XXHighEnd-08a - feedback

[PeterSt]

My PC rebooted today once and that was when I was playing with the sample settings in the FirFace configuration menu with XX still playing.

I must agree with this;
Once the buffer settings in the Fireface are too low (many clicks audible), and during playing you uplift them, you'll get the blue screen of death (BSOD).

[BertD]

Additionally...

While you update the software driver then you should accept it while installing and after you have updated the software drivers for the fireface then you should see the annoying Vista warning asking if you want to use it....

Unless you did not change the rights to prevent that such message shows for the previous drivers, then it will show each time you reboot the PC....

What numbers does the FireFace show (TAB: "about" in the configuration window)

[Chris V]

Hmm ... Chris ... From theory that is possible, because of my earlier expression (somewhere) that after this timeout it shouldn't present an error. So ... as long as it does while I don't understand why ... it could cause anything. I myself never experienced a reboot, but I think it just can.
Don't try to find the cause of this for now, and just blame me. 

The computer called it a blue screen event

About the glitches ... you know my opinion about that ... just take your time to get a grasp of that somehow.

Yes I'm convinced its not XX  . I was playing with media player at high sampling rates and it did similar (not quite as often). I think Dell will be getting a call soon

One last glitch to report:
XX was making its way through a short playlist. When starting one track, the marker at the bottom was moving, but there was no sound (no bars moving in the Fireface mixer). I stopped the track and restarted and all was fine.

[PeterSt]

When starting one track, the marker at the bottom was moving, but there was no sound (no bars moving in the Fireface mixer). I stopped the track and restarted and all was fine. 

That would be something for me to address ...
So far (say, days of playing) I did not notice that, but it just could be my bad; When you have that more often, please try to recognize the pattern.

Thanks once more,
Peter

[Chris V]

My PC rebooted today once and that was when I was playing with the sample settings in the FirFace configuration menu with XX still playing. Everytime you change something on the fireface or XX settings then do restart XX to prevent that the fireface drivers get confused and trigger a blue/black screen and a reboot...

That makes a lot of sense, will remember to do that.

128 samples and all works well onder Vista and XX #3 (single, double and upsampling). No skipping here....

Lucky man

Do you use the latest fireface software driver and also the latest hardware driver (updating the fireface itself)?

Yep I use the self same software and drivers you posted earlier.

[PeterSt]

Chris, of what I understand of it ...

Go to the Dell website, find your laptop, and next find the download of the latest drivers for it ...
If you can't find where to go, call Dell Service ...

Besides that, maybe you have some Raid configuration installed ? that's (very) prone to give these problems. If so, try to test around your Raid configures hdd drives.

Yes, this is computers. But in the very end it's for a good cause. Lateron you will be explaining to others ...

[Chris V]

OK Peter, I just needed a bit of direction.
I'm on the case tomorrow

Off to bed now - well pleased with Engine #3

[werner]

Peter,

I installed XXHighEnd-08a on my MacBook under vista yesterday.
Worked right away. 2 things are remarkable though.
Like Hal3101 I do hear kind of crackles on high dynamic passages in the music.
And another rather curious thing happens. When I load a number of songs, XX starts playing
the first. Once the second should hbe heared it is silent, but the cursor moves. If you do nothing it will play the third and not the fourth and so on !
If you click 'stop' and play again it wil play the 'hidden' tracks. So out of the chair after every song. Had to start XX again every few tracks anyway.

Sounds very nice by the way engine #3.

Regards
Werner

[PeterSt]

Like Hal3101 I do hear kind of crackles on high dynamic passages in the music.

And like Hal3101 you have a DDDac ...

Of course I like to say it's not the player, but I'm carefull.
For *sure* I don't say that the DDDac is wrong, but here I'm carefull again. So a few remarks :

What you now have at hand is a player that just lets hear everything. So I'm saying : much more than #1 and #2, which already comes from those not being bit perfect in your case. So my any means #3 is more accurate.
Now, it is very very common to "detect" anomalies from the rest of the system by this. And of course you also could say : lousy player because I hear wrong things.

With the above as the context, many things could be going on, including the Dac being not ok. Btw remember, it is not 16 bit IIRC, and or it is just less, or effectively it's less. It was on DD's website some time ago, and when I last wanted to find this again I couldn' find it. Of course you can build a 24 bit Dac from it, but you'd need a cooling tower with the size of ... well, you know best.

The other angle I have is in the direction of buffering in (near) the Dac. For this matter, it's good to know that the Dac talks to #3, and from that communication follows the buffer size. It just could communicate wrongly about this ...
In the same leage is what I do with that information within #3. As I said elsewehere : this version is *not* calibrated for soundquality, and in fact it should be more or less calibrated for my own situation, or the Fireface if you want. Not that there will be settings for each Dac etc., but stuff around this can be automated, so, say, auto-calibrate. This is not in there at the moment, just because I have to find the general parameters on that for Dacs I don't know ... (like yours).

To make a long story short ... it would be good if you could analyse the problem (let's call it distortion), me knowing that these things just can be done by some (hmm) experience. E.g. if you say it sounds nice, this can't be possible including that distortion, unless everything actually is wrong, but you still judge it as ok. In that case it would be the Dac. Difficult to explain, but if that would be my communication with the Dac, there would be no way that you judge it as "sounds nice". Alsdo, there's no way that only piano notes (etc.) distort, but there are a zillion ways to let sound piano notes wrong just NOT caused by the Dac (and the player makes it profound).



The whole point (well mine) is, that the both of you have such a Dac, and now I can't think this is a coincidence.
For that matter, I'd be very happy to hear from Klaus what his opinion is.

When I load a number of songs, XX starts playing the first. Once the second should hbe heared it is silent, but the cursor moves.

Is in fact a known problem, but from #2. By that experience this should be about your Dac running much too fast ("much" is 10 seconds on one track, which btw is not so much if your track is 1000 seconds (1 % on nearly 20 minutes).
Also it is related to the fastness of the "network" where the track comes from, which then must be veeeery slow to let this go wrong.
To conclude this one for now : The last thing I had to do was making some adjustments on just this, related to new error messages I had to build in, related to the not matching sample rates from source and Dac. I did not test this thouroughly, and with that I am not saying that this is the fault of the Dac or network, but just me not finishing this part completely.

Peter

[PeterSt]

Werner,

Sadly I can't find anything wrong in the program.
Unless you receive messages which you didn't tell.

When you don't here sound, is XXEngine3.exe running (I guess you have something like TaskManager in there) ?

[PeterSt]

Torh and Werner,

Would you care to upload a 2 minute sample of what you perceive as wrong with #3 (here), and indicate what you hear at what time offsets ?

Then I can judge whether it's XX or not.
Thank you !

[hal3101]

Just added a small test track that makes noise with engine #3,

TorH

[PeterSt]

And another rather curious thing happens. When I load a number of songs, XX starts playing
the first. Once the second should hbe heared it is silent, but the cursor moves. If you do nothing it will play the third and not the fourth and so on !

As a matter of fact, today I had rather many occasions that a next track just wouldn't play (without pressing anything). But, then it wouldn't play at all anymore. So not : one not, one yes, one not etc., but just not anymore. After pressing Play, yes.

I'll try to find this ... 

[werner]

Hi all,

I dowloaded the testtrack and played it a few times last night.
I could not hear any rattles or cracks. I did not like the quality of the track so much.

I also tried to reproduce 'my own rattles' so I played the same tracks as yesterday morning. Nothing !!
To make sure that it is not the mains (I use no filter) I tried again this morning, but also no things you don't want to hear.

Just because I am curious I tried some tracks I upsampled some time ago in Linux to 48K
engine #3 starts playing them for a few (about 30) second before ending up in hissing noise.
Long enough though to hear that an EAC 44,1 K rip sounds better.

Werner

[PeterSt]

Hi Werner,

Thanks for your outlays ...

Let me first of all try to "explain" that, yes, there is a possibility that the playback quality of #3 is influenced by environmental stuff.
I only say this because it comes to me (too) that the quality is different from the one day to the other. And, I combine this with other players which are much more prone to that. In addition, I never found #1 with RME MME drivers to be unstable for this matter.

So there *is* something, and I know in which area this is, from the technical viewpoint of XX. That is *if* it is true at all that #3 is prone to be responsive to environmental stuff too. Maybe I can't tell yet, because of too few experience. For you : just keep in mind you can be just right.
For me : if this is true, I will find the means to go around it.
Anyway, please keep on reporting when you have the idea that a "bad day" is occurring again.


About the 48K ending up in hissing noise ...
You really shouldn't try this, just because I didn't test it. For that matter : please keep in mind that no one in the world is doing this currently (bit perfect in Vista outside of ASIO), and for that matter I can only tell when / if things are a bug, when I excessively tested it myself.
Also please note that things rather "officially" can be bugs, just because officially the Exclusive Mode is not supported by Vista (needed for all being bit perfect), nevermind what the MS guys say themselves. I have the MS code wherein it is excluded, and I just made that going. But to what extend ? dunno yet ...

I already found that my Fireface reports to the player that it can't do 96K 24bit, while officially it can. Is that a bug in my code ? perhaps.

Anyway, please keep on reporting all the anomalies you find, because otherwise I won't even know about them.
Thanks.