XX Stopping

[Scroobius]

Hi Peter - I am finding that with longer tracks say 10mins and longer XX suddenly stops part way through the track after say 5mins. The XX interface comes up as though it had finished playing the whole selection.

Sometimes (but not always) after this has happened PA will not then engage and I have to switch engine4 off switch off XX and then start again to get it to work properly.

P

[PeterSt]

Paul,

Now *that* looks new to me. Although, I recognize a part of it.
Can it be that you hear the PA shutting off and on again with in the middle some seconds of silence ?
If that happens to you - recognizable by itself. I never noticed the PA being Off after that, but I reckon this can happen.

So notice that something tells me that the OS can't cope with the more "severe" processing the lower SFS requires for a longer time. So, actually always - at a certain amount of time into the track - that stall happens here the same.

Let me know your responses ...
Peter

[boleary]

Just came in from a long drive across Pennsylvania, fired up XXHighend, qued up Cat Stevens,and started reading this thread. Non of the Stevens tracks are more than 4 or 5 minutes long. While reading Peter's reply what Paul described happened here. Felt a little creepy! Anyway,  there was no issue with PA not engaging after restarting the track. With 9Z-7-5, I had the same thing happen maybe three or four times. It was so random and infrequent that I never posted about it.

[arvind]

Hi Peter,

Playing Anna Maria Jopek/ Barefoot album, XX suddenly stopped playing in the midst of the 3rd track. I clicked play again & it starts. After 30 secs or so there is a tick where presumably PA engages.

Best regards,

Arvind

[Scroobius]

I had another problem develop later - when I started playing a track it would go into a loop and keep repeating at about 1.2 second duration.

Anyway no problem no I rebooted and all is OK.

P

[Scroobius]

I spoke too soon - no sooner had I finished writing the above than XX stopped. Odd because because it had played 7 tracks one of which was 15 minutes long no problem. On the second from last track bosh it stopped. No problems with PA after that it seems to be working OK now.

I shall investigate if it happens with a bigger SFS setting.......

[PeterSt]

I only now realize what's happening here. A dead-normal thing.

Paul, you brought my attention to it per that looping situation. This is all about the actually too small SFS. ever back in the Release Notes when the small(er than 12) SFS as introduced, I talked about it. It can work, but maybe it does not. And the "not" also implies albums-long to be okay, while another day it goes wrong 5 times on one album.

This is about super coincidence of matters which I can't capture (detect).
Ok, I just scratched an explanation with examples which became too difficult to grasp anyway, but let's summarize it by saying that the smaller the SFS *and* buffer size result (Q1 x Q1F x DevBufSize), the earlier it will happen that both internal buffers and SFS chunks end at the same sample. When this happens, sound stops (it is different, but now you have some focus).

This can happen with certain settings of either (buffers vs SFS) but it may also never happen because the both imply that they won't end at the same sample ever.
And do notice that the "construction" of the lot already implies that the lower SFS needs the lower buffer result (like an SFS of 1.2 needs a Q1x Q1F of 7 IIRC when the DevBufSize is 4096. So you are challenging things).

The whole lot is of vast complexity, because this is still a memory player (no matter you are on the limits of violating it at these small SFS and buffers), and you must think something like : when the buffer is larger than an SFS chunk allows to load, it won't work. For example, when the buffers imply a length of 1 second while the SFS chunk is 0.5 second, the buffer plays longer (and all is actually in idle mode) than the load-trigger for the SFS requires. It would imply half a second of silence.
Not that this helps you with this problem, but I try to indicate that it is all so complex by now that I don't even dream of attacking that problem with those "boundaries".

For the longer term users : I think we all now that once in a while a small silence could be heard. This at the same "frequency" as you encounter the stops from now. Back then : big deal. Today however, we *have* to stop in controlled fashion because otherwise the out-of-control disengagement of Phase Alignment will be our part. So all what happens now is the detection of when silence will be there, and when detected a controlled stop is applied.

Btw, this detection itself already is difficult, and I know that especially at the low SFS size this will happen when the PC has become too much out of order. Not fast enough anymore; two days on and such. This is especially noticed when longer tracks are in order which let spin down the disk (never mind you think it is read from there (memory cache) and when the spinup time of the disk will not fit withing the small time permitted with the small buffers and such. Can't explain this to you, but while you'd say that the huge SFS and buffer sizes would imply the problems (because much more has to be done to read and load it) it is the other way around and the current buffer playing, just does not allow *any* time lag in the other processes (like loading a chunk) because it plays only for a few ms.

Anyway ...
When this happens regularly, try to change Q1 one step (direction doesn't matter). Just so those boundaries won't fall together (or will only after 3 hours etc.). You can change the SFS as well, but as we know this is more a SQ changer, so you'd like to stay that as it is.

Hope this helps somewhat ...
Peter

[Scroobius]

Ah now that is interesting I have changed SFS from 2 to 2.1 and the problem is reduced. XX has only stopped once since changing to 2.1. Why SFS 2.1? well low SFS really does sound better to my ears and so why not?.

It is strange that this has only happened to me with classical music often that contain long tracks but the problem does not necessarily happen with the long tracks it can be on a short track (as you explain above).

Cheers

P

[PeterSt]

Paul,

Is your logging off ?
I only ask because I couldn't understand myself why yesterday the one album just played along while the other (longer tracks) really wouldn't go.

Then I dreamt about a few things and saw the light ...
Logging On with low SFS won't go;
Played the same album today without any probs ...

Peter

[Scroobius]

I rebooted (for other reasons) - I have SFS max at 30 and SFS at 2.1 so I assume that SFS max sets the contiguous memory allocation.

[PeterSt]

Correct.

[Scroobius]

I have changed everything - a new hard disc - installed W8 (from W7) - 09-z-1a (from the previous version). And I still have the same problem - XX stops playing randomly maybe once per album maybe sometimes less frequently than every album. That is with low latency settings of SFS=2 Q1=14 Q1f=1.

I would have to think that with the above Peter that your theory of a timing problem makes sense. But the problem is what can I do about it? to my ears the big latency settings just do not sound right the magic happens at low latency. Is there anything else I can do (more in hope than expectation)?

Surely someone else out there must have the same problem with the above in mind?

Paul

[PeterSt]

Paul,

If you are sure this doesn't happen with the (somewhat) higher SFS (hence you are Activated all right), try Q1 = 15 or 13.

Peter

[PeterSt]

And switch OFF Logging. This is crucial for W8 and the lower SFS.

Edit : I once had Logging On and couldn't play a thing with SFS=2. Not so at all with W7 ...

[Scroobius]

Hi Peter - I have tried different Q readings from around 10 to 20 but I still get the random stopping. I will try higher SFS say 20 to 30 but that is no good for me long term as it really does negatively impact SQ - SFS2 is where the magic SQ happens. But of course it will be useful to know if bigger SFS settings does indeed prevent the "stopping" problem.

Paul