Capless playback in version 09w-3

[JohanZ]

Hi Peter,

The harddisks are connected via e-sate to the PC. At the end of a track i hear the clicking sound of the harddisks loading a new track. In the last version of XX 09w-3 the music is not alway capless anymore.
Changing in the Settings Area the parameter "Split file at size (MB)" to 20MB, then most of the tracks are interrupted one or two seconds. When I changed it back to 2500MB then sometimes i can hear a break of a second, while expecting capless playback between the two tracks. When I checked the 'Mem' tickbox then i have the impression that i have capless playback.

Johan

[PeterSt]

Hi Johan,

Although I do not recognize anything of your "seconds" gaps, I hear clicks for weeks now on the boundaries of loaded pieces of tracks. For me this came totegther with removing the pre-amp (all being more audible because of that ) and most probably the new memory management which for me came earlier than "official" (as per 0.9w-1) but anyway is in my mind a being related and ever since wating for someone coming up with it. Ok, your "seconds" are not exactly what I meant (I really don't know how *that* happens) but it was to be kind of expected by me anyway.

Just throw 0.9w (u/i -3) in the trash bin because by now I'm sure it s*cks all over.

[PeterSt]

When I checked the 'Mem' tickbox then i have the impression that i have capless playback.

Interesting ...

And besides that, Johan, it is remarkable that you gave it the time to find this out. I too used the Mem checkbox but merely to find out whether it could improve SQ on 0.9w (u/i -3) and I imagined it did a bit. But it didn't occur to me that it removed the (btw very small for me) clicks.

And I must say, although I know what I changed, it has been a work of far more than 100 hours to get where I wanted to get for the end result, which doesn't mean I have to spend another 100 hours to do it again but right. However, at this moment I still don't have a clue on what is actually wrong (sound wise that is), but now knowing the end result I will be able to let things work similarly to 0.9v7 ... I hope.
The knowledge of this Mem box thing is valuable to this, and although you may think this is related to gapless only, to me it says more.

Thanks,
Peter

[JohanZ]

Still in version XX09x-3 i have a problem with capless playback behaviour. The only way to get capless playback is to mark the mem tick box. I was hoping that this new parameter "copying to XX ... " solves the problem. It's for me the solution to get rid of the sound of spinning up and down of the harddisk every track!
Now reading the tooltip of mem again and i see that "...you may even like the sound quality better when mem is ticked"

Conclusion mem tick box always ticked!?! (for gapless playback and soundquality)

[PeterSt]

Hi Johan,

No, I do not suggest that SQ will be better. It just may, and if so it will be about less dynamics (IOW you may have too much of it, which really happened at one of the very first versions (was not public)).

On the gapless ... I saw your CPU figure (doesn't look wrong), but I can only imagine that the CPU takes too long.
Can you post a graph of it (Performance -> Prestaties) which captures the playing over track boundaries and when you expect gapless while it is not ? Indeed switch "Copy to XX ..." on. I think that will make things very clear to me ...

Peter

[JohanZ]

Can you post a graph of it (Performance -> Prestaties) which captures the playing over track boundaries and when you expect gapless while it is not ?  

See attachments

[PeterSt]

Hi Johan,

Although the graphs show everything should be within limits, somewhere they are not. But I can't think of where and how.
Could you please incur for the problem again, but now with logging switched on and post (or send) both the XX and X3 files concerned ?
In this case you MUST be able to hear the gap, or otherwise it is of no use.

Thanks once again ...
Peter

[JohanZ]

Hi Peter,

....but now with logging switched on and post (or send) both the XX and X3 files concerned ? In this case you MUST be able to hear the gap, or otherwise it is of no use.  

See Attachments. two XX (the second one was made when i stopped XX during playback of the second track) and one X3 file

Johan

[PeterSt]

Hey Johan,

Please help me (somehow) ...

From the X3 file you can see that at 22:49:54.6965640 the loading of the track starts, and at 22:50:04.1647080 it is ready to play (look between the two ----- lines). That is half of a second to prepare the 7:41 track no matter what preparations had to be done for it ... they were applied. This is Unattended playback ...

Now wat could be holding up after the last line in the X3 log file ? I really can't think of anything.

Right after the last ------ line all is in memory, and te only thng it takes after that is playing the previous track to the end and switch over to the other track. This happens within the notice of ONE sample.

At ripping, you didn't apply something like "insert space (of 2 seconds) in between tracks", did you ?

Maybe it is time to provide me with two of those subsequent tracks bothering you ? Pleasedo if possible. Never mind if it's FLACed.

[PeterSt]

Hi Johan, I have been thinking ...

When you try this again (with the log files) Attended, I think I can see better what is hapening. That is, if it then too goes wrong. It may not, which also will tell me something.

To the ultimate I can give you a logging version of XXEngine3 I use for myself, but I can't do this right now because I don't have a consistently working version. Maybe at the end of today ...

Peter

[JohanZ]

  ....if it then too goes wrong. It may not, which also will tell me something.

In attended mode it still isn't capless (only when i ticked the 'mem' box!)

[PeterSt]

That is half of a second to prepare the 7:41 track

Of course it is not !


Ok Johan, I have made a mistake in my previous analysis ...

Let's take the last X3 log file;

Note : The trackload is allowed to take 14 seconds. This normally allows for a complete CD to load easily (a good fast system will need 7 seconds for that).

At 13:21:49 (rounded) the first track is ready to play. It lasts 1:22. So, assuming playback of it starts immediately after this (and it should, especially for the first track) it will last until 13:21:40 + 1:22 = 13:23:02. Now, 14 seconds before it ends, the next track will start loading if present. This should be at  13:23:02 - 14 = 13:22:48. However, this happens at 13:23:03 which is 15 seconds too late.

The withgoing XX file shows that at 13:21:44 XXEngine3 acknowledges that it has started, which by itself is visible in the X3 file.

Back to the X3 file; this shows that 13:21:44 the Wallpaper commences to change, but, in your case this seems to take 2.5 seconds at least. Why at least ? because this is a parallel proces (ChangeWP) and XXEngine3 does not need to wait for it. However, since it takes 2.5 seconds (from 13:21:44.77 to 13:21:47.20) before XXEngine3 comes to the stage the music file is found it must be the conclusion that ChangeWP eats the CPU time the loading in XXEngine3 needs. But, the "loading" itself only starts after "music file found" and ahead of that it hardly does anything. It is fuzzing around with the .dat files a bit, similar to what you see 13:23:03.7680290 (but which doesn't show at the first track because the first track is treated differently).

In the XX file we can see that the second track starts to do something at 13:22:57, which does not comply to the 14 seconds XXEngine3 reserves, but which includes XXHighEnd to be fast or slow at her timing. But, XXEngine3 will start waiting for the new track from off 13:22:48, as calculated before.
The XX file shows that the track is there at 13:23:00.144, thus it took 3 seconds for XXHighEnd to ... fuzz around with .dat files again. There were no conversions, nothing.

At 13:23:00.192 XXEngine3 tells that it has found the info on the new track;
X3 shows that at 13:23:03.76 it starts doing something with it. This looks impossible to me. Remember, the first track lasts until 13:23:02. So it actually has finished playing already. At that stage (finished playing) it is looking for new track data each 20ms. The 13:23:00.192 shows that it did find the track data, but it lasts 3.5 seconds before it "wanted" to do something with it. Even at being idle (the 20ms loop) it takes over 1.5 seconds to start doing something.

Johan, you have a serious problem in your PC;
Your processor seems to have difficulties with multitasking, and switching tasks in general. Try get an Intel instead (if one fits in the socket).
Besides that, you have some serious problems with hdd data access. Although, it may derive from the same origine.
Also keep in mind the very strange problem you have with not having access to the data (.dat) files if I only treat them in that one particular way (which I luckily could avoid).
It looks like you are having additional problems with the writing time to the display, which somehow may be logic for the kind of special display (and probably interface + driver) you have.

I can imagine that other settings of Core Appointment help, and the best might be "No Appointment" as well as not setting the priorities ("Nothing") might help to some extend. But reboot after changing the settings to "nothing", because nothing is not explicit, and old settings may stick otherwise.

My best advise would be to get another motherboard for EUR 80 or so and with a processor like a core 2 duo E6600 this is doable I think. I may save your from lot of troubles.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Hey Johan,

Of course you can try what difference it makes (and whether sufficient) to

a. Shut off the Wallpaper;
b. Set the "Split files" at the minimum of 12MB.

Since you say that the Mem box already helps, the latter might be sufficient already. Why ?
With the Mem box nothing is preprocessed in Engine3 and all is done in real time. This is equal to a file to be preprocessed of 0MB. Thus, set that to 12, and you'd have at least less than your current 700MB setting (which in practice would be some 140MB for the 7 minute file). This is 12MB to process against 140MB and it just could make the difference.

Oh btw, I will keep on trying to be helpful, so please do not see my advise for a new motherboard as something to leave it behind me, and you stuck with it.
Also, may the Wallpaper do the job, I think I could make something that being treated with less priority.

Peter

[JohanZ]

Hi Peter,

.....you have a serious problem in your PC; Your processor seems to have difficulties with multitasking, and switching tasks in general. 

Just recovered from a crashing systems, two harddisks problems, Network Media Tank frustrations .......you tell me i have a problem with mine HTPC

But now seriously. Your suggestion about the processor gave me the idea that it has something to do with the energy saving software "Cool & Quiet" from AMD. I'm using an AMD ATHLON 64 X2 3800+ (65W) dual core processor.  Compared to the E6600, price and consuming power is better. To get rid of the ventilation noise i am using a passive CPU cooler. Using "Cool & Quiet" lowers the CPU temperature. But it is dependent of your Vista Power Management settings. In mine case the setting was "Powersave" mode so the processor is running on 1MHz instead of 2MHz. Switching to a Balanced mode solves this gapless playback problem. (I am not sure if this switching is ok for the audio. But i need it to let the processor run in an save temperature range). So i hope you can optimise this processing time in the near future, so i can use this powersave setting again.

....other settings of Core Appointment help, and the best might be "No Appointment" as well as not setting the priorities ("Nothing") might help ....Shut off the Wallpaper,....  

Before i changed the "Cool & Quiet" setting i have done some tests with the suggested settings. But these settings makes no difference! Still no capless playback.

  Set the "Split files" at the minimum of 12MB  

When i use this setting i get on a track of 6 minutes sometimes two times a short brake in the sound and i hear the sound of the external harddisk spinning up and down. Strange because i thought that all the tracks were playing from the internal harddisk! (Copy to XX-drive by standard). I have changed this “Split file at size” setting back to 700MB. Why do I hear this external harddisk spinning up and down during playback?

[PeterSt]

Hey Johan, Good !

Why do I hear this external harddisk spinning up and down during playback?

Uhhmm ... because I have done something wrong somewhere ?
To my knowledge it shouldn't, but if you say it does ... it does. Btw, it is hard to check for myself because I can't hear my disks spin up.

But I will sort that out !