HQ Player

[Bob Stern]

Thanks Miska for your prompt answer. I will just wait for your NAA for OSX and try it again then.

 

When Miska said "not anymore" in post 17, this means he has a beta for OS X that does not require a NAA, i.e., does not require a server-client architecture. Apparently it is a stand-alone desktop music player application like Audirvana's playlist mode.

[Bob Stern]

@Miska: I hope your OS X app will be controllable by AppleScript for playback control (play, pause, forward, back), for adding audio files to the playlist, and for clearing the playlist.

 

If adding AppleScript commands is too much trouble, then please include menu commands for these functions (rather than requiring the mouse) so that we can automate these commands using scripts that send keystrokes.

 

Thanks!

[Bob Stern]

I downloaded the trial and it doesn't see any of the OS X core audio devices. Might be user error, but I am stumped.

 

Since the public demo version is dated 4/18/14, it apparently is the old one that requires a NAA client, not the new Beta Miska just announced.

[Bob Stern]

I also am getting sound only through the left channel.

[Bob Stern]

The transformers I am using are UTC HA100x- vintage 1:10 mic transformers.

 

Shouldn't this I2S hardware discussion be moved to a new thread?

 

However, I was curious enough to google the UTC HA100x xfmr. The secondary has a 60K impedance. Are you driving a circuit whose input Z is that high? (Please don't reply within this HQ Player thread.)

[Bob Stern]

Those of use getting only the left channel should report their DAC and OS X version. How else can Miska troubleshoot it?

[Bob Stern]

I reported it... however in my case I only get the left channel with MONO tracks

 

A possible solution:

 

While you are logged into an admin account, open Audio MIDI Setup, click Configure Speakers, click the Multichannel tab, and make sure the popup to its immediate right says Stereo, and make sure the icons below are set to Left = 1 and Right =2. Click Apply.

[Bob Stern]

3.4.0beta2 did fix the 10.8 device name issue, but it still plays only the left channel.

 

If I change channel offset from 0 to 1, both channels are silent.

[Bob Stern]

Strange... Does this version help?

http://www2.signalyst.com/bins/HQPlayerDesktop3.zip

 

...has one change for this channel issue based on wild guess...

 

 

No.

 

This time I used a test track with spoken identification of the left and right channels. The left channel of the recording was correctly routed to the left channel of the DAC, but the right channel was silent.

 

Same behavior on all Betas.

[Bob Stern]

I use this program to view hidden folders and their contents:

 

Path Finder 6 by Cocoatech

 

This includes an option to view/hide hidden folders.

 

There's a 30 day trial. You can download this, view that hidden folder, and easily rename or delete it.

 

 

FileXaminer is only $10:

FileXaminer

[Bob Stern]

Success with Metric Halo! Thanks, Miska!

[Bob Stern]

I don't have a good answer... I've looked into it, but the Apple documentation is a bit vague so I'm not sure if it will work the way I think it will until I try it out. And it would be OS X specific feature not available on other platforms which makes it lower priority.

 

[snip]

 

(the ALAC code release from Apple wasn't really useful, they released the codec code, but not the code dealing with the container where ALAC is stored)

Miska, I think you're losing a large chunk of the Mac market if you don't support ALAC. If you look at the discussions of Audirvana 2.0 on this forum, you can see that iTunes library sync/import is a huge concern of many users, which means they have a lot of music in ALAC. Pure Music is entirely dependent on iTunes. Many prospective users won't want to spend hours converting their entire library to FLAC or AIFF.

 

I'm not a programmer, but I don't see why you need to know the ALAC file format or M4A container format to read audio data from an ALAC file. Core Audio can do the conversion for you. Even though you are not using Core Audio to perform your DSP algorithms or even to send audio to the output device, it seems you should be able to use Core Audio (e.g., AudioConverterFillComplexBuffer) to read audio from an ALAC M4A file, convert it to CAF in memory, then convert it to 64-bit float or whatever other format you need for your DSP.

 

(I found the AudioConverterFillComplexBuffer method in the book "Learning Core Audio" by Chris Adamson & Kevin Avila.)

[Bob Stern]

What is vague is what format I would get if I don't ask anything specifically. I mean I want to get bit-perfect decompression of the content to what ever is the native format and then go on myself from there. I specifically want to avoid any other conversion than decompression.

 

CoreAudio sort of works wrong way around, because it expects me to tell what I want. But I want CoreAudio to tell what was the source format before compression and give me that one.

Can you open the source file only to read its properties, then use that to specify the audio format for Core Audio to use when you subsequently tell it to convert the source file to CAF?

[Bob Stern]

Spotlight

 

dmnc02, I see you have Spotlight running. Try disabling it during music playback using this terminal command:

 

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

 

You can turn on Spotlight again using:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

 

This method does not erase Spotlight's index file.

 

(Audirvana automatically turns off Spotlight during playback and turns it back on when you press Stop, so you don't need to bother with this.)

[Bob Stern]

XLD can convert ALAC to FLAC (as well as converting among numerous other formats).

 

However, Miska should figure out how to read ALAC files. It's probably something simple that could be resolved if he posted a question to a Core Audio developer forum such as:

 

https://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/coreaudio-api

[Bob Stern]

I can think of quite many that don't support ALAC. ... On OS X it may be different ...

Yes, it's very different on OS X, since the leading OS X audio players (Pure Music, Audirvana, Fidelia, Amarra) are based on the iTunes database for organizing the music library. The iTunes database is invaluable for searching a large classical collection more flexibly than permitted by a hierarchical folder structure — for example, quickly comparing multiple recordings of a single composition, or finding other recordings by a given performer. If you organize your folders by composer, you cannot easily search by artist, and vice versa.

 

Admittedly, switching from ALAC to AIFF rather than FLAC would preserve the ability to use the iTunes database, but doubling the hard drive requirement is costly for a large collection.

 

 

but HQPlayer is a multi-platform player and I prefer to minimize number of OS services I use because it gives me better control on what and how things are done. ... If I'd use OS services for ALAC support that would need one or two more frameworks to be used. If I would make HQPlayer the same way as "every other player", it would also sound like "every other player".

I don't see how reading (and decompressing) an audio file using the standard Core Audio functions (like every other OS X audio player)* instead of open source libraries would be expected to degrade the sound quality of HQPlayer. Certainly it would not affect the distinctive sound of HQPlayer, which is based on your upsampling algorithms rather than any unique method of reading an audio file and decompressing the FLAC.

 

*(Some OS X audio players claim to improve sound quality by bypassing some Core Audio functions for outputting audio to the audio device driver. However, I believe no OS X audio player designer has claimed any benefit in bypassing Core Audio's functions for reading an audio file.)

[Bob Stern]

--

[Bob Stern]

If your DAC has balanced outputs, you can implement the sum and difference matrix function of the Acourate Cleaner hardware using 8 resistors. No need for an active buffer stage and power supply.

 

Of course, this raises the issue of whether passive "preamps" are inherently bad. No need to re-hash that here.

[Bob Stern]

only good ol' reset PRAM saved my day...

 

FYI, you can clear "boot-args" without doing a complete PRAM reset using:

 

sudo nvram -d boot-args

[Bob Stern]

library management, GUI, customizable views, etc of JRiver's front end is unmatched IMHO (Roon is too bloated for me)

Ted, what are the most important features lacking in Muso and Alchemy Desktop that you enjoy in JRiver?

[Bob Stern]

What are the changes in 3.16?

 

The link to the "Version History" page is the "Main" button in the left column of the web page.

 

The download link is near the bottom of the page linked by the "Consumer" button.

[Bob Stern]

If anyone else is bothered by this bug, please notify Miska so he'll prioritize fixing it:

 

For comparison purposes I sometimes want to listen to a passage in the middle of a track. If I click the pause button, drag the playback position marker, then resume playback, the first few seconds of music is garbled. This is very annoying at full volume.

 

(It sounds like the shift register for the upsampling filter has a mix of samples from the old and new playback positions.)

 

This is an old bug, unrelated to the 3.16 update.

[Bob Stern]

@DSD256:

Miska's criticism of the Yggy was merely an explanation of why it did not appeal to him. Why should he feel obligated to spend his limited time and money to evaluate a product of no interest to him, regardless of how many other audiophiles like it?

If you're as confident in the Yggy's virtues as your extensive defense indicates, you should be sufficiently confident to not need your preference validated by Miska. It's bizarre and childish that many audiophiles get upset when a reviewer or other authority doesn’t share their taste or priorities.

[Bob Stern]

HQPlayer and the Network Daemon were just updated to versions 3.16.1 and 3.5.1, respectively.

[Bob Stern]

On 4/15/2017 at 8:03 AM, Dr Tone said:

 

It depends on what you listen to I suppose.  I have quite a bit of harsh bright sounding digital from the 80s.  It's the price I'm willing to pay I guess.

 

It seems to me that a better solution to that problem is parametric EQ (PEQ).  I find a modest dip at 4 KHz ameliorates many harsh recordings without the loss of "air" caused by rolling off the uppermost treble.

 

Although HQP doesn’t support EQ plugins, you could generate one or more FIR filters corresponding to different PEQ settings and load the desired one into HQP's convolver.

 

I intend to implement this when I get caught up with my non-audiophile chores.