XXHighEnd

Hi Peter,

Yesterday re-installed Win7 back, now having 'Conversion Error' repeating on several albums randomly chosen.
XXHE reports RAMdisk full while only one (standard, 16/44) CD loaded on 4GB RAMdisk.
The content of playback drive is interesting: first file is ok (size/bitrate) but all others are not.
On albums with less tracks there's no 'Not enough space' message, XXHE goes to unattended and one track is played.

Thanks!
George

George,

First off, congrats with your new system (well, looking at your sig ... :yes:) That is ... hmm ...

First quick question :
Did you try this without Playbck Drive (just empty the field for it) ?

Native .WAV files normally play ? (if you need to try, first answer the question above to gain some speed).

Peter

Next question :

When you play Attended, will the next track automatically play ? You can drag the time cursor (in the bottom) towards 1 minute before the end to gain some testing speed here.

Thank you Peter, I like seeing long row of yellow LED's, he he.

I've already booted to normal OS to see what's happening.

- Loaded one album previously showing errors: 18 tracs FLAC files, no RAMdisk.
Conversion errors again, XXHE goes to Unattended and plays track. I'm able to select and play next track with 'Alt+N'

- Loaded native WAV, 21 tracks, no error window/message shown
- Same in Attended w/ WAV - no errors

George,

Attended is just that and this is not Normal OS.

Did you empty the field for Playback Drive ?

I can of course repeat all the questions, but it would be more useful if you just answer them. Ok ?
(so revisit what I asked please)

Peter

Understood your question first time but I did (re)booted from Min to Normal OS while waiting reply. I'm not mixing Unattended/Attended and Min/Normal OS :)

Back to MinOS and no RAMdisk started at all. 'Playback drive' field cleared of course (did it in NormalOS already).
- Unattended FLAC 'Conversion Error' for all 18 files (this album). With 'Alt+N' can advance to next track - with new series of error messages.
- Attended FLAC plays OK, can move time slider for next song etc.
- Native WAV plays OK both Un- and Attended

If this is to be understood as "playback automatically advances to the next track" then ...

Right from the start I expect a multi-threading issue. But I don't know how to test it further.


You mean, did not start at all ?

Anyway, I don't want to scare you, but I suppose you don't have another LGA2011 processor laying around ? If so, test it. If not, what to say ...
(Anthony never received any issue, if you know what I mean ... (but of not, just ask))

If you go to TaskManager and rightclick on a random process and choose Change Affinity - do you see all the processor cores ?
Btw, you can try to switch off Hyperthreading (in the BIOS) and see whether it makes a difference.

Peter

No, playback not automatically advancing, you suggested this 'to speed up things' in testing.
RAM disk should be read as "I have not created any RAM disk(s)" 
16 LED's present and active. Slow an cool :)

Have you looked at pics #3 & #4?
Same album, in RAM disk: first file ok, 30MB / 1411kbps (std 16/44) while all others (2nd marked) 2.58KB only and 3072kbps 
This is where XXHE shouts 'Hey you, No Disk Space Anymore!' :)

Oh boy. George, if you are not able to "detach" problems from eachother, we will never get anywhere.

Now do this and do not do anything else :

- Attended.
- NO PLAYBACK DRIVE.
- Start Play on a list of FLAC's.

This stops at the end of the 1st track ?

Oh boy indeed. OK:
Min OS
Attended
No RAM disk.
Problematic album: Jesse Cook, The Blue Guitar Sessions, 14 tracks
Play does not stop. It continues to next track. And next. No problem at all.

Same album
XXHE in RAM
RAM Playback drive
Unattended play
Results with error seen on pic #1.
The content of RAM Playback disk/folder is shown in pics #3 and #4.
First file is converted OK (30MB) others are 2.58KB only

Yes. And if you "concentrate" on one problem at a time, your second list would not suddenly have changed 5 things. So if I were you I would have made that second list with one change only (compared to the first attempt / first list) : Play Unattended (and change nothing else). Thus :

- UNattended.
- NO PLAYBACK DRIVE.
- Start Play on a list of FLAC's.

But I think you have already done this, but not sure because of all your mixes. But tell me explicitly.

If still no go :

Do you have an album with MP3's ? When you try this, doing that according above list is sufficient.

Unattended
Error messages all over
XXHE continues with shutting services, plays first track.
First track ended
XXHE stops and exits unattended

No MP3 on this PC/HDD's, can copy from 'work PC'

MP3
Unattended
Error decoding...
Track plays

EDIT
And stops/exits unattended after first track.

Do you have a W8 OS disk readily available ?

Did you already try my Hyperthreading Off suggestion ?

No W8 ready - it was on this same partition before W7.
HT - Not yet, will do it right now and report asap.

So on another not (all) you guys should learn that it is quite inconvenient to begin with to always overwrite an OS ?
Just get yourelves that few $ new disk ...

With HT turned off - no error messages anymore at unattended.
RAMdisks works OK as well (XXHE and Playback drive)

And for the disks, I have one WD Blue 2.5" dead already and
another WD Green 3.5" full with music at 38% of health.
Soo, I'm on the market but I don't know whom to believe anymore..


In the meantime second song plays OK, somewhat louder than before I would say. Will fix that with (proper) settings

Now I don't understand what you mean. Ok, I must be in bad shape today.
Are you suggesting that some things die ?

---

Anthony, might you read this ... Do you have problems with your Xeon working Hyperthreaded ?

It's about hard disks Peter :)
Very recently one nice & quiet 2.5" HDD suddenly 'died' here.
Another one, abt 2.5 years old is heading same direction, with 1.5TB of music files :(

Short answer...don't think so...but I have never tried turning off hyperthreading.  I do get one or two of Georges errors in w7, but I have never attributed them to hyperthreading.

Firstly, in w7 I do occasionally get the "will only play one track" problem that George reports, but it only seems to happen from the first song of the album.  If I play from the second song all of the songs play through.  And I don't think that it happens on every album I play. When the problem does occur and only one track plays when XXHE comes back up I notice that the little blue square on the right hand side of XXHE is empty, which I think indicates that the playback engine is not initialised  (or something like that).

Secondly, in w7 I do get the occasional "Caller J" and "Playback drive full" messages but it seems to correlate to songs with commas or apostrophes or some other unusual symbol in the filename, so I thought it was a filename issue.  I have always had this problem with FLAC files but I got around it by converting all my music files to WAV.  These days I only seem to have this error if I am trying to play FLAC with unusual filenames that I have not yet converted to WAV.

This morning I will turn of my HT and report if it fixes any of these issues.

Regards,

Anthony

I should say that I have not reported the"first track only plays" issue because I have only been a couple of days in w7 and I have not been able to identify what the precise conditions are that causes it to happen.

Anthony

Thank you for your help on this Anthony ...

Peter

No probs Peter, glad to help.

So, I have two tracks (that I believe you also have Peter):  tracks 4 and 6 from the Beatles White Album (Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill) in FLAC format.  If these two tracks are next to each other in the playlist then I get the "Caller J" and "full playback drive" error messages and no playback is possible.  If I split them up then I get no messages and the music plays.

If I turn off hyperthreading then those songs can be placed anywhere in the playlist, even next to each other, and things play well without any error messages.  So it does seem as though hyperthreading has some effect on the "Caller J" and "full playback drive" messages.

I use the same processor as George, a Xeon E5-2648L which is 8 core that hyperthreads to 16.  Peter, I believe that the yellow boxes at the top of XXHE indicate each processor core.  After counting 20 boxes there, when there should be 16 (if my presumption is correct) then something is not quite right.

George, how many boxes do you count?

Regards,

Anthony

Same story in w8 as it is in w7.

Aha ...

Then it should be so that when you tell in the BIOS that only the first 12 cores (Hyperthreading On) are to be used, the problem is gone and it is me (XXHighEnd).
I will look into this later today and see whether I can find something.


Super that you tried that too Anthony !

Regards,
Peter

Yep, found a bug ...

Damn bugs...

Hey Anthony,

I was not actually counting the led's but rather watching (extremely fast) constructors building fantastic stairways over my screen. Sometimes with the red carpet  ;)

I found one screenshot with 17 led's but consider it normal as always had one led more than number of cores/threads, as if software is 'probing' for next thread.

And glad to learn that Peter found the culprit already.

 :drinks:

Haha, which actually only could happen because we put this to the forum George (so yes, this started with an email).

So this was about two bugs in the same part of code, and it reflects more than 12 processor cores. The download below solves that - hopefully (I can not test it <- a lousy 12 cores only).

Unzip this over your current XX folder with the notice that it is best to kill/exit AutoHotkey because a new Alt-W is in there too. So especially for Anthony maybe :

In Settings there's a new Show Gallery field which behaves the same as Demo Gallery and a track playing goes into the Show Gallery with Alt-W.

It also contains "conveniency" improvements for Windows 7 and re-attaching to the LAN which will only reflect those who dynamically shut Off the LAN (it won't go faster, but dealing with it is improved).

Let me know whether this helps the FLAC conversion please.

Peter

Edit Feb. 25 : Download removed because of a problem in there.

Yes Peter, all looks good again: FLAC conversion works w/ HT turned 'ON', on CPU with 8 cores / 16 threads. With RAM drive(s) as well.

:drinks:

  (http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab79/giokka/donaldd_zps105ca557.gif)

Yeah, you laugh; when I finally wanted to order that processor (2 months back ?) the guy was taken out or something ... if you know what I mean.

Hi Peter,

When reading about the LAN I downloaded the file.

When I start XXHE from RAM, it says "XXDATA folder created" and it is created in the A: ramdrive. it was not doing this before. So I exited XXHE, then started the physical XXHE and entered "C:" again (it was gone). Restarted the PC, but the same messag e keeps repeating each first time of a session in ramdrive, as if it does not keep the "C:" info in Settings anymore... And it does not...

The second problem I have happens when I want to access the music directory. As soon as I press "L" an "unhandled exception" error pops up and (it's written in French here - sorry) and asks if I want to continue or quit. There are no details. It ends with a "Reference to an object can't be identified to an instance of that object" - something like this (translated).

Alain

Went back in Normal mode. It does the same (exception error)... It does not keep the "C:" parameter in the XXDATA settings (from the physical XXHE)... I restarted the PC a few times, but nothing changes...

Alain

Alain,

Coincidentally I found that my own C:\XXData\ wouldn't persist after writing about it in the RAMDisk topic (somewhere, but you will know).
So, apparently I have changed something myself here without really knowing it.

The other issue will be about some change switch/twirk with Music Roots and starting with Search at the bottom will solve it and it will stay OK.

Do notice that your other issue (mentioned RAMDisk) is *because* your procedure ain't right. Well, you know.

For everybody : Do NOT use this version because it is not official and I can't support it (per these kind of things like Alain's).
And Alain, just revert to your 1.186a. Sorry !! (but your [ L ] issue will remain - You will get it right I'm sure).

Regards,
Peter

Thanks Peter, I reverted it and all is fine :)

Alain
Edit: I can assure you that the ramdisk (the batch file that I originally wrote) is OK, but I don't use the START line (I just added it last year, but like you mentionned, I find more practical to decide when I will start XXHE)...

Thank you Alain, and especially about reporting this of course.

George, Anthony ... If either of you now suddenly encounters similar problems then let me know. Of course it is not qiute the idea to provide a patch for the one thing and destroy the remainder.

Alain, if you want or like you can retry 1.186-b but now avoid the RAMDisk at setting it up (when all runs, re-engage it again). I think this can matter for the issue(s) you encounter.
No need to retry on my behalf ...

Best regards,
Peter

Everything works fine here.

BTW: I've used Alain's script for creating RAMdrives, except last line - starting XXHE. I prefer shortcut instead...

Hi Peter,

This has killed my XXHE in both w7 and w8.  I applied the update but have two problems that I can see.  Firstly, setting changes I make will not stay put (when I restart XXHE).  Secondly, XXHE gives an "Unhandled exception" error as soon as I load up Explorer either directly or via the "L" button in XXHE.

Stupidly, I applied the update to both w7 and w8 before testing it in one or the other so have killed both.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

Anthony

I should add the procedure that I used to install the update:

• Un-minimised windows so that I could get network
• Made sure that XXHE had not run and also killed the autohotkey service
• extracted the RAR file over the 1.186a directory

• Started XXHE and answered yes to the prompts

Anthony

Hi Anthony,

I just made PC restart to remove RAMdisks from memory (and kill active .AHK) then copied new files over old ones.
Second thing was renaming the directory to reflect the version change. Made changes - proper directory for XXHE Shortcut (C disk)
and .BAT file as well. Second move was deleting old Shortcut pointing to RAMdrive and creating new one after creating new RAMdrives.
All works OK, settings remain as dialed in. I did not used "L" command previously - tried just now, it starts XXHE play. Pls (re)check BAT
& Shortcut pointers.

Brgds,
George

I don't have a real procedure for it, but try something like this :

Empty the field for Music Root;
Quit;
Restart XXHE (change sure should have been saved);
[ L ]
The error is on screen ?; press continue.
Select or type at the bottom a "music root" (can be your normally used one);
Press Search;
Quit;
Restart;
[ L ] works now ?
Fill in your Music Root in settings.

Notic : What George described for procedure re a new folder should not be necessary at all. Not getting confused with RAMDisk procedures is crucial.

Peter

No.  The error is not on screen.  I do not get an error if the Music Root is not defined.

If I press [ S ] and then fill in my Music Root and then press [ L ] it all works fine.

However, if I now quit and restart XXHE and press [ L ] the error pops up.  I press "Continue" and then XXHE is virtually frozen.  Some buttons like the [ Q ] section works but [ S ], [ P ], [ L ] do not respond...those panels remain blank...and right-click on the mouse does not function in XXHE at all (no menu pops up).  I can press play and whatever is in the playlist will play and Alt-X brings me back out of unattended with the playlist showing (not blank) in its panel.  NOW I can press [ S ] to bring up the settings and then go back to the playlist by pressing [P] but press [ L ] and I get the error again.  Interestingly, if I do not click  [ L ] but I right click in the left panel to "Show Embedded Explorer here" then I get the error message, but I can still use [ P ] and [ S ] after I have pressed "continue" to the error message.

So, I still can't change the playlist but XXHE is not as dead as I first thought.

Anthony

Key is that Search Anthony. Did you try that ? So this should reset things.

Peter

Nah, just looked with TeamViewer at Anthony's and something really is wrong.
When the field for Music Root in settings is emptied no problem occurs, and this is workable I think.

Now I must try to mimic this here ...

Peter

Thanks for having a look Peter.  Much appreciated.  We managed to arrange it perfectly when I was having dinner and putting then kids to bed.

Anthony

George, if you are watching ...

Is it maybe so that you never filled in that Music Root field in Settings ? That would explain why you don't have a problem with it.

Peter

Music root was there, nothing added/modified etc.
What is of relevance and I forgot to mention in my previous post is that I started XXHE from hard disk, Unattended (w/ HT 'on').
When no errors showed I continued with RAMdisk(s) creation. 'Playback drive' field was empty of course, added only upon starting XXHE from RAM.

Since I'm not using much keybord keys (except Alt+S & Alt+X) what can I try here for testing? Teamviewer session is ok as well, if needed.

George,

I did not read back in the topic, but you do NOT have problems, right ?
If so indeed then no TeamViewer needed because I can look at my own situation - also no problems. :swoon::swoon:

Regards,
Peter

Correct - no problems here.

Well, nice then. Not. :scratching::scratching:

Thank you George.