HQ Player

[ronnie.sengupta]

When I try 44.1 PCM to poly-sinc-xtr DSD 512, I get a lot of dropouts on my I7 - 7700k + GTX 1080 PC. The CPU runs at about 62% load without Cuda off load and with Cude off load, I get 25% CPU usage and 80% GPU usage.

 

If only 62% of the CPU is used, I was wondering if the bottleneck is with RAM speed. I am currently using DDR 4 2400Mhz RAM. I am on Windows 10 home edition running HQP 3.25.6

 

The xtr filter at DSD256 runs without any problem and sounds wonderful.

[ronnie.sengupta]

I managed to get 44.1 PCM -> DSD 256 working with ADM7EC + poly-sinc-xtr-lp running on my i7-7700k

 

Overclocked to 4.7ghz with hyper threading disabled. CPU running at 98% with CPU temps around 69 C

 

Now, I need to find a reasonably priced CPU which will run the above settings at 50% load!

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Good achievement to get load to 100% without dropouts! Not really much spare left for the OS. You could keep HyperThreading enabled to get a little bit better performance. And the total load figure drops to half because there are twice as many logical CPUs for the same number of physical cores, not that it would change anything from practical point of view.

 

i9-9900K(S) is probably what you are looking for. Pretty much same clock frequencies but twice as many cores.

 

Another alternative is to use some RTX-series GPU, like 2080 to run the filters. But it doesn't really save much money. And 9th gen i9 is still somewhat faster than 7th gen i7, clock-to-clock.

 

 

With Hyper threading enabled, the CPU usage comes down to around 80% and there is constant stuttering, which is a bit strange.

 

I was a bit hasty in posting my earlier results, with Hyper threading disabled, I do get some stutter, but once or twice in a song and sometimes no stutter at all.

 

i9 9900KS is not yet available in India. I could try upgrading from  my GTX 1080 to 2080, or wait till the processor becomes available in India.

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

On 12/27/2019 at 11:14 AM, Jerry said:

 

Just to reiterate, with proper cooling, a 6700K overclocked to 4.7G and a GTX1080 are enough to achieve EC variant DSD256 with the most demanding non-2s xtr filter for red book materials. Try to play around the HQPlayer settings and you will get there...

I am able to run 7EC with DSD 256 with GTX 1080 at 60% CPU and 60% GPU load. Much better! This runs without any dropouts.

 

I have tried everything, but can't seem to get ASDM7 + 512 with poly-sinc-xtr @ 512 DSD to work.  I am wondering if it would it help to upgrade to RTX 2080 or upgrade to i9 9700k processor instead.

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

When I am converting from redbook to DSD512 with Poly-sinc xtr. The CPU stays at ~45% and the GPU is at ~80%. If I turn off Cuda, the CPU goes up to 95%. These settings result in constant stuttering.

 

If I switch to xtr2 filters, then CPU usage is around 35% and 8% GPU - no dropouts.

 

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

13 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

80% is around the edge of GPU capabilities, usually up to about 75% load it goes fine. But going over the desktop graphics rendering and having something like a web browser or Roon open can cause intermittent processing delays on the GPU causing stutter.

 

Is the 80% with conversion from 44.1k to 22.5792M or something else?

 

 

Conversion from 44.1k to 22.5792 (I have auto-rate family checked).

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

18 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

OK, I can check the load figures for my three GPUs (GTX1080, RTX2080 and RTX2080Ti) when I get back home.

 

 

Thank you. I really appreciate it. If I have to upgrade, I would rather upgrade my Processor/Motherboard than the GPU as the my Noctua HD15 with dual fan keeps the CPU very cool and runs pretty quiet as compared to a GPU running at something like a 70% load.

 

But, if upgrading the GPU is a safer bet to get xtr @ dsd512 to work, I don't mind changing the GPU to a 2080 super or a TI

[ronnie.sengupta]

On 12/31/2019 at 5:58 PM, Miska said:

 

OK, I can check the load figures for my three GPUs (GTX1080, RTX2080 and RTX2080Ti) when I get back home.

 

 

I tried Hqplayer pro to generate DSF files upsampling redbook to dsd512 xtr asdm7 512. Strangely, the dsf file when played Direct DSD also stutters. 

 

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Are you playing with Direct SDM enabled or disabled?

 

 

Direct SDM Enabled. 

 

I managed to solve the problem. I had Matrix Pipeline enabled to swap Left-Right channels. Disabling that fixed it.

 

The T+A Firmware I installed for Linux flips channels for DSD.

 

@miska any thoughts on which way to go - CPU or GPU upgrade for 512 xtr.

 

 

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

22 hours ago, Hammer said:

Hi, I'm running HQPlayer 4.2.3 on Windows Server 2016 with a 16 core AMD Threadripper 1950X CPU.  I've read in some postings that HQPlayer runs much better on Intel CPU's due to higher clock speeds.  However, I'm wonder why when I run HQPlayer say using the non -2s XTR filters that the clock speed of my system does not go up, but stays at a relatively low 2.2 GHz.  When I run Prime95 to stress the CPU, the clock speed jumps up to 3.6 GHz, so I know the system is working/cooled properly, and more importantly, recognizing heavy loads and increasing clock speed.  Is there any reason why Windows does not "see" or "sense" the demand of HQPlayer and therefore does not increase the CPU clock speed?  The music stutters with the XTR filters so clearly the CPU is not keeping up, but it's also not running as fast as it can...Any insights would be much appreciated.  Thank you!

 

 

On my Intel i7 7700k without Cuda - running XTR ASDM7 512 from redbook - I noticed that if I turn on Multicore DSP in settings, the CPU hits close to 100% on all 4 cores (I have Hyper threading turned off). If I disable Multicore DSP the CPU utilization comes down to around 58%.

 

With Multicore enabled and Cuda enabled the CPU utilization comes down to 48% with GPU at 80 to 85%

 

The audio stutters in all three cases.

 

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

2 hours ago, Hammer said:

 

On my PC with Windows 10, i7 7700k with CUDA (2080 Super), I can run Redbook to DSD256 using the non -2s XTR filters and ASDM7EC without stuttering.  Do you have Hyperthreading turned on?  I find that my system will stutter if that is turned on, but works fine if it is off.  I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but I also have HQPlayer set to Realtime in process lasso.  GPU is at 35% and CPU is at 57% (of which HQPlayer is 55%).

 

I too get stuttering when I turn Hyper threading on. With HT turned off, I can get the above settings to work with and without Cuda on my i7 7700k.

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

1 hour ago, LoryWiv said:

 

90 to 95% CPU without Cuda. With Cuda it comes down to around 50 to 60% on both GPU and CPU

[ronnie.sengupta]

I just upgraded the CPU to i7 9700k with z390 board and 3200 c16 ram. To my surprise it is stuttering on dsd256 asdm7ec xtr and using about 90% CPU overclocked at 4900mhz.

 

The pc was only detecting one of the ram modules. So I opened it up to check on the second ram module.

 

Disaster struck! My 4 year old managed to spill a little bit of hot chocolate on the motherbard while I was working on it. Now its not booting up

 

I should have just stuck to my i7 7700k!

[ronnie.sengupta]

Jussi had posted earlier that HQP recognises HT and as such it should not make a difference.

 

@Hammer are you able to play asdm7 non ec with dad 512 with xtr with your 2080 super?

[ronnie.sengupta]

Thanks @Hammer. The cpu upgraded didn't help at all. So was a bit nervous before ordering the 2080. Couldn't decide if I should get the super or ti. I guess at 60% gpu on 2080 super, the TI will be an overkill, given the considerably higher price.

[ronnie.sengupta]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

There's a separate CPLD firmware for Amanero to deal with that channel swap issue.

 

 

Hard to say. If you need to replace CPU, motherboard and RAM to upgrade CPU, you can compare the prices. It also depends if you have some other use for the hardware.

 

 

I promised to provide load figures fort poly-sinc-xtr-lp from 44.1k to DSD at 44.1k x512...

 

Here's GTX1080, doesn't work, frequent drop-outs:

 

Here's RTX2080, doesn't work reliably, intermittent drop-outs:

 

Here's RTX2080Ti, works reliably:

 

 

I suspect bigger difference here is due to bigger L2 cache (2/4 MB vs 6 MB) on RTX2080Ti and wider memory bus bandwidth (256-bit vs 352-bit, 320/496 GB/s vs 616 GB/s). Titan RTX would bump the memory bus to 384-bit at 672 GB/s, but same cache size as 2080Ti. Although the RTX2080Ti chip is much bigger compared to RTX2080 too, 13.6 vs 18.6 billion transistors (545 sq mm vs 754 sq mm). GTX1080 is 7.2 billion transistors and 314 sq mm.

 

 

Thank you Jussi for the results.

 

I got really impatient over the weekend and upgraded CPU to i7 9700k - that didn't help at all. So, this morning I ordered 2080 ti, just installed and ran poly-sinc-xtr-lp from 44.1k to DSD at 44.1k x512

 

Success! Its running CPU at 28% and GPU at 48% - very similar to your results.

 

I could have done without the CPU upgrade the GPU made all the difference.

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

I realized that when I did my tests earlier, I had the multicore setting set to Checked which resulted in stuttering on my i7-9700k with redbook to  ASDM7EC and xtr filters at dsd 256. With Multicore set to "greyed out" I get no stutter and the CPU stays at 55 to 70% with no overclocking, running at clock speeds of around 4600 Mhz.

 

The same settings were running at close to 100% on my i7-7700k overclocked, running at clock speed for 4700Mhz to 5000 Mhz (no stuttering)

 

 

I ran some additional tests on my PC (i7-9700k + RTX 2080 ti) with and without Cuda, all three settings for Multicore,  EC / Non EC modulators and xtr / ext2 filters. 

 

 

@LoryWiv

XTR filters seem to benefit quite a bit from the Cuda offload as can be seen in row 11 and 12 above for ASDMEC and Row 1 and 3 for ASDSM7

 

@Miska

I ran the ASDSM7/xtr/512 tests on my registered HQP 3 version it works without stutter at 85-95% CPU. Same test on HQP 4.2.3 stutters and uses ~74% CPU. Without Cude and Multicore greyed out.

 

HQP 3.25.6

 

 

 

 

HQP 4.2.3

 

 

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

35 minutes ago, Carlos269 said:

Does your DAC support 48KHz based clock rates? Are those DSD512 and DSD256 datasets for 48x512 & 48x256 or for 44.1x512 & 44.1x256? I believe that I know the answer but want to confirm. Thanks.

 

everything is at 44.1 if I try 48X512 - 100% CPU for over a minute, I had to kill HQP.

 

I am not sure if T+A Dac 8 dsd supports 48Khz base rate. I'll try and find out.

 

Update:

The Dac supports 44.1 and 48Khz base clocks. I tried 96Khz PCM and it worked fine oversampling to 48X512

 

[ronnie.sengupta]

6 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

This is because core allocation and reservation in HQPlayer 4. On a 8+ core CPU, two cores are reserved for low intensity tasks and for things like Roon. This works generally well until you hit a case where you would need those two cores for running the filters too, this happens only with the heaviest filters though. You can disable core reservation by setting environment variable HQPLAYER_RESERVED_CORES value to 0 (Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment variables). If the CPU would have HyperThreading, you could also move the reserved cores to the threads by specifying suitable mask, this would free up all primary siblings to intensive tasks.

 

Once I enable Cuda - I don't have a problem with running this filter -  I guess it's better leave the reserved core settings the way it is. I was just curious as to why it was behaving differently. Thank you for the explanation.