Hey,

I want, belatedly, to echo Fidelio's first comment in this chain!

Initial feelings only, since I only started listening about an hour ago, but this is a BIG, BIG step up from the previous version I had (y-2).

Immediately, bass has more 'slam', to the extent I was about to go and tweek with the subwoofer settings.

Much more foot-tappy.  Literally.

More depth in the image, forward and back.

The best front-end I've ever heard.  Period.

Tim

Hi, I tried the J River for a while, but in my mind there is no comparison.  For starters, I couldn't stop the clicking and skipping, so it is ruled out.  (Admittedly I didn't try very hard - but I shouldn't have to, since other players don't ever suffer from this problem.)  Then, I agree with Telstar - nothing really distinguishing, sounds nice for a while but then I tend to wander off and do something else...  Doesn't stand out.

A shame as I like the concept and the front end is nicely thought through, but in the end if it doesn't cut it on the SQ, then what's the point?  I didn't extend after the demo version expired.

XX still sits on the throne.

Tim

HP Laptop / Vista, XX 0.9y-4, Empirical Audio Off-Ramp, Chord DAC64, Red Wine Audio Signature 30.2, Zu Druid 4, all cables by Zu.

Hi again, thank you all for your input.  I upped the 'Split file at size' to 150 MB and my longest track played fine.  So yes, thank you, this was my question really!  My longest FLAC track (the first movement of Mozart 38), which comes in at 17.43 min of 24 / 88, takes about 1.10 min to start and uses 920 MB of memory.  This is on an old, average laptop with twin 1.6 GHz processors and 3 GB memory.  A WAV track of the same length took about 12 seconds to start.

Given that the computer is so under-specced, and converting to WAV is free and easy, I don't have a problem with this effect.

Thanks again for your suggestions, have a good day (listening to some Mozart from Linn perhaps?).

Tim

Hi.  I've just downloaded the Linn Records version of Mozart's last four symphonies as 24 / 88 FLAC, following a series of great reviews.  I can report that, yes, about half of it sounds fabulous musically and in terms of recording quality, but the other half doesn't play at all...

The issue seems to be the length of tracks / size of files.  Shorter tracks (up to about 8 mins) play fine, but with longer ones there's a wait while the memory allocation rises, then eventually the 'Fail!' window pops up and I have to restart XXHE.  The memory requirement of the Engine gets pretty big, 900 M or so, before it falls over.

Any suggestions?  It's a recent version (0.9y-2), my laptop is running Vista with 3 GB of physical memory, with nothing much else running on the PC.  Apart from this, everything is working like a beautiful well-oiled machine...

In an extreme, would it be possible to split the long tracks...?  Don't really wanna go down that path...

Apologies if this has been covered somewhere else, cheers,

Tim

It's great that XXHE now works with my Empirical Audio Off-Ramp.  The sound is a BIG step up from 0.9x-7, Engine 1 or 2.  Clarity (vocals), attack (guitar or violin transients), and space and air around the instruments.  I've never heard such good source.  Thank you!