XXHighEnd

Peter,

Yesterday once and today in one hour twice the music stops playing. It happends with a Wav cd wich i have played many time's. It stops playing when the music goes to another track. The strange thing is that the slider keeps on moving just the same when a song is playing (with music).

When i let slider  keep on walking and it is at the end of the song (without music) the next song does play. No special errors come up.

Did you nodice it?

Grtz

Hi Gerard,

I had the same thing happening yesterday, the music stopped but unexpected it started again after about 10 minutes or so.
I think this happened to me in the past too but I'm not sure.

Gerard.

So far ... no. Didn't notice anything of the kind.
If you see a pattern, I trust you will let it know ? :)

Hey Gerard, ;-)

You are right there was a moment that i had it before... But it was gone at a moment...

Grtz Gerard...

Peter,

If i see anything strange i will let you know.

But thinking about the one today. I can't be sure at the moment :dntknw:... But if i remember correctly the space between the little counting stripes down the slider where bigger... So it looks like the song is shorter.
A counting thing?

But if it comes up i will make a pic.

Grtz

This happens to me a lot and has for a while. Sometimes a song will play all the way through with no sound. So, as the songs play, one or two will play normally and then one may play through with no sound (slider moves through the song) and  then the next song will play through normally. I have watched this for a while now and can't seem to find a pattern. It is pretty random. So when this happens, I press "Play" as the slider moves silently along. Then the song will restart and play normally.

Mike

Hi Mike,

I am quite sure your problem is not the same as what this topic is about;
If you have a MacBook and/or a DDDac it is kind of know (from a year ago though), and if not, please tell me your configuration and which Engine you use.

Thanks,
Peter

Hi Peter,

I use a Toshiba Satellite notebook PC running Vista Home Premium. It has an Intel dual core processor, 1.6 Ghz. with 2 gigs of RAM. My XX settings are Scheme 3, Nothing and High.  DAC is set at 16 Bits.

What is happening to me sounds (to me) identical to what Gerard stated in his first post.

Best,

Mike

Mike, I am sorry. Now I read your both posts again I must agree with you.
But please put your configuration and all in your signature. I may be able to find a pattern in there, especialy when more people are going to tell the same.

One thing I know (and this is addressed to Gerard as well) : a track shorter than 14 seconds or so won't play.
This is due to the buffering in memory, and can be solved by me with explicit attention. I just did not so far, combined nobody mentioning it.
I noticed myself at playing the Mattheus Passion last Easter. :nea: Didn't work well.

Hi Peter,

I know my first post was a bit confusing... I am sorry. The tracks skipped aren't unusually short or long... It appears very random to me.

I will work on my signature. I don't often post so I haven't spent the time,  my apologies for that as well.

I usually just check in from time to time to update to the latest version and see if anything new or old has been solved.

Best,

Mike

The blame is on me Mike. :yes:
Do you recall since when you have this problem ? or has it been always like this for you ?

Hi Peter,

I have been using XX from the beginning and following things even before in the BD Design days...

There have been so many versions that I don't remember exactly when it started but it has been quite some time now. I figured that it was me or my machine (and it still may be). I don't spend the time on these things as some people here do. So if I had to guess, maybe a couple of months or more now. And I update pretty regularly.

Still working on my signature....  ;)

Mike 

Same problem here! Sometimes i don't see this error for a while and today it happens in tree albums eg after four or five tracks. I think it make no difference if you play attended or not.

Today i was using the PCI Soundcard.

Regards,

Johan

Gerard,

I'm sure you mentioned this in your first post here because something occurred to you which wasn't normal. But if I may ask, would you still recognize this as something happening to 0.9v-1 which didn't happen in the before versions ? Or, how many times did you have this by now (0.9v-1) ?


GerardA,

In fact the same questions, although from your post I can't derive that the sound stops for the duration of exactly one track. Any new opninions by now maybe ?


Johan,

I know you said "same here", but you quoted less from gerard than Gerard actually said. In other words, to me it looks like that for you the music doesn't continue playing at a next track (after one being silent). Is it correct that you didn't try this (or that with you the music just never starts playing again ?



No matter Johan said this, I think everybody agrees that these things happened before (longer time ago) *and* that actually nobody explicitly reported this (not that I recall). But, I know it was there, but I do NOT recognize that the time cursor kept on running in any circumstance. I only wantto say : if you are referring to the past, please be sure that you refer to the same thing.
Also, I don't think anything can have changed in 0.9v-1 opposed to the before (0.9u-16) version, but :

I do think things can have changed on the matter of "stops playing at the end of a track" in several of the 0.9-u versions and the different means of calculating the length of a track. I am sure one of these 0.9-u versions solved the problem regarding this as how I encountered it myself, but I don't know which 0.9u version exactly.

I must assume your problem is related to the (wrong) calculation of the running time of the track. If this is the case -and when it happens- you can recognize this by the fact of the time cursor being at the end long before the track is at the end of playing (with long I mean 30 seconds or so), or the other way around, the cursor is long before reaching the end, but the track actually already is (note : this is *not* how I ever encountered the problem myself the longer time ago, but anyway).

It would be great if you all could confirm that your WAVs concerned are from another origine than EAC, or that you just don't know because you bought it over the Internet etc.

Whatever it is causing this, so far this still did not happen even one time to me ...

Peter,

It is really hard to say because sometime's it's gone for a while. After my first post i waited and waited. But it did not came up again. For sure i can say it's been there before. All the time's before i just pressed stop and than play again. Never let the whole song end. The last time i did wait and the song after the songs with no music that one did play.
But 15 min ago there it was again. The cd i played was WAV and again someone i have played many time's with no problem. So i just waited and made pic's. I do not see anything strange but maybe you do. It has been the 4 time it happend with this version. But i like to say that i have not played music for a week. Going back to the error i waited until the second (track 8) song and now the second (track 8)  did not play and the error down below came up. I have tried to play track 6 again and waited for 7. Now 7 played without any problems. I did nothing with the PC. :(

Sorry i have written a bit fast.  ;)

Grtz

Thank you Gerard. Small question : It isn't so that in this occasion during playing you added that second album ?
I ask this because this is known and still to be solved ... (most often the currently playing track is then the last track playing, and then all stops).

Peter,

No i loaded those to two together. And i now that i had it before with only one cd in the playlist.

Grtz

:aggressive:

:P :rofl:     ;)

Well, I've been looking for over 5 hours on where to add debug info combined with where things could go wrong, and could find one place only that allowed a "silent exit" of Engine#3, meaning the sound stops without message. So, if this indeed is the place we are looking for, two subsequent messages will occur, indicated by the first one being "TEMP ERROR B".

Please note that this does not take into account possible length errors, as implied/indicated in at least one post in this topic (the stripes seem not to match the actual track length). On that matter it seems that the various posts in this topic do not deal with the same problem, which does not mean that the origine just may be the same (the latter depends on the truth of all emerging now again, while *all* those problems a. where there before, b. vanished at some stage).
Might it be so that the workout of Gerard (the post with the pictures) is a problem on its own (meaning *exactly* as how he described it), then I can anounce that *that* problem can be solved by a backdoor solution.

I have been looking carefully what was changed in 0.9v-1, and really the only thing related is the calculation of the length of the track (that's why I excluded this in above alinea). But, this then can not be the reason to let things flaw once in a while in a non-repeateable fashion.

Below XXEngine3.zip should be unpacked and placed in your 0.9uv-1 folder (save the original one). SQ might be different.

Hi Peter,


After replacing XXEngine3 it does'nt work. No sound. I have checked the active task list. It shows no Engine3. Both in attended and unattended mode. In unattended mode there is no wallpaper (and sound). Switching back to the original version it works again.

Do i something wrong?

Regards, Johan

Dito :(    :)

Ok, second attempt. Unzip below zip into the 0.9v-1 folder and allow XXEngine3.exe to be overwritten.

Things suddenly didn't work anymore because I upgraded the development environment (to Visual Studio 2008), which of course didn't show on the dev PC itself. :scare:
I tested this on another Vista PC (with SP1 btw while the dev PC is at SP0), and there it works now.
:heat:

It's working here too!

Hello Peter,

After the initial fix not working I downloaded the second fix and it works fine. However it did not fix the problem (for me). My first album tried played the third song silently then continued on through the album. Album is Van Morrison's Keep It Simple (if only it were so...), .wav files made with EAC. Track length of the song before is 4:30.76, the silent song is 3:16.53, the song after which played fine is 5:43.10.

 :dntknw:

Mike

Thank you very much Mike. And for you sig. :)

Btw, I didn't do anything to solve the problem, and I only hoped a message would appear. Apparently not. Otoh, I sense your problem in another direction as ... yeah, as what ? never mind ...;
Can you please tell me what DAC you use, and what the soundcard (or mobo chip) is you use, or whether you use USB for the connection to the DAC. That is, *if* you use an external DAC.

Thanks again,
Peter

Peter,

I just started to test.... But reading Mike's post there is something i would like to say.... The thing is that he talked about the third song. Its something i allready would like to say but i am far from sure. The thing is that it is happening here a "lot" with the third track. (Could be a coincidence!!!) But it has been on a other track to... What do others think???
grtz

 :)

Hi Peter,

For a soundcard I use whatever resides / came stock within my machine. I use USB out to either a USB DAC (City Pulse or mhdt Constantine) or to a HagUSB and then S/PDIF from there into a regular DAC (various but at this moment Cal Labs Sigma II). I change DAC's quite a bit and the DAC doesn't seem to have an effect either way. I spoke too soon on my earlier post as well. XX did not play through the rest of the album but skipped anther song (maybe the 7th). Sometimes I do get an error message WP Change (I think) has stopped working. What happens then is the song starts to play through silently, then the WP Change message comes up and when I close that, another error message comes up, XX.exec has stopped working. Then when I close that error message its full stop and I have to press play again. The player then starts on the song it was on when the first error message occurred. This doesn't happen nearly as often as the silent playing through of some songs though.

Mike

Peter,

Just to let you now that i do not use the WP. And i do not know what happend but i looked at my pc to start music again. I thought that the cd has ended. Again WAV wich i played before without problems. these errors came up. I do not now if they are related to this topic. But i am sure you do...

EDIT: I started the second cd. So it was not going from cd 1 to cd 2. And when i clicked the error down the bottom away the error * Engine 3 did not start within ........time * came up.

EDIT2: Never had those errors.
 :)

Gerard, thanks. That ChangeWP thing to me looks like a similar problem why the earlier uploaded XXEngine3 didn't work. I need to apply similarly to the ChangeWP.EXE (and another one or two I think). Also this implies that I address the Wallpaper stuff unnecessarily. I will sort that out.

The error you showed at the bottom is due to XXEngine3 still running, which by itself is caused by the "No track given" message not clicked away by you (so, really not a problem, but by itself caused by the originating problem, which will be the ChangeWP thing).

These are the same error messages that I get (albeit in a different language) and I have had them for a while now, probably as long as the silently played track thing.... They don’t come up all the time though and not as often as the silently played track.

Mike

This is not true of course, because I didn't upload a new version of that.


Mike, that puts things in another perspective for at least some of your cases. Also, now I have something concrete to work with.

Yesterday the music spontaneously stops playing halfway the record in unattended mode (09v-2). No error messages. I have seen this before. Today I have test it with the same record in attended mode. Again it stops and now with messages! I have the impression that i have seen it also with other records. (In this version it is the second time)

So it looks like you can copy this behaviour, right ?

Which track was it at ? I have that album too, so I can check it.

Every time i played this record it gives the errors
I have seen them just before the start of track three en and the second time just before the start of track four.

In the unattended mode you don't see the errors!

Hi Johanz,

Do you also mean by this that the slider keeps on moving without music? Or do you think this is different?

 :)

No. The slider is at the start position!

Gerard, Mike,

Did anything change since 0.9u-v2 ? I tried to apply some changes which might help in that version, but didn't hear back from you.
If things are still the same, or changed (and still errors) I'd like to know, so I may be able to apply something else with the upcoming release.

Thanks,
Peter

Peter,

I did not have very much time to listen... But the moments that i did the error playing without music is gone. Meaning i did not have it until now. There are some other errors wich i will beam up later.... ;) But must of these are the No track given ed.... First i must see a pattern...

Grtz

Hey Johan,

I just tried this, but nothing ...

I noticed that you must be talking about the 24/96KHz version, that is, looking at the track times (look below, the first 9 tracks are the normal version, the second are the 24/96KHz version). There is a difference though ...
My picture of the 24/96Khz is "Morphed" and yours is not. My normal version is not either. This may tell nothing, but how good/official is your 96KHz version (ripped) ?

I saw that you play at -6dB which I did the same (as well as Q1 = 4).
I tried Attended Mode ...
(in an earlier XX version I played the album Unattendedly without problems)

:scratching:

It's the official Donald Fagen Nightfly Trilogy. ripped with DVD Audio Extractor.

I have seen these errors also with other recordings. Not always reproducable

????

Peter,
I am running 9u-16 and am having similar trouble as listed in this thread - "WP error", "no track given", and "engine 3 did not start" messages . The problem seems to be much worse when playing an album copied as an image of an entire CD rather than an album copied song by song. I'm running an NOS 1543 DAC, Vista Ultimate, and doing my pulls with EAC. I'll list below:
In all cases the computer "crashes" and restarts itself when left alone playing music. I.E. if I leave music playing and dont shut down the player manually, I get the "engine 3 did not start in the alotted time" message and the computer eventually restarts itself. I haven't actually witnessed this entire process yet, but the message appears after log in that an unexpected error had occurred.
Imaged CD's tracks play out of sequence. The player stops working after the "out of sequence" song is played. The correct song is displayed as playing, but you hear another. This happens just about every time. Stopping the player, and double clicking on the correct song title in the playlist usually sorts it out for awhile.
It seemed to start happening all at once after a week or so of no trouble with the last XXHE activation. Interestingly, this never happened before I activated my copy of Vista, and not on XP when I ran it. It could be coincidence, but the problem started immediately after I activated Vista through Microsoft and downloaded all the "updates".

Thanks in advance
Scott

Thank you very much for your detailed outlay Scott.
Btw, please put your data as mentioned (and more if you think it's applicable) in your signature. This is very easy for me and others, when finding common denominators in problems.

Ok. By now, I myself had this WP error once, and in that sequence somewhere and empty small window showed titled "ChangeWP". Of course I recognize this because I created it myself, but I can't understand what happens when the window is empty. I assume you all have this empty window too ...

Then, when you say "Image of the whole CD" I assume you mean you made a Cue File of it (via EAC), right ?
Well, that this ends with a "Stopped working" is very recognizeable, and somehow I "introduced" that some 4 or 5 months ago. IOW, I still must sort that out, which is not the easiest thing to do because it seems to happen only at playing the complete album. Btw, since the ChangeWP thing it happened only once to me, I never thought of the relation to that, so I will dive into it via that angle. But :
That this will let crash your PC ... :nea: ...


This is an interesting one, because I never heard of that, nor did I experience it myself. It could well be though that I never recognized things to be out of sequence, as well as that I always thought the album finished playing, while actually another track is there. Or IOW, it seems logic that when playing is out of sequence (and is skipping a track), things go wrong towards the end because another track is expected.
It wouldn't be so that you know of an album where you can copy this behaviour, hence know in advance what will happen ? If so, please post (or send me) the .cue file involved; maybe I can make something of it.


Ok, but what is ? the out of sequence playing, or the crashes of XXEngine3, or the reboots ?


Never believe in coincidence, and rather prove it isn't ! Another thing is that it might not be the best idea to auto-perform the upgrades offered, because you then never know what causes which. In this case it might be an idea to Google for the KB's concerned (each upgrade will have an MS KB number, which will be listed under your "Software" (or "Programs", whatever it is exactly)) and see whether others have problems with it. You also could go the nuke and pave way, and uninstall those upgrades.

Please let me know anything new on this, and don't hesitate to ask whatever it is you might want to know (without knowing for sure it is even relevant I mean).

Peter

Peter,
Sorry for the late reply. This job thing keeps getting in the way...
I'll try to go in order:
     The WP error, I cannot recall if it was blank. I will note what it says next time I see it.
     Yes, in EAC the selection is "create image and cue file". Interesting, you note that the WP error seems to come with this type of file playback - this has been my experience also that it behaves worse (less reliable playback) with the image of the cd vs individual tracks.
     Regarding the "crashing", maybe my terminology is wrong. Everytime I leave the computer unattended with the player "going" (individual tracks selected or an image) I find it has restarted. This happens without exception if I do not shut the player down manually myself. Upon login I see the "Windows has recovered from an unexpected error". Is this one unique to just me? I would appreciate any input from anyone.
     I will try to recreate the problem when I get back home and make some notes on when it happens, and if it is repeatable/predictable. I haven't yet looked for patterns. I will send a .cue file next time.
Regarding "it all started" I am referring to these events collectively as "the problem". There may be many things actually happening, but I grouped them together as "the problem" (out of sequence playing,crashes of XXEngine3,reboots) . It starts with the wrong song playing vs the highlighted title in the playlist and ends with the computer restarting. I am sorry for not being more specific on this one.
     For sure the Windows updates have me suspicious!
     I realize these descriptions so far have very little value : I will take notes on the events of the next unscheduled landing as they happen and report back on this thread. Are there any files that XXHE creates that I can copy and send to you that will help identify what is happening?

Thanks!
Scott
 

Thanks so far Scott.
FYI : I have been watching the playback regrading the sequence for some albums, but saw nothing wrong. Playback ends just after the last track, but, ends in an "XXEngine3 stopped working". I also left the PC at that for a night, but the next morning it was still in the same state.

Did this happen with Attended or Unattended Playback ?

But maybe we're on the wrong track with this all because


this tells it is unrelated to the Cue File problem (wrong sequence playing or not), and it seems much better that we first try to find your restart problem. But is there a restart problem ? The stupid thing is, I 100% recognize your message from seeing that in the log (but I don't know which log anymore), and I just *had* to associate it with a "Stopped working" situation, because my system never reboots, and if it would, it would be asking for a password after that (and the sleep state does not incur for that).
So, how sure can you be that this really happens, hence are you abel to prove otherwise that indeed this happens (Logs).

Now we have three problems in one ... :)

Hello Peter.

Well, I think it has come time for me to put XX on the shelf for now. I have no doubt it is the best sounding player around but it doesn't function well for me. It causes me more frustration then it does pleasure and it doesn't seem that that will change for a while.

The wav stops playing thing has gotten steadily worse, with all kind of variations on the theme. Sometimes the song playing will be cut short towards the end and it will jump forward to the next song and play silently through. The other day I detected very low volume coming from the speaker and could barely hear the song (ear at the speaker) and it was playing back garbled, like at slow speed? There is always lots of no data given messages when I return to my computer. Lots of system index out of range messages etc. Today while playing an album that I have played many times before, the music stopped and high volume static replaced the music. Luckily I was using low sensitivity speakers at the time so my speakers don't appear to be damaged. This was accompanied with a large message box that said something to the effect that "System out of range index was out of bounds of the array". I don't know how to do the screen shot thing. I realized when I bought the software (almost a year ago to the day) that it was in the beta stage but I guess I thought things would be ironed out by now. Hopefully someday there will be a fully functional version.
Maybe it is just me having these difficulties, I don’t know. I guess it could be my machine, or my lack of computer skills. But my experience with software is either it works or it doesn’t. Easy for me to say I guess, because I don’t write it.
So it is back to good old fashion CD’s for me, at least for now.
Best,
Mike

Hi Mike,

As you know this all started with my idea that everbody should be able to use the software, the PC unexperienced as well. Therefore it is even the more sad that you have the idea that it is just that what bothers you now. And it could be ... I can't tell.

For me the major problem in your case is that we don't know when it started. And of course this is to be combined with that it doesn't bother me.

Since you're giving up anyway, couldn't you start playing unattendedly ? I think you never do, and I also think that matters (IIRC the reports in this topic about elements of what happens with you, are about Attended Playback).

I really wonder what the heck it is that can make things so instable ... I am playing and playing and playing and nothing (but one time -> the WP error).

This is an indication of what I said too. This just CANNOT happen with Unattended Playback. But there's another thing ...

I only now realize that the problem from your quote above shouldn't be mixed with the WP error thing. And I don't think it is ...
*Then* it becomes a familiar problem, which was reported by some in the very beginning (I think Werner was one, although he had a Mac or something), and this is about the driver not releasing the sound device properly and this can also be brought down to USB and the larger buffer it uses. So ... you have a lousy driver somewhere ? ... maybe. But maybe not. I did change something in that area, and this was at March 19 2008. I can change it back in order to see if that helps.

Then, I just looked into the program, and without being sure right now, I think that the "control" of the larger USB buffer size as mentioned, has been eliminated with the switch from being able to play in shared mode to exclusive mode only.

Either way, this just cannot happen with Unattended Playback.
Could you please try ?

Hi Peter,

Yes, I will try Unattended Playback and let you know my findings.

As I stated before XX is the best player I have heard. And maybe because of that it takes more effort to dial in the computer to get it to work properly. I have tried a few other players and although they don't sound as good they seem to be simple to setup and to use. They also play the files without problems.

Of course I acknowledge my part in all this; I just don't have the time or the inclination to read all the posts that might be related to this issue and then try to figure it out on my machine. I am of the group of people I think that just wants to install the player, make a couple of adjustments and then listen. Not sure if you have developed a Help system yet but that would also be good for people like me.
Listening now in Unattended Playback……….
Best,

Mike






 

Ehhm, but that would be the most normal Mike. XXHighEnd is not for nothing still in beta, just because I know these kind of problems are there for some, and as soon there's a small thing I can grab on to, I solve it ASAP. But as you'll understand, for cases like this I can only hang on to you guys out there (who helped a LOT already).

If XX only was a normal player, then it would behave normally, but it is not (mainly because it plays all from memory for the good cause) and things are a 100 times more complicated. Add to that the in fact buggy Vista Exclusive Mode WASAPI stuff, and there we are. But I hope you know I try my best.

No, there isn't anything of a manual or help system yet (apart from the ToolTips and what's said in the Release Notes) which is just because we're still in beta (I just added functionality over the last few weeks which can use 30 pages of help alone ...). And indeed, by now there are so many things nobody knows, just because all is stacked in those Release Notes only. But a manual will be there ...

With what I just added, the one but last major thing I wanted from the beginning is in there, and after the last thing :secret: only bug solving remains. But I guess I have to travel the world so solve some of the things you have out there (may be 3 or 4 things only, but difficult enough (because I can't copy them) to travel around a bit ... maybe ... :swoon:).


Btw, don't tell me you're playing for 24 hours without problems now ... ?

 :blush1::yes: :veryhappy: :thankyou:

Nah, no :blush1: needed Mike. But this is *very* important anyway ...
I played several albums yesterday over USB and ATtended, but you know ... nothing went wrong. Anyways, it is most obviously it is there (Attended Playback) where I must look for your culprit;

I will finish off my current activities, blow off some :heat: from it, and then will create a version (or more) of which I expect may help your Attended Playback (which btw you shouldn't want at all, because it sounds "worse" IMHO). If you then can bear with me ... :grazy:
That will take another week though at least, just to take some breath outside of this environment. Pffff

:dancing:

Ok. Here is some experience of myself :

Got myself a Toshiba Satellite (with nonexant sound device), suffed XXHighEnd on it plus some 40 albums, brought it with me during my brake from the last 10 days, and started playing over the loudspeakers (bweh) Attendedly, and witched off "Show as Wallpaper".
After tens of hours of testing (no joke), these are my conclusions :

Yes, it is rather easy to copy a mixture of the behaviours as expressed in this topic.

The silent playing of one track, a next normally playing, and another (could be a few tracks later) quiet again, only happens after a cold boot (thus, switch off, and switch on again);

The ChangeWP error seems to happen randomly, but, it did not happen after a cold boot on its own (see next subject).

In one occasion, the silent playing 2 times (one session after a cold boot) 1:1 followed a ChangeWP error, after a first track playing silent without the ChangeWP error. Again, this happened at one occasion (session) only.


In each of above cases, at always using the same Playlist, it is not repeatable where it happens (using a reboot at least).

The playing silent seems dependent on the number of tracks played, and not on the time after start playing.

The ChangeWP error can happen 1 or 2 times per album, or doesn't happen throughout 24 hours of subsequent playback at all.

Note : Once the ChangeWP error during a playback session happened, at a next startup of XX it will reoccur as many times as it happened during the before playback session (not boot session). This is logical to me, because of the process happening then.

In no occasion the ChangeWP error disturbs playback, except of course the one occasion it came along with playing silent.

The silent playing seems to be related to using 64MB of memory by XXEngine3, although I couldn't really prove that. I do have in mind though, that XP has the very same problem with tracks themselves being larger than 64MB (the around 6 minutes boundary). How this can be related to the Unattended Playback where it does not happen (ok, with a DAC behind the soundcard, which is so far my only experience) I don't know.


So can I solve it now ? no, not from this idiotic behaviour and searching for the real cause. However, I will be able to create a backdoor solution for the ChangeWP error for sure, and *hope* it is the solution for the silent playing in the mean time.

I am not sure whether things are related to playing over the internal speakers, which is the same as using a soundcard with output to the (pre)amp. But with above experience I now can test the same with a DAC behind the soundcard, and see whether that matters, of which I expect it just can for the "silent" part of the problem.


I thought you were entitled to know that this has my full attention, and it was just before I left for my brake that I got the hunch of
a. it happens with Attended Playback only (as described a few posts back);
b. it could be related to playing from the souncard (without a DAC behind it). Thank you Russ.
Thus, the latter might not be true, but it gave me the idea of using the laptop and just let it run forever if needed. This by itself needed the conversion of all the albums I brought to 48K, because the Conexant "hi def" driver allowed 48K only, and Engine#3 obviously doesn't swallow that when fed with 44K1.

I let you know when I know more, and if you can contribute to this, don't hesitate to do so !
Thanks,
Peter



PS : In one occasion throughout everything (days of playing), an "Engine#3 did not start etc." occurred.

Amendum to my last post (and merely for myself, but possibly recognizeable for you) :

At just shutting down my audio PC in order to start testing, I suddenly realized that something *is* related to a cold boot. At least, for my Vista (SP0) it is :

When my PC is booted cold, at performing x time no activity (an Energy timing setting), the PC will hybernate. Not that I have settings which imply hybernating, but it just does. These kind of things are known Vista quirks, and SP1 is better at this (these things), but it did not solve this specific anomaly. Now :
After XX played "some" time (and then stops because I just wanted it), the hybernating doesn't happen anymore. Just the screensaver jumping in (if not already done long before), and throughout the further boot session, no hybernating anymore.
How much time of playing this requires I never found out, but an hour seems enough. Now :

What if at the moment the PC actually wants to hybernate, the silent playback starts to happen ? With *AT*tended playback there is a moment of just no activity. Then the hybernating starts to activate, immediately followed by "oops not", but in the mean time the sound system has beem shut off. At the next track, the sound system is (rather) explicitly reactivated, and there's sound again. But the hybernating feature keeps on trying, and at a next track there's silence again. Of course you were not allowed to even touch the mouse in the mean time, because that would reset the process ... (which might be because the exact moments can't be repeated).
This happens a few times (I don't think I ever encountered more than 3 silent tracks), and then something gives up on hybernating.

The difference with Unattended Playback would be that there's NO idle time between tracks ever. So, only when I stop playback within, say, 20 minutes, I find the PC hybernating some 15 minutes after that.

Am I seeing ghosts now ?

Small update :

Yesterday nothing wanted to go wrong after three cold boots spread over 1.5 hours (which for sure would have given one of the anomalies on the laptop by then), I listened for over 5 hours (without booting anymore) and never encountered a silent track, and since then (11pm yesterday) all is still playing without any error. That's all together almost 24 hours now.

I guess I am now going to test the lot with the soundcard connected to the preamp (and leave the audio DAC out).
:scratching:

Edit :

BUT

After I came home and checking whether all was all right as just explained above (also turned on the sound briefly), I typed this post (yes, that's on another PC), and in the mean time the screen saver jumped in on the audio PC. I woke it up again, and just now there is an "Engine#3 did not start blah blah" right at this moment after so many hundreds of tracks playing allright ? Come on ! this is no coincidence !!
But what am I hunting here ? :evil:

Hi Peter,
I feel your pain -
Good news : the restarts due to "unrecoverable" error have stopped. I have no idea why - I was away from home for two weeks and the problem has not occurred since I returned! Maybe I should leave more often... ;)
However, I still cannot get an entire album to play all the way through. After studying the problem, it seems to be completely random which error occurs, when, and for what track/album. The only apparent pattern is that the player rarely makes it past track #5, usually failing to cue it or going silent during.
You mentioned seeing these problems rarely on your main PC - are there some settings I should copy to try to see if they improve the reliability?

Scott

Hi Scott, thanks.

As far as what I have seen throughout all the testing by now, these are the problems. Or *were*, because nearly all are solved here now ... working on the last ones :

• There is definitely a difference between the laptop I used and my main audio PC. I mean, it is so easy to copy the problems at the laptop, which just do not occur on the main PC (all with Attented Playback btw), that I really can blame *or* the laptop itself at being more slow, *or* the amateuristic sound device which comes with it (and which come with all laptops as it seems).
  This is in general.
  
  
• The ChangeWP error, which I now nailed down exactly to where/what happens in the code, actually can't be. Difficult to explain when you are not a programmer, but this comes down to reading a record from a file, that file just being available for me to view (Explorer), which that one record is being read as empty. Mind you, randomly and with the exact same file.
  I now re-read the file, giving it another chance, and I just *hope* this solves it, and anyway the error is avoided now.
  
  
• It was known by me for a long time that tracks smaller than 14 seconds would produce the "Engine#3 did not start ..." message, which has been solved now (upcoming version). This just needed my attention.
  Btw, what I reported in my latest post in this topic, just *was* this pure coincidence, of just such a short track passing by. So, hunting ghosts indeed.
  
  
• The playing without sound ... I could never copy that on the main audio PC. This (I state by now) sure is a problem of the particular sound driver, but I can't tell how it is related to what, because just this problem only occured after the cold reboot at the laptop, indeed occurs somewhere in the beginning of the album, then occurs 100% sure one time more, and mostly one other time again. After that, it's ok.
  Testing this is a job which can only be performed when you're really doing something else, because it takes days in general, and I assume I don't have that period of time anymore.
  Besides that, there is just nothing which can be done about it in the problem for debugging, because the program just runs hence all is okay, but the sound device doesn't produce sound. Again, this is the exact same problem as with XP and Engine#1 with files larger than 64MB, and there is just nothing which can be done about it (besides that, MS people don't recognize such a thing (I asked), and by kind of pure coincidence this problem doesn't exist in Vista). This too (XP situation) is 100% sure a driver issue, because any driver going around official XP guidelines, just does work (until you perform alt-tab and alt-bab back to the player, then sound stops).
  Please note that XXHighEnd is special and sensitive to this situation, because it plays from memory, which no other (WASAPI) player is doing.
  
  Side note : I dedicated this silent playing to Attended Playback, because I just tried it like that on the laptop, and then indeed it happens. However, I don't think this is true, or at least I didn't prove it (because I never tried the lapop Unattendedly).
  
  There is one thing I should be able to grab on to, and that this the strict boundary of when silent play starts. This is 100% sure in between two tracks, BUT the playing program (Engine#3) really doesn't know about any difference. This comes down to playing one large file, with no gap in between. However, technically this is not really true, and there *is* a difference : the memory management which is needed to, say, glue the tracks together. And it is just this (I talked about it before) that is rather out of my control, because "managed" dot-net code does it for you. So, it is my expectation that the problem is in this area, which will be the same area as the used memory growing and growing (while I don't incur for that) right in the beginning, untill is shrinks again and it after that never grows again (I mean, not without reason). This might be the same moment when things go wrong, or possibly start to be all right.
  And thus, it is this area which I might be able to influence and just watch with eyes : cause the memory not to grow without reason in the beginning, and I bet that if that can be done, this problem has gone too. Otoh, if you'd know what time it took to tweak the whole lot in order to incur for similar, thinking of the "ticks" topic from Edward ...
  
  
• Since maybe March 2008, "Cue Files" can't play their last track without ending in an error. I'm working on that today.
  
  
• There are always the situations that the track length as indicated by whatever means (and these are as many as formats of WAV files exist, thinking of the means of ripping, tagging, incorporation of all kind of sh*t in the WAV file which never has been a standard ... is wrong. This is the typicle situation that XXEngine3 just dies, and I don't think this can be avoided unless sound degrades.
  Mind you, crashes like these should be covered by a means of error trapping, and it is just this what is deliberately left out for SQ reasons. There may be a time though that I can better recognize what really is music data and what is not, kind of similar to the "Crack Detection" feature. Thus, when I can do that more precise, I can check in advance where music data really stops, instead of the wrong information provided in the header, and as written wrongly in there by whatever program (which already can be a tagging program).
  

Ok, back to work !

I'm getting getting crazy here;
Looking at the first few posts from Gerard, he expected that the silent playing is related to a wrong implied track length as the bottom slider shows. So, I just tried to manipulate that. Built in a message when the "manipulation" was applied, which message so far didn't show because I used the wrong settings for that. But instead it happened for real (normal audio PC). Just a second track of an album, the PC running for days now, and especially the whole afternoon playing.

Ok, when the "manipulation" was applied properly, nothing happened. Not with shorter - not with longer than the track is in reality.
:aggressive:

Peter,
Just for test, I tried unattended mode and have run through 2 whole albums today without any interruption!

Haha, but with unattended mode I'm doing that for 150 days.
But now with 0.9v-5 everything should be better. Only the silent playing problem with attended mode, that stays for now (many like silence, you know :)).

On a regular base i have an Application Crash in unattended mode. In version 09v-4 i got the impression that this was caused by the "Double" option. When i switched it off then it seems to me that it works ok. I have test it again in the last version (09-5) this morning and "Double" still generate random an Applic Crash. (one time in two records)

Johan

Hmm ... I guess I will be playing Double tonight.

I'm sorry Johan, I didn't know this.

Johan,

With "Application Crash" you mean "XXEngine3 stopped working" ? or do you mean something else ?

In this case I am *rather* confident these are memory (too low) problems. Wasn't it so that with Double you need 7 times the longest track ? (count 64MB for 6 minutes, or around 250MB per 6 minutes).

Do you think this can be the problem ?
(also, we have Shut off Virtual Memory (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=549.0) now, with which I only want to say that no matter you have 3GB of memory, you can use 2GB only. Max !).

Also, I don't know who I promised it to, but it could be you ... I want to split tracks when the memory gets low ...
:heat: many things to do.


PS: I'm at the third album by now.

Also, I was just thinking ... *If* this indeed is a memory problem, it should be solved by ticking the Mem checkbox.

Hi,
Here the silence continues.. ;)
About the fifth song the silence definitely started just before the song had ended, the last 'words' were cut off.
After that the next song plays silently on.(Attended mode, default settings)

Yes, see attachment.

see attachment.

I didn't. See http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=260.0


Mine question about track length: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=533.0

Your suggestion: "No, I think it is better to think about some smart trackloading in the sense of "too long ? then cut in half". All the mechanisms for this are there already, and all it needs is faking a long track into two, which then plays gapless as always. "

I just played it again....See attachements.

Johan

Johan (GerardA too), thanks all so much for your efforts to make this clear;
From my side I have been proving tonight that shutting off the swap file really harms. I had a whole sequence of screen copies showing the evolvement (Johan, having in mind your Fagen album), which indeed ended in the below screenshot. So, I left out the others because apparently this is not your case ... (and I had to kill some crucial services in order to be able to make the screenshot :yes:).

The real error happening here is the e0434f4d. Well, if you Google for that, you'll find a far too general description everywhere, to deal with. Since I don't have anything of the kind I'm about to hang myself.
:wacko:

I will dive into this for sure ... just because I already intended. I mean, today I thought of the fact that there is some code in there that "silences" the last unfilled buffer part. It could silence the whole track maybe ...

Again, I really appreciate your help. But don't go crazy along with me ... :stop:

Hi Peter,

Thanks for all your hard work on this. I am having good results now for the most part with 09v-5. Still getting quite a few tracks that play through silently but, all in all, XX is working well here and things seem much more stable. I will continue in unattended mode for now though.

Thanks again.

Mike

Good news at last ... it is all SOLVED. Well, I'm very confident in that at least. There is some explanation here : XXHighEnd Model 0.9v-6 (solves silent playback)  (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=567.0)

I want to thank everybody who took the time to test and report, and especially those who feld bad about it, but hung on.

As this thread shows it took over 3 months to solve it, and in the end it really needed all the information to get the clues.
Of course I must thank Russ for his explicit testing and detailed descriptions, which just gave me the hunches about where to look.

:heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat::heat:

Well done Peter  :veryhappy:

I'm glad to have been some help in getting this issue sorted out. I can imagine your frustration in chasing this one down.

Folks, just to re-iterate what Peter mentioned in the release notes for 0.9v-6, if anyone experiences any further glitches or error conditions coming up, please report them here on the forum. It's the only way Peter can find out about them. There are many combinations of hardware in use amongst us and sometimes these combinations act in a manner that Peter could not test for explicitly in his coding.

Cheers all  :)

Russ

 Peter,

:thankyou: I have been playing for a few hours now and no strange errors of any kind!!! :)

Also  i like to say that the coverart search is working real great...  :good:

I have the feeling whe are near to XX 1.00  or am i mistaking :whistle:  :)


 :)

Hi Peter,

Also in version 09v-6, i have some trouble with the spontaneously stopping during music playback.

This morning playing in unattended mode with the "Double" option gives halfway the cd a stop, see attachment "Stopped" and "memory"
Switched off the "Double"option has no positive effect.
I did a restart of XXHighEnd.  Selecting the "Memory" option gives a wallpaper message while the music is playing. After a view tracks again the music stops (not at the end)

Regards, Johan

Maybe connected to before..?
When playing mp3's and wavs in one folder after a while I get 'format change not allowed' and 'engine 3 did not start in time'. The change was from mp3 to wav, but this change happened a couple of times before and then it gave no problem... When I stop and start with the next ( = changed) song it sounds distorted, so I stop and start again and then it is in double speed..

Hi Johan,

I found that GDI error occurring here just the same. Working on it ...
I don't see yet how this is related to what you describe here, but for safety I will solve that first and post a new version (I hope later today). Then we'll see further on this one, ok ?

Hmm ... interesting.

a. Change from file type is just allowed;
b. Change from samplerate/bitdepth is not.

Are you 100% sure that

1. the files have the same samplerate ?
2. your DAC isn't set to a fixed rate, while it atually needs to change ?

Lastly, if above 1 = Yes,  what is the samplerate and bitdepth for these tracks ?
And, this was Attended I assume ?


Oh, note that there is really no difference between just starting a track, and pressing Next. That is, with Engine#3.

Found something related : Do not switch on logging for 0.9v-6 ! (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=571.0)

I think it was a change in bitrate of mp3's but have to check more later.

Hi Johan,

You can try again with 0.9v-6a (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=572.0).
You can send me the logfiles when it still happens. Don't forget to switch logging on (after the install) !
Please put a description in the email about what you encountered, and accurately mention the track numbers as how they show in the log file, so I can look where what happened.

Peter

Hi Peter,

Things are working perfectly here now for 3 days or so in attended mode  :) Thanks again for getting this straightened out.


Mike

Hi Mike, great it is working for you too now. And ehh, thanks for motivating !

Today i had two stops in unattended mode. I have the impression that you don't get the stops in attended mode. Peter i will send you tomorrow the log files

Johan

Same here.  A couple stops in 6 & 6a.  6a stop just happened now at the beginning of second song (Radiohead - InRainbows cd version singlewav/cue).  Unattended
Played the wav/cue again and it stopped exactly in the same place... two beats into the second song.  Pressed play on second song... it's playing now.

Hi Peter,


I have send you today a pm.


The same experience here.

Johan

Johan,

I'll bet at least something that withgoing 0.9-6b solves your problem. Why ? because this is officially known as the JohanZ problem :grazy: and again I had to solve it. Somehow you don't have the rights to IMPLICITLY overwrite files. Explicitly yes, but implicitly no. It would be very nice for me and all others you may address this to without knowing, and in the end for yourself of course, if you could solve this.

I never heard of the thing, but it comes down to this :

Certain commands that create a file have the option to append to it, instead of deleting it first automatically and then create the file and add the data. What is used here is the latter, hence the file should be newly created or at least the contents must be new.
Note (hence disclaimer, whatever) : I don't know whether in such a case physically it may be so that the file keeps on existsing at the place it was before and that somehow its contents can be made empty before the new data goes to it. It certainly looks like this, because this is the explanation on it :

"To truncate a file or create it if it does not exist, use Create".
(truncate means cutoff, afkappen :))

It is this "truncate" which doesn't work for you.
Again, I wouldn't know of a "rights" setting that disallows it, but maybe you could look for it, or just allow yourself for everything at least in your XX folders (that's where this happens). Now Johan : actually it is not about this (hence XX) because I solved it. But what about the rest of your PC ??

In this particular case the writing of these files was changed due to the main subject of this topic (Wav stops playing), and I made the mistake of not paying attention to your problem. So you really don't need to do anything for getting XX back to work again. But again : what about the rest of your PC ?

The huge disclaimer is of course : ... all counts only when the below zip helps (only XXHighEnd.exe is in there).

For SeVeReD / Dave : If it helps you too, you can join Johan. :yes:
Anyway, let me know what came from it !

I'll try v6b tonight.   But really I'd like to "fix" my computer so that I have all rights to do whatever.  When I tried to shut off indexing on my new computer, I ran into a problem when trying to follow this http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=548.msg3934#msg3934 on my main C:/ drive.  All my external HDDs I was able to shut off indexing, but with my C:/ drive, it told me certain files were protected and I'm betting I was not able to completely shut off indexing on my C:/ drive,,, do you think this might be related?

I don't know. What I do know, is that when you don't have just all the rights there are, you will run in some problem somewhere (mostly noticeable when doing things over shares / the network.

In the mean time, for Johan at least, I found that the rights for Create folders/Append (see arrow in the picture below) are the most logical rights to prevent you from appending to a file. Not that it makes sense, because the log file acts the same after it has been created explicitly, as was the old way of writing to data files Johan couldn't cope with from the start.
Anyway, I'd suggest to give yourself all the rights there are, which are summed up on the page that shows below (including the second screen copy). Note that this place just shows the "effective rights", and they are to be applied at the higher level form you see below (the "Bewerken" button). Some will inherit though ... from somewhere.

Could find this for XP only : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308419/en-us

Maybe it helps somewhere.

You mean to put tics in all those boxes ... right?  Why don't your boxes have tics on them?  Ack wait, they don't take tics... I guess this means I've already had those attributes going for me...

Hi Peter,
I sent you an email with log files attachd.  Thought I'd post the contents of email here in case others could relate.
-
Hi Peter,
Here are logs.  Unfortunately, I now have not been able to reproduce XXHE stopping after the first track! ?  That's both using 6a and the executable you gave out 6b.  I was able to get it to stop 3 times in a row on Radiohead as mentioned, then I ticked Log Activities and played Radiohead,,, and it didn't stop (using 6a)... i hate computers.

Here is what it did do and has done in the past that I'm betting is related though.  I tried to describe this to you a while back but I don't think it made sense to you... I'll try again.

(using 6b sent log files)
* Radiohead - InRainbows
Plays first song fine
Begins 2nd song ... plays ~2 beats in and stops/pauses?
Imediately begins song 2 again and plays fine the rest of the album.

It did this during the log files I'm sending you.  It also did this same phenomenon this morning with another album
Kronos Quartet - In Formation

With Rock, it could almost be considered part of the song, the way it stops and then starts, but if you highlight and start the second song first, you notice that the "false" start is not there.  Hope you can find something in the logs.

NEW edit
Well, I just tried to play the Kronos Quartet - In Formation this morning again to see if I could get it to "hiccup" for the log files like it did earlier ... it didn't stop/start on the second song like it had :/ oh wellz

Dave, your problem is one of another kind, related to Cue Files. Something with Index 01 and Index 02 which sometimes exist and a wrong interpretation of that from my side.

Johan, did 0.9-v6b help you ? I'd like to know before putting up another version.

Hi Peter,


No spontaneous stops anymore. It works.... i think. Thanks!

Johan

you know,
as 3am approaches here
I'm trying to end
one of the most memorable listen sessions I've ever had
Between my new computer build, new coax dig cable, and now being able to take advantage of more of XXHighEnds' features, I've never heard my system present music so well, so realistic, as tonight.
Just saying
People shouldn't let these threads dissuade them from trying XXHighEnd
It's working awesome for me, (i love unattended with wallpaper of coverart), and the musical soundscape is so clear and intelligible, so fleshed out, I just can't stop listening,,, good thing this happened on the weekend.  Well I hear some Dvorak calling me right now; maybe I'll come back at 4am with more accolades

:) :) :)

Peter,

In this house too there are no errors during playback of any kind sinds the latest update. (V6b)

 :)  :ok: