DAC cracks without playing music

[hybride]

I had it once yesterday while starting a FLAC song in XX.
I dropped a song in the playlist and clicked play.
It took a long time (maybe 10 sec) untill the file was loaded. A lot of hdd activity.
In the meantime the slider walked like normal as a song is playing??
When the song was loaded the slider jumped back to startposition.
At that moment the DAC tilt's (heavy cracking)   
I clicked 'play' again and it stopped and the music started playing normal.
But u-5 is defenite an improvement over previous versions.

This brings me to a question.
Is the file loaded in memory before activating eng#3 when press play?
Why is the slider 'walking' when loading a song? 

[PeterSt]

It took a long time (maybe 10 sec) untill the file was loaded. A lot of hdd activity.

It is good that you say this, because I noticed a (to me abonormally looking) long load time too, but wasn't sure. I can't think of reasons though, although things have changed slightly in that area. I will look into it.

In the meantime the slider walked like normal as a song is playing??
When the song was loaded the slider jumped back to startposition.

This is normal for FLAC and MP3, but not intentional. Kind of difficult to solve (or better : kind of doesn't have priority and it is somewhat more difficult).

Is the file loaded in memory before activating eng#3 when press play?

Litterally, no. After press play, yes.

At that moment the DAC tilt's (heavy cracking)

Knowing what this theoretically can be (and this is not much at that stage of (not yet) playing), *and* combined with your TT story, I can only say something is wrong with the driver. So yes, I could solve something for you (which btw should not be needed -> something wrong in the base), but apparently I can't prevent everything. Example : if you'd kill the XXEngine3 process during playback, chances are high I think that your soundcard (!)/ DAC will be in the repeat loop again.

Please do yourself and me a favor. Reinstall the normal C-Media drivers and test again. And then ... please note that if nothing changes it still are the C-Media drivers being lousy (they just are).
Nor you, nor me should be bothered by an 18 euro solution endlessly, which can be solved by *another* 18 euro solution (buy whatever el cheapo soundcard just to test). BUT : If *I* could solve things for you, it is always better from my side. So it's not about that. What it is about (for me), is that I want to know what causes this. This is unrelated to solving it (ok, more or less).

Thanks,
Peter

[hybride]

The C-media site is down and, from what i have read, there are no good original vista drivers availible yet.

The C-media chipset came only in the picture because of the Dogber drivers. I don't trust soundcards in common sense of price<>digital quality. I have no problem buying a € 400,- euro soundcard if it is better.
But what do we need if we only want THE perfect interface between software and SPDIF? 
I don't see the difference in a cheap or expensive chipset. But that's what this thread is about. Maybe someone else has more knowledge about this.

One thing i know for sure; the C-media with Dogber driver sounds very, very Good.
One thing keeps my mind busy in this case. Why are the DAC tilt's gone after starting eng#1 or Foobar just once for a moment? Maybe you can analyse that and make some code to repeat that step when XX stops playing? Just to help me    
 

[hybride]

ahum..  still waiting on my new tweeter..

The good news -for XX- is that i now quiet sure can say that the DAC cracks are involved with the use of Vista's exlusive mode.
Yesterday i played with a concurent player XMplay with WASAPI (exclusive mode) output. The same cracks came up.

[PeterSt]

Now, what about "just the other" 18 euro solution ?

[hybride]

 ?  ?

[PeterSt]

Nor you, nor me should be bothered by an 18 euro solution endlessly, which can be solved by *another* 18 euro solution (buy whatever el cheapo soundcard just to test).

For saving tweeters ?
If it sounds worse, obviously it won't be a real solution. But then at least you'll now there's a potential to the solution.

[hybride]

After loading a new playlist i pointed at the first song and clicked start.
At that moment there was a continous crack until the file was loaded.
After load was completed the songs started playing normally.
Could this be an XX related issue?
Dac is at 16/44.1 no OS, only invert
The effect is repeatable 

[PeterSt]

Ahh ... I know now ...

This is related to the trick I apply to get Exclusive Mode let play modes it otherwise won't. But I didn't think of any 16 bit DAC (setting).

[PeterSt]

But to prove this ... what happens when you set DAC Is to 96/16 (!) and play the same file as before ?

[hybride]

DAC is 96/16 makes no difference.
Loading a playlist isn't the reason i found out.
It happens when starting a song AFTER the last song has played, ending with a 'no track data recieved' error.
A suggestion; is it possible to add code which checks a gap. So detect when a song is finished by its data. Then stop the player or fade out and go to the next song.   

[PeterSt]

'no track data recieved' error.

So now your are saying that all the time you get these errors but never mentioned it ? Come on now please ...

[hybride]

Normally i use 5 playlists of favourite songs which i play very often. I re-decoded these files to get rid of the 'no track data error' at the end of a song. The last few days i listened to new albums out of my big (FLAC) collection. I made a lot of new playlist's in XX. It was notable that the number of short 'DAC-cracks' increased and honesltly i didn't pay alot attention to it, because i'm using a pre-amp now. The concrete connection to 'no track data recieved' message didn't have my attention. Last evening i took some time to get it concrete. My girlfriend and daughter asked me if i has become crazy. Start-stop-start-stop-start-stop...
And don't get me wrong. Since you payed attention to this problem the mini-loops are history, DAC-cracks are a lot less. I suspect that the DAC crack issue has to do with the output drivers, not XX. But Dogber sounds so good!
I would appreciate any help preventing things through the code of XX.

[PeterSt]

I think you have quite some problems in your system, and the one I asked for several times now to eliminate (18 euro) JUST TO TEST, you won't even start trying.

As far as the status is now, you are asking me to solve Dogber's problems. UNTIL PROVED OTHERWISE.
Now please, shops are still open.

You do recognize that you are the only one, right ?

In the mean time, stop using FLACs, because THEY can be wrong as well. Then :

Please grab a normal WAV, look at the number of seconds it should run, take a stopwatch and look whether it plays as long as it should. Anyway, tell me how many tenths of a second it is off, okay ?

[PeterSt]

Btw, you might think I'm a little irritaded ... well, I'm not. But when you don't follow, say, "instructions", I just don't know what to do. Also, I don't link you can let me chase and solve a wronly working driver *if* that is so. And I don't say it is, but it has to be proved.
May you be afraid of indeed proving that, then I don't think I can do anything.

Ok ?