Download is at the bottom. Activate with your existing 0.9z-7 (and up) Activation Code.
For those already using Activated 0.9z-6, please look here :
How to Activate 0.9z-7 and up.
Notice : In this version small vinyl like ticks in between tracks may appear (only for tracks with gaps in between them).
There's also a small tick though somewhat louder at the first "SFS Change".
Let's say this is an "anti version" of the previous 0.9z-8 versions and it applies "tricks" learned from how to let Windows 8 sound more right, but now for Windows 7 (not Vista !).
FYI: Notice that appliances for a certain OS are always applied to that OS only and never "deteriorate" the working in the other OS. This is good to know, and while e.g. 0.9z-8-1(a) contained optimizations for Windows 8 which did not influence Windows 7, 0.9z-8-2 now contains optimizations which do not influence Windows 8. Of course there are also appliances which apply to both (or all) OSes, but then this is meant to be so.
Watch out : This version, 0.9z-8-2, is a bit experiemental in the sense that it tears down the OS more than before, but also more to the extreme and it could be "over". What has been done has taken many days of trial and error because the things done are sort of "illegal". For example, the "tweaks" applied now will not allow a reboot in good state when they are not undone first. This undoing is performed by XXHighEnd itself, but, when for example the system reboots while playing in Unattended (All shut off) the state of the OS will not be OK and you e.g. may not have any sound devices available. The solution to this would be bringing up XXHighEnd, quit it and reboot again. However :
While the above could be a fairly normal culprit which shouldn't even happen, it is to be noticed that this has all been made for one OS only : Windows 7 Ultimate N (English version) SP1 (no updates) and it is not said at all that other versions of the W7 OS (what about dedicated laptop versions) allow for the same set of tweaks which may exhibit :
[
Edit August 1 2013 : People tend to read this as no newer XXHighEnd version ever proceeded on this, while the first newer version after this one already covered for all OS versions. Also, below mentioned possible culprits never happened so even this version is OK.]
- Playback won't work at all;
- You see error messages which were not there before;
- A normal reboot into Minimized OS (so not through XXHighEnd) shows strangenesses.
And besides that, when the PC is used for other things than XXHighEnd audio playback, things you could normally do now won't work. This by itself obviously can not be judged from our development desks and needs the experience from you all.
Keep in mind though that once XXHighEnd has been brought up from Unattended Playback, all is as normal as it ever was (for Minimized OS Mode).
Release Notes to 0.9z-8-2- There's a new button "Stop ALL Services" in Settings which implies what has been described above.
Although you can activate it in Normal OS Mode, it will only engage its activities when in Minimized OS Mode (thus won't work in Demo Mode) and with Unattended Playback.
Do notice that activating this button will not combine with *anything* not shut off.
Also notice that it doesn't need to be activated when in Normal OS Mode and booting into Minimized OS Mode. So, it can be changed while in Minimized on the fly (but stop Playback first) and judged for its merits.
- There's a new button "Keep WiFi-Direct Services" in Settings.
Watch out : this works as intended for W7 and W8, but you will never be able to utilize it without the special hardware needed. Besides that, getting it to run (as intended) is a sheer pain and for this reason we won't eleborate on this further, other than that it is a harmless (!) WiFi connection meant to service a NAS (Network Attached Storage) which perfectly works by itself, but which is part of a much larger project, unfinished at this time. More about this in a next version.
One additional remark : WiFi-direct is regarded "vapour ware" announced for W8, hence it should work in W8 out of the box while actually totally nothing is there to support it. However, with the right hardware and drivers it already works for W7. It took more work (and over 700 reboots on estimate) than getting Bluetooth going for the Remote Control and ... it theoretically allows for Remote Control without an "intermediate PC" like with Bluetooth and over a 135Mb connection. Although this works from a normal PC at this moment, it does not work yet from a tablet - at least not from an Android based one; not the most attention was put to this though.
- An adjustment has been made to "stops" which may occur from real slow connections to the music data (disk subsystem) when Q1 x Q1Factor x Device BufferSize is really high like more than 30 x 15 x 4096. Watch out though : Although this allows for higher of these settings in general it does NOT comply with applying Volume Changes. For example, while you will be able to play with 30 x 40 x 4096 now, Alt-U etc. will exhibit anomalies like a buffer being repeated (or skipped) when the change comes through.
While this can apply to Unattended Playback only anyway (Attended will allow for one track of playback with the higher settings as denoted through a message when attempted), it can be looked at as that the 14 seconds normally available to get the load of a "track part" accomplished, now has been increased to 22 seconds.
It is now formally possible to reboot from Minimized OS into Normal OS without being Activated;
The Release Notes to 0.9z-8-1a said something similar but this was not correct.
Edit : But again this is not correct, or at least it is NOT working. Solved for the next version though.
- It appeared that with 48KHz 24 bits based material some upsampling rates exhibited a 10% pitch offset or was just slo-mo otherwise. This has been solved.
While these anomalies have been there forever but were hardly reported, please do so now when you find something wrong for playback speed (44.1 based should be OK anyway).
Notice that "48KHz based" also includes 96KHz, 192KHz and 384KHz.
- For Windows 8, 0.9z-8-1(a) abusively anticipated the Windows 7 Shell to be installed while this was not meant to be at all. But when not, an error occurred after Unattended Playback implying a necessary reboot.
Now, all will work without W7 Shell again, but, special attention has to be paid to obaying the proposed (default) path where to install the W7 Shell; before an error would occur when not done right (the proposed paths are not to be changed) so it would get your attention, while now -when done wrongly- the Metro desktop will start after all and you won't understand.
- It was found that when XXHighEnd's form was Maximized, things would really go odd and the form would be way too wide to further deal with. Not sure when this started to be like this, but now it has been solved.
- XXHighEnd never has been adaptive to the screen's DPI (Dots Per Inch) settings as they can be applied via the Display properties (this is the 100%, 125%, 150% or custom factor which can be set);
If all is right this now is respected in good fashion everywhere.
Please notice : this seems to be related to one of the vertical splitter bars appearing right in the middle of the form somewhere but this behaviour could not be copied hence it could not be explicitly solved. It may be solved now though. Please report if you still see this happening.
- It was found that when Logging was On and Playback ever had been started, and when next Logging was switched off, XXEngine3 had to be killed in order to switch of her Logging.
This is solved now.
Notice that Logging being Off is important for stopless Playback at the really lower Split File Sizes (SFS).
- It was found that actually by accident 32 bit integer (!) files can play through XXHighEnd if only no Upsampling is applied. However, 32 bit files can not be Attenuated (as of yet). Therefore an error message will now occur when a 32 bit file is attempted to play while the Digital Volume shows Attenuation (playback will not start) and it should prevent you getting out for new windows.
- For Windows 8 too, a couple of things have changed in the SQ department and generally this version should sound better than the pervious one. Notice though that it is hard to say "better" when things are (here) judged as not right in the base. So, sounds better ? maybe. Sounds different ? it should.
For the Release Notes to the previous 0.9z-8 versions
see here.
Switch Off UAC (User Account Control) before any first attempt of starting XXHighEnd.exe !However, if all is right this will be arranged for automatically.
