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Is the NAA separately licensed? For example, if I want to run HQPlayer Desktop on a Windows machine and run NAA on a Mac, do I need to buy both a Windows license and a Mac license ... or can you deploy NAA on any platform you like regardless of which HQPlayer Desktop license you buy?

 

Another question. If I buy HQPlayer Desktop for Mac, and later decide I'd rather run it on Windows (and stop using it on the Mac), do I need to buy dual licenses or can I exchange my Mac license for a Windows license? What's prompting this question is the recently reported good results on Windows 10.

 

OK one more question. When using a DAC with undefeatable oversampling (rather than a NOS DAC) how do I use HQPlayer? I don't want the DAC to use it's own FPGA/DSP stuff, I just want to hear what HQPlayer algorithms has produced. For example, My Ayre QB-9 DSD supports 24/192 and DSD64 via DoP, but the specs say it does 16x one-pass oversampling.

 

Thanks for your help. I'm just starting to try to understand HQPlayer.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Many DACs have their own oversampling and filtering algorithms implemented in FPGA. What happens when you use HQPlayer processing and then send the output to such a DAC? I understand that HQPlayer may do a better job than the DAC due to better algorithms and more processing resources, but doesn't the DAC then try to do further processing that could mess up what HQPlayer has done? Let's say the DAC can only do 24/192. If HQPlayer sends 24/192 to the DAC, does the DAC FPGA leave it alone?

 

Are the OSX and Windows versions of HQPlayer functionally equivalent? Which platform sounds better?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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+1. "HQPlayer for dummies". Miska is genius, and somebody is required to transmit him into lower vibrations, or down-sample for ordinary human's understanding.

Funniest comment ever, and so true.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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This might be a nice little NAA box upgraded to Windows 10 .... Dell Inspiron Micro 3050 ... for those who don't want to build something themselves. It comes with either a J1800 (dual core Celeron) for $179 or J2900 (quad core Bay Trail) for $229 with lots of ports so it's pretty versatile. Any comments?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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  • 2 months later...
But the cat is out of the bag.

Hey Richard, thanks for the tip. You should have a look at this, it will make you happy.

http://www.microrendu.sonore.us/%CE%BCRendu.html

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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What is better to use as NAA, Windows 10 or something like SMS-100 or upcoming Sonore micro Rendu? Are you better off with Windows 10 so you can use ASIO drivers, or a Linux solution which IIRC doesn't need ASIO drivers? What are the key considerations for choosing between Windows 10 vs something like micro Rendu for NAA (sound quality potential, flexibility, manageability, etc).

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Miska, do you plan to exploit the integrated FPGA in Skylake Purley? Will this be of value to you for implementation of your code?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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There is limited support for AVX512 on Windows and Mac. nVidia CUDA support is planned to appear some time soon, I was waiting for some new features to appear in the CUDA SDK before implementing some accelerations. Quadro is likely going to be needed, because nVidia wants to make some features exclusive to the Quadro range.

Can you give an example of a Quadro-exclusive feature that you plan to exploit? I also like gaming, and Quadro cost/performance is much higher than Nvidia's GeForce cards which are optimized for gaming. I'd like to understand this before I buy a new graphics card. How much of the benefit of your GPU code would I miss with Geforce vs Quadro?

I asked earlier whether the integrated FPGA of Skylake Purley will be of use to you in HQPlayer. Is it too early for you to say?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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But you may want to make sure it is at least Kepler generation with CUDA compute capability 3.5 so that it has unified memory and dynamic parallelism support.

Thanks, Miska that puts things in perspective. My current GTX 660 Ti only has CUDA compute capability 3.0, but I'm hoping to replace it with a Pascal card about a year from now. A lot of things need to go right for Nvidia to make that schedule, I'm certainly not considering a flagship Pascal card.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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When is CUDA offload of value? Is it just for multichannel, or just for certain filters/modulators? I'd like to understand this better before investing in a video card upgrade. Thanks.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Miska, I'm planning a new Skylake build. For PCM -> DSD256 should I get an i7-6700K, or would an i5-6600K be sufficient?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Is Roon the only way to stream TIDAL through HQPlayer? Looks like Roon has passed on Qobuz integration, saying that the Qobuz API doesn't give Roon the facilities it needs.

 

Is the latest release of Muso a reliable GUI for HQPlayer or is it still kind of buggy?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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My Jeff Rowland Aeris doesn't do DSD, so I have no experience with it yet. I'd like to learn whether I prefer redbook -->DSD with HQPlayer without making too big an investment in a DSD-capable DAC initially. I guess my question is how much do I need to spend on a DSD-capable DAC to really make a well informed decision? I don't want to just plunge in and get a T+A DAC8 DSD until I make this assessment.

 

Should I get something that can do at least DSD256? Is DoP good enough or must I get something that supports native DSD? I'd really appreciate a recommendation.

 

I realize this is OT but it is an integral part of my evaluation of HQPlayer. Maybe a PM would be best so as not to side track this excellent thread. Thanks.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Miska, I have a 15" mid-2012 rMBP. What is a reasonable PCM --> DSD target rate (DoP of course) for that machine, and which filters should I try?

 

I'm planning to build a new i7-6700K Windows 10 machine. I've been waiting for GTX 1070 because I use the system for gaming when I'm not using it for audio. Right now I've only got an ancient E8500 4GB Windows 10 machine. Is it capable of doing any level of PCM-->DSD conversion?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Thanks to ted_b, hifial, lmitche and firedog for your input about how to get acquainted with DSD without initially spending a lot on a DAC. This is for my secondary play-around-with-stuff system where I learn about the potential of new software and hardware.

 

So lmitche, you said you have DSD512 working on both a T+A DAC8 DSD and on an iFi micro iDSD. The question is will the micro iDSD give me a reasonable idea of the potential of DSD512 vs 24/192 PCM? If this is a worthwhile learning experience, there's currently a 20% off deal out there on the micro iDSD.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Does HQPlayer process the entire track and put it in memory before starting playback? If so, does that mean any dropouts can be attributed solely to network issues if using NAA on a micro rendu?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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No, the track is processed on the fly while playing back. Otherwise the waiting time for each track would be too long. For example if your CPU load while playing back is 50%, then pre-processing a track would take half of track's length. So a five minute track would take two and half minutes to process.

Thanks, Miska. This makes perfect sense now.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Most wifi bridges are capable of 1200-1900mbps.

You're not going to get anywhere close to that rate unless your wireless media bridge is very close to your router ... in which case you wouldn't need a wireless media bridge. Still a good question ... what rate is required for DSD512 when HQPlayer is sending data to NAA?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Miska, what characteristics differentiate the various modulators (for example, ADSM7 vs DSD7)? I've seen your descriptions of the filters like poly-sinc vs poly-sinc-mp, but I've never seen something similar for the modulators that describes how they affect the sound and when each is most appropriate to use. The names of the modulators aren't descriptive like the filter names, so I really have no insight into how they differ. Thanks.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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I'll try to remember to update the manual too for next release to reflect the description above.

Thanks, Miska ... that is the level of information I wanted. It's been way too long since I studied engineering to understand the mathematics.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Miska, I'm considering GTX 1060 vs GTX 1070. I use my system for gaming when I'm not listening to music, but since I game at 1080p the GTX 1060 would be powerful enough. The question is ... would the GTX 1060 with 1280 CUDA cores be plenty (with an i7-6700K) for HQPlayer PCM --> DSD512, or do you recommend getting a GTX 1070? Of course, the GTX 1060 memory bandwidth is also significantly lower than on the GTX 1070, but I don't know if that's significant for HQPlayer.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Miska, I'm considering GTX 1060 vs GTX 1070. I use my system for gaming when I'm not listening to music, but since I game at 1080p the GTX 1060 would be powerful enough. The question is ... would the GTX 1060 with 1280 CUDA cores be plenty (with an i7-6700K) for HQPlayer PCM --> DSD512, or do you recommend getting a GTX 1070? Of course, the GTX 1060 memory bandwidth is also significantly lower than on the GTX 1070, but I don't know if that's significant for HQPlayer.

So then Miska, back to my question above. If I'm not doing convolution or matrix processing, are you saying that the new GTX 1060 ($250) should be plenty of CUDA power for HQPlayer? If a GTX 1070 wouldn't make that big an incremental difference to HQPlayer performance in comparison to the GTX 1060, I'd prefer to save the money for something else.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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  • 3 months later...

If you're doing a new build, EVGA 1080 and 1070 cards are literally going up in flames due to thermal runaway. Please read this Nvidia GTX 1080 & 1070 EVGA Cards Reportedly Catching Fire & Dying Due To VRMs Overheating

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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Now there's a first public alpha release of HQPlayer Embedded 4.x available.

Does this mean that an alpha release of HQPlayer Desktop 4.x is coming soon as well?

 

If I buy HQPlayer Desktop now, will I get a free upgrade to HQPlayer Desktop 4.x if it becomes available within the next 6 months?

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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