trying .9-y6 on xp sp2 - need suggestions

[PeterSt]

Hi Mark - So I *should* have looked after those specs. In that case, set DAC Is to 32/192 of course !

But now your sample rate light ... I don't know ...
Btw, are you sure your mentioned list is correct ? I mean, 48 should be there too, and when the DAC does 88.2 it should do 176.4 as well ? and ... aren't you playing Quattro ? so ... ?

Anyway, it would be interesting to know whether you receive the same result (light doesn't come up) with Engine#3 ...

Also, how does q1 and the buffers setting interact with the dual and quad sampling options (sonics, mostly)?  are there specific recommendations, using ks/xp yr7 as in my signature?

Wish I had more time to experiment myself, but would like some guidance so I am not randomly trying every possible permutation!

I can imagine this is a tough job when you just start out with it all. But do you follow the forum topics ? I mean, so much has been said about this the past few weeks ... I can't do better right now than referring to that ...
In any case I wouldn't be bothered about the mixture of upsampling on one side and Q1 settings on the other. First choose whether you like upsampling or not, and next play with Q1. Not the other way around, and not both at the same time. Upsampling is more important, and if I were you 'd only try Arc Prediction. If you don't like that (or better : when your DAC doesn't like that), just don't. It is nog needed, and the fact that 98% of people like Arc Prediction doesn't mean something is wrong or whatever when you don't. It *is* DAC dependent you know (and BTW made for filterless DACs, which your DAC is not (again I didn't look it up, haha).

Achieving very high dynamic performance, the AK4399 features -105dB THD+N

Isn't this a typo somewhere ? -105dB isn't all that good. Actually, it is quite bad ... (just a technical thing, you won't perceive anyway IMO).

Peter

[fzman]

Peter,

Thanks.  I may have mis-typed.  it is 44, 48 96 ans 192, on both the sound card and the dac.

I can't do engine 3 since i am only running xp, not vista or 7- unless I am wrong about engine 3 on xp.

I do not have a problem with whether the light comes on or not on the dac, what i was wondering was whether the fixed rates, and the lack of 88 and 176 on the sound card meant that dual and quad upsampling were then being resampled in the sound card driver, and that the driver may be the bad guy!

I ordered a 2 gig stick of ram (kingston valueram) which should be here today, and I will install it.  As I type this, there are 2-second pauses in playback as xx is loading a large playlist, with constant hard drive activity, and the xx screen not switching over to the wallpaper in unattended.

Do you think the extra ram (2 gig vs 1 gig) will help this out?

Best,

Mark

[PeterSt]

Mark,

Aha, so it is the other way around ! Now I understand ...
So indeed, when no light for locking to 88.2 or 176.4 is there (and 96 and 192 also don't lit) plus your description of the "fixed sample rates", we must assume that your sound card is resampling. Not good !
In this case you might try the AI Upsampling, and be sure to set the "96/192 Only" checkbox in the Settings Area. It might become better from it, and in this case 96/192 should lock (lit). Notice though that the AI upsampling is rather time consuming, plus your 1GB from this moment may play a certain role in it (more slow).

and the xx screen not switching over to the wallpaper in unattended.

Did you install the 0.9y-8a patch for this ? (Re: No Wallpaper at first track in 09y_7)

As I type this, there are 2-second pauses in playback as xx is loading a large playlist

For some (systems) this is unavoidable, and certainly for the ultra low latency Kernel Streaming modes (Special and Adapative) it is. In that case it may be better to untick "Start Engine3 during conversion" (Settings Area, Memory and Disk utilization section), of which I now realise this should be named "Engine3/4 ..." . Then playback won't start before all is loaded/converted. More memory will make a difference to the aspect of things going (somewhat) faster. Ah, you will see it yourself soon ...

Peter

[fzman]

the 2 gig ram just showed up on my desk, courtesy of ups - i will let you know how it works out.

Should I try special mode instead of adaptive?  any thoughts what sonic differences there may be?  special did not work at all in 9yr6, but that may have been a too little ram problem?

Mark

[PeterSt]

Hi again Mark,

Special Mode is tedious to get going (to say the least), so I would keep it to Adaptive. It think is *is* so though, that Special Mode can just give that special experience (I am going to try it myself again in an hour or so). But again, better use Adaptive Mode, because it is easy to get going, if you only follow the guide (the Tooltip on the KS Mode combobox).

No, I don't think more memory will make a difference in getting Special Mode going. BUT, if you have tried it before at starting a larger playlist while that checkbox "Start Engine3 during conversion" was ticked, your chances severely degrade (as does trying it in Attended Mode). It merely depends on the soundcard (and currently I do NOT have the experience of you all to really know about what does and what does not) and above all the cpu capacity and the spread of the load (for example : a one core processor will be a no-go).

I understand that you want to be as prepared as possible, but it really is difficult for me to give you the good advises. If you (hopefully) start perceiving the differences, it will be the most easy to proceed from there. Also it will be far more easy to help you. Now we're both a bit in the blind, because so much depends on your PC. But I promise you you will get around with it.
In any case keep asking, but don't be too disappointed about the answers !

Peter

[PeterSt]

And Mark, to get you on the track a bit (if you don't know already) : very generally in each occasion (Engine#3 and #4) the lower the Q1 the better the perceived sound. I dare say this counts for most of us (for me too), but of course keep in mind : until it breaks. So, assumed the lowest setting indeed *is* the best setting, you must always find a settings which works, and then go lower (for KS Adaptive it works a bit of the other way around because of the guide). Notice though, and now with Engine#3 as the example, that you must be careful not to be fooled by the lower Q1 setting. For example, for me (and I think for most) it is clearly audible that at the lowest Q1 for Engine#3 (which btw is not about latency at all there) is giving you a more accurate sound. But, this turns out to be fake somehow when hopping over from e.g. Jazz to Classical, and the violins appear to sound digital. I am talking about Q1 near 0 (or even under it) and nearly everybody perceives this the same. I didn't notice this with the low latency settings from Engine#4, and there it just seems to be the lower the better. That is, this too wasn't reported otherwise afaik, BUT, it can break (Q1 of Engine#3 generally won't).

I hope this helps you !
Peter

[fzman]

I put the 2 gig module in, and all is working fine. I switched from no appointment to scheme 1, and I think it sounds a little richer and more natural, but with a long play list the hard drive light stays on after playback begins, and stays on for at least 5 minutes, and it takes a while for the wallpaper to come up.

is it better to have a short playlist, for sound quality?  I have many albums in the play list so it will run for a long time so I can break in my new cables, etc..... 

also, when i try to save a playlist, i only have two choices-  currently playing, and played, but i have not set up a folder for data, and wonder if that is required to be able to name and save playlists......


lots more to learn

[PeterSt]

Mark,

About saving the Playlists : It is better to have a separata folder for the data outside your XX folder (also meaning not as a subfolder). You'll notice this with several XX installs. But look into Galleries. They can behave the same as Playlists but are a 100 times more powerful.

About the disk light ... not good. I could say your Playlist is too long (or the selection in there), but we would be talking about 100s of tracks, and this is useless (you won't listen to that in one go). But I don't think you talk about 100s ...

Did you untick that "Engine3 Start duing Conversion" checkbox ? (I think I "told" you before).

If so, you may have tweaked your PC in the wrong direction, so it now behaves as a laptop (I'm serious here). Disk light should go off within 5 seconds or so after playback has started (but mind beforementioned checkbox), and if not, your PC can't cope with the processED data. This is not easy to explain, but what it comes down to is that e.g. data to be copied to disk first goes to memory (this is always so) and from there goes to disk. Now, it can easily be so that this last part takes 5 minutes (look at a laptop, and there it will be standard for most), while it should be instantly. If not the latter, all kind of things can be too slow. Can be the disk, can be the memory, can be the 2nd level cache, can be the FSB, can be the processor, can be the disk controller.

?

Peter

[fzman]

Peter,

I checked my power management settings, and it is set to 'always on', and only monitor is set to turn off, after 20 minutes....  I did lower the color depth from 32 to 16 bit -- I would have gone lower except there was no setting for 8 bit at the screen size i am using.

this helped the drive light activity very much. 

I also set up an xxdata directory, and put it in settings, and set the gallery and data to point to it- that works as well.

I get lots of errors when I pause a playlist, and it keeps wanting to send error reports, which i do not send, as this computer is not networked.  i have to kill the xxhighend process in task manager to get it to stop giving errors, then all goes fine.

Now that I know how to save playlists, I can chose single albums for real listening, and load the large one when I want to get hours of burn-in on the system, without being there to listen.

I will start playing with the gallery soon as well, to see what it can do.

Thanks,

Mark

[fzman]

The player seems to stop part way thru the playlist - I am not sure when exactly, we left for some errands, and when we came home 2-3 hours later, the playback had stopped, and xxhighend had closed.

I have the settings in xp set for "always on" and I switched to giving priority to background vs programs -- I will see how that works.

Also, I click on the "x' to close the player window while it is playing, but still processing the playlist - this brings up the wallpaper screen well, but should I wait and let the program switch displays on its own?

thanks,

Mark

[PeterSt]

Hi Mark,

Please stop with these playlists before you are confident with what you are doing. Or, the least thing what happens is that I don't understand.

This :

and when we came home 2-3 hours later, the playback had stopped, and xxhighend had closed.

and this :

Also, I click on the "x' to close the player window while it is playing, but still processing the playlist

is not consistent IMO. You either play Attended (seen checkbox at the bottom) and the GUI stays, or you play Unattended and the GUI disappears automatically (!) after the tracks in the Playlist Area have been prepared for playback.
Also, the first quote above makes me tell you again that you should UNtick the checkbox "Start Engine3 during Conversion". Why don't you do this after I told it a couple of times ? Of course it is not necessary, but then please leave out descriptions related to a problem (solving) because I really can't follow anymore what you are doing.

The same for the playlists. Not "tomorrow" as you say ... stay out of them because I advice you to. Not because they cannot or should not be used, but they imply you get stuck.
Just play albums for now. One at a time. When you get and see what it takes to do that, it will be your decision whether it is "allowed" to load more. IOW don't load dozens of tracks in the Playlist Area (!!) before it is clear to you what will happen with that, and which is very different for Attended vs Unattended. Ok ?

Here is a small list for the fastest means of loading tracks (this is per track, but for Unattended this is for all the tracks in the Playlist Area) :

- Do not use Anti Imaging Upsampling;
- Do not use the Normalized Volume;
- Do not Copy to XX Drive;
- Use WAVs (this is a stupid one of course, but it does matter);
- Load one album in the Playlist Area (for now);
- Do not let spin down your disks after 1 minute (use 4 minutes or more).

From here on you can start to change either of the above, but watch what the differences are, and what they mean for your real life.

Hope it helps ...
Peter

[fzman]

Peter,

Thanks for answering - I am sorry if I have been stubborn, but I am trying to learn the program with very little time to play with it- and it sounds so good, that I want to be able to listen to music, rather than just tweek settings.

When I first got xxhighend registered, which was probably yr6, it would run for several days without interruption.  I should have known better to expect that it would work with huge playlists-

I agree with your advice- use it to play albums - I would have used winamp to do burn-in duties but it would crash every time, since xxhigh end had been installed and run.  Turns out it was autohotkeys causing the conflict, and some autoruns had gotten into my registry.  I cleaned everything out, and know how to run winamp when I need many hours of continuous play for burning in cables, etc.

I also played with some of the optimiazations of windows, and found that xxhighend seems very sensitive to video setings, so I will be careful with them.  Many of my assumptions going in are from the cics/cmp/cplay mentality which I had been following, and xxhighend seems to take a different approach to some extent, so I will be more careful and attentive about making changes and asking for help.

Now that it is working well with single albums, or playlists of 2-3 albums, I will try to install and configure yr8, as the wallpaper still sometimes skips a track, although playback continues.

Sorry to have interrupted your weekend.

Mark

[PeterSt]

Hey Mark,

By no means you interrupted anything of my weekend. I am just afraid that maybe you won't get there because of running out of patience. Please don't. I realize though that the tone of my last post may have been "impatience" by itself. If so, please appreciate it as unjustified.
Just hang on, and I know you are trying the buts out of you. I will keep on trying the same !

Thank you ...
Peter

[fzman]

Peter,

It's been a few days since I posted.  I am now using xxhighend just to do serious listening or enjoyment listening (not always the same thing!).  I am still getting my system and room dialed in, as I have moved into the house somewhat recently.

Anyway, y7r is working fine, and sounds really good.  I am happy.

now i need to get a registration code for the main computer which is attached to the internet (i registered to unconnected one by a temporary hookup).  Can you pm me and let me know how to proceed.  i am at work now and will not be home for about 5 more hours.

anyway, thanks for all of your help.  I am very happy with the sound.

Mark

[PeterSt]

Oops, I missed your post yesterday. But you have that PM now ...