Is there a size limit to 24 / 88 FLAC playback?

[summers_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

[boleary]

Though I don't know if it will work, one thing you might want to try is to convert the flac files to wave using a program like dbpoweramp, a free download. I did this with the Marianne Thorsen violin concertos of Mozart that I purchased from Linn Records (they sound incredible). Letting xx convert the flac to wave when playing the flac file just took too long. I did not notice any difference in sound quality by converting the file to wave with dbpoweramp and then playing the file with xx.

Maybe just try converting one of the shorter "long" files to see if this will work. My guess, a very uneducated one to be sure, is that the problem is the result of xx having to convert such a huge flac to wave before it plays.

[PeterSt]

I just tried a 10 minute 24/96 in FLAC (335MB) and it plays in 17 seconds. I have 2GB myself.

However ... I use a setting of 150MB for Split File (which is kind of what you asked for I guess). This is also the adviced setting for every situation to play.

Let me know if this doesn't help !

Letting xx convert the flac to wave when playing the flac file just took too long.

Maybe it depends on what you think is "too long" ? I guess 17 seconds is not long at all, and it only happens at the first start of playback. But I guess slower PCs exist. (mine is 2x 2.4 GHz which is already slow today).

Btw, a normal redbook album (700MB) converts in 5-6 seconds (here).

[SeVeReD]

Though I don't know if it will work, one thing you might want to try is to convert the flac files to wave using a program like dbpoweramp, a free download. I did this with the Marianne Thorsen violin concertos of Mozart that I purchased from Linn Records (they sound incredible). Letting xx convert the flac to wave when playing the flac file just took too long. I did not notice any difference in sound quality by converting the file to wave with dbpoweramp and then playing the file with xx.

Maybe just try converting one of the shorter "long" files to see if this will work. My guess, a very uneducated one to be sure, is that the problem is the result of xx having to convert such a huge flac to wave before it plays.

Using XXHighEnd:
Right clicking on a flac file in the library also allows for a permanent conversion of a flac to a wav ... along with a couple other options.  I don't feel a need to do that anymore now that XXHE copies the flacs to wav onto my SSD before loading into memory.
I live life slowly.  No playing before all conversions are done for me.... just push play and slowly walk back to my seat so my martini doesn't spill.

edit
wait, I just tried to copy a flac album to wav, but all it did was copy to flac again?  Is Copy flac to wav not working anymore.

[boleary]

Well, I guess my processor, 2x 1.4 ghz, would be slower, but I sure don't understand how it could be so much slower. Using xx to play three 24/96 violin concertos (9 tracks, 1.4 gigs) takes a full five minutes for the flacs to process before any sound begins. I bought these tracks from Linn Records right after purchasing xx  and figured that converting them to wave files made the most sense given the time it took to get them to play.

I just noticed that I too am having problems with the sound abruptly stopping when playing the larger flac tracks.

However, these same files "manually" converted to wave files and then played in xx work without problems.

I didn't know that you could convert the files by right clicking on them, thanks!

[PeterSt]

Edit : Somehow I read the below as not knowing where to go. My bad. So the explanation is not really necessary I guess.

I didn't know that you could convert the files by right clicking on them, thanks!

For the conversion from FLAC to WAV, see below. Notice that this starts with rightclick on one of the coverartpictures, and the selection of albums to convert which may go with checkboxes as this shows (I forgot to tick one for "selection") here. So you can do your whole collection in one go if you want, although it may take some days in your situation.

But guys, if your PC is really that slow, it is no good for music playback. This is not related to the 1.4 GHz, but to the (power saving) processor type. There is no good second level cache in there, there is no good task swapping, it is, well, just no good for the best music playback. And it is hugely inconvenient (if things go like this ). For example, 0.9y-4 contains a new GREAT upsampling algorithm, which is especially (and very very much hopefully !) suitable for your MSB, boleary. Now, although you will be able to use it, you will hardly be able to change the digital volume during playback, because the change will come through 30 seconds or so later (in my case this is already 4-5 seconds which I find doable). If you don't use the digital volume, ok, but you will be holding yourself from all kind of nice stuff because it is too sluggish/slow to use !

I am SURE your best investment would be a desktop, or at least anything with a normal processor in there, preferrably with real dual cores (like a cure2duo which is *not* the same als duocore). Please listen ...

Peter

[boleary]

Thanks for the advice, Peter. Unfortunately, when I told my wife that my music Guru is insisting on a new computer for music playback, both she and the dog walked out of the room......Hopefully, in the not too distant future we will overcome these obstacles. 

 

[summers_tim]

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

[PeterSt]

Oh, but 1:10 is hardly enough to poor some good drink !

Honestly, even that wouldn't bother me, as long as I'm not track hopping each other minute (I would get drunk )