HQ Player

[blue2]

Hi Miska

 

How does the CUDA offload work? Does it load share with the CPU or does HQPlayer offload all calculations to the graphics card if it's recognised as CUDA and more FPU capable than the CPU? I'm just wondering if buying something like a GeForce GTX 970 and installing in a PC otherwise not capable of DSD512 would be enough as a means to try it out?

 

Thanks

[blue2]

Well, if you buy a license now, you're entitled to free upgrades to all versions 3.x.x.

When v4 is released, there will be an upgrade cost involved. Owners of v3.x.x license will be able to upgrade at a discount price.

 

I leave Miska to reply to the second part of your question

 

I'm also interested in the license details. Does purchasing a license mean it's tied to 1 machine so I can't upgrade my PC without purchasing a second license? Some programs allow you to "move license to another machine" - that would be ideal

[blue2]

Don't know what this particular model might do for HQPlayer capabilities, but Gigabyte GeForce GTX1060 is on sale at Newegg for 48 hours (from midnight Pacific today) at $239.99 with manufacturer's rebate.

 

Thanks for the tip Jud.

 

Miska,

There are 3Gb (cheaper) and 6Gb versions. Does the amount of memory matter or just the processing cores for CUDA?

Thanks

[blue2]

HQPlayer Desktop and HQPlayer Embedded 3.14.0 released!

... Hardware requirements bumped up....

 

I hope you don't mean we need new CPU's ???

 

On another topic I noticed EMM Labs DA2 does DSD1024. Any crazy wealthy folks tried HQPlayer DSD1024 versus DSD512?

 

Thanks

[blue2]

What settings could I use which require minimum hardware processing? Until I build a new PC I am stuck with an AMD Athlon II X3 460, way below the i7 6700K, but would like to at least get an idea what HQPlayer can do. Also I noticed there are 2 MQA filters which "remove HF noise" according to the manual. Do these filters actually decode the MQA 'origami' secret sauce?

[blue2]

Upgraded to 3.14.2 , and speaker processing is now disabled (I enabled it to try sneding a test tone).

 

My music files are stored on a NAS - so I copied some music files to the local volume.

 

It is still the same.

 

Stephen, I'm sure you'll be happy if Miska can solve this problem. However maybe it's a moot point since the CDQ can't play DSD so using your Windows PC's you'll already be getting the most out of HQPlayer with this DAC (upsampling to 96k). From what I've learned & heard myself the best sound is to upsample RBCD to DSD with a good DAC like T+A DAC8 DSD or others as listed by Miska. The good stuff starts at DSD128 and up to DSD512, which needs some heavy duty computing power e.g. Intel 6700k.

[blue2]

This is mainly a question for Miska, but others who might have similar experience please chime in.

My main system has a 6-core i7-5930k 3.5GHz CPU with dual NVIDIA GForce GTX 770 GPU (with the latest drivers) with 16G RAM..

Without CUDA offloading, my system can reliably upconvert to DSD512 without any issues; however,

whenever i enabled CUDA offloading, it starts to stutter very badly. Here are some different scenarions with poly-sync and DSD7 filters.

1. No CUDA offloading, upconvert to DSD512, average CPU loading is 23.2%, no stuttering.

2. With CUDA offloading, upconvert to DSD512, average CPU loading is 16%, SEVERE stuttering.

3. No CUDA offloading, upconvert to DSD256, average CPU loading is 11.0% no stuttering.

4. With CUDA offloading, upconvert to DSD256, average CPU loading is 11.7% , no stuttering.

Having CUDA in this case has a negative impact for my set up even though it appears to have lightened the CPU loading.

Is there anything wrong with my configuration?

Thanks for your assistance and feedback in advance.

 

Also HQPlayer does not support multiple CUDA graphics cards I believe, so maybe you could repeat the tests with only one installed?

 

This actually begs a question for Miska and CUDA users. If you have a CUDA card installed is it also used for system VDU, or are you supposed to add a CUDA card with graphics output disconnected and continue with previous system graphics connected to the VDU?

[blue2]

Hi everyone,I'm is a newbie also not strong in English language so, please accept my apologies. I have a question after install SQPlayer latest version in Win7 64bit (without SP1) I can't open SQPlayer the error message shown below."The program can't start because api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem."I tried to reinstall many time and redownload but still can't open SQPlayer.Please help me resolve this issue.

 

From HQPlayer web site:

On Windows, Microsoft runtime is required, in case you get error message about missing DLL, you can download the necessary runtime here

[blue2]

After install runtime it work now. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Remember to post back how you get on and what your HQPlayer PC build is. Looks like you need something close to the Intel 6700K to upsample to DSD512 but I've found positive results even at DSD128 with my low power computer.

[blue2]

Hi Miska

I have tried HQPlayer 3.14 32 bit on 2 AMD CPU Windows 10 systems: Phenom II X4 960T 3GHz and AMD Athlon II X3 460 3.4GHz, both have up to SSE4a instruction set. The Phenom is the more powerful CPU (Passmark 3840 versus Athlon 2897) however only the latter can upsample PCM to DSD at 128. I have Pipeline SDM enabled and MSCONFIG Number of processors set to maximum. This didn't seem to improve matters on the Phenom. Task manager shows Speed <1GHz (and separate core graphs show low usage) while playing music but has clicks present, whereas as at startup it goes over 3GHz. As you've said several times it seems Task Manager/Passmark doesn't give a proper guide to performance. I know I need an Intel 6700K system However here are my questions:

- Is all of the above because the bottleneck is FPU performance and Intel is much better than AMD in this regard?

- Does CPU performance management (BIOS?) ignore FPU demand?

Thanks

[blue2]

Hi Miska

- Does CPU performance management (BIOS?) ignore FPU demand?

Not sure what you mean by this?

 

I mean that the CPU ramps up/down clock speed depending on demand from programs/tasks running, however it seems that demand on the FPU is ignored. So stuttering can occur due to inadequate FPU throughput while the main CPU is running at low usage? And I wonder if I'm stuck with this while using current AMD CPU's or can anything be done e.g. in the BIOS settings to alleviate this?

 

Also would a CUDA GPU be a waste of money as a temporary solution with AMD Athlon until I get a new 6700K based system?

 

Thanks

[blue2]

Good point! Makes a difference even though the detailed settings seem to be the same MS 'plan settings' DSD64 clean as a whistle now on one PC and DSD128 good on the other.

 

Windows does not manipulate the CPU or motherboard or multipliers or FSB or anything. Power Options in the Control Panel is simply a factor that is used during task-scheduling. When processes run, the Windows task-scheduler allocates a specific number of CPU cycles to different processes and switches back and forth to enable pre-emptive multitasking. Normally, it assigns as many CPU cycles as are available in order to run everything as fast as possible. What Windows lets you do is to assign a limit to how much CPU capacity is usable. As a result, there will be CPU cycles that remain unused, which allows the CPU to remain at a lower temperature.

- above is my synopsis of a googled web site

 

I think whatever is going on here the FPU load is not considered.

 

PS BTW the 'High Performance' option is normally hidden in the Control Panel, Power Options dialogue.

[blue2]

Roon is nice but expensive but it does have a nice app too. I wish there was a cheaper solution that had an app.

 

There's 2 other GUI's mentioned on the HQPlayer web site (External control applications) and discussed here: Muso and Alchemy. They have lots of nice features.

[blue2]

... However, if I want to pass DSD as is (enabling DirectSDM), how do I do it in hqp-control?

 

I think your options are:

(a) HQPlayer saves its last 'transport' set up in XML C:\Users\<your_user_name>\AppData\Local\HQPlayer\HQPlayer.xml

and reads it back in when started. This includes a tracklist and all the settings in one xml file. So you could maybe have two batch scripts to start HQP with a PCM file list and one for DSD.

(b) Alchemy has a mapping feature to set decoding modes and rates etc., for different file types.

© You could also set the decoding mode to DSD and the rate to match the play list if they're all the same. If you want DSD 'pass through' with various DSD rates in your playlist, you need DirectSDM and only option (a) will work.

Muso has a feature to edit a copy of HQPlayer.xml However I think what a few of us are looking for is to create a dynamic play list and have HQP's mode/filter/shaper/rate set based on each file type (flac/wav/dsf/dff) in the list, which I think Alchemy does - but not DirectSDM as there's no command for that ... E&OE

[blue2]

I would like to hear the rationale behind changing DirectSDM setting or any of the other related settings?

I understand changing filter based on music genre. But for the other settings I see little reason to change because those depend more on the related hardware rather than content...

 

My problem is that Auto rate doesn't work with one of my DAC's - probably a driver issue - so I'd like the max rate to be 192k so files at this rate can pass through but use 96k for redbook CD upsampling.

[blue2]

Why don't you use 192k for RedBook!? Since output rate can be changed without touching the settings and straight from the control interface, there shouldn't be an issue even if you want to change the rate.But that is anyway unrelated to DirectSDM setting...

Hi Miska

 

My problem is that Auto rate doesn't work with one of my DAC's - probably a driver issue on older version hiFace - 192k redbook CD upsampling produces silence or noise. When this happens HQP can't stop or pause the noise, i.e. the output stream seems to be locked in a loop. The only way to recover is switch to 96k for e.g. and press play again. So something nasty is happening in this case, and yet 192k and 176k files play fine with no HQP upsampling. This would be a serious issue if I was driving speakers instead of headphones, so I think it's definitely worth trying to avoid the problem.

 

bib01 didn't give you any use case for DirectSDM - I can only think of A/B testing where you want to compare straight through versus DSD upsampling maybe for a demo. Would it be an issue to expose DirectSDM as a command?

 

Thanks

[blue2]

I just tried to create a log file but there's nothing in C:\Users\<my_user_name>\AppData\Local\HQPlayer but I got it second time after restarting HQP

BTW apologies I did tell a lie and you're right about both upsampling and native 192k reproduce the uncontrolled noise from HQP. It was a few weeks ago I found this problem and I actually got normal playback using foobar2000 which outputs through DS, whereas HQP is using WASAPI. There is no choice to make these the same. Maybe it's just my PC can't upsample beyond 96k, but I did get DSD64->DSD128 with my T+A? log on its way. Thanks

[blue2]

I also suggested the developer of Muso should add this feature. I believe bib01 asked for something similar but Jeremy would only take notice if more people request it. Haven't tried Alchemy Desktop yet but plan to.

[blue2]

Miska, with an i7-6700K what are your recommendations for running HQPlayer regarding setting EIST and Turbo Boost? My motherboard (Gigabyte Z170X Ultra Gaming) also has parameters C1E, C3, C6/C7, C8 and Package C State Limit. How should I configure them? Thanks. I'm not doing any overclocking. I already saw your recommendation to use the high performance power plan in Windows 10 Pro.

 

There's a thread about this here http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/hqplayer-win10-i5-how-get-rid-dropouts-30721/#post608397

[blue2]

At this point, I'd wait for Kaby Lake i7-7700K and a Z270 motherboard. Availability is supposed to be only a week from now.

Interesting - however according to this the 7700K isn't that much faster than the 6700K. However it says the next big step is Intel’s new Optane memory technology which should appear on Z270 motherboards. Also some Z170 motherboards can be upgraded to support Kaby Lake processors by BIOS update as the CPU's are pin compatible (LGA 1151 socket). Maybe Skylake CPU prices will come down

[blue2]

You can always count on Jim If You know what I mean https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=108691.0

J River already has a DSP engine for upsampling - not in the same league as HQP - maybe that's why he's touchy on the subject.

 

Roon (Darko web site) are apparently planning to release a new version end of Jan with a new DSP engine which can do cross fade/convolving and DSD upsampling.

[blue2]

Thanks. When I enable "DoP" what seems like a dire warning pops up saying that I shouldn't enable it unless the DAC supports it. There is no explicit reference to "DoP" in the T+A manual, so I wondered if it was OK to enable DoP.

T+A takes DSD direct no need for DoP.

[blue2]

There maybe a point - there isn't a Linux driver ATM for T+A DSD DAC8 for example, but Win 10 does. However Miska would need to tell us if it would work in principle for this and other DAC's having only Win 10 drivers?

[blue2]

I have a CUDA question myself. Is there any benefit to offload on older GPUs? I have an old GTX 650ti card that apparently meets the 3.0 requirement and shows resampler=enabled when starting playback but oddly my system uses 10-15% more CPU this way. I guess that kinda answers the question!

I'm running Arch Linux, latest nvidia driver and an i5-4570 CPU. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get cuda-z to compile to see what if anything my card is up to during playback. Playback is flawless either way, just curious. With both components being a bit dated I'm sure I'd benefit far more from upgrading the CPU first.

 

Miska, any thoughts as to why arglebargle's CPU usage went up with CUDA enabled? Is this what you'd expect or something odd/one off?

 

Thanks

[blue2]

To some extent, but there are so many parameter combinations that caching all combinations is not feasible. So now only the last used is cached, for example if you stop playback and start it again and source content format and settings don't change.

 

While experimenting with all the parameter combinations it is quite reasonable to wait for initialisation. However once you decide you like a set up could there be an option to "Add to favourites" and save the initialisation to disk so it can be selected and reloaded quickly? So that would be all the parameter selections and the initialisation saved/reloaded.