Download is is at the bottom.
Activate with your existing 0.9z-7 (and up) Activation Code.
Do NOT throw out your existing 0.9z-7 (and up) version. DO install any new version in its own folder (your Activation could be violated otherwise).
Edit March 15, 2013 : A 0.9z-8-3 version existed
with a problem in it. This has now been replaced with 0.9z-8-3a.
For those already using Activated 0.9z-6 and older, please look here :
How to Activate 0.9z-7 and up.
Notice : In this version small vinyl like ticks in between tracks may appear (only for tracks with gaps in between them).
If all is right this will be the last version in the series of "XTweaks";
Many more of these "XTweaks" are possible for variations in SQ, but since there is now one "Ultimate" setting which brings it all to the extreme were it about the means of XTweaks (which is about "stability"), we are done for now.
Release Notes to 0.9z-8-3a- XTweaks Ultimate.
As you can see here, there's a new group with "No XTweaks", "Use Settings" and "Ultimate". The latter is the new one, and it applies settings under the hood which overrules all other XTweaks settings, which remember, are about stability, and it stabelizes all to the max (that is, in this same field of setting sorts).
Those familiar with the XTweaks settings will know that care must be taken with some combinations of settings, because they may disallow the cooling of the processor. For those new to this all, read the Help link as you see at the top for the general idea and what to do to find out what your processor can take and whether it will be a good thing to use XTweaks to begin with. Otherwise each of the XTweaks settings contains ToolTip help and it is really a good idea to read it all.
And so it is as necessary for even the experienced XTweaks users to read the ToolTip help on the Ultimate (radio) button.
To summarize this, using the Ultimate XTweaks setting may need to underclock your CPU.
Important notice to users of the "XXHighEnd PC" : they 100% for sure will need to do that OR rev up the fans in there.
Otherwise any PC will be able to cope with the Ultimate setting, BUT, the fans will rev up to intolerable noise.
As a bonus, your PC will be the fastest as you have ever seen, as long as you did not need to underclock first.
Please notice : Underclocking is not for everyone, also depending on the PC (motherboard). It will be perfectly allowed to ask questions on the forum on how to do it, and hopefully others will be able to help (not your humble developer though). However, it is and remains something that can easily bring you into troubles because of too few experience with it. And FYI, underclocking is not a common task to perform at all, overclocking is.
Again a notice for the "XXhighEnd-PC" users : funnily enough (or not accidental ?) there is no problem at all with underclocking, because it can be done in real time and goes so easy that a baby could do it. Again, ask on the forum when needed, and this time expect your humble developer to answer these questions.
- The new NoXTweaks setting almost resembles the same situation as is implied by renaming the NoXTweaks.tss file in your XX folder to NoXTweaks.tst. So, this latter shuts off XTweaks for 100% and nothing can be done with it apart from (notice !!) using the Ultimate Setting and it was created to avoid errors which may happen and disallow Playback at all. The new No XTweaks setting can be used when the file remains NoXTweaks.tss (as how it is from the download of XXHighEnd) but now XTweaks can be shut off dynamically. This too will prevent any errors from happening (when there in the first place), but it is more convenient at reboots, which now will not auto-apply XTweaks when booted into Minimized OS Mode. IOW, you can switch of XTweaks in Normal OS Mode and boot into Minimized OS Mode and XTweaks will remain Off (as they are are always not applied when in Normal OS Mode).
Once in Minimized OS Mode they can be turned On again (use the "Use Settings" option) and Off again when wanted.
Also notice that generally accepted XTweaks settings will slow down your PC so much that it becomes an inconvenient task to even use the Reset button (this too will shut off XTweaks (not Ultimate !)) but any reboot again engages them and you may forget but be annoyed about the slow system in the mean time. So, using No Xtweaks may be more convenient than using Reset.
- The new Use Settings choice will let all behave exactly the same as 0.9z-8-2 (regarding XTweaks and disregrading bugs like the one listed right below).
- It was found that 0.9z-8-2 unintentionally contained quite many quirks regarding when exactly the XTweaks were applied. It may be not important because nobody complained about it, but for example, XTweaks were not applied automatically when booted into Minimized OS Mode, while this sure was described in the base 0.9z-8 version and worked prior to 0.9z-8. The importance of the message now, is that 0.9z-8-3 will do that again and you may not expect this anymore (unexpected heat etc.).
- In 0.9z-8-2 it was described that it now was possible to go out of Minimized OS Mode without XXHighEnd being activated (which latter may happen by various procedural reasons at your side). However, this did not work in some circumstances. Now it does.
- The slider for the Sample Rate Umsampling did not take the normal background once after startup a new album was selected (but depending on the little slider in the left border of the screen). Now it does.
- Watch out : It has been found that track names (or album names) can exist which disallow conversion to the so-called Short Dis 8.3 Names. This does not allow playback of these tracks. This by itself has been sort of covered for by checking whether the conversion ever happened, and when not it gives an error message and Playback will not start.
BUT
In the mean time it has been found that a situation can exist where the conversion never works while this doesn't bring errors at first and all looks to be OK. One exception : when diacritical marks are in the track name or album name. Then it is a problem and errors now come from ChangeWP when the Wallpaper Coverart is used.
Now notice : both are different situations, and the former will be normally covered for by the error message you will recognize, and Playback could not happen anyway. This latter new situation though, will also prevent Playback while it is not justified. This means that people suffering from this latter situation will not be able to play anymore, only because of this message which prevents playback deliberately. Why was it made so ? well, because there's nothing in between the solution to the former situation (above the "BUT") and the latter (under it). The real problem though is the conversion not happening at all, and at this moment we're trying to sort out how that can happen. And so ... please announce yourselves when you can't play a thing anymore, so we can sort out the similarities between that one system exhibiting this and yours. A solution is there, but we want to kind of force you to run into it and tell about it.
Thanks and apologies in advance for the possible inconveniency !
- When a track name contained a dot (.) other than that from the extension, the Wallpaper Coverart cut the remainder of the track name at that point. This is solved.
- Finally the "auto moving" of the second splitter bar has been solved (thank you Jud !).
- When in Normal OS Mode, the XTweaks Time Stability (for Windows 8 ) and Time Performance Index could not be changed in Normal OS Mode. This happened in 0.9z-8-2 or maybe 0.9z-8-1 and looked like settings which suddenly needed XXHighEnd to be Activated, which never has been the intention. This has been restored to the intended situation now.
In similar fashion both these settings could not be used when the NoXTweaks.tst file existed in your XX folder to shut off the XTweaks settings. However, these both are not "XTweaks settings" as such and should remain working outside of this XTweaks shut-off. They now do again.
- In 0.9z-8-2 a longer time has been introduced for the period a track (part) load into memory can take and it was changed from 14 to 22 seconds. This has now been changed back to 14 seconds because quite some people suddenly received "stops" which can't be explained much. So, setting this back to the original value is an attempt to get this right again (no stops) although a suffcient amount of arguments exist to state that it won't help a thing.
Please report when it helps, when it does not help, *OR* when you now can't play well anymore because of this (which should be the case only for people using "huge" buffer settings).
- It can easily happen that a first Playback attempt with the "ALL Services" shut off in e boot session, brings an error. Nothing changed to this, and re-attempt Playback one time in actually all cases solves the problem. However, the way the error emerged was not much friendly, and new messages were created for it with some explanatory text and what to do next.
- New buttons were created to quickly jump to pre-defined music roots. Please see here about it..
So, in the Embedded Explorer buttons were added to jump to the Music Root as defined in settings, to the Demo Gallery as defined in Settings, to the Nice Stuff Gallery as defined in settings, to the lastly obtained music folder through the [ ... ] button at the bottom of the screen, and to the last Bookmarked Gallery Result List.
Last but most certainly not least (and with the notice this is for Windows 7) :
SQ change from this version can ge regarded something like "severe". But, as far as it was found here, you'd *have* to apply all (and that means ALL) of this :
- Activate Stop ALL Services (bad luck if you need a NAS or are persistent in using Remote Control).
- Activate XTweaks' Ultimate (bad luck if you need underclocking and you don't know how to do it).
- Disengage your Paging File. See here how to do that (bad luck if you have 8GB or less of memory (you can try, but expect unexpected errors eventually, especially when you use the higher Split File Sizes (SFS))).
- Activate Peak Extension (this is merely to cover for what we call a compiler bug and which exhibits a too fresh sound otherwise).
- Change your XTweaks setting "Time Performance Index" to "Not the best". Notice that this one is a bit doubtful because at us it emerged earlier than most of the other settings in this list, worked for the better - and on top of it the remainder emerged. It was never changed back.
- And a sort of shocking : Do NOT activate Phase Alignment.
The latter is shocking because of all the work involved at not only our side but also yours (to get it going in well fashion), but merely because -if all is right in the two ears here-, it now appears that when first more other things are right, Phase Alignment is the wrong thing to apply.
Please do not bother to only deactivate Phase Alignment and think "what the h*ll, I can do without the other subjects" (above) because you will be disappointed.
Still disappointed ? don't hesitate (at all !) to say so, because remember, two ears are two ears only, and you have thousands.
For the Release Notes to the previous 0.9z-8 versions
see here.
Switch Off UAC (User Account Control) before any first attempt of starting XXHighEnd.exe !
However, if all is right this will be arranged for automatically.
Edit : It was only found recently that the Device Buffer Size in the Settings Area defaults to 4096, which is already so for "years". This really is too much for many DACs/Interfaces. Please change that to 1024 at your first playback attempts.
