HQPlayer's Network Audio Adapter

[Hammer]

Hi, I posted this to the main HQPlayer thread without knowing this thread existed, but after reading through the 30 pages, I still have not found a solution to HQPlayer being unable to "see" my NAA which is on a Windows (Server 2012r2) machine and on the same network (192.168.1.xxx) as the HQPlayer machine (also running Server 2012r2).

 

As suggested in various postings, I have tried turning off Windows Firewall on both the NAA machine and on the HQPlayer machine, but no luck.

 

If I run HQPlayer on the machine connected to the DAC, it sees the NAA (that's running on the same machine) and I can play through NAA...so some part of it is working. I just can't see it from another machine on the same network.

 

I see that Multicast needs to work on my network in order to connect to NAA, but I don't know what that means or how I can determine if it's "on".

 

Has anyone encountered this problem that can point me in the right direction?

 

Thanks, Hammer.

[Hammer]

Yes, networkaudiod.exe is running...

 

In one of the posts I read, it sounded like there was a possibility of asking HQPlayer to look for the specific IP address of the machine running NAA. Is that possible to try?

[Hammer]

Yup...DLL is installed and I get the "failed to open audio device" error.

[Hammer]

HQP PC and NAA PC are both connected to the same switch and the switch is then connected to the router. Reason is the HQP PC is connected via fiber. In one post I read, it sounded like there could be a problem if the HQP PC has two NIC's which mine does, but I also tried installing HQP on another PC that only has one NIC and still no luck...

[Hammer]

Okay...still no luck. The dropdown box is is blank. Is that what you mean by showing the NAA ip? Or should I look somewhere else? Thanks for your help!

[Hammer]

Could you disable the copper NIC and try again? Does the NAA setup window in HQP show your NAA's ip address?

 

Thanks to everyone who offered their help. Very much appreciated. It turns out the problem was my switch. An enterprise switch which apparently does not (or more likely configured not to) forward multicast. After pulling out my hair, I created a standalone network with a Netgear switch with just the router and the 2 pc's and now, I can see the NAA. I must say the sound improvement is very noticeable and so well worth the effort.

 

Thanks again for everyone's help! Hammer

[Hammer]

Miska, will the quad core CuBox-i work with your NAA OS image? Where can I download the image? Thanks, Hammer.

[Hammer]

You are correct. To support non DoP based DSD at higher res you need Miska's kernel.

 

 

 

 

Would someone mind typing out the full command to get Miska's kernel? I am unfamiliar with Linux. Thanks! Hammer

[Hammer]

I have a couple of quad core Wandboards around and linear PSU's from a prior project and was going to use one for NAA. Off the Wandboard site, there are images for Ubuntu, but they are the xxxhf type (if that's the right lingo) vs. the xxxel packages for libasound2 and kernel on the signalyst website. I don't believe the two are compatible, but am not sure. Does anyone know if I can use a Wandboard for NAA? I'm not very familiar with Linux and so wanted to check before I spend the weekend trying to do something that's not doable! I was going to follow the instructions dispersed throughout this thread, but if someone has something that's more "step by step" they can send me, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

thanks, Hammer.

[Hammer]

I've been busy on other things, so I haven't got time to make new armhf builds. But certainly will when I find the time. At the moment my CuBox-i install of Debian is a bit messed up because I upgraded it to Jessie which of course replaced SysV init with systemd resulting in a messed up system because the kernel I had there was not configured for systemd... Fixing it up would take quite a bit of time, so I will rather get a WandBoard and start from scratch.

 

If you are ready to do some hacking, the optimal would be to modify the CuBox-i NAA image to make it work for WandBoard. You'll need to replace u-boot and kernel (zImage, dtbs and modules).

 

 

I tried until the wee hours of the night getting the Wandboard to work, but libasound2 did not install properly and neither did networkaudiod. Never mind updating to your kernel! (Trying to follow your instructions from posting #328).

 

So, unfortunately, I don't think I'm technically capable of making the modifications you suggest...are you thinking about creating a Wandboard image down the road? That would be great news! I would be happy to make a contribution towards a Wandboard in your lab!

[Hammer]

Hi Miska,

I have tried to add mcast_if="192.168.11.7" (the static address of NAA) in xml it failed.

For example I set static address 192.168.11.8 in HQ side and static address 192.168.11.7 in NAA side in interfaces file, after booting HQ and NAA can ping each other, but cannot find device in HQP if both machines are connected directly by a lan cable.

Then in swichbox and router method and the interfaces file are not set as static and HQ side can connect to the internet, after the connection of HQ-NAA being established check Tool--> Network Audio Adapter Naming, it showed 192.168.11.7, the NAA address only and other fields are blank, the HQ-NAA can work normally.

Then I connect the HQ and NAA directly via an optical cable and no more use of switchbox and router, HQ can continue to play normally !! It seems that once the connection has been established HQ-NAA can play normally via a single Lan cable !

Looking back if start from connecting HQ-NAA directly via a lan cable and use static address although can ping each other but in HQ Tool--->Network Naming, all are blank and only Name field can enter value. So I wonder if one can enter these values manually such as NAA static address 192.168.11.7 in the left and device "hw:1,0" or "hw:0,0" etc then ask HQ to search and connect the two machines and found the device and make a new xml, will this give the direct connection a chance ?

Direct connection of HQ-NAA via a lan cable is our ultimate target, hope you can help when you have time.

 

Many many thank,

 

Maya

 

 

Hi, did you get this to work? I can connect to one of my NAA, but not the other and thought specifying the ip could help. Do you know the correct syntax? Thanks, hammer

[Hammer]

Ok thanks. I tried this with Rufus and it said the image is incompatible. I tried just copying files from ISO to stick and wouldn't boot from stick.

 

I'll try Win32diskimager and see if it will work.

 

 

I tried to install the Stretch armel image to a Wandboard and it does not boot...should it? Sorry for all the newbie questions!

[Hammer]

Hi, I have a couple of wandboards I would like to setup for NAA. I tried a while back but was not able to successfully install the kernel modifications needed. However, I believe the latest version of Debian Stretch has the needed kernel patches built in. Can someone confirm this and if so, can someone post the instructions to download NAA and set it up so that it is started automatically when I boot? Thanks! Hammer.

[Hammer]

Hi, I am using the raspberry pi NAA image from the HQPlayer website and while the pi boots and acquires an IP address from my router, I don't see it listed in HQPlayer. Is there a way to reference the NAA by IP address? Or what other troubleshoot can I do? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, hammer

[Hammer]

Note that NAA is found by it's name. That you can change in the Network Naming dialog if NAA is Linux-based, otherwise you need to manually set the environment variable value. If there's more than one NAA, each needs to have a unique name, otherwise they'll get mixed up with strange results.

 

 

 

Hi, I'm trying to get multiple NAA's running at the

same time on my network and HQPlayer is only seeing one of them. Perhaps I need to change the name in the Network Naming dialog? Unfortunately, I don't know what that is. Each NAA is running on debian Linux. Thank you.

[Hammer]

You can find the naming dialog in HQPlayer under Tools-menu...

 

Oh, so I don't need to do anything like setting up an environment variable on Linux like I do in Windows?

[Hammer]

Oh, so I don't need to do anything like setting up an environment variable on Linux like I do in Windows?

 

Turns out my problem was with a faulty cable. Interesting that I was able to ssh into the device, but HQPlayer did not see it. Now that I replaced the cable, it all works great.

 

Thanks. Hammer.

[Hammer]

No, it is handled by networkaudiod itself on Linux. Windows/Mac version of networkaudiod doesn't know how to make that persist so it is different there.

 

Thanks Jussi...changing the cable solved the problem, but it's weird that the "faulty" cable with that same pi running piCorePlayer works (eg. I can see and play to it from Roon). Strange. Maybe it's a latency thing and NAA does not wait long enough before timing out? Or a driver issue? I am using piCorePlayer 2.0.

[Hammer]

Hi, I thinking about buying a PS Audio DirectStream DAC. I see that it has i2s inputs via HDMI connection and wondered if HQPlayer supports this either via NAA (say from a raspberry pi) or directly from a PC (from a video card with HDMI out). Has anyone had any experience with the DS DAC with HQPlayer? ...better yet would be NAA built into the DAC itself since it has an ethernet port.

 

Thanks!

[Hammer]

The HDMI jacks that PS Audio uses for I2S transmission do not use standard HDMI pin connections. They chose to use the HDMI connector but wire it differently for their purpose, and as such it is not compatible with any standard HDMI connections. However standard HDMI cables are compatible with it as long as they are used only to connect components that are wired according to the PS Audio I2S connection standard.

 

Thanks for the info...

[Hammer]

Hi, I'm trying to install the latest NAA on a Pi 4 running Arch Linux (specifically RopieeeXL).  It looks like NAA is on AUR but only for amd64.  Is there a way to install NAA on Arch Linux manually?  Thank you!

[Hammer]

Hi, I’m running NAA on Debian (dierptpi) on a 4 GB Pi 4 and when playing DSD256, I get an occasional pops.  After some googling, it’s suggested increasing the buffer size might help.  I’ve increased to 250ms in HQPlayer (running on a Windows machine), but the pops still show up every once a while.  Is there a way to increase the buffer size in NAA?  Or something else I can do to get rid of the pops?  I’m running XTR filter and ASDM7EC modulator on an i7 7700k machine over clocked to 4.8 GHz with a RTX 2080 Super.  Thank you.