HQ Player

[One and a half]

A few weeks ago, downloaded the trial. This attempt is #3 in the lasy 18 months at actually trying to work HQ Player in playing files. I can add in files to play and play them, however the type of filters to use, and there are many to choose from is so totally steeped in digital audio playback mysticism, it creates far too much confusion.

I don't mind to write here, I can't use the filters, mainly cause I don't know which one to choose and why, and should I listen to each one and choose the best, and will it work for everything I play? Isn't there some auto tuning feature that can work instead? This is even before considering upsampling? It's all too hard.

I feel very lost, so much so the trial period has expired. Maybe should try again in August, 2015.

 

For those of you who have worked it out, the best of wishes.

[One and a half]

For years we had to bend to Apple's tunnel vision of supporting formats of their own choosing, and ignoring ISO, FLAC and countless other codecs. Workarounds were possible, messy hit and miss, but Apple didn't listen, and iTunes mangles library support like no other. Lucky it is provided at zero cost, who would pay for such a mess, although at one time you had to pay...

 

Time for payback. If you want to play ALAC on HQPlayer, convert to FLAC like a lot of us had to do if we wanted to play nicely with the iTunes world. There are quite a few tools that convert for OSX and for Windows.

[One and a half]

Finally after a few years, purchased a HQPlayer license 3.4.4 (Windows). At the moment on a very modest Sony PHA-2 DAC and Sennheiser PXC-450 headphones, what I hear is closer to what's at home. There are more details coming to life and am very impressed with HQPlayer's sound performance. It can make $500 devices sound like $3000 devices not quite $5k... To make this player a go to, as mentioned earlier in previous threads, it needs good library management and a remote to work on an ipad/android. I don't expect to use a VNC app to select music, and by now Signalyst would have developed a remote, and to a certain degree, I can understand why it's not available.

 

Keep praising at Jriver's management and Jremote, these two items are Jriver's strong points, and HQ Player's weakest. Jriver can act as an ASIO 'receiver' from other applications. The selection is similar to a sound device that is registered on the OS.

 

Why can't Jriver output to HQplayer, since HQPlyaer can output to Jriver (on my system anyway, but that wouldn't work too well, since HQ Player's sonics are better). The media player would have to be ASIO compliant, goodness, if HQplayer was a treated as a sound card, people could even use iTunes as a front end, omg. Maybe the ALAC thingy is missing.

 

Just thinking out loud here, is this too hard? I equate this to an OSX application like JACK, where you could switch the audio outputs from different applications around to suit. Is this a better idea and keeps Jriver and HQplayer at some distance.

[One and a half]

Tried HQplayer with a Grace Design m920 XMOS chip front end with what I would consider standard off the shelf settings. It works fine PCM and DSD, using DoP for the SDM settings and ASIO. System is Win7 SP1, using the supplied Win drivers.

 

When I try a different DAC, Playback Designs MPD-3, and removing the DoP setting, still ASIO, all DSD playback grinds to a halt, pressing play on a track selection moves the advance cursor very slowly updates several seconds in one go and there's no output at all. There's a Cirrus Logic front end in this DAC.

 

Tried a few different settings for DSD7, 5 etc with much the same response. Reboot a couple of times, still same response. At a loss where to go further, if someone has some ideas, would be greatly appreciated.

 

The MPD-3 works from Jriver playing native DSD and regular, horez PCM files, no issue.

[One and a half]

Ty to Jabs1542 and Eurodriver.

 

Well, if the DSD->PDM conversion is set Filter/Oversampling to say FIR, there's output as PCM. Not quite there....

 

So far, the Filter/Oversampling is set to none, for DSD playback native (the main aim). Tried various buffer times, and Modulation schemes, the output when playing a DSD64 is like FM station with no music, it's quiet, just some crackles if you wind up the volume.

 

Some screen shots, I printed the manual and followed the default settings as shown, works with DSD to PCM, but not DSD directly. It's some minor setting for sure, as to which one.

 

 

 

The MPD-3 can play DoP or native, in DoP there's the same type of output.

[One and a half]

There's no entry for pdm_div in the XML export, so maybe driver/DAC specific after all

[One and a half]

Some more settings, DoP is total silence. The DAC displays 176.4KHz when the drop down (over on the far right) is selected to PCM, a 96fs file plays at this level. The DAC switches over and it plays.

 

 

As soon as the drop down is set to DSD and a DSD file is set to play, the output sound is a motor boat (4 stroke), the DAC switches to DSD though correctly. This is with the check SDM output selection cleared and the sample rate changes to 56M+. Predictably, the DAc is behaving the way it should, but no output of music.

 

Set the max and min volume -3db, I rather have this at 0db, but this description is in the manual not to overload the SD modulator with dsd files.

 

Will wait for Miska's advice.

[One and a half]

If Miska could assist in helping with problem to playback DSD on Playback Designs MPD-3 would be greatly appreciated.

 

Referring Posts : 317, 320, 326 .

[One and a half]

I think PBD needs the same setting change as Merging, so see post #324.

 

I have put this setting back to Settings/Preferences dialog in upcoming 3.5.0 so that there's no need to manually do it through config file editing...

 

So what should be added to the <asio> element in XML is

pdm_div="1"

 

OK I will add the code line and see what happens at the end of the month, currently away.

Anyway big thanks for the advice.

[One and a half]

By that time, there should be 3.5.0 out with checkbox for that option in the settings dialog.

 

Installed 3.5.1 today and the Playback Designs MPD-3 works with this revision, thank you.

[One and a half]

With the usual DAC now working with version 3.5.1 (Windows), today's listening test was to observe how HQPlayer played the nano details. These include, the sharp drop in volume of the high hat, the attack of the drumstick, fade of cymbals, and those very fine percussive 'sand shakers' that the cerebral memory can vividly recall.

 

 

Tracks Tested

Thom Rotella Band, Naima, Redbook

Marialy Pacheco, Ay! Mama Inés, 96/24

Pascall Mailloux, Ocean Bolero, DSD64

Listening chain : In my profile, LCD-3 and Phonitor amp for the final interface today.

 

 

All three contain piano and excellent recordings of drum kits, Naima especially has quite a few percussion instruments deep in the mix but are very discernable.

 

 

For Redbook, I didn't use upsampling, found that far too confusing to use (and why?), just left it as the default dither and natural sampling rate. Tried various filters, none of them brought out the nano detail I hear with Jriver (DSDx2 or No DSP).

 

 

OK, so try a few other conservative combos of filters for Marialy Pacheco, the attack of the drums are missing with all of them. For Ocean Bolero, the piano resonance is well down on the list to hear, particularly, the upper mid bass tends to be muddy.

 

 

Unless a further choice is made of different filters for different music styles and fs is selected, what I'm hearing so far is not what is expected as a minimum. To keep these settings, per track or album is what's needed, but that information is not going to happen anytime shortly, and why should it be necessary.

 

 

I did hear hear better results with a modest DAC in the Sony PHA-2, but the MPD-3 doesn't receive the right numbers to playback.

 

 

From an operation persepective, several annoyances are worthy of mentioning:

The album tracks are now back to alphabetical listing, what happened to the numerical listing?

Takes a while to load, maybe 10-15s "loading" then the splash screen

Don't think I'm ever going to get used to the single click to enque the playlist, besides when there's a change to the settings, the playlist evaporates.

The 3gear change and corresponding clicks when starting DSD like A+, and it takes that little longer to change fs and playback.

 

 

From other users here, their results are well received, so I will keep persisting, now and again when the patience level is a little higher to tinker again with HQPlayer to try and obtain at least the same impressions. Tinkering though takes away from listening time, which I don't have much of these days, a trade-off.

 

 

For now, Jriver20 (Windows) will be the 'go to' player for the time being, less tinkering, more listening.

[One and a half]

The intellectual property, if you will, of HQP is IMO largely in the various upsampling filters/modulators. Testing it without upsampling is, to me, like testing pizza but deciding to skip the cheese and tomato sauce.

 

Maybe it's the degree of how much cheese and tomato sauce is applied.

[One and a half]

for these PCM tracks with your powerful computer, would suggest

 

filter [Polysinc] Modulator [DSD 7] [ 5,644,500] [sDM]

 

My experience with HQ Player doing PCM > DSD is that the SQ is significantly better than JRMC

 

Will give this a shot and report, thanks!

[One and a half]

Hammer,

 

The only way the Auralic Vega can play DSD is for the host, like HQ player to 'wrap' the DFF or DSF file in another container for transport from where you store your files to the DAC only. This is how DoP works and how the Vega plays DSD files. HQ player has a tick box DoP, and this should be ticked. When the file plays in HQ player it may read as PCM, but the DAC should display DSD, that's the best clue that everything is working correctly.

 

All HQ player is doing is to boxing up the DSD file and the DAC is unpacking the box, no conversion necessary.

[One and a half]

JS-2 is dual power but one ground, so make sure the other side is not connected. The JS-2 is great but, like some other dual power supplies, is best when powering two pieces of same equipment that shares ground (SSD and mobo of pc, for example). Connecting it to something and the exaSound defeats exaSound isolation, among other things. I'm sure the Regen then helps but.....

 

The connections at the back of a pre-amp have all the outside shells of the RCA joined to the one plane. If all the inputs were floating, then the chance of hum and noise increases, since the 0V (the shells) are not tied together.

 

In the case of the JS-2 example above, the 0V is the same for both outputs. The current for each device that's connected flows back to the same 0V. Like the pre-amp there's a common reference, otherwise noise and hum *increase* if the 0V was at some other potential.

 

It is quite OK (and preferred) to connect the Exasound or any DAC's DC power input for that matter plus the regen to the JS-2 at the same time. If there is noise, and we can't discount this altogether, the source of the power supply is the same and the noise winds up in the low impedance trap of the JS-2 (usually the DC bus caps), where we want it to be.

 

There's no defeating the isolation properties of the Exasound at all, it doesn't care, since Exasound have taken on the (correct) assumption that any USB signal is rubbish quality, and offer corrective actions for it in the DAC for processing.

[One and a half]

exaSound strongly advises against connecting one of the outputs of the JS-2 to the exaSound DC power in and connecting the other JS-2 power output to any device that has a common ground connection to the USB input of the DAC.

 

We are looking for a volunteer to lend us for a week a JS-2 power supply and a USB regen device. We will do

noise measurements and we will make them public.

 

I was thinking of purchasing an E22, but based on this statement, that event is not going to happen. The whole idea of keeping noise to a minimum (one of them anyway) is providing a common 0V that has no voltage differences leading back to the source of supply, this is very usual in instrumentation systems, and surprisingly, it works. Good that Ted let you know of this post.

[One and a half]

Last time drama was a considerably older version of HQ Player, however the DAC is the same.

 

For USB, PCM selected upsampling files play OK upsampled to 384k, however DSD files sound like a motorboat putt putt-ing about when SDM is selected. For SDM, I use ADM7, poly short filters.

 

I stumbled on the DEFAULT settings for the DAC bits and buffer settings, even DoP which worked. (Tried all buffer timings to 100ms). The DAC can work with DoP or native. Restarted the machine and now we are back to putt putt and no music with DSD. Sometimes selecting SDM caused HQ Player to crash (using the older version 3.8, think it was hence update to the newer version).

The DAC gets confused with the signals, when playing PCM (no DoP) DSD is on the display, not DSD x 2.

 

The PC has enough horsepower (twin Xeon 16 cores, 28GB RAM Win 7 Pro).

 

JRiver plays DSD files with no issue, other than sounding shite, example drums sound like a hitting a blown up paper bag, at least it plays.

 

Would like to play DSD from a computer again as a refresher but a no go Joe for the moment.

[One and a half]

Not sure what is going wrong, can you send screenshot of the Settings-dialog?

 

With ASIO backend and non-DoP the "AltDSD" setting should be enabled for PBD DACs. With WASAPI and DoP Also make sure you don't have "2wire" setting accidentally enabled and set "Buffer time" to 100 ms.

 

All good, the AltDSD did the trick, all working now, thank you so much!

[One and a half]

Not sure what is going wrong, can you send screenshot of the Settings-dialog?

 

With ASIO backend and non-DoP the "AltDSD" setting should be enabled for PBD DACs. With WASAPI and DoP Also make sure you don't have "2wire" setting accidentally enabled and set "Buffer time" to 100 ms.

 

For the record, screen shot that works, suggestions listened to.

 

[One and a half]

Sorry if this is not mentioned before, went back to page 158 and search.

 

If there are about 6 tracks in the playlist, and the Settings window is opened, adjusted. On close the playlist is now 12 tracks, the same 6 tracks duplicated. Previously all tracks would vanish when the settings panel was closed.

Doesn't seem to happen with multiple albums opened. Sometimes the playlist is the same, but more often the numbers increase.

 

During play it's not possible to open the Settings window at all which is understandable, so the event happens at stop.

 

Also why does the INV button ghosted out some times. All I play is FLAC and DSF.

[One and a half]

HQPlayer Desktop and HQPlayer Embedded 3.12.0 released!

 

- Support for Roon as control interface and media source.

- Support for offloading part of the processing to a GPU using NVIDIA CUDA.

- Support for cross-application raw streams and extensions to the remote control API.

- Lower overhead Pipeline SDM implementation.

- Fix ASDM7 initialization bug.

- Various smaller fixes and optimizations.

 

All good & well...BUT. The website lists 3.11.0 how to obtain 3.12.0?

[One and a half]

Just try to do a refresh on your browser. v3.12 is online.

 

The refresh worked thank you

[One and a half]

First make sure HQPlayer works alone, without Roon, so you can play content. Then leave HQPlayer running and start Roon, use "localhost" for HQPlayer and when you click Play to play something it should talk to HQPlayer just fine.

 

Windows security software firewalls usually leave "localhost" alone, but there may be exceptions. But at least it should ask for such cases whether you want to allow connections for applications.

 

With version 3.12.0 what does the "control by network" icon do?

[One and a half]

Please help.

Using Sony PHA-3 amp USB to DAC. PCM files play just fine upsampled to 192kHz.

 

If I select DSD, there's just hiss DSD64 or 128 on any DSD or PCM file. I got Roon to work with PCM OK but DSD is the problem there too.

 

ATM, Roon is off and HQ player is on its own. Win10 + HQPlayer 3.12.0.

 

[One and a half]

Does the Sony support ASIO?

 

If not then I think you may need to enable "DoP" under the SDM Pack drop down menu.

You may also need to increase Buffer time from 5ms ...

 

Regards.

 

Yes the Sony supports Asio otherwise hqplayer would not accept. Dop also hisses

 

If I play a DSD file and select Pcm the song plays double speed .