-1 version of XXHE which is required for NOS1 USB.

The problem is specifically applied to playback of 176.4 kHz hires materials from Reference Recordings. I encountered two types of problems when applying quatro AP :

(1) After clicking play on any 176.4 kHz tracks on selected RR albums , XXHE does not play and pops up a dialogue box saying " Wrong header data for ......file name of the track....."

(2) After clicking play on any 176.4 kHz track on other RR albums other than those in (1), XXHE plays that track for 1:08 minutes before a loud distortion starts for the rest of that track. The distortion sounds like playing materials on a tape deck at 4 time the normal speed at high volume. The distortion starts at exactly 1:08 minutes after the beginning of the track for all tracks on RR albums which fall into this type.

Experiment with other settings such as changing KS to WASAPI, reducing SFS, buffer size, etc. Nothing solved the problem for type (1). The only solution for type (2) above is to reduce the sampling rate from "quatro" to "double" (176.4 => 352.8 kHz). Reducing the sampling rate for type (1) did not solve the problem too.

Is this problem applicable to all hires materials ? No ! XXHE z6-1 plays all other 192 kHz materials from Chesky with quatro AP beautifully.

Any clue ?
Thanks
Praphan

Hey Praphan,

The info you just provided is of great importance ! I mean :

The problem with 4x 176.4 (and 4x 192 IIRC) is known, and I have been clueless so far. It probably has been there always, but of course we never could test it (768 only now being possible with some DAC :)).

What I did not know, nor could expect (I think :no:) is that it is track related, hence will be about wrong header data. That is, this is what I clearly get from your post. And, probably I never ran into a working one (Chesky) by accident.

The fact that some RR albums don't play at all is also unknown to me, but most probably a very good clue. Can you please mention a few albums so I can test with those ?

Great thanks !
Peter


PS : Are you saying that you only have 192 examples which can work at 4x (16x) ? or do you also have 176.4 examples which work ?

Hi Peter,

I do believe that this phenomenon is related to XXHE player rather than NOS1 USB. This is based on my two observations :

(1)  All 192 kHz materials can be played back with quatro upsampling. Not only 192 albums from Chesky but also from other labels offering 192 kHz native materials. 

(2) Before the release of NOS1 USB, I used to run double AP on all 176.4 kHz albums without problem. It was not until 0.9z-5 that I started having problem with some selected RR albums which fall into type (1) above i.e. not being able to be played back at all with "Wrong Header Data" message.  At that time, NOS 1 was not released yet. I did not pay much attention since I was struggling with getting my PC mobo right in order to solve my problem with NOS1  (the AMD thread). I wish I could test 0.9z-4-1 again. But it is impossible since NOS1 USB can only work with 0.9z-6 onward.

With 0.9z-6 and NOS1 USB, 4x 176.4 playback will face either one of the two types of problem as mentioned earlier. It is not track related but album related.

RR albums that fall within type (1) : wrong header data (since z5-1) are as follows :
* Crown Imperial
* Eiji Oue Minnesota Orchestra Rachmaninoff
* Hot Club of Sanfrancisco- Yerba Buena BOUNCE
All tracks in three albums above behave the same ie. wrong header data. I cannot find any solution to this.

RR albums that fall in type (2) are as follows:
* Eiji Oue Minn Orch Stravinsky
* Eiji Oue Minn Orch Exotic Dances
* Joel Fan - West of the Sun
* HRx Sampler 1 -2008 176.4-24
All tracks in four albums above get distortion after exactly 1:08 minutes. The problem can be solved by applying 2x rather than 4x.

All 96kHz materials are tested with 8x AP : no problem at all.

All the above are fact based.

I am trying to send you some small tracks of both type by email but the files are too big. Will try tools like YouSendIt.

best
Praphan

Thank you Praphan.

If you can send me one track of either situation (two is better for comparison), yes please; I don't seem to have any of the albums.

You can use FileMail for it; it is very easy (and free).

Peter

This is also the time when I was no longer able to play WMP files.

Ok Peter, I will do it tonight. Try to send as much as I can. If needed, I can copy the DVD and send you the whole album of each situation by mail.

Thanks
Praphan

No no no ! not necessary. Upload may take quite a while for you. Just those tracks is fine (and two of each type is the best).

Man, you don't know how pleased I am that you found out about this, because I really had no clue. Well, I still haven't, but I will when those tracks arrive, I'm sure.
This must be a most odd thing ...
(and to me it really looked like the NOS1 could be to blame)
FYI : it happens when a next portion of track is to be loaded into memory, but actually and physically when a first buffer fill occurs from that. I *really* curious how the tracks themselves can incur for this ...

Regards,
Peter

This is solved in the due 0.9z-7.

Hi,

Though I do not have the chance of having an NOS DAC, I had this message (Wrong header) when upsampling from 44.1 to 176.4 (x4)... I realized that the wav files doing this had the same attributes - they had tags inside. After removing the tags, everything was playing properly...

Alain