HQPlayer's Network Audio Adapter

[tboooe]

Thanks Miska (also for your patience): I un- and re-installed the Amanero drivers on the NAA PC and they are now visible in HQP!

GREAT! So how does it sound, especially compared to JPLAY?

 

I used to have a 2 PC JPLAY setup as well but preferred HQP + NAA.

[bodiebill]

GREAT! So how does it sound, especially compared to JPLAY?

 

I used to have a 2 PC JPLAY setup as well but preferred HQP + NAA.

 

First impression:

- HQP DSD256 + NAA more analytically detailed, wide and open, slightly more fatiguing

- HQP DSD128 + JPLAY a little warmer, 'together', easier on the ear (I guess they call that 'analogue')

It is a close call and I will experiment with different HQP settings before making a final verdict. Or maybe I will switch depending on the material.

[tboooe]

First impression:

- HQP DSD256 + NAA more analytically detailed, wide and open, slightly more fatiguing

- HQP DSD128 + JPLAY a little warmer, 'together', easier on the ear (I guess they call that 'analogue')

It is a close call and I will experiment with different HQP settings before making a final verdict. Or maybe I will switch depending on the material.

Thank you for the reply. Or you can try HQP >> NAA >> JPLAY? I remember reading another member did this for a while. Could be overkill.

 

What filters are you using? I use polysinc mp and asdm7 modulator. To my ears, DSD modulators is very detailed and dynamics but fatiguing.

[bodiebill]

Thank you for the reply. Or you can try HQP >> NAA >> JPLAY? I remember reading another member did this for a while. Could be overkill.

 

What filters are you using? I use polysinc mp and asdm7 modulator. To my ears, DSD modulators is very detailed and dynamics but fatiguing.

 

Thanks tboooe! I used poly-sinc, DSD7 with DoP / 5644800 for JPLAY and none / 12288000 for NAA.

 

I will try ASDM7 and other settings when I return home. And then also compare these dual PC setups:

(1) HQP DSD256 => NAA => DAC

(2) HQP DSD128 => NAA => JPLAY (non-hibernate) => DAC

(3) HQP DSD128 => JPLAY => JPLAY (hibernate) => DAC

 

Actually setup (2) seems theoretically sound as the diskless NAA PC is galvanically isolated from the control PC, so I expect the benefit of JPLAY to be greater on the NAA PC than on the control PC. In that respect, you could say that setup (3) is overkill. However, hibernation is nice to have. But I will let my ears decide.

 

Will be continued...

[jroyer]

First impression:

- HQP DSD256 + NAA more analytically detailed, wide and open, slightly more fatiguing

- HQP DSD128 + JPLAY a little warmer, 'together', easier on the ear (I guess they call that 'analogue')

It is a close call and I will experiment with different HQP settings before making a final verdict. Or maybe I will switch depending on the material.

 

bodiebill, what settings are you using with JPLAY when you feed it from HQP? I found also that some DSD upsample settings in HQP with a NAA sound more analytical and less analog then another setup I use for DSD upsample using Audirvana+. So I am sure I have not found the best tuning yet!

 

Thanks!

[tboooe]

@Miska, I just noticed some strange behavior on my NAA PC. When I run the netstat command see a very high percentage of Received Packets Discarded. On the NAA, its over 88%. For comparison, the pc running HQP discard rate is 0.7%. I did a tracert command from NAA to HQP and I can see my latency is measured as < 1ms. Any ideas why this is happening?

[astr0b0y]

Hi Miska. Sorry if this has been posted, I have searched.

I'd like to setup NAA to launch at login (have this working fine using launchd on OS X) but I can't work out how to ensure HQPlayer selects my USB DAC as the output by default. At the moment, if I restart the PC running NAA, HQPlayer finds NAA but selects Built In Input as the audio output.

[bodiebill]

bodiebill, what settings are you using with JPLAY when you feed it from HQP? I found also that some DSD upsample settings in HQP with a NAA sound more analytical and less analog then another setup I use for DSD upsample using Audirvana+. So I am sure I have not found the best tuning yet!

Thanks!

 

hi jroyer, do you mean JPLAY settings or HQP settings?

JPLAY is now on 10Hz, 10s. I just did some further comparisons and I now prefer HQP setting poly-sinc and ASDM7. The latter to my ear is indeed more relaxed/analogue sounding than the DSD filters.

 

Or you can try HQP >> NAA >> JPLAY? I remember reading another member did this for a while. Could be overkill.

I compared the following setups with these HQP settings, in reversed order of preference:

(1) HQP DSD256 => NAA => DAC: open and detailed, highs slightly fatiguing

(2) HQP DSD128 => NAA => JPLAY (non-hibernate) => DAC: warmer, more analogue

(3) HQP DSD128 => JPLAY => JPLAY (hibernate) => DAC: very similar to (2), maybe a tad more relaxed (due to hibernation?)

 

So for now I will stick with (3).

As I understand it, JPLAY on the control PC is just a way to communicate with the audio/NAA PC, and in this respect is similar to using HQP and NAA. The JPLAY settings are only applied to the audio PC. So I am not surprised that (2) and (3) are hard to distinguish. And the minor difference I think I hear, I attribute to hibernation (which in my case is not possible with (2)).

 

What filters are you using? I use polysinc mp and asdm7 modulator. To my ears, DSD modulators is very detailed and dynamics but fatiguing.

 

Confirmed, see above.

[bodiebill]

Following up my previous post, I realized that I am able to use HQP 3.14 with NAA (it just does not work with JPLAY), so I installed it again, on my Windows control PC as well as on a normal ethernet-attached iMac. I was pleased with the result: still open and detailed, but the fatigue is gone!

 

Updated list, again in reversed order of preference (4 sounds best to my ears, although difference between 3 and 4 may just be a matter of taste):

(1) HQP 3133 Windows DSD256 => NAA => DAC: open and detailed, highs slightly fatiguing

(2) HQP 3133 Windows DSD128 => NAA => JPLAY (non-hibernate) => DAC: warmer, more analogue

(3a) HQP 3.14 Windows DSD256 => NAA => DAC: open and detailed

(3b) HQP 3.14 Windows DSD128 => NAA => DAC: open and detailed, hard to distinguish from previous

(4a) HQP 3133 Windows DSD128 => JPLAY => JPLAY (hibernate) => DAC: very similar to (2), maybe a tad more relaxed (due to hibernation?)

(4b) HQP 3.14 iMac DSD128 => NAA => DAC: open and detailed, warmer than same setup with Windows

Apparently the iMac is not powerful enough to do DSD256: it stutters.

What I find interesting is that my unoptimized iMac (no treatments, no LPS etc,) scores higher as control PC than my highly optimized Windows PC. This seems to show that in the HQP + NAA setup the important thing is to optimize the NAA box.

[Miska]

Hi Miska. Sorry if this has been posted, I have searched.

I'd like to setup NAA to launch at login (have this working fine using launchd on OS X) but I can't work out how to ensure HQPlayer selects my USB DAC as the output by default. At the moment, if I restart the PC running NAA, HQPlayer finds NAA but selects Built In Input as the audio output.

 

On Mac, the way CoreAudio handles audio devices is a bit tricky. There is nothing unique and persistent about audio devices across reboots. I need to look into this at some point, I don't remember the details anymore how I did the device binding with NAA on macOS.

[tboooe]

@Miska, I just noticed some strange behavior on my NAA PC. When I run the netstat command see a very high percentage of Received Packets Discarded. On the NAA, its over 88%. For comparison, the pc running HQP discard rate is 0.7%. I did a tracert command from NAA to HQP and I can see my latency is measured as < 1ms. Any ideas why this is happening?

@Miska, more info on this. I see a lot of discarded transmitted packets from the HQP pc as well. I have increased the Rx and Tx buffers on both the NAA and HQP nics which helped improve things a but I am still losing packets. So in summary, on the HQP pc I see a lot of discarded Tx packets and on the NAA I see a lot of discarded Rx packets. Perhaps there is any issue with the communication between the NAA and HQP? Any ideas?

[Miska]

@Miska, more info on this. I see a lot of discarded transmitted packets from the HQP pc as well. I have increased the Rx and Tx buffers on both the NAA and HQP nics which helped improve things a but I am still losing packets. So in summary, on the HQP pc I see a lot of discarded Tx packets and on the NAA I see a lot of discarded Rx packets. Perhaps there is any issue with the communication between the NAA and HQP? Any ideas?

 

That is way below the layer on what the NAA/HQP communication operates.

 

I have those staying zero... Depending on which layer you are looking at, you have either hardware level problem with cables/switch/ethernet adapters, or problem between the two OS (protocol stacks) talking to each other.

[bibo01]

@Miska

 

Does nad have a command to log in a file?

[Miska]

Does nad have a command to log in a file?

 

No, it just writes output to stderr which you can redirect to a file.

 

But I'll add environment variable to the next version where one can set log file name.

[semente]

Hi Miska,

 

I am having trouble connecting my MBP to the NAA image (I normally use Raspbian + NAA).

I've installed the latest versions of both Desktop and NAA.

I can see the Pi at 192.168.1.111 in the Network Naming dialogue window is but it doesn't show in the Device Settings drop down menu...

What could be the problem?

 

Thanks,

Ricardo

[Miska]

I am having trouble connecting my MBP to the NAA image (I normally use Raspbian + NAA).

I've installed the latest versions of both Desktop and NAA.

I can see the Pi at 192.168.1.111 in the Network Naming dialogue window is but it doesn't show in the Device Settings drop down menu...

What could be the problem?

 

Maybe it doesn't detect your DAC? If it appears under the naming dialog, but not in the device listing, then one likely reason is that there are no detected audio devices behind the NAA. Because the device listing doesn't directly show NAA's, but instead the DACs behind.

[semente]

I am using the HifiBerry DAC Pro +.

It's working fine when I plug the MBP directly to the R-Pi running Raspbian+NAA and also when I add the router, but if I change to your NAA the Pi isn't listed.

 

But don't worry about it, I just felt like seeing whether your image would bring any improvements but the HifiBerry probably isn't the best DAC to reveal such differences.

 

Cheers,

Ricardo

 

R

[Miska]

I am using the HifiBerry DAC Pro +.

It's working fine when I plug the MBP directly to the R-Pi running Raspbian+NAA and also when I add the router, but if I change to your NAA the Pi isn't listed.

 

Ahh, OK, you need to edit the bootloader configuration file on the SDcard after writing the image to tell the OS about your attached hardware. When you look at the SDcard using normal computer you can see config.txt file there. Open that file in text editor and add following line at the end:

dtoverlay=hifiberry-dacplus

[semente]

Sounds easy, thanks!

 

R

[shadowlight]

I am starting to have issues with NAA on Win10 system with Amanero. If I use DoP everything works correctly but when I try to use it straight with out DoP for 2XDSD NAA crashes. I am going to roll back the version of the NAA (currently running 3.4) and see if the problem goes away. The HQPlayer version is the latest released version available.

[tboooe]

I am starting to have issues with NAA on Win10 system with Amanero. If I use DoP everything works correctly but when I try to use it straight with out DoP for 2XDSD NAA crashes. I am going to roll back the version of the NAA (currently running 3.4) and see if the problem goes away. The HQPlayer version is the latest released version available.

Has anything changed with your setup? Seems odd that all of a sudden you would have issues if DSD128 worked before.

[shadowlight]

Has anything changed with your setup? Seems odd that all of a sudden you would have issues if DSD128 worked before.

 

The last time I had used a Win 10 system for naa was couple of months ago, since I was using a Linux NAA system. This weekend I am hoping to connect the NAA to a DAC that will do 4xDSD so wanted to retest straight DSD support. Will try a second system that has Win10 installed with NAA running to see if it makes any difference.

[tboooe]

The last time I had used a Win 10 system for naa was couple of months ago, since I was using a Linux NAA system. This weekend I am hoping to connect the NAA to a DAC that will do 4xDSD so wanted to retest straight DSD support. Will try a second system that has Win10 installed with NAA running to see if it makes any difference.

I had issues with Win10 after upgrading from Win7. I eventually ditched Win10 and loaded up Server R2 Essentials. Not sure what the issue was with Win10. Did you try re-installing the DAC driver?

[shadowlight]

I had issues with Win10 after upgrading from Win7. I eventually ditched Win10 and loaded up Server R2 Essentials. Not sure what the issue was with Win10. Did you try re-installing the DAC driver?

 

Yep, reinstalled the Amanero drivers multiple times. If nothing works I will just rebuild the Win10 system or might try R2 Essentials.

[Lionelh2]

I have been struggling with using my MicroRendu as a NAA with HQPlayer for months. I am using a Chord Mojo and I cannot get playback at any DSD rate without dropouts through the MR. I get perfect playback using the Chord ASIO driver with the MR connected directly to my PC using USB at all rates up to DSD256. I get perfect play out at 705/768 PCM rates through the MR.

 

There seems to be some issue with DoP as I was able to get DSD512 working well when I was using iDSD Micro as DAC sending without DoP.

 

This issue has followed two computers, the latest being an i7 6700HQ system.

 

Any advice on where to go from here?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile

 

I posted this on MicroRendu discussion and today I substituted the MR with a Win10 PC running NAA 3.4. And it worked perfectly. My question is now what is different? Does the MR NAA 3.4 have an issue with DoP DSD rates or does the MR lack the processing power to deal with it?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Computer Audiophile