Allow Me To Introduce Myself

[SeVeReD]

and my journey toward XXHighEnd.  ok... where to start... how about ass backward.
My Speakers (two channels)
Quintessence Audio Stealths: I'm sure you haven't heard of these.  They are made in San Diego, CA, USA (where i live) by Tom Campagna.  They are pretty much a few of a kind as he constantly changes the design.  I sold a pair of Genesis 2s for about $20,000. to trade into these and I've never looked back.  I"ll try to get pictures up later. They are a tall speaker in piano black; two 12", two 6", two tweeters, one super tweeter; per side.
Amplifiers for top end of Stealth are Convergent Audio Technology JL3 monoblocks Signatures.  Here's a link to Audio Asylum describing the rest of my system and room. http://cgi.audioasylum.com/scripts/system.pl  Search for severed.
My front end is an Acer Aspire 9500 laptop; 5 external 320 GB hard drives connected to laptop via firewire; Stello 100 USB-DAC nonoversampling (it's a start and sounds good, but I'll change that out as things in computer audio get nailed down; that may happen soon)
After hearing what XXHighEnd (XXHE) can do on WinXP with engine 1, I knew I had to get into Win Vista.  So upped my ram to 2 gigs and bought Vista 32 bit.  Two days ago I did a fresh install of Vista.  My laptop is only used as a transport so I also shut off as many things as possible (no firewall;I'm behind a hardware firewall, defender, in Sound Devices muted speaker and disable enhancement feature....who knows) and so far the only program I've installed is XXHighEnd-09d; the version I was using on XP.
I have used EAC and Plextools to rip over 1500 cds.  Each cd is ripped into a single .WAV plus a .CUE file (more about this later... but 1500 cds peter! yikes)  This summer soon I'll be ripping my classical cds; I'm guessing around 300 of them.  I set up my folders like so (I'll use Yello as an example since you like them); Yello (folder) under which is > Yello - Stella (folder contains single wav/cue file) & Yello - You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess (folder contains single wav/cue file)... all I can say is at least I was wise enough to use wav files and not some other format so I can use XXHE.

Before XXHE I thought I was getting very good playback using foobar 8.3 with foo_output_asio(dll)_047a.7z > asio2k (kernal streaming didn't work for me... Stello usb-dac?) > bypassing kmixer (my xp had no sound card listed; I had things shut off well).  All I can say is from the get go XXHE blew my foobar setup away (foobar had beat all other players I tried to date; winamp, J Rivers...).  I posted about it at www.audioasylum.com (where I heard about XXHE) in their pc forum and I'll be mentioning it again soon.  I've heard a lot of music systems and I'm very happy with what I've put together; Music Quality is utmost for me, not convenience or features.  I've heard some great sounding transports/dacs in my system (mine and friends; best was an Oracle transport with an Altis DAC... I think altis was the name, i'll check that again), but I just kept thinking that computer audio was the way to go.  With foobar I felt I'd matched the quality of some of the most expensive players I've gotten to listen to in my system (mine and friends), but with XXHE I can say I've finally surpassed all optical playback front ends.  I'm that happy and sure.  The Stello dac has really surprised me, but now that I've reached this level on the transport side I'll probably shoot for a better usb-dac (Wavelength Crimson or Empirical Audio or....)

Now about ripping my cds to a single wav/cue file... ugh.  On Exact Audio Copy (EAC) you'll notice that there is a button on the left side labled IMG.  You push that and it rips your cd into a single .wav plus a .cue file, and I'm sure this is how a lot of people have their music stored. [the cue file contains all the album title info, the wav file is the music.]
 
Now that I have Vista and two gigs of ram, I can play these ~ 600 MB files.  [It takes XXHE about 10 seconds to start playing a 400 MB file and 20 seconds to start playing an 800 MB file.  The time is not a concern for me; I have a Sony SCD-1 player that takes that long to spin up and start playing my cds hehe.  I have not listened to see if there is a quality of music difference between smaller multi song wav playback and these huge full album single wav playbacks.  I'll listen.]  anyway...the problem is with these single wav files playing through XXHE I can't skip tracks (it's the whole album or nothing) and I don't get to see song titles.
EAC does have a tool called a cue splitter that works pretty fast in breaking the single wav into individual songs (faster than reripping my whole #$@$ing collection anyway), but it doesn't title the songs!!!  For example Miracle Fortress - Five Roses ( http://www.myspace.com/miraclefortress ; give this guy a listen) splits up as; Miracle Fortress - 2007 - Five Roses - 01 , Miracle Fortress - 2007 - Five Roses - 02 ,Miracle Fortress - 2007 - Five Roses - 03 ,.... but doesn't give me the individual song titles :/ bummer.
I'll be sending my $100 US in soon so I can hear an entire album... I mean I usually put on an album and listen the whole way through anyhoo, BUT please please please please please,
Could you please work on being able to read a CUE file.  I'm hoping it doesn't rape the music quality to do so, but I really don't want to rerip 1500 cds Thanks

[PeterSt]

Hey ...

Well, allow me to say that I loved reading your story. Really nice.
Okay, a few responses :

In Vista (with #3) you really don't have to shutdown anything in order to avoid KMixers and SRC's and all. XX goes 100% sure around them. But, if your soundcard allows it (without soundcard it should anyway). You can test that by sliding the Vista volume sliders, or shut off the sounds at all; -> when nothing changes you are good. Also note that the samplerate settings in Vista won't be respected either (and that's good).

Then, the quality of "complete CD WAV tracks" will not be different from the small tracks. As a matter of fact, for months I could use this means as the only means myself. No problem.

So on to the hot item : the cue files;
In another thread I already promised you it wouldn't be a problem. And it is not. Including tracknames, as long as you can see them in the withgoing cue file that EAC creates (it's just plain text). You will be able to select and play the individual tracks, and have the coverart visible (assuming you or have it somewhere, or have it stored in the cue data). The only problem for now is the priorities I must deal with.

According to the latter : I just finished the base for decent gapless playback (which doesn't bother you currently) (btw, Engine#3 only), which most probably will be uploaded this weekend. Right after that I'll implement FLAC as a first supported lossless codec, but I really can't tell currently how long that will take. I mean, it will be "forbidden" that the process of decoding influences the sound (which it ussually just does, no matter those who say this is not so -> just listen better ) and I really don't know how difficult that is going to be.

If no other things come up in the mean time, I'd say that the support for cue files is next.
(in fact there are many other things already, but these have a lower priority).
Btw, the extraction of the individual tracks from the large WAV will not "be able" to influence SQ.

Peter

[SeVeReD]

Just to be clear.  Since doing a full install of Vista on a formatted HD in the laptop, I've only used engine 3.  No need for the others.  Perhaps, since I didn't install any sound drivers for the onboard sound "card" in the laptop when installing Vista, once I did install my usb-dac, Vista recognized it as my Primary Sound Device (whew).  I was worried it wouldn't and then I wouldn't have been able to use engine 3.  My Stello USB-DAC only accepts 16bit/44 input, so I haven't been able to upsample/double.  The Stello has an option to upsample to 192khz... but I've always felt the straight 44khz to sound better anyway, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on the doubling/upsampling stuff.

http://www.myspace.com/wickedtinkersmusic

[SeVeReD]

I've been looking for a picture of my system but I can only find this that I took when I installed a screen and projector.... Let me be clear, heh, this is a music room first.  Only reason I installed anything vid is because the screen rolls up and out of the soundstage when playing music.  This shows a speaker and its amp.  I'll either find my better pics of my system or take more (for insurance anyhoo) and add to here.  I like seeing pics of peps systems too; I'm still drooling over that piano black speaker posted by someone from austrailia ... i think?

click just right of the pic to enlarge

I'm sorry I didn't post this whole thread in the Chatter forum; now that I've found my way around I'll post things in their right spots.  Any way to move it?  gnite
dave