Download is at the very bottom.
Because this is the first XXHighEnd version which supports the Windows 10 RTM versions fully, it will be obvious that you'll need a new Activation Code for the new Operating System;
Of course any Code re-issued for XXHighEnd 2.x will be refunded via the known procedure.
For those without Paypal - other means of payment and Activaton are possible (nothing new there too).
For the Release Notes of 2.00, look here : XXHighEnd Model 2.00 - New Filters & Extended Remote Control (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3184.0).
Install any new version in its own folder (your 2.00 Activation could be violated otherwise).
Edit : Nov. 20, 2015 : The original download of 2.03 has been replaced with 2.03a because of an authorization issue;
Those who downloaded 2.03 already do
not need to replace !
Release Notes 2.03(a)- Official support for the Windows RTM versions, starting with Build 10240 and as of now Build 10586. However, please notice that we dit not test the 10586 version as it came too late for the XXHighEnd 2.03 release.
Watch out : XXHighEnd versions prior to this 2.03 version do NOT work with these RTM builds. That is, going to Minimized OS will render your Operating System useless. This is not the case with the 10074 Build (so XXHighEnd 2.02 can be used for that perfectly).
- Official support for Operating System Boot from RAM (disk/deviceless operation);
With 16GB of RAM this works perfectly (more is allowed).
Brief explanation :
The Operating System's install is copied to RAM, booted from there and when done the source disk for that can be removed. Now there is no (spiky !) device active in the system and this benefits Sound Quality vastly.
Watch out : This requires a BASE disk to be obtained from Phasure.
The BASE disk contains several Operating systems / versions of it (Windows 8 and Windows 10). It is our promise that each sounds (very) different.
A general explanation of use can be found here : Using the OS from RAM (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3353.0).
Issue at this moment for when the OS has been booted from RAM (may be unsolvable) : The Time Stability and Performance Index settings can not be changed and are stuck at their "base" settings.
- With the clear notice that the RAM-boot implies a NAS or another means of where the music files are stored "behind the LAN" ... it became apparent that a few "worker files" now should also reside on the music server. So, people may not have been aware yet, but when we really do not allow ourselves to have *any* (to the Audio PC) local storage - and which thus is the case when the OS runs from RAM - then things could be inconvenient here and there for losing certain settings and statuses. This is now all solved in well fashion.
- XXHighEnd now integrates with the Tidal Streaming Service. This means that Albums can be downloaded from Tidal for Playback in XXHighEnd with zero quality loss;
The way this has been set up is such that once the Album has been downloaded, there is technically no difference any more with any of your other stored Albums (or tracks, for that matter). So there is NO trickery to detour the sound (stream), there is NO trickery involved in different (or no) filtering means and there is NO trickery anywhere else. It is 100% transparent.
There is also NO possibility of your Internet connection being too slow and that sound may stall - the most heard complaint of Tidal (in its CD quality version); it is just impossible to happen (or to be different from what you are used to).
Downsides ? sure ... that the "streaming" as such is an off line process. So you order for an Album - this is downloaded - after that completes you can play it. Notice that by this means we can not be in lack of internet speed (which is an important reason why this has been set up like this in the first place).
There is much, much more to this all, and for that please see the Tutorials here : Streaming Services (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?board=26.0). Please notice : At the time of this writing (and first upload of XXHighEnd 2.03) these Tutorials will not be complete yet. They will be finished soon though.
- In Settings there's a new field for the "Streaming Files Folder";
What you want to play goes in there first.
- In Settings there's also a new field for the "Streaming Files Gallery;
What you prepared for Playback is stored in this Gallery;
Leave empty when you don't use Galleries in the first place.
- The Intermediate Files Folder (in Settings) exists for many years, but is now also used to store Tidal Search Results (which can be wild at times) so this does not obfuscate your normal Streaming Files Folder (see above).
When you are satisfied with resulting Items you can move them to the Streaming Files Folder by means of the functionality in the Streams menu option. Here :
(http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal01.png)
- Part of the Tidal Tutorial will be something you may run into anyway. Look here :
(http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal02.png)
What you see is different border colours on the Items (Albums) in the Library Area. They can be Red (all normal), Green (Tracks present in meta data format), Purple (Tracks present for streaming but not all of them for that album yet, White (only album definition is there and nothing else) and Yellow (album was attempted to Prepare but no CD quality (or higher) is available and the Album can't be played.
- Another thing for the Tidal Tutorial but which you may run into automatically is the caption of the Search Button. Here the three versions of it :
(http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal03a.png)
| (http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal03b.png) | (http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal03c.png) |
And the menu which causes the changes, that menu appearing when you right click the Search Button :
(http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/Tidal04.png)
In brief :
The first version of the Button is what you are used to (let's call that Local Search);
The second version is Search Tidal, and store in the Streaming Files Folder (see more above);
The third version is Search Tital "Temporary", which is a sandbox version of the normal thing, meant to mess (up) with.
The three versions can be exchanged in the Library Area by means of the RightClick on the button and choose the appropriate playground (matter of a second).
More about this all in the Tidal Tutorials.
- What plainly lacked in the previous (2.02) version was an "OSIsW10.tss" file;
Notice that when such an OSIsxxx.tss file is remaned to OSIsxxx.tst, the system will apply internal settings accoding to the OS denoted. Normally this is not to be used and most certainly not to denote a newer OS version than really is running, but it can happen that because of another issue the system (and XXHighEnd in the empty Playlist Area) reports WinNT32 (or something like that). If we can then make OsIsW10.tst "active", it is useful.
Side note : it is not (and will not be) possible to have something like OsIsW10-10240.tst. This could be tricky for when a newer W10 version implies different settings than the older, and the OSIsW10.tst implies the latest version of W10 (because XXHighEnd's version is newer and anticipates it) while an older version is running.
- There's an [ X ] button now on the Gallery Shortcut menu (normally in the left pane when the Library Area is active). It removes that same menu from the screen which is especially useful when the Large Library Area is active (see [ L ] button in the right border of XXHighEnd); Now nothing can be hidden under that menu.
It is restored when either the Smal - or the Large Library Area is re-entered.
- In Windows 8 it appeared necessary to explicitly switch on the LAN yourself (with the LAN button), in some situations of bringing up XXHighEnd during Unattended Playback. This is now solved.
- There always has been the annoyance of selecting an Item in the Library Area for Playback (like Double Clicking it) to next find that at returning to the Library Area you are somewhere else (and can't easily find back where you were). This has been solved now.
- Another issue which has been present for ever, was the fact that when no results showed up in the Library Area after pressing Search, it required a restart of XXHighEnd to ever show something again.
Solved.
- The Context Menu in the Library Area (Right Click an Item) has been reorganized for better accessibility. Nothing disappeared and if you can't find it ... it will just be somewhere else in one of the sub-menus.
- The reserved area for the Embedded Explorer (in the left pane when the Library Area is active) did not have a suffcient height which caused the scrollbar at the bottom not to be visible/reachable. Solved.
- It appeared that he Messages / Questions occurring from the "Delete Original Files function, were quite unreadable because of scaling problems. This is OK now.
- Whether useful or not, when the On Screen Keyboard (XXOSK.exe) is quiot via its [ X ] button, a question appears whether to really quit or not (as usual) but when we answer that with No, the OSD (On Screen Display) screen surface is refreshed.
Notice that this was made for Windows 10 and the 10074/10240 build because it appeared that oftsen the Remote (!) screen would not be refreshed;
Most probably this is not useful any more anyway, with also the notice that it did not even help (read : when the Wallpaper Coverart shows the "old" instance (like previous track data) no refresh took place with this function, while it should. And, when nothing is stuck, the function works (but now for what ever reason to use it ~).
- Proceeding the above ... It should be so now that no Remote screens get stuck on old Wallpaper Coverart data. It is now quite sure though what solved it, but it could be a general Windows 10 problem, solved per Build 10565.
Please report when this still bugs you.
- The On Screen Keyboard (XXOSK.exe) now has an Audio Emergency Stop Button - the [ D ] (green) button;
Keep this button pressed (down) for a second and audio will stop playing.
- With the "Use Touch facilities" activated (see in Settings, Services and OSD section), a.o. selecting a Track in the Playlist Area does not auto-unselect other selected tracks. For result this implied that very often the first track is selected (which often is out of view) while you select track 18 etc. The result ? the first track plays unintendedly.
Now it is so that when the first track is selected while further down the line at least one other track is selected, and the Touch Facilities are active, a question pops up wether this is intended or not. With a No answer the first track is unselected automaticaly (and does not play).
- The font size (size of the characters) in the Library Area always grew/shrunk along with the Scaling Settings. This has now been changed into a fixed and readable size. Effect ? now more of Album Titles etc. can be read with the very large Scaling Factors.
- A great new feature is the Unselecting of Library Area Items when a next is Item is loaded (or several are loaded) in the Playlist Area. That is, when the Touch Facilities again are active, and unselection normally is not performed automatically. Now it is, and this prevents from undesired double (or more) loading of Items (Albums).
- When Windows 10 is the OS in use, the Build Number of it shows in the (empty) Playlist Area.
- Windows 10 suffers from the switching off of the Monitor and then can (!) hang. Since this was used at Rebooting, this is now eliminated for Windows 10 (no big deal, but the message is : the ages it could take for a reboot (or shut down) with Windows 10, initiated by XXHighEnd, is now eliminated to normal.
- CheckDos83.tst and CheckExFat.tst (present in the XX folder) are not in use any more;
Ever back it was thought that certain Wallpaper (not showing) issues were caused by certain file (disk/volume) organizations, and while this was true, other things have changed and all should work normally now.
Issues- It appears to be so that a very first XXHighEnd install on the Windows 10 Operating System takes a rather long time before the XXHighEnd screen appears (this first time). Think 6 minutes !
What you will notice of this is a taskbar icon for XXHighEnd (hovering it will show the screen in grey colour) and all you need to do is wait.
It is not clear what is happening during that time; it is a Windows 10 quirk.
- Not sure if it is real or has been a temporary quirck over here, but might it happen that XXHighEnd does not appear while an icon for it is visible on the Taskbar (just at some random start up and where we saw it was under Windows 7), do this :
Start Task Manager, find XXHighEnd.exe under the Applications Tab (W7) or the Processes-Details Tab and expand the "node" you will see (W8/W10), rightclick and choose Maximize. Now right away quit XXHighEnd and restart. Lastly drag (the borders) to the size you like. Quit and restart to check whether all is fine again.
- It looks like it (suddenly) can take ages for a Tooltip emerges; If you hover a new field and nothing happens, hover another one of which you know that ot works (has a ToolTip) and after that go back to the new one. Now just wait.
When nothing happens and you don't trust it, please announce it on the forum (then we can look and confirm either truth).
Reminder for Windows 8 users :
As an option, don't forget to install the Windows 7 Shell provided with XXHighEnd. See the Windows7_Shell folder in your XX folder and don't forget to read the readme's in there !
Notice that this Windows 7 Shell does not work for Windows 8.1. and Windows 10
and instead it will render your OS Install useless (black screen) when you install it anyway.
New for XXHighEnd 2.03 is mentioned "as an option" because Windows 8 now just runs as well on the Metro Desktop *IF* you get the habit of selecting the Windows Desktop first from where you do all with XXHighEnd.
Just start the XXHighEnd.exe file; no Install as such is needed. See below at the mouse arrow.
(http://www.stordiau.nl/XXHighEnd/XXHighEnd04.png)
However, when you are running Windows 8 or higher - have not used XXHighEnd before - and are not connected to the Internet, first read this : Windows 8 Tutorials - Install .Net 3.5 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2348.msg23844).
Without this Tutorial you won't be able to obtain an Activation Code for XXHighEnd : Windows 10 Tutorials - Make Internet Explorer available (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3240.0).
Also, we urge you to read this : Windows 10 Tutorials - Wallpaper, Core Schemes, Q4,5 and more (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3228.0).
It is
mandatory to read this : Windows 10 Tutorials - Start XXHighEnd.exe (first time) (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3227.0) (this is also about Activation).
Please report as much as you run into but do so in a dedicated topic with a catching title.
Edit, Nov. 22, 2015 :After installing the main XXHighEnd-203a.rar, also install the XXHighEnd-203a-Addendum over the folder you used (this is for when you are going to use Tidal).