XXHighEnd Model 2.08 - Easier Install, More Tidal, MQA Testing, SQ improved

[PeterSt]

The Full Download (2.08d) is at the bottom.
UpgradePatch on to 2.04 and beyond is below the Full Download.

For those without Paypal - other means of payment and Activation are possible. Contact sales (at) phasure (dot) com for that.

For the Release Notes of 2.00, look here : XXHighEnd Model 2.00 - New Filters & Extended Remote Control.
Install any new full version in its own folder (your 2.00 Activation could be violated otherwise).
Install the UpgradePatch only over version 2.04 or any newer version (up to 2.07). Thus, the UpgradePatch208.Zip file does not go into a separate folder but is to be pasted over the XX folder you are currently using.

XXHighEnd runs fully fletched on Windows Vista, Windows 7 (advised SP1), 8, and 10 , advised Builds 10074, 10565 (both formally expired now), 10586.0 and 14393.0. Please notice that for Windows 10 it is best to use the advised Builds (see the four mentioned) because each Windows Build changes and when not anticipated, it is usually not for the better regarding Sound Quality.

Highlights 2.08

More work than ever went into this version and it shows by the long list of Release Notes more below.

One of the key elements of 2.08 is the different approach on the remote control and how it interacts with the audio playing program and controls. You will notice this in the immediate response to crucial commands (not all of them yet), like Stop, Volume Up / Volume Down, Next Track. Mind you, we are talking about Unattended Playback here, thus without SQ interfering GUI. Thus for example, the command for the Next Track a. goes instantly and b. goes without even a gap.

Another important functionality as such is the now (hopefully) completely seemingless install (mind you, in the environment of an Operating System allowing for about nothing "we" want). Thus, no matter it is Windows 10 and its "app" environment, XXHighEnd should now just run without any installs or hiccups in the procedure.

The greatest impact should come from new Tidal functionality like the support for Playlists and integration with MQA playback. For those who do not know : MQA stands for Master Quality Authenticated and while half of the world thinks this is a hoax, "we" should approach this objectively and give it a listen. For that, it first had to be supported, with the notice that XXHighEnd is the very first to do so on the Windows platform.
Let's keep in mind that your humble developer (HD) has decided (via a very long tour) that MQA should not be implemented as advised (by MQA ltd), but as only the first half of a theoretical whole, the 2nd half only being detrimental (says HD). For insiders, this would be "a software implementation only", and HD says this is for the better (remember, Phasure does the hardware just the same, when it is decided to be for the better).
Also quite important to know is that the implementation chosen is to be regarded a test. This is almost a legal thing, as nothing has been approved by any instance, which means it can not be formal. However, since the implemenation - including its physical ignorant means to do it (no different from the Tidal implementation as her base) - has been done so in order to squeeze out the very best SQ possible (which is very different from dumn (e.g.) Tidal Player streaming), the cause is the best imaginable : judge MQA.
So what the above tells, is that by means of XXHighEnd, MQA can finally be judged to its merits (this really is not possible elsewhere), and this requires the "test" setup for you guys and gals first. Without that it would be your HD's ears only and as we know it does not work like that.
What could be important is this : MQA can be quite unlistenable, which according to your HD springs from "too much digital". This may come across as strange, but since the existance of the Lush USB cable this is now an apparent phenomenon. And, this same Lush cable seems to be a necessity for MQA (?). So before you debunk MQA because of hurting your ears, please keep this effect in mind.

Release Notes 2.08

• The Install should now go the most fluently. If not, please report.
  Part of this is the "zip" file which has been re-instated to .Zip indeed (has been .Rar for a very ling while).
  Edit Oct 1, 2017 : No, it now appears that today's Windows versions check for the origine via the ZIP method of packing and finds the source insecure. Now all the files must be manually unblocked before they can be used. So we will continue using RAR.
  
  
• There has been an anomaly with Bookmarking a Library (folder) and returning to it. The scenario : You have a Tidal Library folder and with that one on screen in the Library Area, you know you want to revisit that regularly. You also set (it) to sort on Date/Time creation (in the screen under the Search button).  So you use the [ B ] button at the bottom to Bookmark it and its settings. This can be retrieved by means of the [ B ] button in the left pane (Library Area active). Now, bringing this back including the (sort) state of it, did not really work out for a few reasons. Now this works.
  
  
• Just a nice bullet point : SQ should have improved by some minor but important change.
  
  
• For Unattended Playback it is always the strong advice to use the XXOSK.exe and in the format you see below.
  
  
  
  
  This now avoids the Alt- key combinations and besides it is made for the remote (tablet and such).
  Especially when using this (or at least all the test have been applied to this), using Stop (Alt-S) is now immediate (still slightly depending on set buffer sizes, but minor).
  Next (Alt-N) is even more great, because the start of the next track is now virtually instantly. Also, it goes gapless (with some times nice effects). On a side note we noticed that it looks like Windows 7 might have problems with showing the new Wallpaper of the newly playing tracks, but only with higher SFS buffer sizes (say like 20 and more).
  Volume Change (Alt-U and Alt-D) are also "quite instant" but are now more subject to buffer sizes. And, depending on the SFS buffer size this goes more immediate and fluent, or less immediate and less fluent. But either seems to mutally exclude the other. Meaning : with a relatively low SFS buffer size of 1 you will encounter some hiccups at the change but the change is immediate, but with the higher SFS of e.g. 4 there are no hiccups but the change takes place in 0.3 secs (instead of 0.01). In other words, there is no need to complain about this because we know and we also know it is quite "impossible" to solve this. But you will see you will prefer it over any old situation ...
  Please notice that some more commands can be subject to this new "instant" means of responding, but this will be for 2.09.
  Lastly, it seems that Pause is not operable really; it stops already, but proceed after Play does not work (restarts the track).
  
  
• The playback of Tidal tracks is now more intuitive than it was, regarding what to do in order to get it to play. Meaning :
  A fast internet connection assumed (like 100mbit/s) will preload any not explicitly Prepared track (or album) into memory on the fly and will commence playback in a few seconds (mostly depending on the size and less depending on what conversions need to be applied). This is now up to explicitly playing Attendedly, which actually never has been supported for such a thing. Fact of course is : this now can not imply gapless playback. And always keep in mind : it is the explicit goal of XXHighEnd to not let interfere any processing other than audio playback itself, with SQ. Thus for example, converting a track from FLAC to WAV is not to happen during playback, which thus does not happen. And for your full understanding : this is what Unattended Playback is for, where all of this happens in advance of playback. This includes the preloading of Tidal tracks (and decoding from FLAC to WAV, or, as we will see later, decoding from MQA to WAV).
  Anyway, what's changed per this topic is that Attended Playback is now more robust regarding this, and you can happily press Play on an unPrepared Tidal track.
  
  
• There was a bug in the ending of Demo Play Time which caused a windows error to pop up. This is now solved.
  Do notice that when Demo Time ends, lastly changed settings (for this XXHighEnd session = since it was started lastly) are not saved.
  
  
• A really great new functionality is the working with Tidal Playlists. But a small downside right away : Tidal Playlists can not be searched for (they could be listed, which dumn functionality we omitted as this is quite useless, see more below) so they must be handed to you by one or the other means. This with the notice that one of the means is the Tidal Player itself BUT this is about Public Tidal Playlists only and many of them you won't like or imply some kind of commercial (advertise an artist etc.), so what to do with that in reality. Anyway, gping voa the Tidal Player would bring you those;
  
  Everybody can make Tidal Playlists privately, with the notice that these can be accessed by the public just the same, if only the ID of them is known. Side note : people make these Playlists via Tidal and (so far and possibly forever) not via XXHighEnd.
  Although various means exist to copy the URL of such a playlist, generally look for the "Share" option in Tidal. Thus, click that,
  
  
  
  
  see the URL appearing in a pop up,
  
  
  
  
  click there and als apply ctrl-c (copy) and ...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  paste in there (mind the caption of the Search button which must address Tidal (Srch TT). Now click the Search button and end up with
  
  
  
  
  But now the fun only begins, because what comes from this, is this :
  
  
  
  
  and this :
  
  
  
  
  And we see a couple of things Tidal itself can not do. This is :
  
  a. A playlist sequence which is equal to the person creating it which your HD regards totally crucial (if you build up a Playlist, you like the one playing it to see your own build up with dedication).
  b. Coveart which belongs to the album where the track of concern came from.
  
  
• Proceeding on the above, look here :
  
  
  
  
  This is a rightclick on the Coverart in the left pane, and now we are going to abuse that to get the whole Album of the Track selected. Again we pas in the search screen :
  
  
  
  
  And there we have it :
  
  
  
  
  with of course its individual tracks :
  
  
  
  
  This is really so easy and fast to do.
  
  What your HD does himself, is playing such a Playlist and each track he likes, he puts to his Demo Gallery (Alt-Z) or one which he created for the purpose (Ctrl-Alt-Z under Cmd-2 - see XXOSK screenshot above) and later (say next day) he visits everything in that Gallery. Now *because* tracks of this never really played album are listed as "interesting", the next you'd do is Prepare each of them, and later play them as a whole.
  In the end this is really a greatest means to explore new music and all you do for it is playing a Playlist from Tidal which looks interesting to you.
  
  Keep in mind that I now used an example of a Playlist from Tidal herself, while it maybe merely is the intention that people who made one themselves, or found one elsewhere, passes this on and all we do is copy-paste the URL in the same (or very similar) fashion. A while back a topic was opened for this : Forums with Tidal Playlists.
  
  
• In the same field you saw above, not only URLs from Playlists can be pasted and searched for, but also the URL of an Album (we actually dealt with that example above without really noticing) and also the URL of a Track will work. Edit Oct 22, 2017 : No, this latter does not. It will for 2.09 but when pasted in the field for the Track Name.
  
  
• If we look at this :
  
  
  
  
  and watch the "playlist" in the search field near the bottom, we see that the Library Result is now filtered on playlists. This is because a Playlist has this term in the path.
  So it is easy to find back the Playlists you use(d) from Tidal.
  
  
• Suppose we load the Playlist with the Police coverart. One of the tracks (from an album is this one) :
  
  
  
  
  But look what rightclick shows under the mouse pointer ...
  If this option is chosen, this can be the result :
  
  
  
  
  and it would tell that there is no need to obtain this album from Tidal, as it is locally present already.
  Notice that this search function is quite rudimentary and uses the Album title only (could be way more smart).
  
  
• It always has been so that the Normalized Volume shown was of the last track which went to the Playlist Area, instead of just the one selected to play (first). Now the latter is in order and avoids confusion.
  
  
• The XXHighEnd screen could grow wider and wider, after it was minimized to the Taskbar and brought back from there (each time brought back again wider). This has now been solved.
  
  
• When the Volume was changed in XXHighEnd's GUI while Unattended Playbck was going on, this resulted in a later inconsistency between the two playback mode. This is now solved, if all is right.
  
  
• As we can see in one of the screenshots more above, the Search screen now allows a "MQA Only", "No MQA" or "All";
  This is for example about the explicit wish to never see an MQA album in the result, because you have the idea that MQA albums are no good to begin with, and you are not interested in them. However, do notice that an album in the Search Result is tagged the MQA logo, when the album is MQA encoded indeed.
  
  
  
  
  (also see the smaller picture in the beginning of this Doors album).
  Similarly you could be interested in the MQA albums only (of your favourite artist).
  
  
• MQA Albums are supported in a transparent fashion BUT do notice that this supports (for now) only counts for albums obtained from Tidal. Thus, might you have your own (like downloaded from highresaudio.com), they will not play with the first "unfold" and play only undecoded (which plays all right, but which is no good, really).
  The only thing you may notice from it, is that at the start of Playback the MQA decoding takes place and which may take 10-20 seconds, depending on the length of the track. On the other hand, all the processor cores you have will be put forward to decode MQA, so if you have 10 cores and 10 tracks, the 10 tracks will be decoded in parallel and still take 10-20 seconds only, for the complete album.
  Of course this anticipates Unattended Playback, as usual.
  Please take notice of the fact that Tidal is required, it also requires a XXHighEnd license to play MQA in the first place. And, for those already in possession of an XXHighEnd license, this MQA support is virtually for free.
  And never to forget : in the best Sound Quality possible which explicitly does NOT anticipate MQA hardware (an MQA DAC).
  
  Otherwise notice all the MQA indications you'll receive :
  
  
  
  
  Thus, you'll see it on the Coverart in general, in the same place where the HDCD logo can show on the GUI but now with the Authentication color involved (in short : green for being recognized as formal MQA, blue for (additionally) authorized by the artist (production facility) and lastly imprinted on the OSD Wallpaper at the bottom (again where the HDCD logo can appear), here also with Athentication color.
  
  For those who wonder : no, unlike HDCD decoding, it is not possible to stop MQA decoding for an MQA encoded album.
  
  It could also be important to know that since this software decoding is applying the first unfold only, the result for sampling rate after decoding will be 88.2Khz, 96KHz, or just 44.1Khz/48Khz. Thus, never more that this, although the Album could be denoted "192 KHz" etc. Notice that this behavior of XXHighEnd is quite consistent with the general perception of what would come from (the genuinity of) the further unfold to higher sampling rates (which is to be perceived as "nothing much", while this first unfold can really "be". So here again, the best SQ is the aim, and this allows no fake.
  
  
• If we look more closely to how a Tidal Search Result is filtered to that Result only presenting what you searched for, you may notice that for MQA searches ("MQA Only") a "&{mqa} is added to the original Search String (the one you gave to the Search function). Thus, since the results are to show MQA only, *while* your Libray Area may contain results for non-MQA results already, this additional {mqa} is now a filter because it is in the name of the album (see screenshot above, right side - the "{MQA}"). The "&" in there is just the "and" means for searches, although this is only known from some Release Note in the past (read : you may not be aware of the Search Facilities regarding this).
  Remark : If you'd want to see the non-MQA results in a Search Result with MQA albums in there, this is not possible (this would require a "-" or something, which excludes a string from the Result, but at this time this does not exist).
  
  
• Mainly for observing the base quality of MQA tracks, this new functionality emerged :
  
  
  
  
  Notice that this can be done for Tracks only, but, that you can load the Playlist Area with whatever you want, and select more Tracks at one time and hand these to the Spectrogram function.
  When finished, the track will appear in the Coverart Area (right pane), when the Show Data button is active :
  
  
  
  
  You can double click it so see the large version of it, so you can judge the merits of this MQA decoded Spectrogram.
  
  
• For Windows 10 there's a version of IrfanView installed, just because Windows 10 latest PhotoViewer software is unworkable. This is general, but the showing of above mentioned Spectrogram makes this change mandatory.
  
  
• Again a change has been made to the means of determination of the Year of production of an album (obtained from Tidal). If all is right it now just is the oldest date to be found in the data, with the notice that a "2017 Remaster" in the description of the Album will lead to a Year prefix of 1972 when that was the first release of the album (that is, when this is obtained in the data as provided by Tidal).
  
  
• The little slider for the Sampling Rate could be hidden, caused by some anomaly. This is now solved (can still happen but now in the most rare cases).
  
  
• It only recently appeared that when the Sound Device was changed in XXHighEnd, this did not come through to the Sound Engine (XXEngine3.exe) which thus could create quite some hairpulling at changing the Sound Device for any obvious reason - that leading to no change anywhere.
  With apologies that this has existed for quite some years (till 1.186 or so) this has now been solved.
  
  
• When an Item is clicked in the Library Area, the Coverart (etc.) contents of that Item will now show in the Coverart (right) pane. Previously this only happened to selected tracks (for playback).
  
  
• The general working with Tidal Searches has been sped up largely when many Albums are in the (old !) Result List. Notice that it is *not* the idea to clear the Result List (the in Settings denoted Intermediate Files Folder), but, that this list ca grow to 10,000 Albums easily, always bothering you because the list is always enumerated in full, prior to filtering out your last Tidal Search. In the end part of this still happens, but a first determination of what's in there (and to warn you about possible deletion of it) now takes a fraction of a second (for 10K Albums) instead of 10 seconds.
  
  
• If all is right, The Windows Update Service is now definitely shut off when you ask for that (see RightClick on the Stop button). However, remain careful when connected to the Internet and always anticipate Windows Update "breaking through" anyway; As we know we really do not want our preciously selected and set OS to be molested by unknown new (broken) facilities.
  
  
• It appeared that the Coverart from Tidal abusively was named Front.jpg. This shouldn't have bugged you really, but in certain specific situations this is not convenient and in the end not intended. Now they are named Folder.jpg as should.
  
  
• A (hopefully) great improvement has been applied to scrolling through the Tracks in the Playlist Area, the time it takes for the system to respond, and what you see of it regarding the current Coverart, plus the Normalized Volume of the selected track;
  As we may recall from infinite history, a track need to be clicked three times in order to show its current data (mentioned in the sentence above). Now this is
  - one time for showing the Coverart (really necessary when working with the new Tidal Playlist feature);
  - one other time to show the actual Normalized Volume (omit this extra click and the Volume of the last twice clicked track will show).
  As a result one can also scroll through the Playlist with Down-/Up-arrow and see the Coverart instantly change.
  
  
• If we recall the explained possibility to copy a Tidal URL from the Coverart showing in the left pane (to next give this to our own Search - see more in the beginning of these Release Notes), then we may notice that this exact same copy is the means to pass the URL to someone else. Thus, I just applied the copy of the Ben Harper album from the last couple of screenshots, and this comes from it :
  https://listen.tidal.com/album/77644599
  So if you feed this to the XXHighEnd Search (or to the Tidal Player) you will receive this (MQA decoded) Album.
  And here is the same for copying the URL from a Track (see RightClick on a Track in the Playlist Area - and this one is from the "By My Side" track :
  https://listen.tidal.com/track/77644610
  
  At this moment it is not possible to copy the URL of a Tidal Playlist. But as explained already, any underlaying Album (from the Track in the Playlist) can - and which just again is the Copy URL function on the Coverart in the left pane.
  
  When the source of the Album is not (a Stream from) the Internet, the option to Copy the URL is grayed out.
  
  
• Previously, when more Tracks were selected for Unattened Playback, only the first Track of that selection showed when bringing up (the) XXHighEnd (GUI). And, after clicking one of these tracks, the other selections appeared again.
  Now the complete selection shows right away, as should.
  
  
• When a filter has been set on the Search Result lists (the fiters only work on local data) ...
  
  
  
  
  then this now shows on the GUI :
  
  
  
  
  This is a kind of necessity in order to understand our Result Lists of everything, as the filter applies to everything (like changing our Library selection from Nice Stuff to Demo).
  
  
• Although not 100% sure, chances are fair that since 2.07 the running time cursor did not position on the current playback position, after XXHighEnd was brought up from Unattended. This is now solved.
  
  
• It appeared that the [ X ] and [ T ] buttons near the bottom, were positioned over the Scrollbar of the Embedded Explorer. And, at some more special Remote setup this is quite disturbing (prevents access to the Scrolbar). This is solved.
  
  
• There's official support now for Windows Server 2016 (and an OSIsW2016.tss coming along with it, to be renamed to OSIsW2016.tst in case WS2016 is not automatically detected - see Release Notes elsewhere).
  
  
• The OSIsDifferent.tss file has been deprecated; it is not necerssary anymore to rename to *.tst (it is not there any more anyway) when one of the others (.tst file of OS of concern) is to be applied.
  
  

Possible Issues

• For the MQA Decoding, a set of DLL's are necessary and it depends on your system whether they are already installed or not. For a Windows 10 OS it is assumed they are (but it still may depend on the Build number (like 10586.0 etc.).
  MQA Decoding happens at pressing Play and when the set of DLL's is not installed, you will receive this message (or a very similar one) :
  
  
  
  
  Never mind the Dutch or whatever shows up in your own language, but see above the mouse pointer and the DLL file missing.
  To solve this, find these files in your XX folder :
  
  
  
  
  Now carefully examine whether your OS is 32 bits or 64 bits.
  For 64 bits unzip the 208VCRT-x64 file to your XX folder.
  For 32 bits unzip the 208VCRT-x86 file to your XX folder.
  Never do both and try to avoid doing the wrong one. But if it happened that you did the wrong one after all (you will now receive a message like the mentioned .DLL file is not suitable for your system), delete all the files starting with "api-ms-win-" as well as the ucrtbase.dll file from your XX folder. After that, do the right one.
  With MQA it is best to never use the proxy/caching, meaning that this button must be active as you see here and whuch works in conjunction with the [ C ] button being active under it :
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This means that decoding always takes place again at Stop-Play for a same track (or for the complete album for Unattended for that matter), which obviously costs time but is more decent (as the caching wasn't extensively tested).
  
  
  
• In rare occasions it can happen that the playback of an MQA encoded file, shows a verty glitchy sound, like a badly worn out LP (so really nothing about windows blowing). In that case quit and restart XXHighEnd and just try again. Most probably it will be fine now.
  
  
• Volume Change in Unattended may exhibit some stuttering. This occurs when the SFS (Split File Size) is relatively low (like around 1.00 and lower).
  
  
• After a fresh install it may appear that the filter on Date/Time in the Search screen is active and that the date (from and to) in it is far behind the current date, disallowing results to show. Just disengage the filter and set to None :
  
  
  
  
  Edit Oct 01, 2017 : This has been solved in the 2.08d version (the current as of this writing).
  
  
• An MQA album currently can not be Volume Normalized and Play on the fly (an error occurs or possibly distortion occurs). So first Volume Normalize it explicitly (if you want Volume Normalization to begin with) - see rightclick on the Library Area Item - and after that play it.
  
  

Reminder for Windows 8 users : As an option, don't forget to install the Windows 7 Shell provided with XXHighEnd. See the Windows7_Shell folder in your XX folder and don't forget to read the readme's in there !
Notice that this Windows 7 Shell does not work for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 and instead it will render your OS Install useless (black screen) when you install it anyway.
New since XXHighEnd 2.03 the Windows 7 Shell is mentioned "as an option" because Windows 8 now just runs as well on the Metro Desktop *IF* you get the habit of selecting the Windows Desktop first from where you do all with XXHighEnd.

After copying / unzipping the install files, just start the XXHighEnd.exe file; no Install as such is needed. See below at the mouse arrow.

However, when you are running Windows 8 or higher - have not used XXHighEnd before - and are not connected to the Internet, first read this : Windows 8 Tutorials - Install .Net 3.5.

We urge you to read this : Windows 10 Tutorials - Wallpaper, Core Schemes, Q4,5 and more.

Please report as much as you run into but do so in a dedicated topic with a catching title.
Right below here you will find the full install of XXHighEnd.
Below that you will find the UpgradePatch install which can only be used on/over the previous XXHighEnd version, but only from of 2.04. Do *not* installl this UpgradePatch on its own in a new folder because nothing will work ! Only paste and unzip over the contents of the existing XX folder where 2.04 up to 2.07 is installed.

For the existing XXHighEnd user, in order to avoid anomalies which are difficult to comprehend, it is best to kill XXEngine3.exe and AutoHotkey.exe (via TaskManager) prior to the install.

Edit Oct 1, 2017 :
If people run into the message A problem occurred with registering this track, this sprung from 2.08 and the new 2.08d (below) will solve this.
If people found that the files from the install had to be "unblocked" (also see 2.08a patch - XXHighEnd not starting) then 2.08d in .rar fashion (not .zip) will solve this.
With Attended Playback (GUI present) an error would occur after the track finishes playing (only with Logging off). This is solved in 2.08d.
2.08d also solves the unjustified message about a space being present in the install path.