I don't think ur crazy 

I noticed that WAV sounded better than FLAC on my cowon portable player - more relaxed and natural, actually just a more pleasant listening experience so I decided to save all my CD's as wave.

Perhaps this does not apply on XXHE especially if we have separate drives for OS & data but I am happy with my decision to go with WAV I can still get my entire ( modest ) music collection on one small portable HD or a few big SD cards.

If you are running AVG HD_speed does not work and AVG reports a virus. I'm moving away from AVG for various reasons.

Logic suggests to me that for my files, that are nearly all .WAV, 44100,16bit, 2 chnl, I will need 1411200 plus some control data - let's say 2Mb/s.

I will test for all the above drives to see if my theoretical calculation matches reality.

I can understand that the OS drive should be as fast as it can possibly be so that mechanics of computing does not slow down flow of data but do the data drives really have to be as fast as possible ?

I will post my findings here

Perhaps I will invest in a solid state 100gig HD for OS only - and use remaining drives for data

I tested my all hard drive read speeds with a little program called HD_Speed.

int HD 1 with OS             60Mb/s but with serious glitches fairly often
int HD 2 music only         60Mb/s steady performance
ext HD 3 backup             32Mb/s steady performance
SDHC in USB card reader  12Mb/s steady performance
old USB pen drive           0.6 Mb/s steady performance

So I feel quite hopeful about my seagate ext HD at 32mB/s but this is a non expert guess

Do we know what an acceptable speed would be ? Of course i will try it with actual music but I am curious to see if the is a standard we should aim for

thx

mike

Hi Peter,

No, I have 2 internal HDs and ( at present one ) external seagate "free agent go" 500gb HD

int HD 1 with OS and some other data
int HD 2 with only music
ext HD 3 general back up including music

But as all my music is stored as WAV I may well exceed my internal capacity soon so I am thinking should I switch to making my ext HD my working music storage location.

So I wonder are there any drawbacks to playing music from ext HD compared with my current arrangement.

mike

My PC has two internal Hard drives so I have the option of storing music internally or externally.

Do we know of any pros or cons for each of these options ?

thx

mike

Thx for ur reply - I did that and it sounds extremely good - very clean & refined

Can you direct me to somewhere in the forum which is something like introduction and explanation of hotkeys.

Does Hotkeys improve the sound ? or is it control thing ?

p.s. it's not really ur english, ur english is good - it's just that for a newish person here there does not seem to be any basic explanation some things - hotkeys is a good example - I tried searching in many different ways and could not find anything that just explains what the basic concept of hotkeys is - I have known the word for over a year now but really have no idea what it is and why I should implement it and how I can implement it etc.

thanks

mike

Actually, to clarify having thought it through it's actually navigating this forum that is the biggest problem - I'm pretty sure that all the info is here somewhere but I find it almost impossible to find the information that I need.

Hi,

I don't come hear often but I would like to download the latest version for windows 7.

The latest version only contains two files and does not work . . . .

Where do I find the other files that are needed to give a complete set of files so latest version works.

I tried reading the instuctions but this did not seem to be covered - or did I miss something  . . .

my user account control is off already

I have heard of hotkeys but I have no idea what it is for and why I should get into it and believe me I have tried looking around to find out but I could not find a jargon free and simple explaination.

You may not realise this but this site is incredibly complicated for the occasional user - do you have plans to make the whole process more simple ?

What I mean by that is this . . . . . "here is the latest version , you download it and it works" - just like other software . . . . is that a possibility for the future ?

I think this will open up this lovely sounding software to thousands of people for whom at present it way way too complicated and geeky

many thanks

mike

Thx Russ,

Just now the only box I have ticked is tool tips - I'll let you know what happens - but I have the feeling there's more to it than that

cheers

mike

Hi Peter - just to say I am getting this problem occasionally also - sometimes after 1/2 hour of use, for no apparent reason, the screen starts to flash on & off, I loose that task bar and just after that I invoke a window inviting me to check for sony / vista upgrades !

As yet I still am not sure the benefit this hotkey thing gives - is that covered here somewhere ?

From my side I would prefer it if XXHE did not interact with the display at all and would be happy to be able to disable this function - is that possible ? at least until it's stable - just the XXHE window is fine for me.

cheers

mike