HQ Player

[RubenV]

Awesome, many thanks! I will try this out tomorrow and follow your and clipper's suggestions.

Unfortunately, no luck. I did another fresh install of WS2012R2 Essentials and even downloaded AO again fresh. The background clearly says Essentials, AO also recognises the OS as Essentials but the Service Tool 2.00 does not display the "P" option to prepare Essentials the right way. Any suggestions?

[tboooe]

Unfortunately, no luck. I did another fresh install of WS2012R2 Essentials and even downloaded AO again fresh. The background clearly says Essentials, AO also recognises the OS as Essentials but the Service Tool 2.00 does not display the "P" option to prepare Essentials the right way. Any suggestions?

Have you asked Phil?

[RubenV]

Have you asked Phil?

 

Yes, I've emailed him yesterday. But I presume he is on holiday or something like that. So I just continue to try other things. Just finished the first two steps of this: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f28-highend-audiopc-sponsored/%5Bhow-%5D-install-hqplayer-windows-server-2012-r2-30776/ and installed 199 updates, let's see if this works

[RubenV]

Have you asked Phil?

 

The steps I took seem to work, HQplayer and Roonserver are opening without errors and I can find the Roonserver with my laptop (which I will use as remote). Now I have to install NAA on my audio pc. Is there any guide for that?

[tboooe]

The steps I took seem to work, HQplayer and Roonserver are opening without errors and I can find the Roonserver with my laptop (which I will use as remote). Now I have to install NAA on my audio pc. Is there any guide for that?

Great to hear. For NAA just run the executable but remember to install the Run Time as mentioned on the HQP website.

 

On Windows, Microsoft runtime is required, in case you get error message about missing DLL, you can download the necessary runtime here.

[Hammer]

That is not necessary and you just waste diskspace. You only need latest Nvidia drivers, everything else comes with HQPlayer. I have this working for example in the latest server build. Win10 Pro OEM, Nvidia drivers and HQPlayer installed, nothing else. And CUDA offload works.

 

 

P.S. If you use any OS optimization tools, it may be possible that those have messed up something and that's why some things don't work.

 

Miska, I am finding that offload only works right after a reboot. If I quit HQPlayer and open it again, offload is not enabled. This is with the latest nvidia drivers.

 

Could this his be due to the fact I have the 1080 card as my "secondary" graphics card? I set my primary to be the integrated graphics of the 6700k since sometimes I like to run Roon via RDP. My machine is a dedicated windows 10 machine for HQPlayer with not much else installed.

 

Thank you. Hammer.

[RubenV]

Great to hear. For NAA just run the executable but remember to install the Run Time as mentioned on the HQP website.

 

On Windows, Microsoft runtime is required, in case you get error message about missing DLL, you can download the necessary runtime here.

Thanks! I am rolling back to GUI mode on the audio pc as we speak, so I can get rid off the old driver, install the new one + NAA and runtime. It takes a while though haha

[tboooe]

Thanks! I am rolling back to GUI mode on the audio pc as we speak, so I can get rid off the old driver, install the new one + NAA and runtime. It takes a while though haha

 

That is precisely why I dont update HQP or NAA very often. I wait until a major release before upgrading because going back and forth to GUI mode is just painful.

 

Dont forget the steps I posted yesterday to get NAA working in Core mode.

[RubenV]

That is precisely why I dont update HQP or NAA very often. I wait until a major release before upgrading because going back and forth to GUI mode is just painful.

 

Dont forget the steps I posted yesterday to get NAA working in Core mode.

Yes it is getting quite complex now. From Roon on my laptop I can select the HQPlayer output. But in HQPlayer I do not see any devices listed under Tools>Network Audio Adapter Naming.

 

The control PC (with HQPlayer running) uses the onboard LAN to communicate with the internet, while a second network card is solely setup for communication with the Audio PC (which has NAA running). I've used the settings from the AO manual to only select IPv4 and giving it a static adress. This used to work with JPlay, never had any problems. However I can't find the NAA device. Does this only work with IPv6?

 

And when I look under settings>device settings I can select NAA for the back-end but the Device box under it stays empty.

[tboooe]

Yes it is getting quite complex now. From Roon on my laptop I can select the HQPlayer output. But in HQPlayer I do not see any devices listed under Tools>Network Audio Adapter Naming.

 

The control PC (with HQPlayer running) uses the onboard LAN to communicate with the internet, while a second network card is solely setup for communication with the Audio PC (which has NAA running). I've used the settings from the AO manual to only select IPv4 and giving it a static adress. This used to work with JPlay, never had any problems. However I can't find the NAA device. Does this only work with IPv6?

 

And when I look under settings>device settings I can select NAA for the back-end but the Device box under it stays empty.

When I was using JPlay I did the same thing as you and it also worked fine. I have never tried this same direct connection with HQP and NAA. It may be best to ask how to do this in the NAA thread.

[RubenV]

When I was using JPlay I did the same thing as you and it also worked fine. I have never tried this same direct connection with HQP and NAA. It may be best to ask how to do this in the NAA thread.

Thanks I will have a look over there. Just when I was so close, disaster struck and now my audio pc is on an infinite boot loop and I can't even proper boot it from a USB-stick in order to perform a fresh install haha. This keeps amazing me... I will have to take my cf card reader out to deploy an image on it, another setback.

[Miska]

Could this his be due to the fact I have the 1080 card as my "secondary" graphics card? I set my primary to be the integrated graphics of the 6700k since sometimes I like to run Roon via RDP. My machine is a dedicated windows 10 machine for HQPlayer with not much else installed.

 

Could be, although it shouldn't make difference. But it may be that Nvidia does less testing with such configurations.

 

RDP doesn't work with Nvidia drivers? That shouldn't make difference either...

 

All my configurations with Nvidia card also have display connected to the same card.

[tboooe]

Thanks I will have a look over there. Just when I was so close, disaster struck and now my audio pc is on an infinite boot loop and I can't even proper boot it from a USB-stick in order to perform a fresh install haha. This keeps amazing me... I will have to take my cf card reader out to deploy an image on it, another setback.

Wow you are having bad luck indeed. I have never run into any problems installing Server R2, HQP, AO, or Roon. Good idea to just do a fresh wipe. You cant even get into the BIOS during start up?

[RubenV]

Wow you are having bad luck indeed. I have never run into any problems installing Server R2, HQP, AO, or Roon. Good idea to just do a fresh wipe. You cant even get into the BIOS during start up?

After the boot loop the fresh wipe seemed the smartest to do. However, I couldn't select the usb drive in the bios itself. I managed to start from it to choose boot options before you enter the bios but after loading the files I got the same boot loop (or it took ages and I was to impatient). I already had opened the case of my regular pc this morning because the lsi raidcontroller failed and was stuck on the boot screen (more bad luck) so I took it out in order to download the correct ws2012 ISO. I tried the PPA cf reader on different sata ports and allthough the lights on the card did light up, it didn't show up as a drive. Sata is hot swappable so I presume the PPA cf card reader died after three years of heavy usage. So tomorrow I will try the machine I managed to install today as a single pc so I can listen to music again. The NAA pc has to wait untill a new ssd will be delivered.

[tboooe]

After the boot loop the fresh wipe seemed the smartest to do. However, I couldn't select the usb drive in the bios itself. I managed to start from it to choose boot options before you enter the bios but after loading the files I got the same boot loop (or it took ages and I was to impatient). I already had opened the case of my regular pc this morning because the lsi raidcontroller failed and was stuck on the boot screen (more bad luck) so I took it out in order to download the correct ws2012 ISO. I tried the PPA cf reader on different sata ports and allthough the lights on the card did light up, it didn't show up as a drive. Sata is hot swappable so I presume the PPA cf card reader died after three years of heavy usage. So tomorrow I will try the machine I managed to install today as a single pc so I can listen to music again. The NAA pc has to wait untill a new ssd will be delivered.

Do you have a lot of PPA gear? I have heard other people having issues.

[Hammer]

Could be, although it shouldn't make difference. But it may be that Nvidia does less testing with such configurations.

 

RDP doesn't work with Nvidia drivers? That shouldn't make difference either...

 

All my configurations with Nvidia card also have display connected to the same card.

RDP works, but not Roon via RDP.

[RubenV]

Do you have a lot of PPA gear? I have heard other people having issues.

Yeah I got quite some PPA goodies around but so far only the cf card reader stopped working.

 

Today I tried to get HQPlayer working on a single machine. Unfortunately, it seems that the 120W PPA lpsu is not powerfull enough for the 6700K. I also tried it with the USB card and SSD both running from batteries, but as soon as I hit the play button to play local stored files (PCM converted to DSD) the pc powers down. A bit strange, since a stress test on the 6700K shows a maximum power draw of 100W (link for test: Intel Skylake Power And Temperature Results). Would 20W not be enough for a mini-ITX mobo? I doubt it...

 

After this debacle I am now running HQplayer on my normal pc (i7 6950x intel extreme octa) and installed the single pc as NAA. It works, but even with upsampling everything to DSD512 it doesn't sounded as good as my previous dual-pc setup with just AO and JPlay. The regular pc outputs a lot of electronical noise which you can hear during quiet passages or between tracks. So I guess, I will look for a beefier psu...

[jabbr]

I've loaded HQPlayer 3.14.4 onto my son's Windows 10 gaming computer so I can test out CUDA offload.

 

We built an i7-6850/GTX1080, and this machine is connected to our network via 802.11ac/AC1900. So far so good. Seems to do DSD512 using poly-sinc -> NAA ... few stutters but I haven't tried to optimize. I'm controlling via Roon that sits on my OS X machine. All good except that the Volume control doesn't work while music is playing -- Roon says volume is fixed, and the volume dial doesn't work on HQPlayer itself ... needless to say its really hard to compare sound.

 

If I'm going to do this for awhile I'll need a separate Windows license for HQPlayer...

[jabbr]

... was that pesky "DirectSDM" setting that's hidden away in the "other" menu... was enabled by default. From a UI standpoint, consider moving that to main settings because it has effects even when (trying to) DSD64->DSD512

[Jud]

If I'm going to do this for awhile I'll need a separate Windows license for HQPlayer...

 

Could dual-boot Linux (e.g., Lubuntu) - would give you an OS that's pretty well optimized out of the box, and you can use your Mac license.

[jabbr]

Could dual-boot Linux (e.g., Lubuntu) - would give you an OS that's pretty well optimized out of the box, and you can use your Mac license.

 

I've considered that but ... want to run HQP essentially as a service: as a startup item and hidden :)

 

(upsampling to DSD512 uses 20% cpu on this machine)

[Jud]

For anyone wanting to DIY a computer to run HQPlayer (and/or other players or computing-intensive tasks) - Newegg has the i7-6700K on sale for $324.99 through January 4th.

[jabbr]

For anyone wanting to DIY a computer to run HQPlayer (and/or other players or computing-intensive tasks) - Newegg has the i7-6700K on sale for $324.99 through January 4th.

 

Great for normal purposes ... I'm toying with a 3-4 way digital Acourate digital crossover kernel, then fed into 3-4 DACs ... would HQPlayer automagically output say 6 channels from 2 in (stereo) with the proper kernel?

[Miska]

Great for normal purposes ... I'm toying with a 3-4 way digital Acourate digital crossover kernel, then fed into 3-4 DACs ... would HQPlayer automagically output say 6 channels from 2 in (stereo) with the proper kernel?

 

You are better off with a multichannel DAC like exaSound e28 or now e38. With multiple DACs there's one major culprit, asynchronous transfer and synchronizing multiple DACs is sort of logically conflicting...

 

But yes, that's one of the reasons I built the i7-6950X + GTX 1080 machine to output 8 channels to the exaSound e28...

[Miska]

... was that pesky "DirectSDM" setting that's hidden away in the "other" menu... was enabled by default. From a UI standpoint, consider moving that to main settings because it has effects even when (trying to) DSD64->DSD512

 

On purpose, I've tried to collect all/most settings that have to do with DSD-sources to one place, that is the DSDIFF/DSF Settings -dialog.

 

Now it also has to do with DSD sources from Roon and such, so the naming is not completely all encompassing anymore.