XXHighEnd

Hi Peter

This is similar to the issue reported by JohanZ in “ New filter: error message “ thread.
However, to the extent that this problem and JohanZ’s problem are the same, this confirms that it has nothing to do with the new filter (as suspected in that other thread) because this is a fresh 1.186a install and there is no new filter.

The problem is:
   1)  after I hit alt-e or alt-s while playing unattended, when I hit alt-p to play, Bill Gates pops up a window and says that xxEngine3.exe has stopped working and gives me the option to close it.  I select the option to close it.  And since I have no engine I hit alt-x to start all over;
   2) Once xxHighEnd comes back (I’ll save the long explanation and just say: ) the Kernel Streaming driver setting is lost and the WASAPI driver or the High Definition driver is erroneously selected in settings.  And so when I try to play I get, paraphrasing, “Product of Q1, xQ1, buffer size is too large …” message followed by several other error messages like “2, 32, 352500, …”,  and “could not…” and sometimes “Engine _ is for XP {or vista or whatever}”.

Now as best that I recall, bringing up xxHE from unattended while music is playing, then clicking on the UI stop button (not alt-s), this sometimes keeps the proper KS settings and it is possible to select a new album under [L], hit play, and it can work.   BUT sometimes not, as best I recall, sometimes not.

THIS IS RELATED TO BEHAVIOUR I WAS SEEING WITH 1.186i
What is interesting is that the reason I reverted to “a” was because I was seeing a problem with “i” as follows.  I figured “i” was beta-beta and I could not expect perfect behavior.   But it turns out “a” is worse for me.  But the good news is that supposedly stable “a” should be giving us a clue.  Do you see a similarity?

The problem with -->i<-- is:
1)  after I hit alt-e or alt-s while playing unattended, when I hit alt-p to play, the DAC has trouble synchronizing.  It  stutters and refuses to lock at 352 or 384.  Hmmm.   So I alt-x.
2) Once xxHighEnd comes back, the DAC no longer synchs when I attempt playback at 352 or 384.  Hmmm.  Sometimes if I play a full track at 44.1 it is possible to play again at 352.  Else, a reboot solves this, but eventually, it would fail upon attempting to play, forcing me to eventually go to HQPlayer or JRiver which play almost perfectly at 352 or 384.  I was hoping that reverting  to 1.186a would allow me to use XX again for a while until the 352/384 filters come out….  But no, a similar problem occurs.

Nothing is ever wrong with any 186 version after a reboot and selecting  a CD and playing fully through to the end.   All tracks play perfectly.  Something with 186 goes awry after the first explicit stop, either by alt-e, alt-p, or by clicking the UI, where clicking the UI has better luck.

BTW, I first thought this was a DAC problem because the upgrade is new, and so it seemed.  But after I got HQPlayer and JRiver working, which did take some tweaking like explicitly telling to use 32 bit packets and increasing buffer size, all was well, and after trying different USB cables, and now a new dedicated USB card (which I will report about soon),  all attention turned to XX as the problem.    The DAC maker says that synchronization is usually the fault of the data stream not being consistent enough.  But how can xx be the culprit here if xx specializes in a very steady stream to avoid jitter???   Well, clearly something goes awry eventually.   And BTW,  0.9z-9b has no issues. 

Hi Charlie,

Maybe I must apologize for the long explanation you had to make, but this is a known problem for 1.186(a). However it is always announced differently and for that reason I changed the title somewhat so now a next one can find the problem more easily.

So there's a bug in 1.a86(a) which can select (not always) the first audio device in the list. And if this is not the one you are using, things go wrong of course and all you write about it is just dedicated to that. So the explanation of it all is now just easy.
If all is right this was solved from of 1.186-e, but not sure because not really tested. Why ?

The "best setup" so to speak should already have switched off all you don't use (which is thus what I do). This means that in Minimized OS (Normal OS does not matter because not used anyway if all is right) the one and only audio device you are using should be active in the first place.
And then this bug can not express (obviously, I hope).

What you generally do is shut off all in Normal OS for WDM devices and if that leaves Kernel Streaming devices in MinOS you don't use, well, deactivate those too (Device Manager).

Hope this helps.
Peter

Hi Peter

No problem on the title change.

So, I'm still having the 1.186i issue and I will start a separate thread for that one and include the latest inforation because I now know that some of it turns out to be incorrect.

Ok, thank you Charlie.