XXHighend?!

If you run xXDark420SmokXx without magic pebbles, you're going to make Little Baby Jesus very cross.

 

Where did you get the free demo for it? I'm interested to try. I've tried hq player and wtfplay. Both had different pros and cons, I liked the hqplayer oversampling configurations but it had digital edge in my system. Wtfplay had zero glare, just effortless sound but no oversampling so have to stick to the oversampler inside the dac which isn't bad. Xxhighend looks like a good blend of the two. Kicking off background windows tasks can be beneficial I guess.

What's the limitations of the demo version vs full version btw?

Regarding the usability nightmares, it's kinda ironic that everyone is happy loading trucks and trucks of vinyl with no gui, needing maintenance, but find xxhighend or hqplayer unusable. Maybe I'm just used to those stuff, but I don't find them hard to use at all. My music player is completely commandline now, and actually easier to use for me. Just a few tabs and I'm in the song, no need to endlessly scroll.

 

Without the oversampling, hqplayer sounds very much like any other bass library based player - musicbee, winyl etc. It's mainly glare from windows stack (even if you use asio). I don't think that will go away unless you have tools to disable a lot of windows background tasks, or have super well isolated usb outputs, or move to linux and take full control of background tasks.

 

I tried it recently. It's a pain to set up but sounds fantastic. Made my write up in the computer player softwares thread.

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...omputer-audio-players.134/page-22#post-342256

Thank you for the thread btw. I wasn't quite into trying more players after trying wtfplay (which sounded virtually noise free) but this one is even better due to its interpolator, apart from being low noise. Nothing like hqplayer btw (not fond of hqplayer sound).

Make sure you set windows volume to 100% and use xxhe volume controller (or the analog control in your amplifier).

 

Yeah, I bought the full version in the end, it's the only 'audiophile' software worth buying I think, and it's a steal.
Minimised OS mode is legit.