HQPlayer's Network Audio Adapter

[Miska]

6 hours ago, Zauurx said:

NETWORKAUDIOD_MCASTIF in ./networkaudiod.xml ?

Or 

tc@pCP:export NETWORKAUDIOD_MCASTIF='*'

 

 

Edit /etc/default/networkaudiod file:

NETWORKAUDIOD_MCASTIF="*"

 

And then restart networkaudiod service with "systemctl restart networkaudiod"

 

[Miska]

If you want to specify interface there, put the interface name there instead of "*", such as "eth0".

[Miska]

1 hour ago, mrwiggles said:

BTW: I turned 'on' the NAA client in RoPieeeXL and rebooted the PI. But I don't see the additional NAA endpoint in my HQP Server to select. So perhaps a naming conflict etc. Would love some guidance on this. Thank you!

 

Yes, likely a naming conflict, if the one you see is called "naa" or something like that.

 

By default, name of the NAA is hostname of the device networkaudiod is running on. But you can change this by editing /etc/default/networkaudiod file and adding a line there like:

NETWORKAUDIOD_NAME="MySecondNAA"

 

Here's screenshot of example listing:

[Miska]

16 hours ago, Whyme said:

Is there image (from the repo below) I can use for Rpi3 with Hifiberry Digi+?

 

https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/images/

 

My goal is to run NAA on Rpi3 and output via COAX to my DAC. Appreciate your help.

 

Not anymore, I dropped support for older RPi's and just RPi4 remains.

 

If you need RPi3 NAA suppport, likely DietPi is best option.

 

[Miska]

11 minutes ago, MikePid said:

@Miska, I tried the NAA image in my ultraRendu as an alternative to SonicOrbiter.  It won't recognize my DAC (NuPrime Evolution) for native DSD.  It only works for DoP.  About a year ago, Sonore fixed this in SonicOrbiter.  Is there a way to get HQPlayer NAA to support Native DSD to my DAC or am I limited to using HQP NAA through SonicOrbiter?

 

There are four NuPrime devices supported at the moment. But this should get covered for good over time when kernel rolls to 5.15. But older kernels have still more device lists.

 

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, Andrey Boldakov said:

@Miska could you kindly confirm what NAA image will fit best for ultraRendu?

naa-420-cubox-i-rendu.7z

or do I need another one?

maybe you know someone have tried DSD1024 over it?

 

That should work at least on microRendu. I doubt DSD1024 will work through it...

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

Am curious if anyone has tried the Zen Stream as NAA and if so how it fared vs other NAA devices they had?

 

I've had it since the beginning. Works nicely up to the specs. I always run it in NAA exclusive mode.

 

At the moment it is feeding Topping D30Pro.

 

[Miska]

17 hours ago, lsantista said:

Nice. Playing above 768 and specially 1536 on my 2.8 UR will result in a glitchy playback. Im using etherregen with 100mbs ethernet cable  to the UR to a Holo Spring3 KTE, my PC is 11600k i5 with 32gb of RAM and usually will run at 45% of CPU capacity when attempting to play PCM 1536. So you'd think the CPU is still not enough?  

 

At least you should be using 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps ethernet instead of 100 Mbps. You are trying to push 93.75 Mbps through 100 Mbps connection which is not going to be reliable.

 

[Miska]

Etherregen is the bottleneck there, since it limits the maximum speed to 100 Mbps.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Superdad said:

The EtherREGEN is fine up to DSD512.

The extreme of DSD1024 is too much for the 100Mbps ‘B’ port of our switch. 
 

I can not speak to the high-rate limitations of the [iMX6-based] Sonore Rendu series. 

 

iMX6 can do max 400 Mbps when hardware flow control is in use. Without flow control it will stall badly, due to about 60% packet loss (loses more packets than it can receive).

 

[Miska]

On 5/26/2022 at 9:34 PM, Zauurx said:

@Miska

On ZenStream with the (old) version of NAA, i have this :

(HQPlayer play DSD256x48 in direct mode (no DOP)).

 

I don't understand.. it's correct ?

 

Yes, it is correct.

 

[Miska]

8 hours ago, Atriya said:

@Miska Do your HQPlayer Embedded bootable images for RPi4 not support WiFi configuration via the interface, as of now? If not, how would I go about configuring the SSID & password using the console? Would a better route still be to install Ubuntu/Fedora/Debian? I need the WiFi to work.

 

No, there's no GUI for setting it up so far.

 

Otherwise, WiFi should be possible, as all the necessary ingredients should be on the image. You need to configure SSID and password for wpa_supplicant and then add it to systemd-networkd for rest of the configuration. There's quite a bit of documentation for this on the internet.

 

[Miska]

On 8/11/2022 at 2:00 PM, copy_of_a said:

With my newly aquired Singxer SDA-6 Pro - while HQPD on the Mini correctly identifies the NAA and the Singxer on the Macbook - playback doesn‘t work. Direct playback from HQPDesktop on the same Macbook the Singxer is connected to works flawlessly, though.

-

When no audio is feeding the Singxer the display shows „unlock“. So I am thinking: does the Singxer maybe needs some signal/instruction through USB to receive the incoming signal and to internally set the respective format/rate before it activates playback? Or something like that?

 

If local playback is working correctly, then NAA should work the same way, since they use the CoreAudio output the same way.

 

I suspect this is permission issue. You may need to run "networkaudiod" through "sudo". So you could start it like "sudo ./networkaudiod" which will give it elevated privileges.

 

This issue happens mostly if the device in question presents any input side things on USB.

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

ok, figured out how to run it through sudo.

Unfortunately still no luck with DSD (PCM transfer is working, albeit at 16bit)

 

Maybe the DAC is accidentally selected as default macOS audio output device? Or it has digital volume control which is not set to 0 dB?

 

Note that any processing such as digital volume control on DoP data will destroy it and result in quiet hiss as output.

 

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

DAC is not default output. Also no DSP or volume control on the DAC. It doesn‘t have such feature - only input select and mute (and external clock select, which I don’t have). And on/off 🙂

 

Main question is if it looks any different on macOS Audio&MIDI Settings? Since the CoreAudio handling code is the same on HQPlayer and NAA, I'm trying to figure out what could be difference between these two applications.

 

If macOS thinks there's input device, it will need user granted permissions (for terminal in this case) for "Microphone" access. If not granted, CoreAudio will just produce silence. Some DAC manufacturers may be lazy with reference USB code and leave for example unused input features enabled in the code.

 

HQPlayer having a GUI can have macOS prompting you to grant permissions. But console applications that don't have GUI like networkaudiod cannot have such prompts.

 

Is there a particular reason to run NAA on a macOS machine?

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, Bob Stern said:

My RME DAC may be an example of this: it has no USB input, yet it shows an input in Audio MIDI Setup. Nevertheless, it has not requested Microphone access from MacOS Privacy services, and I am running NAA from a user account that does not even have ordinary administrator privileges.

 

IIRC, it has loopback feature and it can pass inputs from S/PDIF (coax and optical) to the USB. So it can be used as an input device with HQPlayer as well.

 

[Miska]

11 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

But when I hit play on HQP the NAA (the DAC) defaults to PCM. So there's some kind of limitation in adressing the coreaudio features I need to playback DSD (DoP).

 

And you get quiet hiss? Or regular PCM output? What does HQPlayer indicate as output format?

 

11 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

I am thinking about adding an iFi Zen stream ... assumed that I don't run into the same trouble??

 

Inexpensive way would be to try with RasPi4 and NAA OS image. WIth a good PSU, not any worse than a regular Mac.

 

11 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

Or, preferably, maybe I could run a little OS with NAA on an USB Stick or SD Card on the Macbook Pro?

 

You likely could run NAA OS if your MacBook Pro is Intel based.

 

11 hours ago, copy_of_a said:

Problem is: I have absolutely no clue how to do it (no idea about Linux and command line stuff).

 

You only need to boot up NAA OS, you don't need to know Linux things.

 

[Miska]

28 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

No hiss. I get PCM output. Highest rate selected in the prefs (352.8k/348k), but only 16 bit.

 

And you have latest networkaudiod version? No such problem with other DACs in the same setup? Does format enumeration from networkaudiod display formats also with more bits?

 

28 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

But before I get into this ... would NAA OS also work through WiFi?

 

No, not without some unsupported manual configuration on command-line. NAA OS is supposed to be headless plug and play, which is possible with wired network, but not with wireless. WiFi would always need some configuration, and that gets into chicken-egg problem. You would need some way to configure it...

 

[Miska]

5 minutes ago, copy_of_a said:

yes.

(As noted above also this command from the prefs is listed on the NAA: "DSD playback at any base rate")

 

HQPlayer log file could shed some light to this, if you could email such to me, with a playback attempt that ends up with unintended output format.

 

[Miska]

On 8/25/2022 at 12:45 AM, Bob Stern said:

 the new NAA v4.2.4 for Mac is on the downloads page, but there is no indication of this version on either your main page https://www.signalyst.eu/consumer.html or the News page https://www.signalyst.eu

 

I don't always announce minor updates that touch only particular platform and limited set of hardware. I believe this fix applies only to rather small subset of hardware with macOS.

 

In case you have issues, you can ask here if there is fix existing or forthcoming.

 

[Miska]

38 minutes ago, OzarkMtn said:

@Miska, will there be an update for the cubic-i-rendu NAA image anytime soon? It seems all of the other images have been updated recently? Does it just not need any polishing around the edges?😏

 

It is just one of the more tricky ones to update and kernel support typically lags a bit behind.

 

Main reason for the recent NAA OS update was just to update kernel from 5.10 to 5.15.

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, sledwards said:

@Miska

 

You may want to check image:  naa-425-x64.7z

 

I have tried twice and can not read from it when burning to USB stick. First time I have seen this happen with any image file.

 

Seems to be working fine. I just wrote it to a 16 GB USB stick using "bmaptool copy" and then booted it up on an old NUC and seems to be working fine for me.

 

What are you using to write it? Also make sure your OS accessing any pre-existing content on the USB stick is not messing up writing it.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, stefano_mbp said:

@Chanhthen you have more than one Ethernet port on your NAA pc.

AFAIK NAA OS works if only one Ethernet port is available, if there are more than one Ethernet port you can (must) use HQPLayer OS (embedded) that can work with more than one Ethernet port.

HQPlayer OS runs both HQPlayer and HQPlayer NAA .

Once HQPlayer OS started you can login (root/no pwd) and disable hqplayer service running the following commands:

systemctl stop hqplayerd | systemctl disable hqplayerd

           

… or you can try to disable the Ethernet ports except one.

 

 

In such case you can also use the regular NAA OS image (not the ramfs one), and modify wired.network configuration file under /etc/systemd/network so that the match rule points explicitly to a specific network port instead of global "e*".

 

You can use "ifconfig" to figure out which one. There's a text editor called "nano" included that can be used for editing those files.

 

38 minutes ago, stefano_mbp said:

or wait until Jussy will compile the NAA 4.2.5 version for windows, or install Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy and use the Jammy version of NAA 4.2.5 that is already available from here https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/linux/jammy/

 

With Jammy, one needs to use my custom kernel too in order to make the Accuphase DAC option card working.

 

Debian Bullseye is another option (with my custom kernel as well).

[Miska]

1 hour ago, sledwards said:

@Miska Thought I would try again to modify NAA image (4.2.5) to utilize specific port. Followed your instructions, but still not able to connect to NAA from server. Here are screen shots of "ifconfig" and modified wired.network file. I will stick to using embedded OS image if you think this just won't work and I am wasting your time.

 

And it still doesn't work after reboot? What does "systemctl status networkaudiod" say?

 

Next release of HQPlayer OS will contain the Accuphase support anyway.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, sledwards said:

Forgot to mention, rebooted NAA and server several times now, still no luck. I can ping the NAA successfully.

 

I assume you are working on the regular x64 image, not the x64ramfs one? Since on former the configuration changes can persist across reboots, while on latter one not.

 

1 hour ago, sledwards said:

 

Looks like the rule set is not satisfied, so networkaudiod doesn't get started.

 

1 hour ago, sledwards said:

What does this release have to do with NAA OS support for my i5-9400T NAA build with the JCAT 2-port network card I am trying to configure? 

 

HQPlayer OS bridges all ethernet ports into one, thus becoming a software switch. While NAA OS doesn't. HQPlayer OS is happy once it gets IP from any of the ports. Due to this difference, HQPlayer OS also includes networkaudiod for cases like yours, so it can be used as a NAA OS alternative.