XXHighEnd

With my settings below I get occasional ticks and, toward the end of long tracks --11 minutes or so-- I get long drop outs where sound stops for around 25 seconds and then resumes. This only seems to happen with Hi Res stuff. Is my SFS too low? Settings are below. Thanks.

Hi Brian,

Use my settings for the NOS1a. Something not right with that as well ?

Regards,
Peter

Thanks for the quick reply. Am off to work now --some folks can only be found on weekends-- so will change settings this evening and let you know.

Well I think I finally figured out the general cause of my Hi Res problems since switching to W8 several months ago. Changing settings made no difference and, over time, the problem seemed to change: drop outs and ticks stopped but they were replaced by occasional blasts of white noise or static near the end of the last track of a Hi Res playlist or, like a needle getting stuck on a scratched album, the track would just start repeatedly ticking till I turned it off. These problems only occurred with large tracks - 10 to 15 minutes long (classical stuff, BTW Mozart Symphonies 38-41 by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, produced by Reference Recordings, is an exceptional orchestral recording. Fantastic!). Yesterday, having no luck changing ALL settings, I started XXHigend from the hard disc instead of the RAM Disc and for the first time everything was fine. I could finally play all four tracks of one symphony without any issue whatsoever. Anyone else have a similar experience? Am thinking I should re-install Alaine's program which I have used since installing the IMDisk software, but thought I'd ask here first. One thing I do remember now is that several months ago I got an error message that one of the RAM Disk drives needed to be scanned for errors. I hit okay and the scan never started so I rebooted and forgot about it. Don't know if this is relevant.

Hi Brian,

I use the ramdisk all the time, but I must admit that I do not put many tunes in the playlist at a time. I can't say if that is the reason why I do not experience this... I am using 1.186a for the time being.

If there are such differences between the ramdisk and the hard drive, maybe having your ramdrive "script" joined with a post would help to verify if there is something special about it ?

Alain (or Alaine - this is when I am in a parallel universe ;)

Geeze, sorry about that misselling Alain! Thanks for the reply. I just read Peter's instructions (for the first time  :blush1:) on using the RAM Disc and I think the problem is probably related to the size of the discs. I have my drive A as 1 gig and my playback drive is 5 gig. I thought this would be sufficient for 24/96 and 24/192 playback. The Mozart I spoke of above is a 24/96 file. I really don't understand why Drive A needs to be bigger?

Yes Brian, that's a size issue and IMDisk doesn't protect from this well (just does not notice the RAMDisk is actually full).

So 1GB for either RAMDisk ? never !!
But by now yuo have read the instructions so you will know what to do now.

A has to be bigger somewhat because it also will contain the XXHighEnd programs (the XX folder). And the tracks go in there just the same (the B: drive will only contain the tracks).

Hope you get it working now ...
Peter

No problem Brian :) I was joking about it :) I have misspelled names a lot more than that through time, even typing my first name "Alian" ha ha !

I sure hope that your situation will turn well with the changing of the XXHighEnd ramdisk size.

(to Peter...)
Is the XXHighEnd absolutely necessary for the ramdrive ? By this I mean if someone would like to have a bigger play drive, not using the 2-3GB for XXHighEnd may allow for this ?

Thanks.

Alain

Alain,

But of course. Just as you are allowed to not use a RAMDisk at all for all. But two things :

1. It will be slower and when the music is obtained over the network it's a no-go for FLAC (too slow);
2. Outside the NOS1a SQ will clearly not be for the better.
(and with NOS1a I am not even sure - I never tried).

Regards,
Peter

Well, no problem. It's only that you now won't sell much any more.
;)
Peter

You're funny Peter :) I see your smile from here ;)

Thanks guys.

Brain  :)

Hey Brain, thank Alian.

;) :)

I forgot to mention that XXHighEnd is on a SSD (with the OS) and that all my music is in WAV... So no copy done in the XXHighEnd path...

Alain

When the music is loaded over the LAN (or from a NAS) *and* one chooses for "Keep LAN - Not Persistent" ... then it is. So or it's copied to a Playback Drive which is local, or it's copied to the RAMDisk because that's denoted as Playback Drive (and which RAMDisk thus is also local).

Peter