My quality buttons (liquid/quad/upsampling selection - not Q1,2....) are greyed out.  How do I acess these and what do they do please?  I'm using Q1=-1, 24 bit,  if that makes any difference

tks

Murray

At the risk of exposing how dumb I really am can someone enlighten me as to how to easily copy albums to the library and playlists please.  Maybe it has been my upgrade to W7, but when I go to the library and use explorer I can find the folders etc, but can no longer highlight all songs (only one song at a time highlights) and right click for the option of copying to playlist (the option is no longer there - though arduous this was my vista way of doing it).

How do I use the library - if i do manage to get an album in there - the load selected album to playlist seems to be greyed out....

 Am I missing something obvious?

tks
Murray

Hi Peter,

tending to be one who jumps in boots and all - I had already upgraded to W7 (no agony so far except it seems to have reset my permissions back to near zip) before reading your message.  Oh well .......

The results are that it doesn't alter the clicks and pops (or nothing at all) etc that I get at settings other than Q1=-1.  However it has made the USB much more resiliant.  Now on -1 There is no disturbance or interuption resulting from other computer activities (opening screens or programs etc) and the USB doesn't crash at all so far (fingers crossed).  So it is an improvement.  Sound wise - don't know - sounds pretty good to me - no worse anyway.

I tried "play unattended" - it did something all right - it stopped any usb output at all (well in so far as the dCS kit would recognise it anyway).  Stop Services wasn't ticked.  Should I try the rest of your instructions anyway?

BTW - is the few second wait on pressing play normal - I guess you are loading into memory or similar?

Many thanks for your support.  Will update my signature as you suggest

Best

Murray

Thanks Peter and Pedal.  I contacted dCS.  I'd rather not publish their reply but in essence they weren't too happy about Wasapi and felt it a bit immature and buggy.  For now they suggest ASIO as a more reliable solution, until Wasapi matures a bit more.  They say that early indications are that Win 7 is an improvement.

I don't have acess to any other Vista machines but I do have a complimentary upgrade to Win 7.  I've not been rushing to load this but I could now and try that.  Of course my expectation is that 50% of the rest of the programs will throw up  though ....

I've searched around and not found much else to help.  I have an xp laptop I could try - but I don't think XX supports XP does it, and certainly it'd not be Wasapi?

All this is a bit experimental for me - for the period of about half a song that XX runs before the USB stops (the player keeps running) it does seem to sound the pick of the bunch to me.  Oh, well, we'll see.

best

M

Thanks Peter,

Well until I get this solved I guess that means I should run J River in exclusive - so now that you suggest it, it does sound cleaner and a step more alive.  Mind over matter maybe, but I doubt it. 

Ok, i can raise this with dCS -If you have time to send something that helps demonstrate what is going on - then that would be much appreciated too.

best

Thanks Peter,

well, here's some more pieces of the puzzle.  Foowasapi has the same sort of crackles that XXHighend does, and no amount of buffer setting fixes it, though altering the buffer affects it.   J River plays fine no matter what buffer is set.  I loaded XMplay with Wasapi and it plays fine too.  I compared XMplay to J River - I accidentally set both playing - and much to my surprise they both played together.  I had thought one wasapi would grab things to the exclusion of another.  But, at least in J River this is a seeting option.  I tried J River with exclusive turned on - it then performed like Foowasapi and yours - clicks and crackles through the music.   A shorter buffer setting more or less fixed it.  XMplay was then excluded and couldn't gain acess while this was playing.  I put J River back to non-exclusive and tried to run Foowasapi or XXHighend with it - neither would play indicating that both are probably setting their Wasapi set up to be exclusive.  So..... we have two players that run fine in non-exlcusive, and three that play up when set to exclusive. 

dCS use an asynchronous USB connection.  It shows up as a separate dCS Player in the sounds setting window.  You can disable the ability of this USB to accept exclusive control.  If I try that, XMplay and J River run ok, but XXHiend and Foobar won't - both report errors, XXhiend reports "Exclusive mode not allowed". 

So...... looks like maybe if exclusive mode can be turned off in XXHighend (and Foobar) all might be well with Wasapi and the dCS driver.  Does that maybe mean a special build?

You can't say I don't try ;-)

best

Murray

Thanks Peter,

no other USB devices or usb hub used; have tried other ports - no difference; run both 1m and 3.5m cables - no difference.  Tried various other Q2,3,4,5 - no difference.  Tried different processor settings - no difference.  Tried various Q1 settings - either nothing happens (no USB lock?) or locks briefly then drops out.  I'm using the laptop as the music plays.  If another process throws a high demand on the computer (eg opening a window, even XXHighEnd itself) will temporarily disrupt the sound (eg half second drop out).  All this as reported originally - ie only setting Q=-1 plays listenably, but then with occasional minor disruption.  I don't hear any difference between the sound character of the Q-1,0,+1 settings.

A number of other players have worked without any problem, with or without ASIO4all - except I have never managed to make Foobar wasapi work.  J River wasapi works fine.

On occaisions the music will just stop - sometimes with a message Engine No.3 did not start within required time or some such. Sometimes instead of causing a brief disruption, opening a new window will stop the player.  Pressing play will usually restart it ok, sometimes from the start of the song, sometimes from where it was up to.  Sometimes the Wasapi process or USB reciever is screwed up (then J River wasapi will no longer play either) and requires the USB to be unplugged and replugged. 

So it seems the program is not independent of other processes in the machine and is disrupted by brief demands elsewhere.   Have I maybe missed some set up step permitting the program the ability to maintain top priority?

Btw, despite setting 24 bit, the reciever shows it as 16/44.1 incoming - I guess that is normal though for a 16 bit Flac file.

Hope there is something there that might give a hint,

tks

Murray

Hi Peter,

I tried 09y-1d as suggested, but the results were pretty similar.  I moved the player and thread priority to high, and that may have helped some - or it may be my imagination.

best

Murray

Hi,

I'm trialling XXHighEnd with a Sony Viao, USB and dCS Paganini upsampler (set to not upsample).  The only way I can get any sound out of the system is to set the dac settings to 24 bit.  Then I get sound but with a cracking noise interspersed irregularly in the music at a rate of about every 1 - 2s or so.  I can improve this to almost no problem by setting Q to -1.  With this setting I just get occasional small bursts of low level static sound in the music - quite infrequently.  Changing to -2 seems to work too but more static effect.  + 1 generally makes things worse with more cracking noises.  >+1 doesn't seem to even lock.

Anyway - it all seems a bit tenuous, especially since your note on the 24 bit selection says "Do not use!".

If I try to use other settings (16 bit or 32), I get a message "Endpoint create failed.  The Dac does not accept this byte sequence.  Try switching the DAC Needs from 32 to 24 (or the other way around)."

I'm using Vista and 0.9 y-4

Any ideas?

Sound so far seems pretty good!

tks

Murray