XXHighEnd Remote Control

[SeVeReD]

I don't go through all this minimize stuff just to screw it up with network cr*p.... I'll get my fat ass off the couch to walk to my ps2 mouse/keyboard to change stuff.... cause that's the way I roll.  Quality or nothing for me.  hehe little drunk/high and still loving XXHE for life Thank you Peter... you be a saint.
edit
  Of course if you can keep my (come to think of it) skinny ass on the couch, I guess that could be cool.  But SQ over all.

[s_chris]

• Fully working right now, and available per (due) 0.9z-7.
  
  

Apart from the controlling device(s), there's a little bit of hardware to obtain (and you for sure won't have it). Cost : approx. 35 euros maximum.
Next a quite extensive (better : detailed) guide will be needed from my side, which has to be very precise and has to be followed to the letter. Then things will work out of the box.
Something else is needed () of which it is assumed you will have it. Later you will understand why.

Peter

Hi Peter,

when will XX HighEnd Remote Control/ new version 09z7 be available? I wonder why nobody has asked before. 

regards Chris

[PeterSt]

Oh, people do Chris, but not in this topic as it seems. All I can say is "soon now". Really.

Regards,
Peter

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Most people will think FINALLY a proper remote control for the PC.
Well indeed it is, the remote UI (User Interface) has many, many advantages/functionality options I will mention later on.

But lets think a little longer about those 2 words "remote" and "control".

It started out with Unattended playback and later on the minimize OS functions in XX,
as we know everything has an effect on SQ matters, we can easily say "less is more".

As we all know for eg. recently Nick put a lot of effort and time in this subject of "stripping-to-the-max", the outcome well we could have guessed it, again "less is more".

But the opposite is true about the current functionality.

- First I really hate this, enjoying my music, when on many occasions I had enough of the album i was litening too,
  didn't made my mind up what to play next, so when in Unattended mode its inconvenient (SQ-wise) to take a dive in my XX gallery.
  After you have found an album to play this is mostly followed by a minimal silence of 30sec or more, well what is 20-30 seconds, not that much.

  But this is about "control", I ratter don't want to get out of my chair to select another album, right!?
 
  And the genius that he is, yea you Peter, came up with the only proper solution, a "not SQ destroying" tablet-pc as remote control to serve us "the people".
  I guess, a modded XX UI with probably a kind of xx-gallery and all network functions still working while playing music.
  So now its possible to select an album while still enjoying music + all the network functions still working,  for eg. go thru an album review online, just for fun.
  Also, now its finally possible to get a decent functional 'playback timer' or 'remaining time function' working.
  Not to mention all the "geaky" functions most other software players have, are again for the grasp. (think, LastFM, displaying syncronised lyrics (yea it really works), visualisations are possible again.
  Like I said before, no restrictions, compleet "CONTROL" over your setup instead of the other way around.


  But indeed a remote control is very handy, cool and a "gods" gift to the people, but..... there is that word again, "Remote".
  Think about it for a second!

- I did somewhat longer than a second, but its not hard to understand that this is pure and simple about taking the nessasary steps to take SQ to the next level.
  Everybody thinks, wow nice, an Ipad remote control, wait till my friends see this and indeed so right they are.


BUT .... couldn't it be so that:


- Most xx users have likely a second PC next to their dedicated and costly audio pc, mostly a dedicated audio pc that most hardcore gamers would be jealous of, ....all that to play music
  I hear *them* say, what a shame.

- So, Peter, Nick can we still minimalize the audio pc more? (HW and SW wise)


You tell me........

1. Do we still need a GPU-card in there, when having remote access working ?
   The GPU-card takes most power, needs most cooling and costs the same as an Ipad, to keep the GPU cool we use expensive watercooling solutions to iliminate the need for cooling fans.
   Because some also tend to use that PC as HTPC or gaming, its a costly and capable machine afterall, what was it...........dual CPU HT 24 cores etc. etc.
   "The" machine is doing most of the time actually nothing (as should), all that processing power getting wasted for the purpose of ..... what? converting some FLAC's to wav.
   Its like going wild and taking a Ferrari to Madurodam, for some site-seeing on steroids.

   Now what about stripping some more, make a Minimalist Standalone Audio PC and keep all that processing power in your staggering working Horse, The HTPC (no, not the Ferrari),
   for more fun stuff like extreme gaming (60fps) or for eg. frame-interpolation in movies going from 24fps to a staggering +200fps, creating on the fly the needed intermediate frames, its like upsampling for movies.
   its to avoid something called Judder, you do know those fast movie action-scenes its like you experience "interfalls" in those fast scenes, just not enough frames to keep up with the action scenes or great nature scenery's.

2. Could it be possible to run the XXHE UI on the HTPC, to do the pre-process stuff, network stuff and as the residing place for your stack of music HDD's.
   Superfast pre-process using both CPU and GPU with OpenCL, to do a 1 second conversion and than send it over the network to the audio-pc.
   Which means, you have 24/7 control over your hdd's to do better things like acting as a "semi-public" music server, thus now we are taking all the audio hdd's out of the audio-pc? (incl. the SSD gallery disc)
   OK, think a step further, can it be so, correct me if i am wrong here, that the XX UI runs on the HTPC and XXEngine3 runs on the audio-pc, imagine playback won't stop untill the HTPC finished the pre-process task
   and its ready to send the pre-processed audio data over the network to the audio-pc, using for eg. a router to trigger the "green LAN" port to wake up, or something like that.
   So, with the idea, that the Ipad is not controlling the music pc but rather takes control over the superfast HTPC, which eventually means the audio-pc has no need for processing power at all,
   this could now be a simple and cheap pc and not being constant under construction and won't wear off that fast.

3. So Nick, yea..... hopefully more stripping to do, if possible, remove GPU-card + watercooling (a real money saver), reducing the power concumption and iliminating cooling (or fan) problems.
   CPU wont need a fan, just a block alu, cpu does no demanding tasks anymore. you wont even need a case fan anymore + PSU can be very simple, clean and high-effenciency and no fans are needed anymore.
   Next, how many hdd's do you currently have in your music PC, Peter ? a whole lot, having them in there will most likely never work out for the better.
   And dont forget, no more need for: monitor, keyboard and Mouse. Removing all that HW will most likely reduce the needed software and driver stuff. (maybe more OS tweaking possible, closing ports and such)


4. Unattended to the max, yea, the audio pc only sees some "daylight" when letting 700MB per album of audio data in, or selecting a next track, or volume changes.
   (this in consideration, I dont know what the response time will be for functions like that).


5. Can you explain a bit, at what stage the upsampling stuff takes place, I thought this was a pre-process, which I assumed wrong.




OK, thats all for now....



Roy


:added later:

Q: If you use a 2TB OS drive in the audio-pc, which can easely hold 2800 pre-processed albums, why deleting them directly after playback ?

2800 albums can be very big favorites gallery, or........
Just a thought.

[PeterSt]

Roy,

The idea is interesting and good by itself, but I think I can make a few remarks which make it fail for parts of it, or will make things moot perhaps.

First off, your base is the HTPC or something similar around as the work horse. Ok. However, these days (and with some more experience by now) that same PC is used for audio just the same. And no, earlier I stayed far from such a combination, but today it is harmless. Again, with some experience on how not to destroy what (of the other).

You assume no "super processor" is needed for good SQ (and suggest it is for converting FLACs fast only). Well, sadly such a processor *is* needed for good SQ, whether because of its horsepower or the threads it supports.

In between some lines : indeed it is not so that Arc Prediction is a pure preprocess. It is to the audio engine itself, but it is "in memory" and in the end part of the audio engine. Just think of it ... make 32/705.6 out of 16/44.1 and take your time waiting for it to be stored and (/or only ?) transfer it over a slow whatever line to the slim audio PC. It will never work for this reason alone ...

Whether a graphics card can be left out of the audio PC (per the remote means implied) ? I don't think so, but maybe it can. Maybe with certain remore software it can. Matter of trying.

The 2TB OS drive etc. ? I think this is a bit of a moot thing because we can always do such a thing. Maybe a conveniency function is needed to not make it an explicit task (preconvert what you think you will be playing the next couple of days etc.), but in the end, of course, we can just store WAVs instead of FLACs. I mean, if *there* the problem would emerge (like needing a fast multi core processor for that part) it is solved easily.

Generally, no external "NAS" like storage is fast at all, and I even say not fast enough. It may be a matter of what you are used to, but for me it doesn't work. Only with USB3 things are feasable (says me), so if the connection between PCs is USB3 ... okay. But then still that audio PC needs the horse power again to drag it in fast. And it needs USB3 of course.
But for argument's sake, let's say "we" can overcome this little issue. But careful about that slim PC, because within no-time it won't be slim anymore for other reasons (like this one).

The idea about the superfast conversion in the work horse will vanish completely by the inability to make use of the PC's cache. So, after the conversion has been done, a next copy of the file (to whereever) will be read from memory. This may be 0.05sec for your 700MB album. Compare this with any network traffic between PCs and you will know that you'll never get there. Never. Such a process will take a sheer infinite longer, although it will still be a couple of seconds at most. But the point is, these processes are sequenced in sometimes numerous steps. Take FLAC decoding, HDCD decoding, Volume Normalization as an example and each time those couple of seconds are added. Per track actually when we'd say that (in extremo) a one core processor would be enough. Well, sort of, because you now talk about "single tasking" network traffic and although files can pass in parallel, the speed of it will more than linearly decrease. An estimation with FLAC decoding only (8 tracks on a cores) ? something like 45-60 seconds instead of 1.


So no, it all won't work (at all) for all the reasons together. But, some things could. Now it depends on the need though, knowing that the audio PC will remain that work horse within itself.
Your ideas about the iPad and apps like Shazam are perfect of course. They are all done on that "remote" while music plays undisturbed. You can almost say : who needs coverart - no name something. And there is more, or there will be more.
Actually all your ideas are good, but if they won't work (out), well, they won't. But the base idea is and remains good, and you will see later that the remote stuff as I propose it is just about such a thing ...

Peter


Edit :
With only a few minor adjustments (a couple of hours work at most) XXHighEnd can run on another machine than XXEngine3. I could make that for fun, or better, future expansion of all the things which *can* work this way. But at least you then will be able to see what really happens.

[AUDIODIDAKT]

Hey Peter thanks for your reply, hope all is well with you and the family, its been a while.


Actually it is more or less about the future direction, the most simple and "cheapest" solution would be to have just 1 PC, but it needs to be fast, sheer fast.
Because lots of people would like to use that same PC for high-end video purposes too, otherwise "we" need to have 2 super PC's which can be very costly to start off with and also to maintain up-to-date.
Personally I was thinking of creating a dual boot with 2 separate OS's, 1 for audio and 1 for video (or gaming).

Thats brings us to the Question, is it better to maybe leave out the GPU completly, OR is it possible to maybe add another one in SLI for eg. (XX SQ will be the most important thing ofcourse)
Regular people will normally never buy 2 PC's for just media purposes alone, hmmm, curious which way this obstacle brings us.

First of all the time you spended on the remote solution, is much much appreciated, really great job and much rewarding when it all works properly, belief me, baring in mind the current and hopefully almost obsolute xx UI.
When the remote is finished and fully functional, really no one is going back to the cr*ppy UI because it comes in handy or something like that.
This would be mayor step forward in functionalty and takes the xx project a little out of the geaky scene, I guess.

So Peter get it right and please take your time to do so, we need simple panes and decent buttons, like 8 or 10, 2 panes for the buttons (1 for common function, 1 for other settings), a gallery pane, lyrics pane, a coverart and additional info pane, a tracks pane, etc. (but hey thats just me, maybe some things are open for discussion)
so please no more dodgy buttons etc, also its best to just focus on how things work out on a tablet (Laptop is too clonky, Iphone is too small) to let things work right, just get an Apple or Samsung tablet, belief me.
Next, its also best to install a proper pre-tweaked android ROM version as OS, their are lots of projects on the internet about this subject, most important tweaks are already applied for you,
such as Lag-fix and reducing the memory size by half and therefore get a nice speed upgrade, to get you going, this gives you a more response controller,
the overall "feeling" will be much better and feels more natural, no lagging anymore.
Its not that dramaticly but it wont takes much effort, its mostly already done for you. (or look for "Android Kitchens" to do some ROM tweaking yourself)
And mostly they also removed the sneaky spyware which still resides in android, if you know what a keylogger does, well this is just the same, its a standard part of the Android-ROM, nice huh.


haha, who will come up the first app for xx ?


Well i am done typing for today...........
Later


Roy

[AUDIODIDAKT]

I read in several places that in theory it should be possible to run a pc past post without graphics card.

1. Check the BIOS and disable "stop on error" or "Halt on all errors"" (workaround the HW)
   This option highly depends on the Mobo.
   I think newer mobo's mostly will pass post anyway without a graphics card. (you get some beeps)

2. Maybe after that you can't get into windows, probably windows OS depends on graphics driver,
   then there is a special driver needed to fool Windows.
   A VMware driver (Virtual Machine).
   W7 I don't know ? (most likely it does boot)

You can test this, just setup a working RDC, check your BIOS, remove graphics card, boot.

Roy

[PeterSt]

A VMware driver (Virtual Machine).

Not that I thought about that in this context, but it will be the worst (tried it a while back).

Peter