XXHighEnd

Some tooltips of the new parameters are missing.

Yeah, I think I knew that. :sorry:

Hey Peter,

Thnx for this new version, at first glance looking really good.
XX remembers my settings and larger gallery looks nice.

But xx wont play. (even with "copy to xx drive by standard" disabled)

Roy

Looks good, but won't play. Hmm ... :swoon: haha

Can you be more specific please ?

see settings above,

And ofcourse using W7.

selected an album from gallery and tracks are shown in playlist
Then press play and nothing happens.

What kind of files do you try to play ?
Maybe attach your XX and X3 log files ?

:sleeping:

seperate FLAC files no cue,

Unicode file is in xx folder.
But simply doesnt start

Even when I converted my files to wav and "copy to xx drive by standard" disabled

Alt X command gives following error (same in 09y): see attachment

Good morning Peter ...

better make that first cup of coffee extra strong today .. hehe

0.9y-1 is proving rather problematic during unattended play. Most times it will stop at the end of a song (which appears for the majority of the time to be after the first track) and then refuses to come back to life. I've even had it refuse to start playing when the GUI disappears. In those instances sometimes the folder art is displayed and othertimes it isn't.

Attended playback, from the limited time I've used that function, appears to work as planned.

The sound quality is still as exciting as ever, and since I haven't been spending much time in recent weeks actually listening to music, just reinforced how good it is :)

Hopefully this glitches are the result of timing issues.

I can swamp you with logs if you need them, but figured you have a plain test machine set up you use to trouble shoot new versions. But you're likely aware of these issues anyway. This post was just to let you know I'm here with some spare time to help nutting out these problems.

Cheers,

Russ

Forgot to set the Autohotkey shortcut property to administrator. This solves that "No right..." error with Alt X.

Roy,

I can't get this. But looking at everything I'd say it will help if you untick "Start Engine3 during conversion".
Please let me know. Here is sure works (just mimiced your situation as good as possible).

One thing : The file you try to play here has a space before the dot like 01 - Pistolero .flac
Officially this can't be. I looked in the program combined with the log files, but don't see where it would matter, unless the OS itself chokes on it. You might try without such a space ?

Peter

Very much appreciated Russ. But maybe those log files are needed indeed. That is ...

I already now (after the issue Roy seems to have) have the feeling something fishy is going on. So, no, I never experience that playback stops after one / the first track, BUT, I encountered something like "no sound at all" myself yesterday, and for the life of me couldn't think of why, and the "solution" was to revert a change I just made before. Russ, if you can copy this behaviour, it would be the most helpful if you could try 0.9y again. If you switch On the OSD Running Time it just works (that must be how Johan got the old version working). Don't show Coverart will let it work too I guess (might be needed for Attended).

Below there's the old version again, this time including those two dll's.


Side info (maybe for all) : I have really been working for a month (that's 7 days a week 10 hours per day or so) to get this all in an acceptable fashion, the last two weeks every day thinking I got it, while it went wrong at the first "official playing of music" in the evenings. I really got crazy of it. I guess you all really don't know how many combinations exist on the preprocessing side. In the end I just had the feeling of wasting my time, but, it seemed I got there.
Now, yesterday, after the report of Johan and the disks still waking up, I realized that I never put the Copy to XX-Drive into the equation, so I sat down and tried to get that in. Allright, this day of work already wasn't enough because I already know it doesn't work properly (as said elsewhere), but the worst of it all is that it will REALLY take a week at least to again test everything. And I don't want to do that. What I do want to do is revert yesterday's changes, so I'm not in the complete blind of what you all might be encountering, while I worked so hard to not be blind. So ...

Russ, if the before version (0.9y) gives you the same problems, then nothing is the matter and the one month just hasn't been enough; I overlooked things and we will find which they are. But, if the before version does not give these problems (and this might count for Roy just the same), I will revert yesterday's changes in a few minutes - realize that I wasted a day (yesterday), but next proceed with breathing.

Generally you can well say that I shouldn't have started the Digital Filter thing (it is really this which has turned everythig upside down), but this may be because it looks like all sounds better without. Hahaha ... bad luck.

Oh well ... :yahoo:

I shall have a play after nocturnal munchies and report back.

One other thing I noticed this afternoon is that if I queue up a single file ( and perhaps a few ), when it comes time to display the "mirrored back" panel, that the list contains entries from an album in a previous folder and otfen in a later folder. It's as if XXHE has looked at the folders before and after the track you are asking to play, and listed those also. This results in the ^^^ and +++ showing in the left panel. Weird. I'll try and take a screen grab to illustrate later.

Cheers,

Russ

Goodmurning,

Its not that space, but it is wrong anyway.

I tried a dozen of albums, no luck yet.

Did what you asked, untick "Start Engine3 during conversion"

No luck either.

Grtz

Roy, can it be so that when you expect things to play, XXEngine3.exe is running indeed with just very low memory ? (check TaskManager);
This is what I saw myself yesterday at the attempt I reverted (and just talked about). If so, I'll have a small clue to start with ...

I have the HTPC running the 0.9y-a version , and just played a 24/96 album of Zoot Sims & Al Cohn, in unattended mode.

I unticked all the CoverArt boxes and have ticks in all the Services and OSD boxes, together with unticked Start Engine3 during conversion.
Needless to say no coverart appeared but it did start.

It has just played the complete album from start to finish, however, a few times throughout, maybe 3 or 4 , there was a brief pause in sound .. something around 1/4 to 1/2 second at a guess.

I shall continue testing.

Russ

After starting XX and selecting the last track of a album in unattended mode, then every new album starts with that first track.Closing and starting XX then all plays OK! Same behaviour in attended mode.

Next album: Ahmad Jamal ~ It's Magic.

Same settings as above, though this time I put a tick in show wallpaper.

When the GUI disappeared the coverart appeared but NO sound forthcoming. I let it sit like that for a minute or so, then ALT-X to get GUI back and the slider progress bar had advanced to halfway thru the track, which suggests Engine3 is doing something at least. I closed the GUI without doing anything else and after what i thought should have been enough time for the first track to complete, brought up the GUI again. The progress slider was now at the start but track one on the playlist was still highlighted in blue.

Time for some logging Peter ??

Russ

Did a clean install of xx
Nop, XXEngine3.exe is not running,
And when pressing play it takes about 10-12 sec to see the unicode file in the xx folder
also coverart appears very slow (in the right black field of xx)

Still seems a bit of hit and miss getting the Ahmad Jamal tracks to start. Stopping and starting XXHE and requesting , say track 3, might be successful. Another attempt might be greeted with silence.

I think there needs to be some structured testing to all of this.

Peter ??? Let us know what you want done specifically ( ie. which boxes to tick and which not ) if that helps.

Russ

Hey Johan, for you too, much appreciated.

I assume you are using the Copy to XX-Drive setting, right ? if so, that was to be expected (not intended of course, but I knew). If not ... then I don't understand, so far.

Russ, I have no clues. One thing though slips my mind :
For 0.9y(a) I yesterday found a bug that indeed won't let start XXEngine3 when a Selection is played (highlight the tracks wanted in the Playlist Area) in the situation that "Start Engine3 during conversion" is unticked. This is solved for 0.9y-1 but maybe not good ?

Anyway, all my own testing has always been with that checkbox ticked, so maybe if you all have it unticked - the problem lays there somewhere. So, to exclude that as a potential problem, please have that box ticked.


It only tells that Engine3 at least started (and not that it played through the track). Btw, this would be contradictionary to what I just said, because then XXEngine won't start at all (which would be more compliant to what Roy experiences).


Allright, a long shot which would explain everything in one go :

I am using Vista SP1, which might be important here. Roy is using W7 (thus, different);
Maybe two weeks ago I found a bug in Vista (could be SP1 only) regarding the priorities of threads (a thread is a process started from another process and it runs in parallel to the process which started it). The bug in brief explained : if the thread's priority is changed, the priority of the calling process went along with it. This is only half of the truth, because the priority of the calling process just went idle. This can not be seen in TaskManager, but the program can capture it. Uhhm worse, the capturing of this already was in the program, because I use it to determine statuses. Now :

Summarized, this calling process is the audio engine itself, and that is the one receiving the idle status. This will not say it won't move anymore, but I use that to "know" other things can be done ect., and "worse" I stop the processing explicitly in the audio engine (think of : "you say you do nothing, allright, then I make you do some other stuff in between").

As said, at finding this I could tweak it, but this tweaking may a. anticipate too much on situations I found myself by accident (think of pressing alt-u coincidentally when a track was about to change), b. appeared not to be of the most importance because it actually goes unnoticed ... until you change the color of the OSD in some stage and *then* you say "this can't be right" (like it turns green and stays like that forever (see Release Notes), BUT c. ... the fact that it goes unnoticed is very much depending on the system, further load *and* the priority settings themselves.

I use idle (or lowest) for PlayerPrio and real time for ThreadPrio, and I see Roy using a kind of opposite (and counterproductive, but that is his choice).

Since this is a bug in the OS, it is very dangerous to work with. The bug may be in all OS versions, it may be worse in W7, or ... (and I expect something like that really) it is the higher intelligence of Bill Gates and a functional mechanism to arrange for thread switching at appropriate times. On this matter, the fact that Roy has High for PlayerPrio, might incur *earlier* for other threads to go idle. And keep in mind : this won't harm much if you can't hear it anyway (no dropouts, whatever), but I use the state ... (your'e idle, go somewhere else) and *that* means death.

As I said, it is a long shot, but would be an explanation for things I just can't explain otherwise at this time. For 0.9y-1 yes, anything can happen because it really requires more testing with the changes I put through yesterday, although the things not working for Roy just should because I tested at least that, but the 0.9ya things ... they are beyond me.


Anyway, in this stage it sure can't harm to provide log files where possible. Btw, if it is indeed about my long shot, the log files will not help particularly much. It is in the coding though (especially for this), but inactive (because it is in the middle of the audio engine). So if necessary I can make a version which has that active (not to use for listening).

Lastly, for those who want to help, explicitly or implicitly, please do NOT use 0.9y-1 because that version is expected to s*ck anyway, and it can't/won't stay. Only with 0.9ya (attached a few posts back) I can judge well. Please read the instructions in that post on how to operate it, and additionally switch "Start Engine3 during conversion" On.
(http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=872.msg6764#msg6764)

Just installed 0.9ya,

same problem (won't start)
But maybe I keep out of the way for now,
because using W7.

I shall continue my quest in the morning. Have been up since 5am this morning and my eyes are hanging out of my head.

 :sleeping: :sleeping: :sleeping:

Russ

The stupid thing is ... I don't even know what to do on my side ...

And Roy, thank you too. Btw, I never said you should stop because you're on W7, because that should work just the same. BUT WHY DOES IT NOT ??
It may sound (oops) strange, but the most decent part should be the "filtering", or IOW, tick Quattro, Upsample and AA (not Double !! there's no code behind that yet). With 0.9ya that is. Not 0.9y-1.


For others ... I don't hear much from you, but is there anyone *without* problems ? ... this is as important to know !

Thank you all,
Peter

Did as you asked,

But again nothing,

But there are now 3 files in xx folder nl. UnicodeTrack0001.wav, UnicodeTrack0001a.wav and HelperFile0001.wav.
Is this normal (never used this combo)?

Still enjoying previous version:

I was listening music for a while and thought something was wrong with it.
And checked.
And yes, processor core scheme was on "no appointment"
(on 0.9x-7 version, that is)

Is there anyone else, that can check on W7, Please! or Vista, to help Peter to help us!

Still have to do a new install of W7, because it was installed on corrupted RAM.
Hardware and BIOS settings are now 100%.(Yes I found the culpit)
Did hard labour and stressing for a week.

Don't have any problems, but just to be sure

Hey Roy. Thanks.

Ok, Below there's a 0.9y-1a, containing XXHighend.exe only. Please install this over either 0.9y-1 or 0.9ya. This is the latest version again, but some 50 log lines have been added around the area where it stops for you. If possible use the same settings as the last time, although it is not crucial. Grab the log file in the same situation/status as the previous one. Do you want to do this ?

I'm sure something will come from it ...
But what.

Again Nothing,

But no logs either

No, nothing will change for results. Just new log lines ... after you switched that on (it's default off :))

Yes,

Got it.

2 logs same settings same cd - different xxhighend.exe

So forget previous logs in this matter.

Can you attach the XXDat0000.dao, XXDat0000.dat, XXDat0001.dao, XXDat0001.dat files ?
They don't need to exist all, so please post what you find (in your current XX folder, and note they are hidden). Please watch the date/time of them. They must be actual. If they are not there anymore, start XX, press play - wait until you think it is ready, now also post the log file again, and those dat files.

Please, of course. :)

and,

Ok. Another 30 log lines (none of the before showed up :swoon:). But this time we will see what happens. And I already have an idea ...

Just paste this over the latest .exe. Don't forget to set the loggin on.

still no playback

Now a question. Did you press Stop or anything ? If so, once again please, but don't touch anything.
If not, I can proceed with this.

If I don't stop I can not send you a .dat file only log files.
In use by xx

Aha, but I need the log file. The dat is not important anymore. Sorry for the misunderstanding. So, without Stop please.

ok

Hahaha, stupid prick. Why didn't you ever select an Input Device, huh ?
And don't tell me "because it is disabled". You know your ways ...

:fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool: :fool:

So ... this is about the analysis part, and I forgot to deactivate this particualr bit. No Input Device selected (for recording), and you're out. And you probably don't have one that can record, so there's no default either.

Right, that was one problem.

Anyway, very sorry !

Now, I'll try to make yesterday's changes more decent/stable. :heat:

Oke found it,
We have sound. :veryhappy:

But have to play with dac settings

And yes it was switched off, sorry for that

THNX Peter,

Up and running but it aint perfect, but we know that.
Track 1 stops after 1 min

try to play some music and report any glitches

Thnx for now

I just put up an 0.9y-1c. Nothing else solved but that supid mistake on the Input Device, and the additional logging is still in there.
In the mean time I'll try to make something better out of it all.

Roy, thank you for your time.
Peter

Peter,
just some words as encouragement.
This version seems to be quite stable in my setup. I am in the proces of comparing SQ with 0.9x-7. My first impressions of 0.9y-1c SQ are good. I will come back to the subject later.
Cheers, Eric.

Thank you Eric. I will sleep on that (for now :)).

My impressions also :)

I'm currently compiling some notes on a series of listening sessions with accompanying log files. Hopefully will have them ready for you Peter while you imbibe your morning caffeine intake.

Cheers,

Russ

Morning,

Running very good, latest version.

1 thing doh,  every album the last track stops at 1 or 2 min before ending. (But could also be last 10 sec)

Roy

Hi,
when I trie to change volume, the following message is produced:
Change to/from -0dB is not allowed when Engine#3 is running.
Please help.
Eric

Lengthy "twitter" ahead ... of value only to Peter I expect.

Thought I would take notes during the day while running 0.9y-1c.

Just to reiterate my pertinent hardware:
ASUS P5Q3 m/board
E8500 CPU (3.16 GHZ OOB ) overclocked to 3.82 GHz on standard voltages.
2 x 2GB sticks Corsair 1333MHz CAS 9 Ram
ESI Juli@ using SPDIF to external processor ( Integra DHC 9.9 ). Driver version 1.05 (32bit)
Gigabyte HD4850 ( 512MB ) video card
VISTA Ultimate - no service packs installed
Primary drive is Seagate 1.5TB, partitioned as follows:
   1 x 30GB Primary ( Primarily for Video playback )
   1 x 30GB Primary ( Spare for future use and testing )
   1 x 30GB Primary ( Music playback - XXHE installed on this and is very spartan )
   1 x 30GB First Logical ( XX Galleries exclusively )
   1 x 1277GB Second logical ( Adhoc Data storage )
Music storage drives consist of 3 x 1.5TG Seagates
Using AHCI for SATA operation

=================================================================================================

Session 1: Ahmad Jamal ~ It's Magic

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
NO covert boxes ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

As expected, no covertart showed after GUI disappeared. Album played from start to finish and then brought the GUI back again as expected. I noticed a few ( maybe 3 ) brief pauses during play and were well spaced apart.

Closed XXHE down and moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 2: Acoustic Alchemy ~ The Beautiful Game

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

After I pressed PLAY, track 2 in the list onwards were progressively highlighted in blue and just before the end track was highlighted the GUI disappeared and I was presented with the Coverart and album back as it was available.

No sound was forthcoming, and no progress timer. The OSD was not showing either, apart from a slither of the lower text showing just above where the task bar would appear.

I ALT-X'd to bring back the GUI to see what was happening. The progress slider was well advanced into the track. I closed the GUI down again. I noticed the box area where the track timer normally appears ( the red text ) was just a white box. The OSD text was missing completely (ie. the slither of text at the bottom had been cleared). I waited till what I thought should been the end of the track and ALT-X'd again.

The playlist was showing the first track highlighted in blue and the progress bar was at the extreme left.

Clicked on the close button and was jumped back to the coverart.

Alt-X'd again and this time clicked on the stop button.

Closed XXHE down and moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 3: Acoustic Alchemy ~ The Beautiful Game

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all unticked this time <--------------------------
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

After I pressed PLAY, track 2 in the list onwards were progressively highlighted in blue and just before the end track was highlighted the GUI disappeared and I was presented with the Coverart and album back as it was available.

Taskbar showing as expected and no icons showing

Album started playback :)

Played from start to finish with no apparent pauses ( although the nature of this album makes it a little harder to notice that ). At completion of album the GUI popped up, showing track 1 highlighted in blue as expected.

Before closing XXHE down and starting another session I thought I might now go and tick the STOP SERVICES button and see what happens. The XXDat00**.dao and UnicodeTrack00**.wav files are still present in main XXHE folder at this stage.

Clicked PLAY. The playlist tracks were highlighted much quicker this time as expected, and then the GUI disappeared and I was presented with coverart, and then ...

Album started playback from beginning. No runtime timer as expected and taskbar has disappeared. Played first track fine and went to second smoothly. Will let it continue to completion.

Played to completion and brought GUI back up as expected.

Ticked "Running Time OSD" , then clicked PLAY. <-------------------------------------

GUI disappeared, coverart appeared, runtime appeared, and sound happened ! Will let it run till second track then stop. ( There are just so many times I can listen to the same album over and over again .. haha ). Track 2 kicked off OK ... did ALT-X to bring back GUI.

Clicked STOP. Ticked "OSD Text", highlighted track on in playlist, pressed PLAY <-------------------

GUI disappeared, coverart appeared, runtime appeared, OSD test appeared and sound happened. Will let it run till second track then stop. Track 2 kicked off OK ... did ALT-X to bring back GUI.

Clicked STOP, clicked CLEAR, shut down XXHE and moved logfiles to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 4: Al Stewart ~ Year Of The Cat

Unattended
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB

The above is the same as start of session 2.

Clicked PLAY, coverart, OSD text, then running time appeared ( in that order I think .. it wasn't instantaneous for all three components). Sound happened, however I think I detected a very slight pause ( or perhaps a very brief silence ) right at the start of playback. Can't be 100% sure though. First track played fine, went to second track OK. ALT-X'd to bring GUI back up. Clicked STOP. OSD text disappeared as expected. Cleared playlist, shutdown XXHE, and moved logs to separate folder.

Rebooted

=================================================================================================

Session 5: Al Stewart ~ Year Of The Cat

Unattended
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB

Same scenario as above ( session 4 ), and I did this time detect a slight  ( missing ) gap at the start of playback. Track 2 started ok, so ALT-X'd to bring GUI back. Clicked STOP. Clicked CLEAR. Moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 6: Acoustic Alchemy ~ The Beautiful Game

Thought I would try this scenario again as it failed earlier on in similar(ish) circumstances. Perhaps it is the album length ?

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

It all worked fine this time .. aaarrgh ! ( I'm also beginning to hate that first track .. hehe ). Will play till second track and see what happens.

Second track kicked off OK , so ALT-X'd to bring GUI back. clicked STOP , then cleared tracks, then shut down XXHE and moved logs to separate folder.

Might try some hi-res albums shortly ... time for lunch first though :)

=================================================================================================

Session 7 ~ Donald Fagen ~ Morph The Cat @ 24bit/96KHz

Unattended
Stop Services, Running Time OSD , OSD Text all ticked
Start Engine3 during conversion , split file at size 100MB
Show as wallpaper , Show Back , Show mirror Back all ticked
Scheme-1 , Nothing , Nothing

All working fine :)

Played through till end without any aparent errors.

Cleared playlist and queued up:

David Sanborn ~ Time Again @ 24bit/96Khz

Started playing fine :)

Played through till end without any aparent errors.

Cleared playlist and queued up:

Grover Washington Jr ~ Winelight @ 24bit/192KHz

Clicked PLAY, it switched to showing coverart of previous album and was immediately replaced by coverart from 'Winelight', the OSD text was showing, BUT NO runtime OSD and NO sound. Let it sit for a minute or so and ALT-X'd to get back to GUI where it showed the progress slider well advanced along. Clicked STOP, shutdown XXHE without clearing playlist and moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================

Session 8:

Started XXHE again, and simply clicked on PLAY. Same scenario as above .. NO sound.

ALT-X'd to get to GUI, progress slider had advanced along, clicked STOP. Closed XXHE, moved logs to separate folder.

=================================================================================================


Time to call it quits for a while. Will continue later today and over the weekend keeping logging running in the background. Hopefully these will be of some assistance in figuring out what's going on.

For my next listening sessions I might try a different PROC scheme. I've been using scheme-1 for months and months now without any issues. Perhaps these new versions warrant a change to scheme-3 to share the load. Is anyone else running scheme-1 WITHOUT any problems with version Y ??

All log files are in separate "sessions' folder in the attached zip file.

Cheers and beers,

Russ

Inspiration

This is something known (to some) and I never could find it 6a skips the last piece of the last song in the playlist (http://(http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=808.0)). And since so many things have been rewritten in this area, I kind of hoped it was away. So it is not. But :

Somehow suddenly a theoretical bug on this sprung to my mind. And, just checked it, and it is true. I never could mimic this myself so I can't check whether the solution helps, but I'm sure LydMekk can make some arrangements with Diana Krall and check. So, should be solved in the next version (0.9-y1a or 0.9y-2).

Hi Eric,
That's normal for XXHE.  For some reason when you've been using the volume you can't go to 0db or you get bad distortion; Peter had to put the warning there and keep it from going to 0db.  I have a xover that has four vol controls, it used to act like a preamp (had to adjust all 4 volume controls ack) so I love having the one vol on XXHE.  I've adjusted my xover so that XXHE vol is normally riding at ~-13.5 ... so far I've never found a recording that had to go all the way to 0db.  If you have a recording/system that needs to ride at 0 db some times, I guess you'd need to stop the song, set vol to 0db, and then hit play.  Hope you can make yours work.

Hi Eric. This is intentional and was needed especially for Russ here, who first spoiled his coffee at waking up and pressing wrong buttons, but next started to spoil cognaq at night time at falling asleep on his remote. That did it.

... or something like that. :derisive:

More serious, I can't recall quickly why this was solved like this (Russ will know), but I must say that in the mean time it disturbs me myself. So, I will look it up and see whether there's a better solution for whatever it was.

Peter

Oh, that's quick (thanks Dave). So, after a bit of cross posting I already know again. So yes, that was the reason. However, this is exactly what (coincidentally) has changed now, since de audio engine plays all from the same source. Thus, earlier there was a difference betwen "not attenuated" and "attenuated", but this difference has vanished. And so, we can just can rid of this quirk now. Will be in the next version.

Russ is good at testing it. :whistle:

Peter,
Thanks for the morningjoke!
Normally I use my ML32 preamp, so no hurry for me.

Another behaviour in 0.9y-1c strikes me as odd.

After playing a playlist through 0.9x-7, I press Stop, Clear, Off. When I bring up XXHE again, no artwork from the previous session is shown anymore. IMHO this is good behaviour.

When I perform the same sequence in 0.9y-1c, it still shows artwork from the previous session. The way to get a clean screen is to use Delete before Off.
I do not like this change, is it my installation problem (now -for testing purposes- having both 0.9x-7 and 0.9y-1c on my desktop, what about AHK???), or is this change intentional?
Cheers,
Eric.

I remember that .. haha

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=787.0

I had to go search for it .. the 'ol memory had forgotten about it.

Russ

Wow Russ, what a work you put into this.

Session 1


This is something I know from my own Juli@, and as expected per the Release Notes (at least I recall saying something about this). Btw, I don't blame the Juli@, but I learned it is prone to this. Similar is the heavy conversion, when it ticks abd crackles away. Very good for vinyl simulation, but not much intentional. Anyway ...
Yeah I know, and I must see how to tweak things for the better. Keep in mind that the priority settings play a large role here (you have nothing nothing now). Also, it is exactly this where the OS priority bug (see earlier post in this topic) comes into play. I will try something for the next version (or maybe the one after that).
Notice I have it no different. Maybe 2 oir three times during an album silence of a small second, and it happens during the loading of the next track. But, not with my Firewire connection ... (:secret:)

Session 2



This must -somehow- be the situation I encountered myself at tweaking the code for "Xopy to XX-Drive", and which I reverted. But, this was one part of it only, and I guess there is more that can behave the same.
I will try to play with just your settings and file type, and I guess I can let it happen just the same. The log files show nothing.
In case I can't copy this, how much memory does XXEngine3.exe show in this situation ? It should be a few hundred MB and not a few only (which I saw in my case).

Session 3


So something here must make the difference and the only thing which can really influence the sound producing code, is the Stop Services (not used here). Hmm ... I think I'm getting a hunch here.
With the OSD Time you may have noticed that sometimes the background of it is grabbed from the original desktop wallpaper (at a clean screen) which is something which is difficult to get under my control (this is about timing and the OSD needing to wait until everything has vanished from the screen, that being arranged for the ChangeWP process which really is a stand alone thing. So, this all works with interrupts and possibly things are waiting for eachother because of a situation not thought of (like the OSD background really should be black and which persistently keeps on *not* happening at certain file types).
Sorry for the blahblah, it is merely for myself.

Session 4 / Session 5


This too is the Juli@ story (above), but of course before this was okay. In this case it will be the Wallpaper showing which creates a too heavy load on the system BUT combined with the priority bug (note that the before story about this is about track load, which is not in order here). So, what somehow happens is that ChangeWP (and its controlling thread) receive a low priority, but the playback threads "inherits" that. So, this doesn't help much. As how it was before, ChangeWP was called from the thread loading the tracks, when things worked out differently. BUT ... as I just realize ... there is a difference between the old and new situation and this is about the necessary tweaking of the Processor Schemes in such a situation. And that does not happen here. Aha ...

Session 6

[...]

Well, I guess this by now shows what an inmense amount of time it takes to
- coincidentally run into a problem;
- analyse whatever could be the difference, *if* you started recording everything in the first place. Oterwise you're out of luck anyway;
- find the cause;
- solve the problem (like the Copy to XX-Drive didn't work);
- Re-do the whole lot (with the main question "what ?").

Russ, your efforts on this are priceless. I mean it.
I took the two XX log files concerned (the X3 from Session 2 just shows all is okay, but which is up to the track load only -> no more logging is in the code), and found them both the same for relevant data, except for these two parts (which is about the prepapation of the first track) (again, merely for myself registered here) :

Session 2
09:41:00.6260402 : TimeStart : 0
09:41:00.6260402 : Bytes per second : 176400
09:41:00.6260402 : TimeLength : 70775208
09:41:00.6260402 : A
09:41:00.6260402 : B
09:41:00.6260402 : C
09:41:00.6260402 : G
09:41:00.6260402 : M
09:41:00.6260402 : N
09:41:00.6260402 : O
09:41:00.6260402 : P
09:41:00.6260402 : Q
09:41:00.6260402 : V
09:41:00.6260402 : W
09:41:00.6260402 : X
09:41:00.6260402 : Wait for Converson threads to report back
09:41:00.6572402 : Conversion start for processor 1
09:41:00.6572402 : FLAC decoding start for processor 1 Output Name +++++++ "UnicodeTrack0001.wav"
09:41:00.6884402 : X
09:41:00.6884402 : Wait for Converson threads to report back

Session 6
13:08:38.2400347 : TimeStart : 0
13:08:38.2400347 : Bytes per second : 176400
13:08:38.2400347 : TimeLength : 70775208
13:08:38.2400347 : A
13:08:38.2400347 : B
13:08:38.2400347 : C
13:08:38.2400347 : G
13:08:38.2400347 : M
13:08:38.2400347 : Conversion start for processor 1
13:08:38.2400347 : N
13:08:38.2400347 : FLAC decoding start for processor 1 Output Name +++++++ "UnicodeTrack0001.wav"
13:08:38.2400347 : O
13:08:38.2400347 : P
13:08:38.2400347 : Q
13:08:38.2400347 : V
13:08:38.2400347 : W
13:08:38.2400347 : X
13:08:38.2400347 : Wait for Converson threads to report back

Now, the A, B, C (u/i Y) log lines reside in one thread, and everything else is in another.
I didn't look at the real consequences in the program (there shouldn't be), but at least this is the difference. Compared to Session7 / Session 8 (where A-Y show normal), this is'nt doing it.

Session 7


Unless it is an OS quirk, this might be of relevance ...

Session 8


Athough this doesn't seem to present additional information, in the end it does because it might be a compareable situation with Session 2 (which is about another album). Besides that, I have that Grover Washington myself.


CONCLUSION

Russ is crazy.

Eric - Thanks. It is very good that you mention this, because I observed similar (hehe) - wasn't sure it always was so, but it disturbs me more and more.
This is (even) merely about not being able to get rid of some tracks if you don't start playback (you can try it). So, since I am now sure this has changed (for no aparent reason), I will try to get it back to normal again.

Peter

haha .. I've be called that on numerous occassions. I love a good mystery and the hunt to get at the truth.

I try and put myself into your shoes and try and figure out what you need to "see" as you read the logfiles. Trouble shooting from afar must be one of the hardest PC tasks imagineable and one becomes reliant on the party at the other end who has the problem to be your "eyes". It isn't easy and what appears "bleedin' obvious" to you or I sitting in front of our own screen, can lead to feeling of frustration and helplessness when we can't see firsthand what is going on remotely.

I shall endeavour to keep a check on engine3's memory allocation also in future sessions.

While I'm thinking about it, yesterday while trialling a new version ( and I can't be certain which of the 'y' ones it was ), my screen had been powered down due to timeout in my powersaving settings (normally 5 minutes), and when I moved the mouse to wake the screen up, the album I was listening to stopped dead in it's tracks. I have never had that happen before. Needless to say I disabled the screen powerdown mode thereafter. I have had the screensaver disabled all along and had relied on the powerdown function to turn off the monitor. Perhaps a coincidence or yet another example of services interferring with playback.

It's beer o'clock here .... time for a movie for a change :)

Cheers,

Russ

I sincerely think that the issue with the screen saver just is a coincidence and will never happen again.

Never say never, and skip James Bond. These days he refuses to tell who he is, and stopped the Martini's as well. Although, I heard someone say that he had one indeed in the last episode, which is hard to tell for me because I usually fall asleep during movies not containing one Aston Martin at least.

Blahblahblah Me.

My complete Dream Theater collection wont play from within the normal folder.

Outside the folder just playing normal !?
Come back on this

Now PLAYING VERY LOUD Awake - 11 - Space-Dye Vest 


Grtz

When playing an album Attented,

all tracks remain in the xx folder (doesn't gets deleted after a track)
So, now i have like 9 unicode tracks in the xx folder, is this normal behavior?

Thinking about it, maybe its better this way, saves time deleting between every song,
and "Prev" would become easier. (Faster I mean)

Right??

But I guess this is about that cover subject.

Peter,

Why not clear the playlist after finishing an album. (just clearing finished albums)

Can you tell me the purpose of having those songs staying in the playlist when finished an album. (its not like I'm playing it twice or something like that))

Am I overlooking something here?

Is there a possible way to maybe build-in an "Auto-Clear" function checkbox □.
(as in upon deleting unicode files also delete the ones in playlist)

Also with maybe future plans of remote control (selecting a direct song) (otherwise with more than 1 played album in playlist for eq. location of track 8 is never certain)
If playlist clears the album after playback, (with for eq. the button next album) location of for eq track 8 is certain

I dunno, just a thought!

Roy

Roy - Although it only looks complicated this way, it has its reasons. So, you shouldn't be bothered about this (what about not looking at it).

About the tracks being kept in the playlist ... I wouldn't them to get removed as soon as they have played. Maybe I want to see afterwards what I even played (which is not always known, depending on the means of playback). So, this for sure will stay too.

Again, that this may make things more complicated for sure is true, but it all has good reasons.
Thanks though !
Peter

This is for Russ and everybody else who wants to know of course :

Despite what some may think, this really isn' working. At least with separate FLACs (Unattendedly) there is no way to pause and continue, or change the volume and the like, or tracks end too soon, start too late and everything else which is not intended.

So, especially for Russ, please don't bother at this moment to invest all this effort in finding out what is going on. It needs the reverting of the changes I applied day before yesterday - possibly implement that in a better way (the Copy to XX-Drive thing) or whatever, but this is not it.
Sorry.

Peter


PS: I hope to upload something better in something like 12-13 hours from now.

Short playtime and two bugs (tested on W7 RTM x64):

1) start button disappears
2) background does not returns to normal when i close xxhe (this was solved for me in a previous build)

luv the long tree :)

Thanks for the feedback Telstar.
On 2), is that when XXEngine3.exe is not running ? ... that works ok here (in that case). And if so (XXEngine3 not running), how do you close XXHighEnd ?

about that back ground pic.
I have a HD background pic and xx gives that pic back after playback
but the wrong settings.

there is extra layer in W7 (extra settings)
zie pic.

Think Telstar means this, I guess

:yahoo: Found this one; Only minutes before the first 0.9y upload I changed something of which I couldn't see the danger. :fool::fool:
However, that caused a start of playback not at the beginning (being the same as e.g. changing the volume underway) to repeat as a start offset into every track.

Roy, although I found/solved a problem I was seeking for a long time (under "Inspiration" in the earlier post), this has really been the problem you had, I'm sure.

So, for the current 0.9y-1c, as long as you don't do the things I just mentioned, you will be okay I think. This does not count for the problem of no sound at all sometimes (as per Russ's extensive outlay). Or at least I don't see the relation to that.

The Copy to XX-Drive changes have been reverted by now. More tomorrow.

Hey Roy. Thanks for that ! However, I can't get what that extra setting is. Can you help me ?
currently I use (may it say something to you) WallpaperStyle and TileWallPaper (and of course Wallpaper itself). These three are subkeys in "CurrentUser","Control Panel","DeskTop" in the Registry. I guess you talk about another (new) one. But which is it ?

look for yourself

Additionally (I'm off here now), when you find it ... whatever it is ... what values can it have, what do they mean, and what should it be reset to ?

Or anything else you (I) may need to add ... (this is going to be dangerous haha, so don't overdo things if you don't trust it).

Oh, I see you are just ahead of me. TileWallpaper ... but I use that already. Hmm ...

Maybe you can make a screenshot of how things must be (when all is OK according to you) and one of how XX leaves it when it's wrong ?

:sleeping:

Sorry dont know for sure,

I only saw the problem.
look into that tomorrow

Grtzzzzzzz

Don't feel obliged to do this.

Morning,

About that "resize to 500 x 500" :good:

Make your life easier and resize!

Its takes time to do all, but your being rewarded by a superfast gallery (scrolling like crazy :grazy:)
This is just great, not even have my gallery on SSD, yet.

Thanks for that Peter

I think this is solved too!!!!!
 :)

Hi Peter. I really like the speed of 9y-1c. Everything here seems to run much faster and smoother. I also really like the way you can see tracks being processed in unattended, though both the first and last track don't get highlighted. The release notes only refer to the first track not being highlighted. Regarding other glitches the hotkey command for explorer, ALT R, doesn't work. Also when I pause in unattended, ALT E, and then resume play, ALT P, the track starts from the beginning. I think this was true of   9x-7 too.

Regarding sound quality, I'm going to post in the other thread, but all seems very well!

Nothing going on with that wallpaper,
Telstar just save your personalize settings.

Think that solves it, In my case it did.


GRtz Roy

Thank you.

Last track not highlighted ... not sure, but I think that is because at that time the GUI is just closing. So, it closes earlier than you can see the last track getting highlighted. Think like this : last track is finshed prepapring thus ... a. higlight it, b. quit asap. The asap has prevalence ... (I guess). I could wait for the track being highlighted, but that is stupid I think.
I will try to get the first track solved.

Alt-R just works here, and this may be about the Alt keys (for Attended !!) not working always ? That is what I see myself anyway. I don't know what it is, but it is outside me. Note that Alt-R is unrelated to AutoHotkey (and it is for Attended only).

The Pause etc. I am currently working on as a last thing before a new upgrade (and your Track 1 maybe). I am not sure I will solve it before that, because it is a tedious bugger - and has always bugged me. Btw, it should work extra "bad" in the 0.9y version(s). Before it worked better.

Thank you very much for your feedback !

Yep, like the speed too.
Its sure faster, overall performance is really great.

Aha. Roy, you may open a new topic especially for this. Describe what to do and such. I guess once W7 gets more common more people will be bothered by this.
If you don't want ... allright of course.

On my new little screen (18,5"), I'll have 1360x768 (took a model with low resolution native on purpose).
If we make it 600px, it would be perfect :)

I agree with Roy that some biiig pictures in the gallery make it slow. I have really huge scans saved as folder.jpg.

From the X button in the top corner of the window (remember that i always play attended).

Telstar - Just tried everything here (Attended) but can't let it go wrong.
Is there any situation that this goes right with you ?

Or otherwise you may show all your settings ? (I'm almost up to the upgrade so I'd rather take the solution along with it).

Sorry,

Is this still about that wallpaper,


That is W7 sh#t, not XX.

Telstar, Rightclick desktop, Personalize, Desktop background, choose Picture position.
Then save changes.

Fixed!

Had this many times before (when started playing Unattended and forgot to activate AHK)(And I sure I am not the only one!!)
Your left with two choices, reboot or wait for xx to finish.
after reboot wallpaper settings are also changed.

Peter,
Re 0.9y-1c.
Occasionally when I load a track and press Play, I get the error message  "XXEngine3.exe werkt niet meer" and the show stops. In trying to find out when this happens, it occurs to me that when it happens, I play from the C-disk. So far, it didn't happen when I play from another disk. However, not all tracks from the C-disk give this problem.
I never saw this happening in 0.9x-7.
I hope this helps you with debugging.
Cheers,
Eric.

Eric - This is about the poor implementation of that CopyToXXDrive thing in the first place. That is, I suppose you are using that parameter when playing from the C disk, as you say.

If all is right this is solved in the upcoming version (0.9y-1d), although I didn't particularly see what you described. But it was wrong anyway.

Thanks,
Peter

Edit :
PS: But I actually wonder (at reading your post again) whether you are talking about that parameter. Are you ?

XX plays tracks out of the blue,

When playing an album it suddenly likes to play another song.

Not a track on the current album, but a song on a completly different album

Best is to wait for new version and see what happens.

Special randomizer. :)

I always use fill, never tile (which in vista was crop or something) and i'm using the landscape theme atm.

Anyway, I'll try more on the dedicated pc, i dont use wallpaper here.

Its either the "Fit" or "Fill" setting.


Use Fit

Looks like the previous problem of xx  not being able to switch from a 14/44 to a 24/96 song, or vice versa, in the same playlist is back. Additionally, the info tab which gives the bitrate isn't functional. No hurry here, love the improvements.

Hmm ... you are right. Just before upgrading. :)
Always you eh ?

haha
Thanks !

Hoped I could slip that in before upgrading! Thanks.

Both issues are solved (info tab and format change). Upgrade coming up now.
:heat:

Dear all,

I want to thank you for spending all this time on getting done in 48 hours which I myself could not achieve in even ten times more;
As the earlier 0.9y Release Notes already stated, "not stable". Not because I knew the issues, but because I sure knew not enough time was spent by me on testing just everything. I know this is not the official way, but it seems the only way workable. At least at these major changes it is (which never have been so major and numerous before, and of which I sure hope it will never happen again).

Of course, at this time, it still is so that too few people tried the 0.9y version (from here on, 0.9y-1d or newer please), so it is my guess there is more to expect. Anyway, 0.9y-1d should be much better, and at least I have a much better feeling about it now.

Russ, although I have been spending quite some hours on your problem this morning, I could not find anything that really causes your "no sound at some times". However, I have changed rather essential code in an area of which I may expect it matters.
If you still encounter this problem, please open a dedicated topic for it so it can be treated in there without the confusion of more general things which normally are solveable at a glance, so to say.

All the best to everyone, and again, thanks.
Peter

I did some testing with those folder.jpg files

Just resize everything above 900x900

IMO resize 700x700 would still be a good picture and also fast

Because most covers are already smaller than 600x600

So if we could resize those eq. 2800x2800 to 700x700 would be great. (and delete the original)
 

I'm not convinced it's size 1024X1024 or whatever... it's the size of the file ... I ran into some .jpg that were like 8MB or something (how does a pic get into the 8 - 12MB size? something embedded?)... after I resized them myself to 1024X* they were in the kb range and sped up... also, folder depth ... like having one folder for an artist and putting all their albums in folders underneath that ... bleh slowed things down... that's with x7 ...dunno about this latest Y version.

Explain "bleh slowed things down"

What do you mean by this?

What is getting slower

probably just x7 and before... library would slow down/load pictures slow as you scroll down when I hit folders that were buried.
I'm not bragging here, but I do seem to have less problems with xxhe, (?dedicated machine/services off, file structure, wav/cue files, 'careful' setup of each version of xxhe...?) I haven't had a single disc not play all the way through today... or is that just because I waited to load Y version until today,,, after you all did all the 'beta' testing hehe ... btw THANKS everyone!!!

hmm why do I have this craving for some blue oyster cult...

Scan at high dpi without compression. But to be 8MB it has to be 2000x2000 or above.

You guys really need to use photoshop to do this job. I download lots of covers from allcdcover and half of their scans needs to be cropped, smoothed and colors adjusted. Then I usually leave the normal resolution. I think I should instead make a smaller version 600x600 or 700x700. My own scans are set at 72dpi (screen resolution) and around 1000px IIRC.

Now that I have most of the DB already built it would be quite a pain to go trough all that and resize all. But indeed having lots of big covers makes the library quite slow.
Edit: didnt try the latest versions yet.

and


Well, I hope for you this is a typo, and it should read 92. If you have a display with 72dpi it may be worth some money (for the museum).

:oops:


Anyway, I keep them to the normal physical size, and for 92dpi that would be 500x500.
Further, notice that the number of albums hence pictures you hve in there, really doesn't matter for Gallery speed. It is the size of the pictures what does, and besides that, though slightly relevant only, the means the pictures are stored. Think of a Folder.jpg to be found immediately for the coverart (although I think Cover.jpg is earlier to find), if not some intelligence has to be applied (although most of it is out in the 0.9y versions and it now is far more easy to see a back cover because of not complying to the naming conventions -> earlier this was all sorted out better), and whether you have a separate "SCANS" etc. folder where all is to be found, when no Folder.jpg is in the main music folder.
Multi volume albums require some additional attention especially when you have a separate folder for coverart again. Oh, note that only in the upcoming version this now works ok (at last, it never did).

Lastly, notice that there is no single reason to make the front cover large. The maximum size of the screen really is large enough, and if it is smaller (like 500 x 500) you really wouldn't see the difference because the rendering applied. And it is those who slow down the Gallery, not all the other sh*t. Make that 6000x6000 if you want, it really doesn't harm, as long as XX doesn't think it is the front cover. Also, for the other stuff it indeed is (or could be) important to be large, because that often is about text to read, which otherwise (like at 500x500) can not be read at all.

HTH
Peter

Peter,
just to inform you that up to now, the poblem quoted above hasn't shown up in 0.9y-2. Moreover, the test that I created in my environment to generate it, now runs okay.
 
Thanks, Eric.

Ah Eric, that is very good to hear, and much appreciated that you gave feedback on this.
The problem was more general, and as you saw in the Release Notes on 0.9y-2 several of these things have been found and solved (although I described it merely as "no sound").

Anyway, good to hear that one has gone too !
Peter