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Hi Miska,

 

I noticed that after the 3.19.1 install that the correct filter selection and dither selection are no longer showing in Roon. It now just shows "default" in both fields. The correct PCM output rate is still showing. It still sounds the same so it probably is just a data display issue. I did re-boot everything but it did not help.

 

I saw some other display issues reported earlier but not this one. Sorry if I missed it if it was already reported.

 

Thanks,

 

Bob

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1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, works as designed, fixing the display issue. When you set output mode to "Auto", settings from HQPlayer setting dialogs are used, that's why "Default" is shown. In Auto output mode you cannot change those settings from the main window because it is logically impossible to display the settings there with current GUI design, so all those controls are disabled now. Otherwise it is just plain confusing as before... If you explicitly select PCM or SDM output mode, then things are as before, so the change only affects "Auto" output mode switching.

 

I'm expecting most people would not use the Auto-output-mode.

Switched to PCM and the display is now correct again. Thanks and I will await your fix.

 

Bob

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1 hour ago, Hammer said:

HQPlayer and priority in Windows.  

 

Hi, I recall reading on this thread sometime ago that one should not set the priority level for HQPlayer in Windows because the only impact that would have is on the GUI and not the signal processing give HQPlayer manages that internally.

 

I am running HQPlayer on a Server 2016 system with a GTX 1080 for CUDA offload.  What I find is that the music will pause every so often, but as soon as I RDP into the system to see what is happening, the music starts up again.  Therefore it appears Windows is suspending HQPlayer.  The system has 64 GB of RAM, a 16 Core Threadripper, the GTX 1080 and not running anything in the background and so I think it is not a resource issue.  

 

Has anyone experience this and if setting priority does not help, are there any workarounds to get HQPlayer “running” all the time?

 

Thanks, Hammer

 

You might try "Process Lasso" by Bitsum. It has a great algorithm for this type of issue. I have used it for years. There is a free version if you want to try it out. He also has another called "Park Control" to keep all cores active and it works with Lasso. Just a thought.

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9 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It probably could, but I think it would go to "assuming too much" category. IMO, messing with such things is something application is not supposed to do... If it would, then someone would ask "can I script this?" and then the conclusion is - it shouldn't have been there in the first place...

 

Keeping such things separate is just better overall.

 

We are already starting to see that keeping UI and audio endpoint separate from the player is also better overall.

 

 

This what "Process Lasso/Park Control" that I mentioned above does very well.

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Just now, Miska said:

 

Is it documented somewhere what it exactly does? I don't like things that mess with the OS without exactly specifying what they do.

 

Does it also know how to deal with GPU power management (Nvidia drivers)?

 

I am not very technical so I can't answer your questions directly but you could check on the "Bitsum" website here https://bitsum.com/.

The author has been at this for a long while and he makes a point to support audiophiles' needs. He is very good at responding to questions as well. I read a review of this product  "Sound Galleries SGM Server" where this product was running HQPlayer and Process Lasso to output DSD 512 without issue. I am not trying to sell this but I will say that I have used it with success on several computers over the last several years. It is worth investigating. One thing I will mention is that if you are running the MS Server 2016 as the OS you would need the paid server version of Process Lasso.

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  • 1 month later...
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I also use ASRC as some others have reported here and love it but I do have a unique situation. I have a Mark Levinson 390s CD/Processor that is limited to 44.1/24 or 48/24 input on SPDIF. I use HQ Player with ASRC to bring everything coming into HQ Player converted (up from 44.1 and down from the rest) to 48/24 out to the ML 390s which then further up-samples to 384/24 using its own internal filter (no doubt FIR). I have also found that for me it works best without any dither. No matter which one I tried, I could here some distortion. There probably needs to be somewhere to stash the the dither noise and at 48/24 I doubt that there is room.

 

This works well while I take my time replacing this aging but still amazing DAC.

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On 9/13/2018 at 2:22 AM, Miska said:

 

Using filters from the poly-sinc family that can convert 44.1 to 48 do quite a bit better job on that conversion than ASRC. So I'd recommend those instead.

 

Thanks Miska, I have been trying all the poly-sync family and find that I like poly-sync short MP the best. Another thing I tried was setting the DAC  setting to 32 bit as my UltraRendu is a 32 bit capable device. The BelCanto uLink USB to SPDIF converter that follows is 24 bit so it gets truncated there. I did this because I don't use dither and the manual said that for 32 bit devices that quantization errors get lost in the thermal noise. It does seem to work very well. As I said earlier, adding dither always added some distortion. Maybe the dither interfered with whatever my DAC (ML 390s) was doing in its up-conversion process.

 

Thanks

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1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Especially in this kind of case you should set "DAC Bits" to 24 and use some dither like TPDF.

 

Truncation always causes distortion, while dithering doesn't. Dithering to 24-bit adds white noise at -144 dBFS level. So if you'd hear dither it would sound like tape hiss or like FM radio between stations. If dither interferes with something in upstream, there is something seriously wrong with the upstream component.

 

Thanks, I will try it.

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3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Especially in this kind of case you should set "DAC Bits" to 24 and use some dither like TPDF.

 

Truncation always causes distortion, while dithering doesn't. Dithering to 24-bit adds white noise at -144 dBFS level. So if you'd hear dither it would sound like tape hiss or like FM radio between stations. If dither interferes with something in upstream, there is something seriously wrong with the upstream component.

 

Hi Miska, Tried TPDF and it sounds great with poly-sync short mp converting 44.1 to 48.  Thanks again

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  • 3 weeks later...

Miska,

 

Could you please list those filters that are suitable for 1:1 at 44.1. As I mentioned before, my ML 390s only accepts 44.1 or 48 at the SPDIF input and then up-samples internally to 352/384. For a while I was taking everything up or down to 48 but I never thought that it sounded quite right. I only stream Tidal using Roon at 44.1 (gave up on MQA, another story) so I would like to keep it 44.1 ===> 44.1 but re-filter. I have tried all the MP filters and most sound much better at 44.1 ===> 44.1 than what I was getting using other filters and going up to 48. I am trying to not compete with the internal filter of the ML 390s. I know that this is a unique situation but I am making due until I can replace the ML 390s with a more modern DAC.

 

Thanks,

 

Bob

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  • 2 weeks later...

All this back and forth about the massive amount of processing power needed to do DSD 512 conversion leads me to to ask this question:

 

How can certain manufacturers who I won't name claim to be doing DSD 1024 on what appears to be an ordinary FPGA chip?

 

Is there some trick to programing or some unknown capability that I am not aware of or do not understand?

 

I know that HQ Player can do higher than DSD 512 but to date I have not seen anyone be able to actually do it and I don't think there is a DAC readily available that can accept it. It is the same issue as these mega million tap high rate PCM filters being run on a FPGA. The PCM scenario seems at least plausible but the DSD 1024 on a FPGA seems far fetched.

 

If this has been discussed before I did not find it so pardon me if I am asking something that has been explained before.

 

Answers appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance to all.

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Because you can reach the same goal in many ways, if you just want "DSD1024" and are not picky about actual quality.

 

You can do it easily if you lower the quality bar and consider something "good enough". DAC chips do similar thing these days too. So the usual approach, like DAC chips do is to first have some platform (FPGA or on-chip DSP) and then make processing that can run on that what ever limited amount of resources you have. For example DAC chips run proper digital filter up to 8x rate and they they just repeat the same sample value 128 times to make up 1024 "rate" for the modulator. Or some more fancy chip like Chord DAC FPGA runs digital filter to 16x rate and then does linear interpolation (argh) to 2048 "rate".

 

While I prefer to do things vice versa, first make specifications of what I consider "perfect" result and then make processing that reaches the wanted quality level and runs as fast as possible. And then you need to buy hardware that can run it. I don't tailor the algorithm to run on any specific hardware, the hardware needs to be tailored to run the algorithm.

 

For Chord's million taps to 256x which is best they can do now, you can run 16 million taps on cheap GTX 1060 GPU to 512x in comparison... (and it's less than 25% load on that GPU) Like the number of taps alone would matter in first place...

 

Most FPGA's do processing in fixed point and at lower resolution. I do processing in 64/80-bit floating point. Making an FPGA do complex floating point processing already takes immense amount of FPGA space. And I would never resort to something like repeating samples or linear interpolation to reach the target rate.

 

 

Sometimes companies ask what it would take to run my algorithms on FPGA, when I tell them that it would need Xilinx biggest Virtex FPGA's, they quickly forget about it. Such big FPGA's cost way more than CPU/GPU and you are likely not going to find such chips in DACs.

 

 

Thank you Miska for the very detailed answers. I suspected as much.  Bob

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  • 3 months later...
10 hours ago, Lio_B said:

I'm using Qobuz via Roon with HQPlayer

 

I limited sample rate to 96 kHz in PCM settings of HQP, I don't want higher.

 

But when Qobuz stream a 192 kHz file, HQPlayer do not like that, a progress bar stop the playing.

 

is it impossible for HQP to downgrading this rate ?

 

thanks

 

Try the ASRC filter. That should work.

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  • 1 month later...
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39 minutes ago, sixman said:

Miska, most dacs have their own internal SRC and resample to their own intrinsic rate, as well as apply their own filters to the incoming signal. Does this negate the processing done in HQP to some extent?

 

I always wonder if people with say a PS Audio DS dac get the same benefit of using HQP?

There have been posts where people say that for PCM they get the best results using HQP from DACs that are either NOS or can turn off SRC and filtering to become NOS (Holo Spring as an example). For DSD this should not be an issue.

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  • 1 month later...

Jussi,

 

Could you please look into making the phase inversion setting stick from one start to the next. My pre-amp inverts phase so I need to leave it on and it always reverts at start to non-invert setting and I forget to look and change sometimes.

 

Also, would there be any benefit to allowing an option to have HQP Win Desktop version set as a service so it would start automatically at start?

 

Loving version 4. I don't bother with the client as all I use is Roon streaming Tidal/Qobuz. One less thing running.

 

Thanks

 

Bob

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8 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

That's a mistake if it doesn't stick. I'll check it..

 

 

Service is more like daemons on Unix-like systems (macOS/Linux). This is what Embedded does on Linux. But such cannot have built-in GUI for configuration. HQPlayer Desktop is specifically a desktop application with GUI, so instead if there would be one that can be run as service it would be Embedded.

 

If you want, you can configure Windows to auto-login a user account, like I have on my listening room media computer. And you can easily make HQPlayer Desktop launch automatically at login time.

 

OK, Thanks

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2 hours ago, craighartley said:

Miska,

 

This may be a stupid question, but if I am using another front end like Roon and not using Client and therefore never 'see' the main window, what does HQPlayer assume is 'set' in the main window??! 

Miska has said before that the settings from the settings page are the default beginning point so I assume the same is true in the 4 series. I too also use only Roon and no client. I see the default settings in the Roon playback chain so check yours.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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