XXHighEnd

Yesterday evening, I was enjoying listening to the Jacques Loussier Trio playing Satie. Although not labelled as such, this is in fact an HDCD recording. As with all the other HDCD recordings I have, there is a sweetness to the sound that I just love. Maybe this is actually a distortion that the PM ADC introduces, but in any case I like it.

At one point, I had Alt-X and stop playback to take the kids up to bed. On my return, I pressed 'play' again, and... wtf! The sound was totally destroyed. I'm quite familiar with how HDCD sounds without HDCD decoding and was quite certain this was what I was now getting. In a nutshell, it's cr*p - utterly unlistenable.

So, I pressed the blue button to kill the XX Engine and quit XX. I then started XX again, selected the same track and pressed play. The sweetness was back.

Although I'm less sure about this, I think there may also be an HDCD decoding issue whenever Alt-U or Alt-D are used also.

I believe this really is a big deal. As I said, there is something about the sound of HDCD that is lovely. And all XX users have access to getting this sound from HDCDs. But not if the HDCD decoding in XX is being destroyed by user interventions during replay.

Peter?

Mani.

Mani,

Best would be to examine the HDCD indicator on the Wallpaper Coverart. If that still shows HDCD it should be OK. If it does not show HDCD it still can be that.
(I hope this is clear).

Showing it right is difficult with all the "cacheing", but having it right is difficult just the same. These both indeed apply to restarting something which was just played from the current playlist. Playing it the first time should be OK always.

The caches can be cleared with the [ C ] button near the bottom.

Are you using 0.9z-8e ? If not it will be that what you heard ... (which originally is about "ticks").

Peter


PS: I think I have to agree about your mentioned "sweetness".