HQ Player

[craighartley]

Yes it's been an 'English' since long before Shakespeare, having been adopted from the French into Middle English after the Norman Conquest (1066)...

[craighartley]

Imagine you have 6144000 set as max. SDM bitrate in the Settings dialog. A playlist with some tracks appears in the main window. As soon as you click OK in the Settings dialog, the SDM bitrate in the main window adapts to max. possible value below or equal to 6144000 - depending on filter used and original bitrate of the track file. So it need not to be necessarily 6144000. I would like the same evaluation to be run before each next playlist track to be played. This behavior could be restricted to playlist mode (for album mode it wouldn't have much sense).

It would make great sense if you were choosing the albums in Roon where you don't have access to HQPlayer controls.

[craighartley]

I have now added "Auto" as first item to sample rate and mode drop-lists in main window. Down side with the current GUI design is that you don't see what ends up being selected inside the engine. But it is less issue for those DACs/NAAs that have front panel display.

 

That's a wonderful addition.

[craighartley]

I could use more cores for the same cases where CUDA helps, not everything can be parallelized further, but some. Checking number of cores is a bit tricky because usually HyperThreading cores are counted as cores by the OS too, while not being really useful for most of HQPlayer's computations. But at least for the case where reported number of cores is >= 16 I could switch over to more parallel version (8 or 16 real cores).

Miska,

Can you please do this to benefit 6-core machines too (like the 6-core Mac Pro I chose recently - with your help; especially as it can't make use of CUDA)?

[craighartley]

Thank you very much. Particularly for the family setting.

 

(As you will have predicted, the new beta doesn't solve my Roon-HQPlayer DSD256 stutter.)

 

There is now 3.13.0beta5 with setting for keeping the sample rate family even if filter can do other ratios too.

 

I also changed the OS X process throttling settings, now it should be even less likely to stutter when HQPlayer is running alone. There are still some interoperability problems with Roon that I'm trying to solve with them.

 

I did some fine tunings for the DSD7 modulator too...

[craighartley]

If you use latest Roon builds with HQPlayer, the active rate is actually reported there...

 

It only really does this fully for PCM source file doesn't it? That's great, but for DSD64 > DSD256 it doesn't report whether the output it is 11.2 or 12.2. Could that appear too?

[craighartley]

Roon gets just a number, they beautify it to the shown form on their side.

 

Thanks - I'll suggest it to Roon. Actually it's not quite as I described it as the behaviour changes with PCM depending on whether you have Auto Family checked: it says 'DSD256' if 88.2 is processed with Auto rate Family checked, and '12288kHz' if Auto rate Family is not checked. This is with Poly-sinc/ASDM7.

[craighartley]

On another matter, I (and I imagine quite a few others) only use HQP for it's DSD output capability and I would find it really useful to be able to 'lock' the output to 'SDM (DSD)'. At present, if I make any adjustments it defaults back to PCM and it is too easy to forget to reset output to SDM (DSD).

 

Ray

 

+1

 

I was going to make the same request. It would be especially good for anyone like me using HQP headless (with Roon Server). It resets to PCM output any time I reboot (HQP is set to open at startup).

[craighartley]

HQPlayer remembers the last selected output mode, unless there is an error at startup up that interrupts restoring of the previous state.

 

Well it hasn't been doing that for me until I downloaded the latest version this evening - I was about to thank you for introducing it!

Its true that I often get an error on startup because HQPlayer doesn't find my Exasound Playpoint NAA until after its put up the error message: it then displays the Preferences window and by that time it has found the Playpoint. So I just press OK and everything then functions okay except that DSD output has changed to PCM.

[craighartley]

That indicates some network delay somewhere on the way. HQPlayer waits one second for the NAA to respond, if it takes longer then it is assumed not to be available... One second should be plenty of time.

 

You could let "ping" run towards PlayPoint for a while and see what kind of latency values are reported and if there are any missed responses.

 

Thanks. I've never 'pinged' but I'll have a go. But I think it may only happen when HQPlayer starts after rebooting the Mac Pro and seems to open before the network is fully connected. So I'm not sure I'm wise to have it set as an app to open at login.

[craighartley]

For WASAPI it is good idea to change the "Buffer time" setting in HQPlayer to for example 100 ms. Practically all drivers default to 10 ms which is quite demanding when other stuff like Roon or remote desktop is running.

 

Miska,

Do you know what the ExaSound (e22) driver defaults to?

[craighartley]

 

Ideally there would be option in the Preferences menu to output only PCM or output only DSD.

 

But in the meantime is there any way to disable the Auto output mode setting or force HQP to open with the preferred output mode?

 

Thanks

 

+1!

 

My biggest inconvenience using HQP and Roon headless is that the output mode setting doesn't stick after an unexpected shutdown or disconnection. It would be great if you could make it stick like the settings in Preferences.

[craighartley]

What are the changes in the latest beta release ?

 

Well one change is that HQP no longer sees the exaSound PlayPoint NAA with this beta. I went back to 3.13.

[craighartley]

Thanks for the prompt to redownload Mac beta - now fine with exaSound PlayPoint.

[craighartley]

I see that when I start HQPlayer, it defaults to PCM. This is not the best situation with Roon if you use a DSD only DAC. Could you make an option for choosing as default PCM or SDM?

 

++1!

 

The lack of this facility is what I miss most when using HQP and Roonserver headless.

[craighartley]

For me HQP stays at the last setting I chose (which is always SDM in the right-most pulldown). Is this a Roon issue?

 

This only works for me if I shut down HQP then Roon; then start Hqp before starting Roon. If Anything else happens - like I forget this strict ritual - or Roon/HQP loses contact with the NAA (PlayPoint) - which is relatively frequently when coming back from a break - then HQP starts in Auto mode across the board. The number of times I start off playing and then realise it has defaulted to PCM is countless.

Miska was asked to change this some time ago, but explained that it was expected behaviour and it was reasonable to expect to close HQP in an orderly fashion. I can't find the post. I don't understand why he can't make these settings stick through an unexpected shutdown like the Preferences settings do, but the fix may be more complicated than I realise...

 

(I use Mac).

[craighartley]

This only works for me if I shut down HQP then Roon; then start Hqp before starting Roon. If Anything else happens - like I forget this strict ritual - or Roon/HQP loses contact with the NAA (PlayPoint) - which is relatively frequently when coming back from a break - then HQP starts in Auto mode across the board. The number of times I start off playing and then realise it has defaulted to PCM is countless.

Miska was asked to change this some time ago, but explained that it was expected behaviour and it was reasonable to expect to close HQP in an orderly fashion. I can't find the post. I don't understand why he can't make these settings stick through an unexpected shutdown like the Preferences settings do, but the fix may be more complicated than I realise...

 

(I use Mac).

 

In addition, ExaSound Customer Support told me the following last December, and it still applies for me:

 

​The HQPlayer implementation on the PlayPoint [NAA] will improve over time. At this point it is bit tricky to make the computer to see the PlayPoint. You need to restart the PlayPoint and to start HQPlayer after the PlayPoint is ready.

[craighartley]

+1, and I am using Ubuntu

 

With an NAA?

[craighartley]

. Roon on your NAS, HQPlayer on your workhorse, and the NAA on your minimalist quiet isolated DAC-connected device. A nice audio menage a trois.

 

Yup, that's what I got working today

[craighartley]

Not planned. ISO file is designed for optical media and not good for playback on a computer.

 

 

 

There's a free tool for converting ISO to DSF. I have never used such because I don't have any SACD ISO files (don't have a suitable PS3 to rip), but others may be able to help. As long as the data is the same, sound is the same too. How do you know how ISO would sound on HQPlayer?

 

Some of us have downloaded ISO files: SACD rips are not the only source. For a long while downloading ISO files from the Pentatone site was the only way of downloading their native DSD recordings.

[craighartley]

and native DSD64 sounds even more natural with HQP SDM direct mode than upsampled to 512 .

 

Not on my system with my ears.

[craighartley]

Try if it happens also with new 3.14b7

 

Signalyst - Installing HQPlayer beta

 

Can anyone say what is changed in b7 from b5?

[craighartley]

Miska,

 

Could I ask what buffer setting you are using with the T&A DSD 8?

[craighartley]

It is yet another ASIO driver that doesn't allow buffer size adjustments (no control panel and uses fixed size buffer regardless of sampling rate). So use "Default", since the selection doesn't have effect anyway.

 

Thank you. That saves me a lot of pointless experiment.

[craighartley]

That is what he is saying.

 

Here are instructions for creating a microSD card with Miska's image:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f22-networking-networked-audio-and-streaming/installation-hq-player-naa-cubox-i-24863/

 

Note: be sure to use another microSD card in case you want to use the mR software again.

 

I thought Miska was talking about the Sonicorbiter (hardware) not the MicroRendu.