XXHighEnd

Those that followed my early tribulations will know that I had (and still occasionally have) drop-outs during music playback.

This is not an XXHighend issue, but is to do with how 'busy' the computer is internally, and how other tasks is has to do can cause music playback (which has relatively low priority) to stutter.

Here is a bit of software that tests you computer.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml (http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml)

Mine shows that "some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop outs". Nice to have it confirmed :) now i just need to identify what processes are causing it :wacko

Great Chris !

I suggest the following : Put the graphs from your machine into here, and I will produce the same graphs so we can compare. As you know my system has no dropouts/glitches (apart from two in twoi months) so we must be able to find the (dis)similarities.

You are first !
And for others with problems : please go ahead too.

Peter

OK Peter

One small problem, can you remind me (us) how to capture the image and post it :scratching:

Cheers Chris

Just out of interest:

Most small spikes of about 150us(green), many at about 1000us (yellow), and one or two beauties at about 50,000us (red).

Just tried on my gaming machine (when i listen to music into headphones only, its a dualcore with vista x64).
Most spikes green, a couple of yellow along a 2 minutes test period.

This machine is NOT optimized for music, there are quite many background processes, including diskeeper, kaspersky7, outlook, uTorrent, msn and vmware virtual drivers.

I do experience an occasional dropout of music playback sometimes, thanks to creative cr*ppy drivers for the x-fi.

A program like SnagIt is most convenient, but not free (I suppose it has a trial period).
If you are really in need, various combinations with ctrl, shift, alt (?) and the PrintScreen button. This copies parts of the screen (depending on the key combinaton used) to the clipboard, and from there on you can struggle further to get it into something you can attach here. :)

I use a program called gadwin, it is freeware and very convenient.
See gadwin.com

Well this is mind.... Most green spike's though...... :( :)

Well, this should tell something (but what ??).

The first picture shows my Vista audio PC. It doesn't look right to me, and the deviation is 14 us or so. Veeery consistent, but with once in a while a drop to normal levels.
The second picture is right after a reboot of Vista. It's a bit busy then (as usual).

This third picture is my offical HTPC, which I hardly care about, but for having the proper drivers etc. running, and, might it matter, it's tuned for PCI latencies (Chris, I think I once handed you a program for that).


The Vista machine seems to have a minimum of 992us (apart from the few drops) and that sure is smelly.

Hi Peter

The measurements I gave earlier were with the laptop sitting idle and not even running music or on the Internet.

I now have XXHighend running. For 99.9% of the time all measurements are steady, just like yours, between 1000 and 1080us. About every 30 miniutes I get a single red bar at about 4000us - this is probably my drop outs.

FIO I did try the PCI latency program some time ago, but the software did not apply to vista :(

Have we just opened another can of worms??

Maybe ... but until I understand this, say not.

Here it doesn't matter whether XX is running or not, but for the greens to disappear completely. The steadyness remains. After a reboot without starting XX no difference.

Strange ...

YES Just had an audible drop out that coincided exactly with a red bar of 3886us :good: :good:

Hi (I'm fairly new in the XX area, and were I live they call guys like me  'a simple guy from the countryside').

First of all: The sound from XX is really second to none! Thanx PeterSt!

Second: I do have problems with lots of dropouts when playing music (WAV) from local disk or file server to the usb connected DAC and move the mouse (usb) around in XX or using other programs. Disconnecting the mouse helps a lot.
I ran the latency analyzer and clearly there are problems (see attached file). I assumed problems with the usb driver, yes, all possible drivers are at the latest available version. I contacted HP support and after some emails back and forth, they stated that the cause must be within the XX player, no doubt. So what do I do now? I'm using a brand new HP Pavilion laptop pc, dual core 2 GB ram.

Well, :welcome: then !

Where I live we kind of say it the other way around : "I'm only a city boy", but we mean the same by it. We must have respect for country boys ? :)

Anyway, if you have any infrared connected devices (could be keyboard, mouse), disconnect them.
If you have Wifi on board, shut that off too.
Bluetooth ? the same.

Everything only for trials of course.
If you don't have those devices, then actually I don't know (apart from that it sure is not XX related, but you guessed that I suppose).
But let's first see what your answer is ...

Hi again, (and you city boys are fast resonders, countryside guys love that  :))

Well, I have disconnected ir and bluetooth devices from the very beginning  :scratching:. I have not started the cumbersome exercise to disable services, the pc is also used by others.
The dropouts occur most often when the usb mouse is connected and I hear always dropouts when used, therefore I suspected the usb internal service. Dropouts occur also sometimes starting new programs. I have tried to change the Processor Core Appointment scheme; no change. I have also tested various combinations of player & thread priority.
Still wondering what to do.

Ah ! but you can't use ANY USB device once you use an USB DAC !! :no:
The way the DAC plays over USB, say, has no priority (well it has, the lowest).

You could try to find another USB "hub" in your laptop plus withgoing connection. But I'm not sure whether that can help (all may end up in the same interrupt pool).

Since I see that you have a CD10, a few people would be interested to know whether you can (over USB) play 96/24 (or actually any "DAC is" 32 setting) !

Hi Peter,

Thanx for the usb answer, I my simple mind with the pc technology in 2008, I thougt this was possible, but OK I can live with this  :thankyou:

I just love the CD10, the soundquality is superb both for cd and usb playback with 16/44 WAV files. I still have some more tweaking to do, but that is just great fun to have something to work on further.

I just now tested two flac files and on WAV files, downloaded from the 2l.no site.
flac 24/96 + 24/48: Convert from FLAC -> Length error in FLAC file ....
wav 24/96: No sound and after pushing 'play' again, got the error message: ENDPOINT CREATE FAILED -> The DAC does not accept this byte sequence

What were your "Dac is" and "DAC needs" settings here ?
And could you please post the Notapad report of your DAC with the "DAC Test" setting ?

Thanks,
Peter

Hi,

The DAC setting is 16/44, and this is the only value I able to set wihout getting an errormessage.
Trying to set e.g. 24/96 afterwards, XX acccepted, but playing the WAV file resulted is message 'INVALIDARG'.

The test DAC setting gave me the same as seen before on this forum for Eximus and Stello USB.
I played the VAW 24/96 file.

Thank you very much.
As I said elsewhere, the CD10 (as the only April Music product I think) officially states that it supports 96/24 for input in the specs.

Do what you like with this information.
And don't blame me !

Wait... let me understand this.  You have the DAC setting in XXHE at 16/44.1, but are playing and hearing 24/96 WAV files?  I've never actually tried to play a 24/96 wav file.... hmm time to go to the linn site and grab one and see...if only I had a working amp heh... tomorrow if I find time, I'll dl a file and see if it plays in XXHE.  But that doesn't sound like it should work?  Is some down/resampling taking place?

I don't think kberge said this. :)
Downsampling does not take place.

I could make that (to 48K !), but I don't think it's the best thing to listen to. At the time things come down to "better that than nothing", IMO we are 10 years ahead at least, so *then* it has a good reason, weren't it that by then everybody has the DACs, or tweaked the input receiver the least. Hehe.

I should have said: I tried to play the 26/96 WAV file. But no sound.
The test was done on request from PeterSt with the latest XX version.

Well, the statements from April Music saying their players accept 24/96 input; this is not according to tests done by me or pedal. The simple fact that the usb unit in the box is limited to 48 KHz says it all.

I think our units can accept 24/96 through coax though,,, right?

Yep, 24/96 through coax should work, but not through USB.