Hi Peter and All,

A compelling new FW interface product from the very professional Swiss brand WEISS:
http://www.weiss.ch/afi1/afi1.htm

This could well be a very serious contender to your famous RME FireFace 800 (same price range about 1300€).
However, your DAC must accept AES/EBU input (or optical ADAT; which is the rarest option; only for some Pro studio units).

Cheers

...but ya, I'm a bit of a NIN fan...distortion and all.

Well, if you can find a pattern I'll be happy to dive into it again.

I've only had a chance to listen once, so I will try again later to make sure this is repeatable.

The separately uploaded XXEngine3 was dedicated to Scheme-3;
0.9u-14a works with all the Schemes (and thus incorporates a newer version of XXEngine3, which you can see by the date it carries).

I hope we understand eachother ...

In 0.9u-14 that new XXEngine3 is incorporated.

. . . the latest is working a tad differently again to this matter !).

For those who were bothered by this, would you care to try the below version of XXEngine3.exe and report please ?

Put the current XXEngine3.exe in your XX folder aside, and replace it with the one in the zip below.
Thanks,
Peter

A bug has been found for the Q1 settings of -2 and -3;
-2 appeared to be set equal to -1;
-3 appeared to be set equal to -4.
Now both have their own values indeed.

I am currently using usb as output, but have also found a HDMI switch on the net with a tos-link digital sound out.

"The result is that a simply slaved CD player (not even synchronously re-clocked by LessLoss) outperforms even the most scrupulously slaved computer soundcard"  Basically they are suggesting PC Audio cannot compete.

Mani

While your D70 can act as master it probably does not operate the same way (syncronously) as the LessLoss DAC?

Do you have any comments about the LessLoss impression of PC Audio that you can share with us ?


Frank

Edward,

I slave my RME FF800 to my DAC (i.e. I have a separate 75ohm BNC connector feeding a wordclock signal from the DAC to the FF800). My DAC is not a LessLoss but an Esoteric D70. And yes, XXHighEnd definitely still performs ‘correctly’ in the sense that it sounds great.

But actually, I think that when the DAC is Master, XXHighEnd has less impact on SQ.

What I mean here is that with the FF800 as master (PLL setting on DAC), any adjustments in XXHighEnd are more easily identified as compared to the D70 as master (wordclock out setting on DAC).

This was my impression last weekend when I spent some hours listening to various combinations. I need to do some more listening, but won't be able to until I resurrect my hifi in a week or so.

But in any event, switching to DAC as master provides a quantum leap in improved SQ - IMHO, greater than anything XXHighEnd itself can provide. In this respect, I agree 100% with the LessLoss guys in that the DAC should act as master, with the clock sitting right next to the dacs (though I’m less sure about their views on using a SuperClock, what with the frequencies involved).

When I find a nos dac with wordclock output, I'll give it a go...

Mani.

Peter and all,

The problems are gone over here... I have set q1 on -2 for a few weeks.... Today i moved it a bit upwards (0)  and the cracks and hickups are gone....  

Maybe something for Edward to try.....

Grtz

Might you feel like trying something ... put your XXEngine3.exe aside and stuff the below in your XX folder.
I changed something which is more official according the books. I ran 1.5 album over it without problems, which - as we know - doesn't say much.

I hear those 'glitches' in this setup (USB out), but also in the direct headphone out. Foobar or WMP makes also no difference. All glitches, hickups or other interuptions in the audio stream are at random, I never have been able to rehearse a symptom in the same setup or plase on a cd audiostream.

Now, if you can find a way of making me clear how to copy what you still have ... I can't for the moment.
Btw, I ran at least 6 other CD's yesterday night with the same test setting, and not any hiccup.

Must think ...
But if you can come up with anything ...

In the mean time, when a, say, 5 minute track loads, how long does your disk light lit ? Please keep in mind that you can only test this properly for a first time per track. Otherwise the cache is involved.
Also you could try to notice whether the hiccup occurs during the disk I/O or right after that (during the cpu peaking).

Lastly, you might show a plot of the cpu useage during the track boundaries, but please tell me how long (minutes) the loading track is.

I have switched off the virtual memory as fas as possible (Re: Disabling Virtual Memory can cause errors and the result I get from that is that the used memory grows and grows.
So now I know how "Managed" dotnet works for it deciding when to delete memory. The G.d. thing first copies to virtual memory, and then lateron it may delete it (which IMO can happen only after a copy-back to the physical memory first).

Note : By the same process of development it was proven that it is not allowed to shut down the virtual memory, never mind it looks like that can't be achieved it all (it can, but the OS keeps on having some for itself).
When no virtual memory officially is active, you will bump into the limits of the physical memory, recognizeable by some more harsh cracking during the load of the next track (this is not way loud cracking, but sure more nasty than the cracking which may emerge e.g. during a service shutting down).

But let me know if it still doesn't work for you.

Peter

Remember, the trackloading happens at the lowest priority already, and can't be influenced by you (but the "opposite", the playback thread, you can).

Did you try the reboot now ? 99,99% chance it helps.
... for the hicups !