HQ Player

[Quadman]

Rookie question and sorry its off topic of latest posts. I want to try HQplayer beta with my roon subscription but I see on signalyst page that the mac osx version in trial mode works continuously for 30 minutes, really only 30 minutes, then what do I do. I also see the windows trial version works for 30 days. I remember when I tried audirvana 1.5x it was for a 14 day trial. Is this 30 minute continuous playing true?

[Quadman]

Thanks @REShaman, thats what I was guessing but it still seems like a PIA, considering windows users get 30 days and the Audirvana worked fine for 2 weeks. Mac's get no love and reboot every 30 mins. It better be worth it, but lots of people say wow after hearing.

 

Be well

John

[Quadman]

Okay this seems strange, I just downloaded the beta version of HQplayer and when I opened the dmg file it did not "install" to my applications folder. Actually I was never asked where do I want to install, it just opened. When I close out of it, HQ player, I have to go back to my downloads folder to reopen as it is not in my applications folder. Never had that happen before with a downloaded program. At work now so I cannot see if I can get music to play roon-HQplayer for my 30 minute timeframe. Weird.

[Quadman]

@jud, your right. I guess in the we do everything auto world now one gets lazy.

 

Be well

 

John

[Quadman]

I am sorry for such a rudimentary question here but I have a strange problem un related to playback issues. I am doing a trial of HQP 3.12 (Mac) after downloading and unzipping I dragged the DMG file into my applications folder, of course with the 30 minute timer I have opened this file many times; it has not mounted it still shows as a DMG file in my applications folder. Whats up with that, operator error or because it is just a trial it will not mount? Would like to buy a license but this concerns me as future updates would have to be downloaded as new programs which will mess up licensing. Image of file info below.

 

[Quadman]

@Argopo thank you, sometimes I can miss the most obvious. Enough of my dumb questions I'll go listen to music I am much better at that.

 

Be well

[Quadman]

@Miska Last week I installed the latest beta build (3.14b7) on my i7-4790K windows 10 pro PC. So far I have encountered two problems that may be program related or possibly PC related. First I use Roon and upsample all music to DSD512 and use the new 512 filter in the beta version. When I use MinringFIR occasionally the music stops mid song and I cannot get it to restart, if I close HQP and reopen it music still does not play and I see that the HQP screen is flashing, what I would call unstable. To correct I have to close HQP and re-open and quickly select another filter then music plays fine. After a bit I can go back to Minringfir and it plays okay.

 

Then in minringFIR MP when ever I try that filter I get a very annoying drum like sound about evey second or so riding above the music, it does not go away and I need to pause music and select another filter and then all is ok. These are the only issues I have found so far on 3.14b7.

 

So are these beta software related or do you think it could be PC based. This is a dedicated audio PC with minimal programs on it except audio (Roon, HQP), audio fidelizer, Chrome and adobe reader, win10 pro. My dac is a heavily modified Gustard X20 with signed theyscon ASIO driver v3.38.

[Quadman]

This may have been addressed in this thread but searching has not brought me the results I am looking for. I have 2 i7-4790k based computers, both run Windows 10 pro, both are audio only. One has a H81 chipset MB and the other has a Z97 chipset MB. Both are overclocked with the H81 to 4.2 GHz and the Z97 to 4.4 Ghz. I have gone into the bios and adjusted some settings based on suggestions in the Audiophile Optimizer set up guide. Such as turning off/disabling Turbo mode, Hyperthreading, all C states, Intel Speed Step, Virtualization tech, Rapid start, Smart Connect, Excute Disable bit, and Limit CPUID max. I do not use AO but do use Fidelizer pro on the H81 machine.

 

I upsample all music to DSD512. The issue I now have is I cannot get the poly filters to play DSD512, the poly 2s and minringFir filters work fine (apprx 45-50% cpu load). When I select a poly filter the CPU pegs at 100% and the green bar shows on the HQP main screen and moves back and forth, the Fans in the PC run full speed and then the green bar stops and no music comes forth. The CPU is then back down to 1%. Heat is not an issue as I use a water cooler on the Z97 MB and use thermal grizzly compound on the heat spreader and a large arctic freezer air cooler on the H81 also with Thermal grizzly, CPU temps max out at 65 C. It seems to me with the H81 MB and before I adjusted the bios settings to manually overclock and turn off the above mentioned items I could play the poly filters. Now I realize I am kind of answering my own question which would be to go into bios and start turning things back on until all filters play. My questions is, is there some guideline on what to turn off or on in bios so the CPU can playback all HQP filters at DSD512. The 4790K processor is certainly capable of doing so.

 

btw- I have been using HQP since November of last year so have a decent handle on the settings part within HQP. Tho I have not played extensively with the driver buffer sizes, yet. I am pretty sure I have the buffer size set to 100ms in the HQP settings tho.

[Quadman]

Since I manually over clock, advice I get from overclockers.com is to not enable turbo boost when manually overclocking as it is redundant and could cause issues. I will do that on my H81 MB PC as it only allows 1.2V to the CPU which is really to low for any real overclocking so turboboost it will be. I have enabled hyper threading and listened a bit on the z97 pc and did play some music at 512 (poly filters) but it was choppy, which seems weird as CPU usage was only high 30's per task manager. I will slowly raise the cpu voltage (currently 1.285 at 4.4 Ghz) on that machine to see if I can get it stable with Poly at 512.

 

Start with enabling turbo mode first. That is likely to fix it.

[Quadman]

Hey @Miska, for 2 channel audio only (no convolution) with no graphics card, but up sampling all files to DSD512. Is there any advantage to getting a 6 core intel processor over a 4 core intel processor? Thinking about 6700K vs. 6800K. Goal being able to use all available filters in DSD512.

[Quadman]

Thanks Miska, Yes, I also use Roon, Tidal, HQP, Audio Fidelizger Pro. Nice catch on the 6800K I hadn't gone deep enough in the specs to catch that it had no graphics built in. Seems like a lot of folks on the build a PC/server for HQP thread use the 6700K with success and are able to use all filters. The 4790K I currently use does not seem up to the task on all filters in HQP at 512, even with pipeline SDM checked and hyper threading enabled.

 

Depends on what else do you plan to run simultaneously. Like for example Roon. 6700K is newer architecture generation, (Skylake) compared to 6800K (Broadwell-E). And for such cases I'd generally recommend to go for maximum clock speed quad core. But, 6800K has two advantages too; it has faster memory bus (4-channel DDR4-2400 vs 2-channel DDR4-2133) and it has some spare core allocation for running the OS, possibly Roon and the smaller tasks in HQPlayer.

 

However, note that 6800K doesn't have any built-in graphics. While 6700K has built-in graphics. And they use different socket, LGA2011-3 vs LGA1151.

[Quadman]

Read this first https://community.roonlabs.com/t/how-do-i-use-roon-and-hqplayer-together/5866 that tells you how to get them to work together. Since you have used HQP standalone I assume you know how to adjust filters. In the Roon/HQP integration for backend in the HQP settings panel I make sure ASIO is selected. That is about it.

 

Are there any directions to have HQ and RoonServer running on a W10 machine? I've tried HQ in the past as standalone on my W10 but not with Roon. Other than the quick start guide I'm not able to find anything.

[Quadman]

Miska's manual, I think is in the HQP download, around page 8 or 9 he discusses the filters with a chart. Depends if you will do DSD or PCM up sampling. I do just DSD512 up sampling and prefer the polysinc short, polysinc short mp, minringFir or closed filters for this. Below is a shot of the HQP setting page this is my set up for DSD, which are to the right side mid way down, the PCM settings are on the left of DSD. For playback, on the main HQP screen make sure the dialog box to the far right under the round volume knob is set for what you want PCM or SDM (DSD) then HQP uses the coresponding filter set you chose in the setting dialog.

 

 

Thanks, I'll read through that. if there is documentation about the filters and such I'll need a refresher on that too as its been a long time.

[Quadman]

You don't need DSD files to up sample to DSD. 99% of my music is Aiff or flac at 16/44, I up sample to DSD512 (which does require some serious computing power) DSD512 is where the magic happens so that is all I listen to. DSD256 is really nice too, until you hear 512 then there is no going back. If your PC lacks enough computing power then try the 2s variants of the filters they use about 1/2 the CPU power.

 

Thanks again! Why do you not up-sample PCM? I thought that would be the preferred files to do. I don't have all that much DSD anyway.

[Quadman]

@Miska I am having an issue and you are probably the only one who can answer it. Here's some background (post was originally put up on Roon's site under Roon Software)

 

I did a search and can find nothing on this. I have a i7-6700K based windows 10 pro PC with a geForce 1060 GPU card for cuda offloading (which I understand does nothing during the filter building stage). I slightly overclock the CPU to 4.4 GHz. Testing with Intel extreme tuning utility shows the CPU to be stable at the voltage I apply (1.35 V). The PC is a stand alone audio only PC with Roon, HQP, Tidal and audio fidelizer all loaded on the C drive with the OS and my music collection on the D drive. Connection to my dac is direct with USB with a AQ Jitterbug and uptone regen in the path. I have roon set to open on windows startup and HQP opens after audiofidelizer finishes it's job. Roon is the current version and HQP is also current 3.14.4

When I begin a listening session (power up the PC) I confirm my filters are as I want, usually Poly-sinc-shrt-mp, DSD5v2, and sample rate of 22579200 (dsd512), I have checked in HQP Cuda offload and pipeline SDM. When I hit play on a music track the filter begins building and about 60% of the time Roon crashes and I get a windows message saying the program has stopped working and needs to close. I close roon and HQP and then reopen both and hit play on the track again. This time the filter finishes building (about 20 seconds) and music then plays and I have no further issues during my listening session which lasts up to 6 hours. The issue only crops up on my first play and then only about 60% of the time. The CPU pegs at 100% during the filter building process. My windows version is 1533? the most current before the anniversary update.

 

Is it normal for the CPU load to go to 100% on a CPU like this when building a filter? Once I get it playing CPU load is ave low 20's and GPU load is also around 20. Looking at each core when playing rarely does any core go over 50%. It seems strange I get a crash on initial start up but then after closing both HQP and Roon and retry I get success. Also if I only close roon and leave HQP open and hit play nothing happens and when I bring HQP to the front the pause symbol in the upper left is flashing. Also If I use 2s filters or DSD256 no crashing.

 

Thank you, Be Well and Happy New Year.

[Quadman]

I am at work and PC is home so I will capture them tonight and email is this the best email to use? [email protected] . I know I am 1 version behind on the driver, they seem to release them every 3 weeks or so, I get drivers directly from Nvidia site as you noted many posts back. I did capture Roons log files of the event last night but not HQP's log files.

 

Happy New Year!

 

Yes, it is normal. It is trying to finish the initialization as quickly as possible to get playback started, and when possible utilizes all available CPU cores to do that.

 

HQPlayer log file of this happening could help (please use email). Also check that you have latest Nvidia drivers. Even though CUDA is not used for initialization, it is involved in the initialization process because the offloading is prepared at the same time.

[Quadman]

I installed 3.15 last night after un-installing 3.14, and listened all evening to the new XTR-mp-2s filter. I am really digging that sound with this filter. Great clarity, and seperation the sound was more organic, less re-produced more live, huge soundstage with great image solidity. That filter seems made for my system. Today I will try the non-2s filter and see how long it takes to initialize. I run a 6700K with a 1060 video card so I should have the horsepower.

 

Outlaw, when I have had the plusing pause symbol in HQP I usually just had to close and re-open HQP and the problem went away. Sometimes I had to click the speaker in the lower right corner in Roon and then click the chain link resetting the connection. Then in the worst instances I had to also close Roon and re-open that always solved the issue.

[Quadman]

Dang, could the dac driver somehow get corrupted, might be worth uninstalling it, rebooting and reinstalling.

[Quadman]

Good luck, I just noticed you said roon works fine on its own so that means the driver is probably ok. Worth a shot tho. 2 weeks ago I had some issues in my playback chain (dropouts) and ended up doing a clean install of windows, HQP, Roon and audio fidelizer and all drivers. That solved the dropout issues.

[Quadman]

Thats not good.

[Quadman]

obvious, but make sure you back up Roon's data base first. It really was not that bad when I did it. Couple of hours max. Made a bootable current version of win 10 pro on a USB stick.

[Quadman]

sweet.

[Quadman]

I too had issues playing tidal 48K mqa tracks in HQP thru Roon with 1.3. I think I was using the poly since shrt mp 2s filter and HQP just had a flashing pause button. Closing and re-opening HQP did not solve either. My dac is a gustard x20u modded to play DSD512. Before 1.3 I could play a tidal 48k mqa track fine but when going back to 44K track it would freeze. NO big deal but strange indeed.

 

Thanks for this!

 

 

I did some more testing. The only 48kHz MQA test file I could find on 2L was this one.

 

If I select "poly-sinc" in the standalone player, it plays. If I select "poly-sinc-mqa", it will not play. If I exit HQPlayer, and start fresh, select "poly-sinc-mqa", it will not play.

 

So the issue is perhaps the "poly-sinc-mqa" filter?

 

My max rate is set to 11289600.

[Quadman]

I agree, I up sample with HQP to DSD512 so the mqa stuff is not that big of a deal to me. There are non-mqa versions on tidal of this stuff that has no issues. BTW I love the sound of his new XTR filters in HQP but they sure are CPU intensive, so much so I only use the 2s variety with my i7-6700k CPU. I think I saw a post by Jussi that he lessened the filter building load for the xtr's in the next release.

[Quadman]

Could this issue be related to filter selection and your dac's driver capabilities? For instance if I try to play a 48K based tidal album thru HQ Player and I am using one of the new XTR-2s filters my dac will not play the song and HQP usually has the issue you describe going on. I upsample to DSD512 and my dac is only capable of 22m6 at DSD 512 where 48K native would be 24m6. The XTR filters seem to only be able to handle 2x multiples and 22m6 is not an even multiple of 48k. Thus HQP flashes the pause sign. If I switch to a poly sinc family filter I can easily play the 48K based files because that filter can do all multiples not just even multiples.

 

Miska it would be handy, if not published already, what filters can only do multiples of 2 and what filters can do any multiple. Maybe put on web site or in manual.

 

HQplayer not working again.Play button greed out and pause button flashing.