HQPlayer's Network Audio Adapter

[Miska]

4 hours ago, higginsd said:

Actual I'm using Allo USBridge Signature, which has a "quiet" and optimized USB A port. Can use up to DSD512 (1024, but nobody is able to deliver and play) and PCM 768. Also with RopieeeXL and it works as a charm!

 

HQPlayer can of course output DSD1024 and 1536/32 PCM...

 

4 hours ago, higginsd said:

These are the cheapest and most efficient ways to build an NAA endpoint for HQPlayer. I think this is much easier than implementing the NAA protocol to a propietary DAC OS.

 

This is what I use with my bootable NAA image:

https://up-shop.org/home/339-up-gws01w4g-memory32g-emmc-boardwo-vesa-plate.html

With a Meanwell medical grade PSU. With Debian 10 and my custom kernel installed it also works as a USB input to HQPlayer.

 

[Miska]

11 minutes ago, John K said:

Thanks for the advise, I tinkered around with the setup again and somehow I am now able to play dsd256 without any stutter. DSD512 is still not playing though, Anyway I am happy with the DSD256 sound coming from Sotm Sms200 ultra! 

 

If you are trying something like DSD512 with the EC modulators, then your server very likely cannot do it (I don't know any that can). So it may be for a different reason...

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, MarcinGD said:

Hi Miska. I just purchased Audiobyte Hydra Z usb converter and I can't play native dsd through it. Could you add kernel patch to support native DSD for this converter ?

 

Maybe, but I need data about it since I don't have such.

 

[Miska]

13 hours ago, MarcinGD said:

Hi Miska. Here https://audiobyte.net/products/hydra-z you have data on the bottom. If you need something more let me know I can contact maker.

 

I need the DAC's part of "lsusb -vvv" output. But please use email for such, it is rather long and unnecessary noise for the thread. You can also email me the whole listing if you don't know which part is the DAC.

 

[Miska]

9 hours ago, luchoh said:

However, if I change settings in HQPe, then playing directly x48 produces silence (the log file shows that it's playing - NAA output network engine started at: 12288000 and Roon tracker is moving).

 

It needs to be checked that 48k DSD actually produces correct results. There are DACs that you may trick into producing sound at those rates, but the DAC actually ends up using 44.1k clock, so the music is playing too slow.

 

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, luchoh said:

@Miska do you mean the music is audibly slower? That's not what I hear. It plays at normal speed. I think I should be able to hear 8% difference in speed... is there a way to be certain? This is what the log says when inputting 96KHz:

 

Yes, it would be good to check with spectrum analyzer that 1 kHz tone actually appears at 1 kHz in the output at those rates.

 

15 minutes ago, luchoh said:

The DAC however shows 11.28MHz - probably because it is higher than DSD128 and this is what the firmware developer decided to show when > 5644800

 

I suspect the firmware is somewhat broken in terms of support for 48k-base DSD. So it would be better to uncheck the "48k DSD" in HQPlayer settings and just stick to 44.1k base. At least until the manufacturer has tested and fixed behavior at 48k-base DSD.

 

Different DACs behave differently in such cases. Display indication is also broken for example in Pro-Ject PreBox S2 Digital, but otherwise seems to work (just doesn't indicate DSD). While for example on Mytek DACs sound gets badly distorted at 48k x256 speeds in addition to incorrect display. Manufacturers should really check and verify this functionality.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, blueninjasix said:

I finally managed to set up Raspbian buster lite on my USBridge Signature and download and install the armh Deb file. I'm using Ubuntu Studio on the other computer. My DAC is Chord Qutest. I only use PCM and upscale to 705. I still get loads of cracks and pops (more even than when I have Ropieexl loaded on the USBridge Signature).

I decided to try a different path and got a Pi 4. I installed Raspbian and enabled 64bit and undated kernel to aarch64. I can get the 32 bit  armhf Deb file (downloaded from Signalyst) to work perfectly with no cracks and pops.

My problem is trying to install the 64 bit package. There's a missing dependency called librasound2. The file exists in an armhf version but not arm64. Can anyone help please?

 

RasPi's before 4 had serious trouble with ethernet + USB combination.

 

In official Debian Buster repo there is certainly such package. But if armhf version works, don't worry too much about installing 64-bit version.

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

That's it? Connect it to power, network, and the DAC and its off to the races?

 

Yes...

 

[Miska]

On 5/8/2020 at 8:07 PM, Kurt said:

I have HQPlayer desktop running on an iMac (trying out a demo).  I also have a MacBook Pro and would like to run NAA on it (with a USB connected exaSound e38).  I have downloaded the Network Audio Daemon 4.1.1.  How do I initiate the NAA on my Macbook?

 

You can start it from terminal, it's a terminal application, not a regular application that you'd need to install. You just extract networkaudiod binary from the zip file and start it. Nothing else needed.

 

[Miska]

39 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

Does this kit here include everything I will need to run a Pi4 as an NAA endpoint?

https://www.pishop.us/product/raspberry-pi-4b-starter-kit/

 

Yes, seems to have the needed parts.

 

[Miska]

Pi3 is best avoided unless used with boards like HifiBerry that hook into I2S. It has USB problems because they saved and hooked Ethernet to the same USB bus where the type-A connector is (where you'd connect a DAC).

 

Pi4 is supposed to be better in this respect.

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, bobflood said:

Jussi, Below is a copy of a post I put in the Rendu support area of Sonore. This is really strange. It seems that the NAA can no longer recognize my Holo Spring 2 DAC. I just will not connect. I have Roon and HQP on a Win 10/64 machine and this configuration has worked successfully for a very long time. To have it stop from one track to the next is really strange. I get two messages when I open HQP now. The first is the "cannot open device" message and then the "not found" message after that. As you can see, I have tried everything I could think of. As I mention below the Rendu still sees the DAC and plays to the DAC as a Roon Ready device just fine. When I look in HQP settings, the DAC is not ther in IPv4 or IPv6. It used to be there in both.

 

I am at the end of my ability to resolve this. Your help would be greatly appreciated. If you need to get into my machine just let me know and I will get Team Viewer.

 

Windows installs updates automatically in the background without asking you. That is one suspect. But please check Control Panel -> Network -> Adapter settings, that there are no more than one network interface active. For the other interfaces, select the interface and click Disable from the toolbar.

 

Most typical reason for NAA to not appear is that multicast packets are getting routed to wrong interface.

 

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, bobflood said:

Is there a dependent service that Windows may have turned off. If so let me know and I will check.

 

By default, all necessary services on Windows are running.

 

4 minutes ago, bobflood said:

Any other ideas?

 

You could check HQPlayer's log how many NAAs it finds. This would tell if it is found on network, but just DAC is not visible.

 

If it is not found on network, you could also try my NAA image on Rendu for comparison, if you have spare microSD cards. If it is still not found, the problem could be at Windows side, like firewall blocking the response packets from NAA. Also check that Windows has not suddenly decided that home network is "Public network" which it sometimes may also do (very annoying).

 

If it finds the NAA, but DAC is not visible, then the problem is between Rendu and DAC.

 

[Miska]

26 minutes ago, bobflood said:

  2020/05/13 18:06:59 NAA output discovery from 0.0.0.0
& 2020/05/13 18:06:59 NAA output discovered network audio: name='mrendu-013ABC' version='Signalyst Network Audio Daemon 4.1.1'  @192.168.1.143:43210
& 2020/05/13 18:06:59 NAA output discovered network audio: name='mrendu-013ABC' version='Signalyst Network Audio Daemon 4.1.1'  @192.168.1.143:43210
  2020/05/13 18:07:00 NAA output connect to 192.168.1.143:43210 [ipv4]
  2020/05/13 18:07:00 NAA output network endpoint: Holo Audio UAC2.0 Gen2 Standard: USB Audio (hw:CARD=Standard,DEV=0)
  2020/05/13 18:07:00 NAA output discovered 1 Network Audio Adapters

 

OK, so the NAA and the DAC are found. It should appear on the device listing in Settings dialog too.

 

Quote

? 2020/05/13 18:07:00 NAA output adapter '' not found

 

In the configuration there is no NAA + DAC combination selected, so HQPlayer fails to connect to empty unspecified device.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, brother love said:

Can someone please look at my post above & provide some guidance?  I left off that I did engage "allow network control" in HQPlayer. Windows 10 is an older version due to 32 gb storage limitations if it matters.

 

Is there a particular reason to run Windows 10 NAA? To me it looks like it would be much better off with my NAA image, especially on that NAA hardware.

 

Unless you really really have to for some reason use WIndows or macOS on a NAA, don't try to do such. They are massive operating systems with unnecessary graphical user interface and such, something generally not wanted on a NAA:

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, brother love said:

The mini PC already had Win 10 OS & worked before w/ NAA & Ubuntu 16.04 server, so tried w/ 18.04. OS aside, are my settings OK as outlined above (ie any glaring errors by me)?

 

Not all settings are visible, just make sure you don't have "Adaptive output rate" checked. Otherwise playback of any 48k family PCM content will fail with those settings. So either set it to grayed or blank.

 

1 hour ago, brother love said:

I assume that you mean the HQPlayer OS/ NAA ?  I can certainly try it. I tried 18.04 thumb drive for mini-PC but Aptio setup utility didn't recognize thumb drive, possibly because Aptio BIOS is 32 gb for some odd reason.

 

Yes, the NAA image, or alternatively HQPlayer OS image. No need for any installation or touch the Windows. You just dump the image on USB memory stick and boot it up - and you are done.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, brother love said:

 

Success! Thanks Jussi. I finally grasped a non-OS dependent NAA image naa-411-x64.7z needs to be extracted & image burned to a bootable USB thumb drive. I also successfully booted USB image of HQPlayer OS from hqplayer-embedded file.

 

Both work like a charm. Any advantage to either option if Ubuntu 18.04 server has HQPlayer 4.5 Desktop? (I installed all 3 options: OS, High DPI, Desktop).

 

These two are different in a way that NAA image runs purely from RAM, and the media is read-only. So no changes can be stored whatsoever. In addition, it supports only computers with single ethernet interface. So it is really as bare bones as possible. And can be safely shut down at any time by pulling out power.

 

HQPlayer OS runs normal filesystem, so changes can be stored there (such as name of NAA or other settings). It also contains unofficial WiFi support, optional RAVENNA support etc. It should be also shut down properly, for example through short press of a power button (if configured correctly in BIOS). HQPlayer OS also gets more frequent updates so may have support for some devices that the plain NAA image doesn't. If you don't need the extra features for NAA use, just stick to the plain NAA image.

 

[Miska]

6 hours ago, luisma said:

@Miska

Hi Jussi, an NAA only service endpoint running on intel Celeron with 4 cores and 4 threads on archlinux, it won't use more than 15% of the CPU under DSD512

I know you advise on HQPe not to do core isolation etc. as you do your own core balancing on your app that is crystal clear

 

For the NAA, it seems it does prefers one core, I'm using only one core, no HT and no Turbo for the networkaudiod service, it works just fine, would you advise against using this specific design? I just imagine subjectively that encasing the networkaudiod service to only one core will remove the inter core processes and threading, "focusing" the daemon more on just one core and not allowing "distracting" thread process to be running.

 

NAA can utilize two cores (or a core and a thread). But one core is enough, it just context switches more.

 

As a side note, why do you disable HT? It gives you benefit of lower operating system context switch cost. Or in other words, you can have twice as many threads running without having to context switch if you have HT.

 

What comes to Turbo, a bit similar question. But at least it makes sense to check that the CPU clocks and voltages are allowed to fall below the base clock rate (by power management).

 

For example my Xeon W-2245 CPU is at the moment running at 1.2 GHz clock frequency, and as result also at lower voltages. Quite a bit below the 3.9 GHz base clock frequency. Lowers the power consumption notably.

 

[Miska]

6 hours ago, luisma said:

@ericuco oh yeah I totally get it, thank you, but what I'm trying to figure out is if isolating processes to cores will create any issues for the NAA service specifically in the way it handles inter core load distribution, because even if I isolate the process to 1 core if Miska detects 4 and tries to do load distribution and can't that will create unnecessary overhead which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid

 

NAA manages thread priorities, so don't play with any priority stuff (although NAA will at least attempt to override such). But thread assignments to different CPUs is up to OS kernel for NAA. NAA has two active threads.

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, luisma said:

Because I was under the impression that managing threads increased the overhead on certain apps, if that's not the case I will leave it running there.

Thank you, if you recommend to leave HT running will do it.

 

No, hardware threads duplicate CPU registers to create another virtual CPU. There is only one execution unit (core), but double set of registers. This allows OS to behave like there would be two CPUs in place of one. Benefit is that you can "run" two processes simultaneously on single core instead of context switching which involves saving CPU state (register contents, etc) and restoring another context. Only one of the two is actually executing at a time since there is only one real execution unit. Usually the one waiting for data to arrive from RAM is on hold. This helps especially when you have a lot of processes/threads running simultaneously, because it cuts the context switching overhead to half due to double number of CPUs. More you have running threads, bigger the proportional contribution of context switching overhead is.

 

Note that usually you have only few running processes/threads, compared to existing processes/threads. Because most of the processes/threads are sleeping. So the performance gain of such is many times fairly small. But you have some amount of gain always. HQPlayer just takes this HT functionality into account on work distribution, so HQPlayer doesn't try to split same work to two virtual threads of the same physical CPU core, because it cannot anyway do any more work that way.

 

[Miska]

23 hours ago, Hammer said:

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.

 

Have you tried with the bootable NAA image with buffer time set to "Default" and does it make any difference?

 

[Miska]

1 minute ago, skipspence said:

Can you please tell if HQPlayer OS working as NAA supports optical NICs like Solarflare?

 

At least I don't remember seeing or enabling support for such. But for example Intel NICs should work.

 

[Miska]

10 hours ago, skipspence said:

Can I kindly ask to check or enable such a support for Solarflare SFN6122F. Can't check myself for it's not delivered yet.

 

It is not enabled at the moment. Linux kernel seems to include drivers for SFC6000 and SFC9000/SFC9100 series, I don't know if those are applicable for SFN6xxx.

 

[Miska]

On 8/13/2020 at 12:32 PM, skipspence said:

The "sfc" stands for net driver for the Linux kernel provided by Solarflare. Assuming that SFC6000 is for SNF6xxx series NICs, they may be applicable, so they should be enabled in Linux kernel?

 

There are two separate drivers in Linux kernel for those two series, with driver description saying what I repeated above. So I'm not sure if the assumption is correct or not.

 

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, jabbr said:

To set the record straight regarding NAA on Ubuntu 20.04 ... I used the buster deb not the bionic deb... @Miska since 20.04.1 is LTS, consider its own deb?

 

I'm still waiting for the new version to become available through do-release-upgrade on 18.04. At least last week it didn't work yet.

 

The Bionic deb should work on Focal too. Likely also Debian Buster one works too. networkaudiod has pretty simple dependencies.