9w-2 does not work help!

[beto]

Great, it makes sense and I am glad you do it this way in order to cut the conversion processing time.
I had been listening to 0.9v-7 for sometime and got used to the way it sounds, which I liked, but then when you released a new version, I decided to try it, because over all, you have been improving your product as time goes by.. when I heard .9w-1a I heard something new immediately, (thought its my own subjective opinion, or maybe I am going crazy! ...) but I think this new version sounds cleaner or with a little less distortion in my moderate system... Diana Krall is even better now.

and being due to the above opinion, it makes me wonder what do you do in your program to improve sound quality, if you don't mind me asking you?  do you use some sort of crossover to adjust the whole audio frequency range, octave by octave or do you do something entirely different.. its just that for those of us who like your application, it's just curiosity to know what's going on inside your processing engine. thanks.

 

[PeterSt]

Hehe those who follow the development somewhat longer know that I have one priority only (apart from improving sound) : keep all as "bit perfect" as it should be. This means nothing of the kind you may think, and no DSP (ever).

I follow the "rule" : let all come out as 1:1 as possible, and from all follows that the only thing which can be influenced is jitter in the traject towards the DAC, but even further, "in" the DAC just the same, or anyway with influencing that, say, control the (digital <-> analogue) accuracy of the DAC. Voodoo, hocus pocus, but I learned how to influence those things by means of software.

But go measure : the bits going in are the same as on your hdd ... which counts for every software player with means of bit perfect playback.
But it is not about that ...

[GerardA]

Good to know that you will fix it, (if not already fixed).. and I am also wowed to know that with core appointment I can reach a higher level in sound quality.. wow, I thought the way it is sounded good, now you have got me interested.. Uhmm...

Somehow I was playing with no appointment for some time, changed it to appointment 3 and the pc halts and restarts.
It is repeatable, maybe because I use a AMD cpu? (same with 9w-2 and 9w-3)

[PeterSt]

Is that only with Scheme-3 ?

(that is a dual core, right ?)

[GerardA]

That's the only one I tried.
(Yes, Dual core)
Now I can not test it anymore, looks like the MB is dead.
No beeps at startup, happens more to Gigabyte boards...

In unattended mode the computer stops and after a long while restarts.
In attended mode the xxhe-window disappears and I get a (Vista) message that the program stopped and I can say OK to end the program or
do a diagnosis, if I remember correctly.
Then I touched the keyboard and pc stops.

[PeterSt]

Ah, that explains ...

Oops. I hope you don't blame me !

[GerardA]

No, of course not.

I already have a lot of scr*p in the scr*pyard, and this one is still in garantee.

Only scared to try the experiment again, any idea what happens?
Maybe other members with AMD have the same problem?
I hope to fix it today and of course I'll try it at least once....

[PeterSt]

any idea what happens?

No, nothing special. Theoretically a process internally may not "want" what XX directs and that (again theoretically) may crash the OS. But since I never heard of it before (and I certainly would if it happened regularly, I'm sure) it is not likely this is the case.
How it could destory the mobo is certainly beyond my comprehension, and it will be the other way around (the mobo is not okay, and makes the OS crash -> note that when appointing more tasks to one core than normal (which is what would happen by means of using XX) certain parts will be stressed more than usual, although the only parts I can imagine is the cpu itself -> did you overclock ?!).

[GerardA]

No overclocking, no, maybe underclocking in the future!

I forgot to tell that the crash happens after a couple of minutes, 3-4,  so maybe some other proces tries to use the cpu and gets upset?
Even the music kept playing, until I hit the keyboard.
The CPU does not do much so I guess it is not overstressed, I even have a passive cooler on it. With heavy 1080i no problems.
I just bought a heavier version of the same MB today so maybe tomorrow I know more.
Hope it is not the CPU.
BTW does a quadcore sound better/worse then dualcore, in theory and or in practice?

[PeterSt]

The CPU does not do much so I guess it is not overstressed

No, but that is not what I meant. It is merely the interrupts towards the cpu (otherwise Core Appointment would be without reason anyway -> nobody plays music with a "stressed" cpu because of other tasks). And it *is* audible (Appointment) so it does matter "somewhere".

I think there is not much experience with the quad core, and the only thing I can say is that it is more prone to problems (software wise), that's all. XXHighEnd only can benefit from it because of the faster conversions (which are rather important of course).

Peter

[GerardA]

Hi Peter,

Better put your W-version in the scr*pyard!

I installed the new MB, everything working OK. XXHE playing in W3, changed to appointment 3, saved it and restarted XXHE: Blue screen and reboot.
Installed v7 over w3 and no problemo. Appointment 3 is playing now and yes, v7 sounds beautifull.
Only problem left is sometimes a song starts distorted and I have to press pause and play to make it sound normal again.

Also in W3 the songtitel in the wallpaper said : unicode track0001, and playing mp3 showed a lot of disk-activity in between songs, but was not finished before the song started...

Noooo, music stopped and pc frozen....
To be continued.

[PeterSt]

Noooo, music stopped and pc frozen....

With v7 you mean ? (during typing of your post ?)

The UnicodeTrack0001 thing I recognize from 0.9v-2a or something (it was an intermediate version).
Please tell me as exact as possible what you play in this case (MP3 etc., AA box ticked or not and whether it's repeatable).

Only problem left is sometimes a song starts distorted

Like completely unrecognizeable ?

[GerardA]

The music froze while I was almost finished typing so I had to delete a big part.
This was v7. I had to restart and even the bios was automatically reset from the backup-bios.

It was a new mp3-musicalbum I never played before.
So now I'm trying a flac-album, after 9 songs with apointment 1, unattended, nothing else ticked, the music stopped and the screen comes up, so I start song 10 and it sounds distorted (recognizable, but unlistenable, like an fm-radio picking up static from an engine).
So pause again and play, now it can not find unicode_track0001(?).wav and vista shuts xxhe down. Restart and start song 10 (now with apointment 3) and everything looks ok again.

The album I'm playing now is quite long with separate flac-songs.
It sounds wonderfull.
BTW the replacement MB has better mosfets, chokes and capacitors. Any Idea this will make it sound better?

Update: 4 more songs in apointment 3 and stops, restart ok, one song more: reboot.
On reboot DMI-table gets updated...

Again XXHE started says: length can not be less then zero, parameter:length.
Then restart: xxdat0002.dao is in use by other program, ignored and plays again 1 song. (but now no apointment)
After that the XXHE-window comes up again. Play one song, stops. Another song, now the next one starts by itself, but distorted.
pause, play,ok.stop,play etc.

Hope this helps!

[beto]

BTW the replacement MB has better mosfets, chokes and capacitors. Any Idea this will make it sound better?

Hi Gerard, do you mind telling us what brand/model motherboard you have, it sounds to me that you have a motherboard
problem, for what you describe, because when you say that your Bios get reset by XXHE, that is really rough..

I replaced my motherboard an Asus P5k with a newer Gigabyte with a better codec, capacitors, it seems to have a better filtering section for the voltage rail too... and it definitely has better sound especially in the lower notes, I am loving this  board, I tell you that..

[GerardA]

Hi beto,

It is a ma78gpm-ds2h and replaces a ma78gm-s2h. That one did not start up anymore, this happens a lot to this board according to the fora.
The new one works perfect (until now..) for everything but XXHE.
If a MB can improve the sound maybe it is interesting to find out which ones are recommendable.
Seems AMD can have a problem, or are other people playing happily with AMD?
And I did not tweak it to death, so maybe it is some process not running for everybody that interferes with XX.

Which powersupply is recommendable, soundqualitywise..?